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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2016-08-10]
BTC Price: 592.10, BTC RSI: 40.99
Gold Price: 1344.30, Gold RSI: 55.31
Oil Price: 41.71, Oil RSI: 42.08
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin 'miners' face fight for survival as new supply halves: By Jemima Kelly
KEFLAVIK, Iceland (Reuters) - Marco Streng is a miner, though he does not carry a pick around his base in south-western Iceland. Instead, he keeps tens of thousands of computers running 24 hours a day in fierce competition with others across the globe to earn bitcoins.
In the world of the web-based digital currency, it is not central banks that add new money to the system, but rather computers like Streng's which are awarded fresh bitcoins in return for processing blocks of the latest bitcoin transactions.
Bitcoin can be used to send money instantly around the world, using individual bitcoin addresses, free of charge with no need for third party checks, and is accepted by several major online retailers.
The work Streng's computers and others do serves two purposes: they record and verify the roughly 225,000 daily bitcoin transactions and - because they earn new bitcoins for the work they do - steadily increase the currency in circulation, currently worth around $10 billion.
The process has come to be known as "mining" because it is slow and intensive, reaping a gradual reward in the same way that minerals such as gold are mined from the ground.
But on Saturday, the reward for miners will be slashed in half. Written into bitcoin's code when it was invented in 2008 was a rule dictating that the prize would be halved every four years, in a step designed to keep a lid on bitcoin inflation.
From around 1700 GMT on Saturday, instead of 25 bitcoins up for grabs globally every 10 minutes, worth around $16,000 at the current rate (BTC=BTSP), there will be just 12.5.
That means only the mining companies with the leanest operations will survive the ensuing profit hit.
"The most important thing is to be the most efficient miner," said Streng, the 26-year-old co-founder of German firm Genesis Mining, which has "mining farms" in Canada, the United States and eastern Europe, as well as in Iceland. "When the others drop out, that means that they leave the market and give you a bigger share of the pie."
SOLVING PUZZLES
The currency was founded eight years ago by a person or group using the name Satoshi Nakamoto, whose real identity has not been established. It was set up to operate independently of any single authority, instead relying on a decentralized global network.
Because the bitcoin miners operate autonomously, it is hard to track their numbers and size. But in terms of computing capacity it was estimated earlier this year that the network is 43,000 times more powerful than the world's top 500 supercomputers combined.
Computers like Streng's solve complex, automatically generated mathematical puzzles to help secure each block of transactions and keep the bitcoin network safe from hacking or manipulation. For bitcoin users, that security is one of the currency's main attractions.
After the first miner secures a block of transactions, its work is verified by the other miners in the network, and that block is added to the "blockchain" - a shared record of all the transaction data - which is virtually impossible to tamper with. The mining, therefore, keeps the whole system going.
Bitcoin is now accepted by major organizations including U.S. online retailer Overstock.com and travel company Expedia.
The speed and anonymity of bitcoin transactions, and lack of a central authority overseeing the currency, has drawn in many users, including those who want to get around capital controls. It has also attracted investors who see it as a potentially lucrative commodity in itself.
KEEPING COOL
Bitcoin mining started out as a hobby for tech geeks using their home computers in the early years of the virtual currency, but has become more specialized as bitcoin usage expands.
As the bitcoin price has risen, as transaction numbers have grown and as the computers have become so specialized that they can only perform the function of bitcoin mining, a whole industry has emerged.
It can be profitable if firms are able to keep their expenses low. But the costs of running these machines, which cost around $1,800 each, and keeping them cool are fiendishly high.
Streng reckons that, on average, it costs about $200 in electricity, including cooling power, to mine one bitcoin. Equipment, rent, wages and business running costs are on top.
On Saturday, all else being equal, the halving of the reward will double that cost, to $400, leaving a small margin for profit at the current exchange rate of around $640 per bitcoin.
In the same remote region of Iceland as the Genesis mining farm, on a former Cold War U.S. military base lies a bitcoin mining facility belonging to U.S. firm Bitfury. A nearby sub-station means electricity transmission costs are minimal.
In the farm's two vast buildings, tens of thousands of mining machines whir away, producing a huge amount of heat, so the buildings are open to the cold Icelandic air at either side, save for particle filters to trap dust.
Fans in the ceiling allow hot air to escape, but spin so fast that no rain or snow can enter during the winter. The noise produced by computers and fans is deafening.
It is no coincidence that so many mining companies have chosen to build farms in Iceland - Chinese giant Bitmain also has a huge farm there. The volcanic island's cheap, bountiful, renewable energy supply, good internet connectivity, and cool temperatures make it an ideal location.
The Icelandic authorities welcome the boost to the economy that the bitcoin miners have brought -- Bitmain opened its farm after an approach by the Icelandic embassy in Beijing. Genesis's Streng says he is such a valued client that the Icelandic energy companies fly him around in helicopters.
Bitfury CEO Valery Vavilov, who estimates electricity makes up between 90 and 95 percent of bitcoin mining costs, says one way his firm stays competitive is by making its own hardware.
He also says the company, founded in 2011, is prepared for the mining reward cut. "We're prepared - we already went through one halving event in 2012," he said. "You can forecast this...so you have time to prepare, and if you're prepared you can live quite easily."
Vavilov, and other miners, say the prospect of new supply halving has already helped drive bitcoin up over 50 percent this year, which should help ease the pain.
COMPETITION FROM CHINA
Despite the fact that the halving was expected, and that the price has risen, it has already claimed one casualty: Sweden's KnCMiner filed for bankruptcy at the end of May, citing the hit to its profits that the reward cut would bring.
Daniel Masters, who runs a Jersey-based bitcoin hedge fund and who bought a part of KnC's business, said the Swedish firm, like everybody else, had faced competition from miners in China, which are estimated to make up more than two-thirds of the bitcoin network's computing power, or "hashpower".
"It turned out that the Chinese, who really stormed into the mining market in the last couple of years, could just do this whole thing cheaper," Masters said.
Some Chinese miners get hydroelectric power from disused dams, while others use cheap coal-powered electricity.
Bitfury and Genesis, though, say their lean operations allow them to fight off the competition. Genesis, for example, keeps cost down by remotely monitoring conditions in its mining farms and adjusting its fans and cooling accordingly.
And the next time the mining reward is halved, in 2020, they hope the number of bitcoin transactions will have grown sufficiently to mean that the small fees paid by users will make up enough of their income to smooth out the profit cut.
"By 2020 we will definitely have had the tipping point," said Bitfury's Vavilov.
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Dominic Evans) || Coinbase offers digital currency to consumers: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin exchange Coinbase said on Thursday it is now offering the ether digital currency to consumers. Ether is the digital currency for the Ethereum platform, a blockchain, or public database that can be used by consumers or corporations without the need for control by intermediaries. Ethereum, which uses ether to execute peer-to-peer contracts automatically, was co-founded and invented by 22-year old Russian-Canadian programmer Vitalik Buterin. "Ethereum is still in an early and experimental phase, and as it matures will likely evolve to serve a different purpose than Bitcoin," said Ankur Nandwani, product manager at Coinbase, in a blog posted on the company's website. "In the meantime, Ethereum is pushing the digital currency ecosystem forward and we are excited to support it as part of our mission to create an open financial system for the world." The addition of ether comes given the surge in interest in the digital asset among major financial institutions such as Barclays (BARCR.UL), and other global corporations which are trying to explore the Ethereum network. Nandwani said consumers in 32 countries can now buy, sell, and store in their Coinbase accounts. In May, ether trading was added to its digital currency exchange called GDAX (Global Digital Asset Exchange). That trading platform is focused on institutional investors and professional traders. According to coinmarketcap.com, ether is trading at $12.64 late on Thursday, with a market capitalisation of about $1.04 billion, the second largest behind bitcoin. Bitcoin currently has a market cap of $10.48 billion and trading at $664.85. Volume for ether over the last 24 hours was around $25.7 million, while that for bitcoin was $61.2 million. At the beginning of the year, ether traded at just $1 per token and it is one of the fastest-rising digital currencies. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Andrew Hay) || EU proposes stricter rules on Bitcoin, prepaid cards in terrorism fight: By Foo Yun Chee
STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Tuesday stricter rules on the use of virtual currencies and prepaid cards in a bid to reduce anonymous payments and curb the financing of terrorism.
Virtual currency exchange platforms will have to increase checks on the identities of people exchanging virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, for real currencies and report suspicious transactions.
Under the Commission's proposals the threshold for making anonymous payments with pre-paid cards was lowered to 150 euros ($167.28) from 250 euros.
"Member states will be able to get and share vital information about who really owns companies or trusts, who is dealing in online currencies, and who is using pre-paid cards," EU Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said.
Following attacks in Paris last November by Islamic State militants the EU executive said it would step up measures to cut off terrorists' access to funds.
French authorities have proved that pre-paid cards were used by the Paris attackers.
Prepaid cards are issued by a wide range of operators including banks using major networks, such as Visa and MasterCard. They are different from debit and credit cards because they need to be loaded before payments can be made, but can carry substantial amounts of money.
MasterCard said it supported the Commission's objective of strengthening the security of prepaid cards while ensuring that people less well-off could still use them.
The proposed higher controls on virtual currencies and pre-paid cards "are important in tackling black market and terrorist financing", said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at ACCA, which represents the interests of the accountancy sector.
The Commission proposed increasing the amount of checks banks have to carry out on financial flows from risky third countries, namely states with poor anti-money laundering rules and difficulties countering terrorism financing.
In a bid to end tax evasion after the publication in April of the Panama Papers - which revealed widespread tax avoidance practices by wealthy individuals - the Commission also proposed rules requiring the beneficial owners of trusts to be recorded in registers that in many cases will be accessible to the public.
Existing and new accounts will be subject to due diligence controls and the Commission will look into finding effective ways for each member state to share information on beneficial owners of companies and trusts.
"These proposals for public registers will be welcomed by citizens and anti-corruption activists who want to follow the trail of dirty money," Laure Brillaud, Transparency International EU policy officer, said.
"However, we are concerned that it will be all too easy to evade being on the registers in the first place by gaming the rules on trusts. By simply nominating a non-EU resident as a trustee the secrecy can carry on as before," she added.
Tuesday's proposals will need to be approved by the EU Parliament and EU states before they become law.
(Writing by Julia Fioretti and Ines Kagubare; editing by Susan Thomas) || How the ETF Marketplace Continues to Innovate: Note: This article is courtesy of Iris.xyz By BNY Mellon New product innovations are driving the Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) marketplace and offering investors access to new markets and asset classes. Steve Cook, Managing Director and Business Executive, Structured Product Services, at BNY Mellon discusses these new market and products trends. Certainly in areas that were looking at are multiple-asset portfolios, so funds that will offer through a single investment the ability for an investor to gain access to fixed income, emerging market, commodities, and other asset classes all wrapped in one ETF exposure. We also see unique asset classes coming to market with ETFs, certainly, Bitcoin, and Blockchain technology is something that were actively working on and looking at. We also see the opportunity for a better mix of fixed income securities in ETFs, although it was a trend that took place for a few years, it tapered off as threats of interest rate rises came into market, so we do see a number of different areas of focus as we look out for the ETF marketplace to continue to innovate. To learn more please watch the video here . || Traders say it might be time to buy into tech after NASDAQ hits 2016 highs: The "Fast Money" traders are keeping an eye on the big tech names, after the technology-heavy NASDAQ(NASDAQ: .IXIC)saw its highest levels of the year on Tuesday.
Trader Pete Najarian said that technology and biotechnology companies could help drive the NASDAQ higher, especially if giants like Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT)and Apple(NASDAQ: AAPL)start participating in the rally.
Trader Dan Nathan said he likes PayPal(NASDAQ: PYPL)because of "interesting secular things going on in e-payments." Another stock he likes is JD.com(NASDAQ: JD), even though the "fundamentals haven't been fantastic." Nathan said that JD is a company is well-positioned.
Trader Brian Kelly said that he is less confident in tech's potential.
"If you're buying into tech and you're buying into dividend stocks, you just need to know that you're buying into a bubble. That doesn't mean that it can't go higher. Bubbles go on for a long time, a lot longer than most people can stay short them," Kelly said.
He said he would rather look at securities outside the United States, especially in Japan.
"To me, what happened in Japan over the last couple days could be game changing, so I would look towards Japan," Kelly said, adding that in particular he would look at the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund(NYSE Arca: DXJ).
Disclosures:
PETE NAJARIAN
Long stock: AAPL, BAC, BMY, CSCO, DIS, DISCA, GE, KMI, KMI.A, KO, LUX, MRK, PEP, PFE, SAVE, VIAB, ZIOP Long Calls: AAL, AKS, AMJ, CHK, CLF, CNX, CSX, DAL, EGO, GSAT, HBAN, HOG, INTC, KGC, LLY, MT, MU, NLNK, P, SBUX, SLV, SLW, SVU, TMUS, WLL, XLE, YELP. Long Puts: BID, CS,GM, NAV, NLY
TIM SEYMOUR
Tim Seymour is long APC, AVP, BAC, BBRY, CLF, DO, EDC, EWZ, F, FCX, FXI, GM, GOOGL, GRMN, GE, INTC, LQD, M, MCD, MPEL, NKE, RACE, RAI, RH, RL, SINA, T, TWTR, UA, VALE, VZ, XOM and short: SPY, XRT. His firm is long ABX, BABA, BIDU, CLF, EWZ, F, HD, KO, MCD, MPEL, NKE, PEP, PF, SAVE, SBUX, SINA, VALE, VIAB, WMT, WEN, YHOO, short HYG, IWM
BRIAN KELLY
Brian Kelly is long Bitcoin, DXJ, GLD, MOS, POT, SLV, XME, US Dollar UUP; he is short WTI crude, Swiss franc, euro and Japanese yen.
DAN NATHAN
Dan Nathan is Long JD Aug call spread, Long PFE, Long TWTR, BABA Aug put spread, IWM long Sept put, XLF long Aug put spread, XLK long Sept Put spread, FXI long Aug put spread, SMH long Aug put spread, long PYPL call calendar, long C Aug put spread, XOP Sept put spread, TGT long Aug calls, TSLA long Aug put, SPY long Sept put spread, BAC long Sept puts.
More From CNBC
• Top News and Analysis
• Latest News Video
• Personal Finance || What Is Blockchain, And Why Should You Care?: Analysts at Goldman Sachs define "blockchain" as a type of environment that acts like a "a shared digital ledger of transactions recorded and verified across a network of participants in a tamper-proof chain that is visible to all."
Bitcoin is considered to be the first technology to use the blockchain, as every transaction is recorded and made public. According toBrian Forde,the director of Digital Currency at the MIT Media Lab, governments need to fully understand the impact of blockchain-based applications and understand how the technology might be used to increase trust.
Writing for Tech Crunch, Forde noted that governments are in the very early stages of implementing this new concept. For example, the Governor of Delawareannouncedhis administration plans on registering companies, tracking share movements and managing investor communications in blockchain environment.
Related Link: Goldman Sachs Says Blockchain Could Drive Airbnb To Top Spot For Lodging By 2020
The use of a blockchain-type of system could also offer every person a personal digital medical record that would be accessible by any authorized user at any time, while also being portable and secure in its privacy.
"Ultimately, by supporting the development of public blockchain-based government applications and funding critical research of this promising technology — the next president will have the power to significantly increase trust in government, decrease bureaucracy and protect consumer data based on the feedback from the cryptocurrency community," Forde wrote.
Finally, Forde suggested that Hillary Clinton's recentpolicy goalsfor technology and innovation and the use of blockchain government applications is a "positive step forward" in achieving its goals.
See more from Benzinga
• Traders Rush To Close Positions Before The Bell Each Day Fearing Overnight Headlines
• Millions Of Spenders Are Ready To Come Back From The Mortgage Crisis
• Dallas Police Shootings Have Investors Buying Gun, Body Camera Stocks
© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Vitaxel Group Entered a Platform Agent Agreement with Bitspark to Launch Bitcoin Remittance Service in Malaysia: KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA / ACCESSWIRE / August 9, 2016 / Vitaxel Group Limited(VXEL) (the "Company" or "Vitaxel"), a multi-level marketing direct seller, with an emphasis on travel, entertainment and lifestyle products and services, today announced that the Company signed a Platform Agent Agreement with Bitspark Limited ("Bitspark") to launch BitSpark's bitcoin remittance service in Malaysia.
This agreement will allow Bitspark to add Malaysia and the Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) as a supported country and currency. As a result, the customers in Malaysia are offered access to Bitspark's full services at local money transfer outlets and provided an option for individuals to utilize mobile payments. Currently, Bitspark's market has reached to Philippine, Indonesia and Vietnam with over 100,000 cash pickup locations.
Vitaxel & Bitspark Signing aPlatform AgentAgreement
To view an enhanced version of this image, please visit:
[https://www.accesswire.com/uploads/Vitaxel1.jpg]
Bitspark's Chief Executive officer Mr. George Harrap stated, "Today we signed our final master agreement on bringing the Bitspark Remittance platform to Malaysia, both teams at Bitspark and Vitaxel have been working hard to make this happen and today we have reached an exciting new milestone. I think this signals the start of a working relationship that we can build on over time for new products and markets to meet the needs of our customers with our industry leading services in the financial space."
Vitaxel's Chief Executive Officer Mr. Ryan Leong, commented, "We believe that our collaboration with Bitspark, a 'game-changer' innovative fintech company, will move us closer to our corporate goals. We are commited to provide the most effective technology to deliver the best value to our current and future customers."
About Bitspark Limited
Founded in April 2014,Bitsparkspecializes in remittances services in the Asia Pacific region and is known for introducing the world's first brick-and-mortar bitcoin remittance vendor in Hong Kong. Bitspark provides the world first cash-in cash-out remittance platform for individuals and Money Transfer Operators to send money to emerging markets cheaper, quicker and to more destinations than ever before leveraging Bitcoin as the means of transmission with zero prior Bitcoin knowledge.
About Vitaxel Group Limited
Vitaxel Group Limited is a market leader in MLM and e-commerce space, has over 5,000 distributors in 16 countries in Asia. With three significant operating subsidiaries, Vitaxel SDN BHD (Vitaxel) and Vitaxel Online Mall SDN BHD (Vionmall), and the Vitaxel Singapore PTE. Ltd. ("Vitaxel Singapore"), Vitaxel is primarily engaged in the direct selling industry utilizing a multi-level marketing model with an emphasis on travel, entertainment and lifestyle products and services; Vionmall is engaged in the development of online shopping platforms geared to Vitaxel and its members and third party providers of products and services.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains certain statements that may include "forward-looking statements." All statements other than statements of historical fact included herein are "forward-looking statements." These forward-looking statements are often identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes," "expects" or similar expressions, involving known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, and these expectations may prove to be incorrect. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors, including the risk factors discussed in the Company's periodic and other reports that are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the SEC's website (http://www.sec.gov). All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these risk factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements.
Contacts:
Vitaxel Group LimitedEmail:info@vitaxel.comPhone: 03-2143 2889
SOURCE:Vitaxel Group Limited || Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Will Trade on BATS: The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, the highly anticipated exchange traded fund sponsored by twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, will trade on the Bats ETF Marketplace when the product comes to market. The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust made plans to switch its exchange listing to BATS Global Markets from the Nasdaq, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, reports Paul Vigna for the Wall Street Journal. The trusts sponsor is Math-Based Asset Services LLC, which was formed in mid-2013. Bitcoin is a type of decentralized digital currency based on a peer-to-peer network and can be exchanged through computers internationally without a financial intermediary. The system was first introduced by developer Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009. Related: Winkdex Bitcoin Index Debuts Bats ranks as the top exchange operator for ETF trading with the Bats Exchanges BYX, BZX, EGDA, EDGX executing 24.7% of all ETF trading for the month of April 2016. Bats has been the #1 U.S. market for ETF trading and the #2 U.S. market for overall equities trading for every month of 2016, according to the Kansas City-based exchange operator. Trending on ETF Trends 11 Surging Silver ETFs as Two-Year High Looms A Gold Boon for these Glistening ETFs As Bank of England Mulls Rate Cuts, More Pound Punishment Likely As Q3 Begins, Gold Miner ETFs Keep Shining Another Rally Looms for Gold ETFs In February 2014, Winklevoss Capital launched the Winkdex, a bitcoin index that will eventually be used for a planned bitcoin ETF, COIN, which was first proposed in 2013 but is still waiting on regulatory approval. The Winklevoss brothers also plan to use another of their bitcoin-related properties, the Gemini Trust Co., as the bitcoin trusts custodian, according to the filing. Gemini, which operates a digital-currency exchange, received a trust charter from the New York State Department of Financial Services in October and will hold the bitcoins underlying the trust, according to the Journal. Gemini is the third bitcoin-related institution to acquire regulatory approval and the second to be granted a charter by the DFS to a bitcoin-related business. Circle Internet Financial received the first BitLicense and ItBit received a charter last year. For more information on bitcoins, visit our bitcoin category . || Winklevoss digital currency exchange expands to UK: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK, June 21 (Reuters) - Gemini Trust Co, the U.S.-based bitcoin exchange founded by investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, on Tuesday opened trading in the UK, the second leg of an international expansion program.
In an interview last Thursday, Gemini Chief Executive Officer Tyler Winklevoss said that for now, UK citizens would only be able to trade online currencies bitcoin and ether on the exchange.
Ether is a token or digital asset of the Ethereum platform, a public blockchain.
Trading bitcoin and ether against fiat currencies such as the dollar and sterling will start in a few weeks, Winklevoss said, adding that no regulatory approval was needed to operate in the UK for the services the company provides.
"The UK FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) has made it clear that they're not regulating digital assets at the moment," said Winklevoss. "That said, the second that there's clarity that we have to file something, we will be the first company to file our paperwork."
Two weeks ago, Gemini kicked off its international expansion by opening trading in Canada, where no regulatory approval was needed.
Digital currencies have grown in popularity as investors view them as a separate asset class.
Major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and global technology companies such as International Business Machines Corp try to unlock the potential uses and applications of these assets' underlying technology, the blockchain.
The blockchain is a database that enables a network of computers to validate, clear, settle, track, and record the ownership of assets as they are traded.
Volume on Gemini, or the notional value of both bitcoin and ether traded on the platform, for the month of May was approximately $40 million, said Winklevoss.
By the end of June, he sees volume further rising to between $50 million and $60 million.
Bitcoin on Tuesday traded at $677.18 on the Bitstamp platform, with a market capitalization of $10.6 billion, according to crypto-currency data website coinmarketcap.com.
Ether, the second-largest digital currency behind bitcoin, last changed hands at $12.27 and has a market capitalization of nearly $1 billion.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Phil Berlowitz) || London's Tech Sector Thinks Brexit Will Be A Disaster: The British people will vote next week in a national election to decide the country's fate within the European Union.
The vote, dubbed "Brexit," will ask the people if they want Britain to remain a member of the European Union or not. Recent polls suggest a vote to leave the EU is currently winning, but it's still a very close race.
According toTech Crunch,a survey of 320 members of the Tech London Advocates, a collection of technology leaders, experts and investors, also found that 87 percent believe the country would be in better shape remaining part of the EU.
Related Link:Would Falkland/Malvinas Islands' Sovereignty Be At Risk With A Brexit?
"My concern [about Brexit] is that if people felt there was a better chance of exploiting the European market from a place like Berlin, they'll just choose that or other locations instead," Tech Crunch quoted Gary Stewart, the UK Director of WAYRA, a leading startup accelerator as saying. "Startups will always go to places where they'll have the best possibility of success."
Christian Hernandez, a managing partner at White Star Capital, a venture capital firm based in London, shared a similar sentiment. He is worried that an exit from the European Union would result in startups and tech entrepreneurs no longer choosing London as a base of operation. After all, London is widely considered to be the venture financial capital for Europe.
The reality is that life post-Brexit marks an uncharted territory, and no one knows what the landscape will look like, Tech Crunch concluded.
See more from Benzinga
• Bitcoin Is Up 30% This Week And 200% This Year: Here Is What You Need To Know
• Beijing Orders Apple To Halt Sales Of iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus Devices In The City
• Wells Fargo's Hateful 8: Shares Are Down 8 Sessions In A Row, Worst Streak In 8 Years
© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
1 $MOIN Price: C-Cex 0.00000300 #BTC
#MOIN #MoneyEvolved 2016-06-18 18:00
https://c-cex.com/?p=moin-btc pic.twitter.com/kgEXTlb6HD || #BTA Price: Bittrex 0.00001754 BTC YoBit 0.00002300 BTC Bleutrade 0.00001701 BTC #BTAprice 2016-07-06 06:00 pic.twitter.com/aBU5K2VaNY || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$674.05/$675.89 #Bitstamp
$656.64/$658.00 #BTCe
⇢$-19.25/$-16.05
$675.22/$675.59 #Coinbase
⇢$-0.67/$1.54 || $650.02 #bitfinex;
$645.00 #bitstamp;
$621.00 #btce;
Prices & News: http://bit.ly/1VI6Yse
#bitcoin #btc || #BTA Price: Bittrex 0.00001458 BTC YoBit 0.00001500 BTC Bleutrade 0.00001424 BTC #BTAprice 2016-07-14 22:00 pic.twitter.com/EBicIyUh9v || #TrinityCoin #TTY $ 0.000007 (-1.29 %) 0.00000001 BTC (-0.00 %) || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$667.02/$669.30 #Bitstamp
$636.00/$636.33 #BTCe
⇢$-33.30/$-30.69
$671.50/$675.07 #Coinbase
⇢$2.20/$8.05 || #Anoncoin/#ANC price now: $ 0.189436, that's 0.00 % change in 1hour. -2.00 % past day, and -2.07 % in the past week! #Bitcoin is $ 631.22 || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$664.53/$665.94 #Bitstamp
$653.00/$653.00 #BTCe
⇢$-12.94/$-11.53
$666.62/$666.72 #Coinbase
⇢$0.68/$2.19 || Try fatguyslim.david at https://LocalBitcoins.com/ad/317390?ch=w7m … only £523.00 per BTC. (BPI +3.45%) #buy #bitcoin #banktrans
|
Trend: down || Prices: 589.12, 587.56, 585.59, 570.47, 567.24, 577.44, 573.22, 574.32, 575.63, 581.70
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2018-08-15]
BTC Price: 6308.52, BTC RSI: 37.10
Gold Price: 1177.50, Gold RSI: 20.71
Oil Price: 65.01, Oil RSI: 36.15
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
$10.7 Trillion Custodian Northern Trust Helping Hedge Funds Invest in Bitcoin: northern trust bitcoin cryptocurrency blockchain Financial services giant Northern Trust, which ranks 486th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest U.S. companies, has begun to wade into the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Northern Trust Offers Services to Crypto-Curious Hedge Funds Forbes reports that the 129-year-old Chicago-based firm, which caters to institutional investors, corporations, and high net worth individuals, has begun to open up some of its services to cryptocurrency hedge funds while also exploring how to integrate blockchain technology into its private equity division. According to the publication, Northern Trust has for months also been working with three “mainstream hedge funds” that have begun stealthily adding cryptocurrency investments to their portfolios as they seek to gain exposure to the nascent but burgeoning crypto marketplace. Northern Trust has an estimated $10.7 trillion in assets under custody and administration, according to its website. At present, Northern Trust is not custodying cryptoassets directly, but the firm is providing crypto-curious hedge funds and institutions with administrative services such as helping them assign values to their investments, assisting in anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, and verifying that the firms’ third-party custodians are holding the cryptoassets the funds report on their balance sheets. Financial Giants Warm to Bitcoin cryptocurrency wall street bitcoin etf That revelation, along with the recent news that “Big Four” accounting firm PwC had agreed to audit the Tezos Foundation , which oversees the assets raised during the cryptocurrency’s then-record initial coin offering (ICO), is the latest sign that established financial services firms are recognizing that the cryptocurrency industry is a market that they can no longer dismiss. Pete Cherecwich, Northern Trust’s president of corporate and institutional services, told Forbes that while the firm is on record stating that it is “cautious” about blockchain technology, it is also preparing for a future in which governments themselves may issue their state-backed currencies on a blockchain. Story continues “I do believe that governments will ultimately look at digitizing their currencies, and having them trade kind of like a digital token — a token of the U.S. dollar — but the U.S. dollar is still in a vault somewhere, or backed by the government,” he said. “How are they going to do that? I don’t know. But I do believe they are going to get there.” Cherecwich further said that the firm has a team of more than a dozen technology and private equity specialists who are working to produce a suite of services built on the enterprise version of permissioned blockchain software Hyperledger Fabric . Last year, a Northern Trust executive called for “ careful ” regulation of blockchain technology, cautioning that a “database has never been regulated” and that there is “potential danger” from moving too quickly to place new rules on the industry. Images from Shutterstock The post $10.7 Trillion Custodian Northern Trust Helping Hedge Funds Invest in Bitcoin appeared first on CCN . || Bitcoin is Erasing 300 Years of Monetary Evolution: Nobel Economist Paul Krugman: Paul Krugman bitcoin cryptocurrency blockchain American economist Paul Krugman has taken another swing bitcoin, arguing that the prominent cryptocurrency, as well as its peers, represents a 300-year economic regression and will “likely” experience a “total collapse.” Writing in his regular New York Times column , Krugman — who has at various times published articles lambasting bitcoin as “ evil ” and “ the long cryptocon ” — lays out a case for why his continued skepticism towards cryptocurrency is justified. The Nobel Prize winner said that he has two main problems with cryptocurrency: its transaction costs and “lack of tethering” (an ironic term, given the controversy surrounding the cryptocurrency token of the same name). Bitcoin Taking Economics Back Three Centuries Krugman argues that, throughout history, money has gradually evolved toward frictionless transactions, culminating in the current monetary regime centered around credit and debit cards and other types of digital payment methods. Bitcoin, he says, represents a 300-year evolutionary regression because it reintroduces friction into the monetary ecosystem in the form of the costs associated with mining transactions and validating the blockchain history. He writes: “Set against this history [of money], the enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies seems very odd, because it goes exactly in the opposite of the long-run trend…In other words, cryptocurrency enthusiasts are effectively celebrating the use of cutting-edge technology to set the monetary system back 300 years. Why would you want to do that? What problem does it solve? I have yet to see a clear answer to that question.” While conceding that governments have “occasionally abused the privilege of creating fiat money,” Krugman says that the conventional central banking system has done its job “quite well,” providing users with low-friction transactions and stable purchasing power. Bitcoin — you can probably guess where this is going — is not useful as a medium of exchange or a store of value. Story continues Cryptocurrency Has No ‘Tether’ It is then that Krugman betrays his true problem with cryptocurrency if it is indeed digital cash and digital gold. People hold cash in large denominations, he claims, for one purpose: criminal activities including tax evasion. Bitcoin, he says, is constrained to the same use case. But while $100 bills may not be a useful medium of exchange for legitimate transactions — many stores do not accept them — Krugman says that they have one key advantage over bitcoin: their value is “tethered” to the value of smaller-denomination bills, which “have underlying value because men with guns say they do.” He continues: “Cryptocurrencies, by contrast, have no backstop, no tether to reality. Their value depends entirely on self-fulfilling expectations – which means that total collapse is a real possibility. If speculators were to have a collective moment of doubt, suddenly fearing that Bitcoins were worthless, well, Bitcoins would become worthless.” So will that collapse occur? Krugman, on his part, thinks that it will, though he says that it’s possible, if unlikely, that bitcoin could endure as a black market-asset. Featured Image from Commonwealth Club/ Flickr The post Bitcoin is Erasing 300 Years of Monetary Evolution: Nobel Economist Paul Krugman appeared first on CCN . || Why This Allianz Economist Says Bitcoin Is a Buy Around $5,000: As the price of Bitcoin continues its dip to $5,800, one economist thinks that it may be heading into buying territory. When asked at what price he might consider buying the cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin, Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian told CNBC Friday: “Around $5,000.” Mohamed El-Erian, former chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) in New York, U.S., on Sept. 7, 2016. The prediction comes as the price of Bitcoin has fallen significantly since the start of 2018. Riding on a wave of optimism and sudden interest from the general public, the value of the cryptocurrency rose to touch $20,000 in December in some markets. Since then, the price of the asset has fallen by 71% amid greater cryptocurrency regulation from nations, including the U.S. and Japan . The former PIMCO CEO said he expects Bitcoin’s most fervent believers to potentially buy into the cryptocurrency — pushing the asset’s price northward. “I don’t think you get all the way back to $20,000, but I do think that you need to establish a base whereby the people who really believe in the future of Bitcoin consolidate and then that provides you a lift,” he said. Though pointing to the difficulty in valuing the cryptocurrency, El-Erian noted that his decision to point to the $5,000 figure was “a gut feeling.” Though El-Erian’s rationale about why Bitcoin’s price could rise further, does seem reasonable. Major Bitcoin bulls have thrown out dramatic predictions about the value of the cryptocurrency, with venture capitalist Tim Draper saying he expects the value of the digital asset to reach $250,000 in four years . Pfeffer Capital’s John Pfeffer meanwhile said he expects Bitcoin to eventually reach $700,000 . If they are indeed right, then such crypto bulls will certainly have the last laugh. Whether they actually buy into the dip however, remains to be seen. || Bitcoin at 2-Month High After South Korea Regulator Reshuffle: Investing.com - Bitcoin was at a two-month high on Monday as South Korea reshuffled its financial watchdog and set up a cryptocurrency organization.
Bitcoin (BitfinexUSD) was trading at $7,705.10, rising 4.11% on the Bitfinex exchange, as of 4:37 AM ET (8:37 GMT), not far from its session high of $7,755.20.
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission (FSC) is creating a Financial Consumer Bureau as part of an organization reshuffle to “better protect financial consumers,” the regulator said in a press release.
The bureau is tasked with responding to new development such as cryptocurrencies but would also have oversight over policy initiatives related to other financial technology and data innovations.
South Korea is one of the top virtual currency markets in the world. As alternative currencies have increased in popularity, regulators have struggled with how to respond. For now, many major governments are allowing the trade of crypto on exchanges while introducing some consumer protections measures.
Just last week, the U.S Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set up a regulatory sandbox to help firms explore innovated products. The sandbox is usually set up by regulators to help companies who want to launch new products and is generally established by regulators to let smaller firms create and test products in a space monitored by regulators.
While the news of South Korea’s FSC organization reshuffle was welcome to digital asset investors, cryptocurrencies overall remained steady. The coin market cap of total market capitalization was at $288 billion at the time of writing.
Ethereum, the second biggest alternative currency by market cap, inched down 0.25% to $460.85 on the Bitfinex exchange. Ripple, the third largest virtual currency, increased 0.80% to $0.45466 while Litecoin was at $84.366, up 1.14%.
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IG Token Switches to Airdrop after ICO Flop || Bitcoin News Crypto Currency Daily Roundup June 26: Bitcoin News The price of Bitcoin (BTC) was up in the morning; venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has launched a $300-million cryptocurrency fund; Robinhood is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency wallet; Bitcoin is gaining popularity in Europe,; the Central Bank of the Bahamas to launch its own cryptocurrency; and India is expected to finalize crypto regulations next month. Here is what is happening in the cryptocurrency market on Tuesday. SEE: Finra Slaps $400K Fine On Betterment For Failing To Meet Regulatory Standards SEE: Metamask To Add Ethereum Classic (ETC) Blockchain To Its Bridge Services In the News Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz , known as a16z, has launched a $300-million cryptocurrency fund. In a blog post, the firm said: Weve been investing in crypto assets for 5+ years. Weve never sold any of those investments, and dont plan to any time soon. We structured the a16z crypto fund to be able to hold investments for 10+ years. Robinhood , which operates a commission-free trading app, is reportedly planning to launch its own cryptocurrency wallet. CCN reported that the wallet would allow the companys customers to move their crypto assets from other platforms without selling them first. The popularity of Bitcoin is growing in Europe, according to a report from Dutch banking giant ING . The consumer economic report from the bank reveals that fewer than one in 10 Europeans currently own cryptocurrency, while 16% of people expect to own them in the future, The Independent reported. The survey involved nearly 15,000 people across 13 countries. PayCoiner has introduced a cryptocurrency payment gateway platform. The SaaS platform, which is available at PayCoiner.com, is designed to allow businesses to accept cryptocurrencies for products and services. The process is risk-free, completely secure with provable results the company notes on its website. Philippines is going to limit the number of cryptocurrency exchanges operating within the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA), according to CEZA boss Atty. Raul Lambino. In an interview at the Global Blockchain Summit in Pasay City in the Philippines, Lambino revealed that his office is reviewing 60 applications from companies looking to build cryptocurrency exchanges in the zone. Story continues The Central Bank of the Bahamas is planning to launch its own cryptocurrency to further facilitate the process of doing business in the country consisting of more than 700 islands. Kevin Peter Turnquest, deputy prime minister and minister of finance of the Bahamas, revealed the plan at the recently-held The Bahamas Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference. Zebpay , one of Indias biggest crypto exchanges, is warning its customers that their fiat rupee withdrawals could be affected by the Reserve Bank of Indias recent ban. On April 5, the Indias central bank directed all financial institutions to stop providing services to companies involved in the cryptocurrency business. Crypto in India isnt over, according to a report from News.Bitcoin. The report states that a high-ranking official in India said that authorities plan to finalize crypto regulations as early as the first half of next month. Meanwhile, the Indian Supreme Court has agreed to review a petition against the RBI ban in a hearing set for July 3. Cryptocurrency exchange BTCC has decided to sell a 49% stake in its mining pool business BTCC Pool Limited to Value Convergence Holdings Limited, an asset management and financial firm in Hong Kong. If the deal is finalized, BTCC will receive HK$147,000,000 (or about $18.73 million) for the sale of its stake in BTCC Pool Limited. Cryptocurrency Prices Today Bitcoin (BTC) gained 1.64% over the past 24 hours, trading at $6,227.42 in the morning. Ethereum (ETH) is trading at $449.84, down 1.27% over a 24 hour period. EOS moved up 0.88% over the past 24 hours, now trading at $8.03. Ripple (XRP) is trading at $0.4783, up 0.53% over a 24 hour period. Litecoin (LTC) is trading at $80.87, up 0.37% over a 24-hour period. To view more information, click here . The post Bitcoin News Crypto Currency Daily Roundup June 26 appeared first on Market Exclusive . || Gold Price Forecast – Gold drifts lower against stronger US dollar: Gold markets have drifted a bit lower during the trading session on Friday, reaching down towards the $1237 level before bouncing. I believe that the market will continue to be driven by headlines coming out of the Sino-American trade war, and of course the risk appetite of traders around the world. I believe that Gold continues to get a little bit beaten up in the short term, but I do see signs of mass of support underneath. Gold markets have a massive amount of support at the $1200 level, so I think that in the short term I think it’s likely that we will continue to sell off on short-term rallies that show signs of exhaustion, but eventually I think the $1200 level underneath is going to be massive in its implications. The alternate scenario of course is that we turn around and break above the $1250 level, which of course is a resistance barrier above. However, we clear it, the market would show that it would continue to go much higher. At this point though, it looks as if the sellers are in control so it’s much easier to short these rallies for short-term moves. I would stay out of longer-term trades currently, until we get some type of resolution to the situation between the Chinese and the Americans as it will continue to have a massive influence on gold. Gold Price Predictions Video 16.07.18 This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Silver Price Forecast – Silver markets a bit softer on Friday Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 14/07/18 Gold Price Forecast – Gold drifts lower against stronger US dollar GBP/USD Weekly Price Forecast – British pound continues to tread water Natural Gas Weekly Price Forecast – natural gas markets running out of hope? Gold Weekly Price Forecast – Gold markets struggle during the week || Bitcoin and Ethereum Price Forecast – BTC Prices Correct: The BTC prices dropped lower during the course of trading yesterday which can be seen as a correction of the larger move that has been happening in the markets over the last few days. This has since pushed the prices below the $8000 region but this is viewed only as a correction and we believe that as the period of correction and consolidation is over, the bulls will begin their game once again and start pushing the prices higher in the short term. The investors and the traders are still looking for a good opportunity to go long once again and with such support around, we find it difficult to see any chance of a reversal at this point of time.
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Once the consolidation is complete and the next leg of the bull run begins, the next logical target would be above the $8500 region and in due course of time, we should be expecting the prices to target the $10,000 region in the short term. It is likely to take a while but with the bull run upon us, we are in no doubt that the first target of the bulls would be that round figure. If and when the prices get there, we will have to watch the price action carefully to see whether the move higher would continue or whether it would fail like it did the last time around.
The ETH prices have managed to survive the move lower that has been seen in many of the cryptos and it continues to trade above the $450 region. What should be noted by the traders is the fact that the ETH market did not join in on the move higher and it did not join in on the correction so far as well and the prices have been pretty stable. The market would be hoping that it joins the move higher when the next leg begins.
Looking ahead to the rest of the day, with the weekend almost upon us, we can expect some consolidation and ranging to take place for most of the day and we believe that the same action is likely to continue for the weekend as well.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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Here's a look at three stocks that have attractive price-to-earnings ratios, offer substantial dividend payouts, and have the potential to benefit from some huge trends:General Motors(NYSE: GM),AT&T(NYSE: T), andWestern Digital(NASDAQ: WDC).
Image source: Getty Images.
With the cyclical nature of the auto industry in mind, it would be a mistake to take GM's 6.3 forward earnings multiple as a face-value buy signal. On the other hand, it is a metric that casts the stock in an attractive light when recent performance, growth initiatives shaping the company, and its appealing returned-income profile are taken into account. GM stock also comes with a chunky 3.8% dividend yield at current prices.
If business accelerates as management expects in the year's second and third quarters, the company's earnings should actually increase this year. There's some promising news on that front with GM's U.S. auto sales up 4.6% year over year in the second quarter. The company also expects that new launches in its truck lines and growth in markets like China and South Korea will help deliver earnings growth in the 2019 fiscal year.
Some investors also appear to have trepidation about the potentially disruptive impact that self-driving cars could have on the auto space. Mass-market deployment ofLevel 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicleswill likely change the game, and companies that fail to adequately prepare for the shift will face consequences.
However, GM looks well-positioned in the space as it plans to launch a self-driving ride-hailing service by 2019. And, the economics seem to support rides-as-a-service being an advantageous development for industry leaders. The as-a-service model has already been hugely beneficial for the software industry, and while the maintenance costs for cars are likely to be higher, GM's estimate that an autonomous-ride-share car could generate hundreds of thousands in revenue points to big opportunity.
In spite of competitive pressures and recent escalations in trade tensions between the U.S. and China, GM looks to have better growth prospects than its valuation implies.
AT&T shareholders have had to be content with the company's admittedly generous dividend payouts over the last decade. Its share price has remained fairly flat over the last decade while the S&P 500 index has climbed roughly 115% over the stretch.
Much of the poor stock performance comes down to increasing competition in the mobile wireless space and paying a steep price to acquire DirecTV right before subscription declines accelerated due tocord-cutting trends. Recently, the telecom's stock has gotten a haircut amid investor concerns that the roughly $180 billion in debt it carries following the Time Warner acquisition could mean that a dividend cut is in the cards. Those concerns intensified following news that the telecom giant intends to purchase advertising and analytics company AppNexus at a price around $2 billion.
So, there's been no shortage of reasons for the lack of enthusiasm surrounding AT&T stock. The flip side is that shares trade at roughly 9.5 times this year's expected earnings, come with a sizable 6.1% dividend yield, and the company expects to generate $21 billion in free cash flow (FCF) this year. That would put the cost of covering its payout at a still-reasonable 70% of this year's FCF.
The business also enjoys an entrenched market position, is backed by strong brands, and appears to have growth opportunities in 5G network technology andsynergies created by the Time Warner acquisition. For income-seeking investors, I think AT&T is worth adding to your portfolio this month.
As with GM, the cyclical nature of the Western Digital's business presents something of a caveat when valuing the stock against short-term earnings expectations. The company's profits will fluctuate based on product-refresh cycles, heavy investment periods, and swings in pricing strength for its offerings.
On the consumer side of things, Western Digital should continue to benefit from growth in the solid-state drive and NAND flash memory markets. The general trend is that the pricing power per terabyte is declining, and that will almost certainly continue, but the good news for Western Digital is itsproduction costs are also on a downtrend.
The amount of data to be stored is rising as video becomes an increasingly widespread medium and emerging product categories like smart cars and Internet-of-Things devices gain traction. The company expects to start rolling out a microwave-assisted hard drive in 2019, with storage up to 40 terabytes. There's increasing need for storage in the enterprise market as businesses move to support these technologies and ramp up their cloud processing and data analytics offerings.
Still, Western Digital stock boasts a solid 2.6% yield and trades at less than six times this year's expected earnings. The company'spayout growthhas stalled since 2016, but with the cost of distributing its dividend representing just 17% of trailing free cash flow, the company could likely maintain its returned-income distribution even if business shifts to a down period.
WDC Free Cash Flow (TTM)data byYCharts
While some consumer storage business is migrating to the internet and the company faces tough competition fromSamsungand others, there are still drivers of demand for Western Digital. The storage stock looks like a cheap buy this July.
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Keith Noonanowns shares of AT&T.; The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast – IEA Warning, Labor Issues in Norway, Iraq Could Be Supportive: U.S. West Texas Intermediate and international-benchmark Brent crude oil futures settled lower last week. The highlight of the week was the more than 5 percent drop in prices on Wednesday. Volatility is likely to remain at heightened levels as the market continues to work out highly sensitive supply issues.
September WTI crude oilfinished the week at $69.95, down $1.62 or -2.26 percent andSeptember Brentsettled at $75.33, down $1.78 or -2.31 percent.
To recap the week, after trading higher early in the week, prices plunged on Wednesday after OPEC member Libya reopened its ports in the east and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington would consider granting waivers to some of Iran’s crude buyers. Prices were also pressured by fears that a U.S. – China trade dispute could hit global economic growth. Furthermore, some traders are worried that China could eventually impose a tariff on imported U.S. crude oil.
Underpinning the markets were declining oil supplies from Venezuela and labor issues in Norway and Iraq that could curtail supply. Additionally, there are also fears that the U.S. would eventually push forward with its original plan to cut imports from Iran to zero starting in November.
Another unexpected drop in U.S. inventories may have also added to the support late in the week. On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said that U.S. crude stockpiles fell by 12.6 million barrels during the week-ending July 6. This was the biggest price slide in nearly two years.
Finally, probably providing the strongest support after the steep drop in prices were the comments from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The IEA warned on Thursday that the world was short of spare supply capacity and hence any new disruption could further elevate prices.
In other news, General Electric Co’s Baker Hughes said the U.S. oil rig count remained steady at 863 in the week to July 13.
The markets appear to have found support late last week after Wednesday’s steep sell-off. The warning by the IEA seems to have slowed down the selling and perhaps brought in a few new buyers.
The IEA said in its monthly report, “Rising production from Middle East Gulf countries and Russia, welcome though it is, comes at the expense of the world’s spare capacity cushion, which might be stretched to the limit.”
“This vulnerability currently underpins oil prices and seems likely to continue doing so,” the agency added.
The IEA statement is likely to continue to underpin the markets while the news of labor disputes in Norway and Iraq is likely to attract new buyers.
Any surprise announcements about increased supply could limit gains or even drive prices through last week’s lows. For example, an end to the strikes in Norway and Iraq could be the catalysts for such a move.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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The most financial savvy states According to WalletHub, the 10 states with residents in the best financial shape overall, starting with the savviest state are: New Hampshire Virginia Minnesota Maryland Utah New Jersey Maine Colorado North Dakota Illinois Different states at the top of the list excelled for different reasons. New Hampshire scored very high in all categories. Its residents were No. 3 when it came to good financial planning habits and ranked No. 1 in performance on WalletHub's WalletLiteracy test, which is a 30-question online test compiled with help from professors in the field of finance. The test -- which includes questions ranging from how to tell which laundry detergent is cheapest to what factors matter when deciding to buy a home -- was completed by more than 8,000 people from across the country. Virginians, on the other hand, were better at putting financial ideas into practice, as the state scored No. 2 in terms of residents exhibiting good financial habits such as having a rainy day fund. While Virginia residents may be doing the right things, their WalletLiteracy Ranking was ninth and they ranked only 29th in financial knowledge. By contrast, Maine residents were No. 1 in financial knowledge, but 17th in financial planning and habits, so while those residents know their stuff, they aren't always doing what they should. The least financially savvy places Now for the bottom of the list: the 10 least financially savvy places to live. Starting with the lowest score and working up, these are: Louisiana Alaska Mississippi Oklahoma District of Columbia New Mexico South Dakota Kentucky Delaware Rhode Island The worst-performing state, Louisiana, received an overall score of 52.72, compared with New Hampshire's total score of 70.28. Louisiana scored the worst of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia in financial habits, and came in 49th out of 51 for financial education. Story continues Louisiana residents also struggled on the WalletLiteracy test, finishing 47th. Mississippians, however, performed the worst on the test, although their financial knowledge and education score was actually not too bad, ranking 26th. How can you improve your financial literacy? While it might be nice to live in a state that ranks well, it's more important that you have your own financial life in order, regardless of what your neighbors are doing. To get your finances under control, make sure you have both the financial knowledge to make good decisions and the willpower to follow through with responsible practices. Some of the ways you can improve your situation include: Having an emergency fund: North Dakota scored highest in residents with rainy day funds. Not having an emergency fund means you could end up in debt or facing financial disasters such as foreclosure if your income falls or you face unexpected expenses. You should have three to six months of living expenses in a savings account you don't touch unless you have an emergency. If you don't have this much saved, make a budget, determine how much to contribute to reach your savings goal, and set up automated contributions. This guide to emergency funds will help you get started. Opening the right financial accounts: First and foremost, you need a checking account. Getting paychecks and paying bills are very expensive if you don't have one. Oklahoma has the highest share of unbanked households, and one big reason is concern over fees and overdraft costs. The good news is, new apps are developing to serve the unbanked, such as Capway . A bank account is just the beginning, though. You should also open a high-yield savings account for an emergency fund and to save for other goals, and a retirement account such as a 401(k) or IRA to invest for retirement and get tax breaks. Do research on discount brokers and check out this advice on opening your first brokerage account . Develop sustainable spending habits: Residents of Washington, D.C., had the least sustainable spending habits -- habits including living on a budget and spending less than you earn -- according to WalletHub's rankings, while Massachusetts residents did best at spending below their means. The best way to develop sustainable spending habits is to track your spending, create a budget limiting how much you spend on needs and wants, and allocate a sufficient amount to savings. You can check out this comprehensive guide to making a budget to learn about budgeting to spend within your means. Increasing your financial knowledge also helps you make better choices on how to allocate your cash, where to put your savings, and what to invest in. Improving your own financial literacy Improving financial practices doesn't have to be difficult. The key is to get the basics right, such as having the right accounts, saving for emergencies, and living within your means. If you start with these best practices, you'll be well on your way to financial success. And you'll do your state proud if you're ever part of a financial literacy survey. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
2018-06-29_11-00-44 Forecast #BTC $BTC #Bitflyerpic.twitter.com/0GcsLTKpRL || @BTC_INFOCHAIN || @India_Bitcoin || #Doviz
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#USD : 5.3128
#EUR : 6.1426
#GBP : 6.8813
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#BTC
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#Gobaba : 36936.23
#BtcTurk : 36365.00
#Koinim : 36100.00
#Paribu : 36408.00
#Koineks : 36448.00 || @Bitcoin_Stats || @lifeoncoin || @btc_update || @Bitcoin_Stats || @btc_fan || @Bitcoin_Post
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Trend: up || Prices: 6334.73, 6580.63, 6423.76, 6506.07, 6308.53, 6488.76, 6376.71, 6534.88, 6719.96, 6763.19
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2021-11-23]
BTC Price: 57569.07, BTC RSI: 42.46
Gold Price: 1783.50, Gold RSI: 41.07
Oil Price: 78.50, Oil RSI: 45.62
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin rallies above $57,000 as crypto market cap overtakes tech giants: Bitcoins latest rally has taken the overall crypto market cap above $2.3tn, overtaking the value of tech giants like Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft. Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) (NurPhoto via Getty Images) Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) continued to rally on Tuesday after reaching above $57,000 (£41,899) on Monday to hit a fresh five-month high. The world's largest cryptocurrency was up 1.63% to trade at $57,194 after briefly dipping below $57,000 on Tuesday morning before continuing to rise, bringing its total gains for October to 32%. Bitcoins latest rally has taken the overall crypto market cap above $2.3tn, overtaking the value of tech giants like Amazon ( AMZN ), Google's parent company Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ). Only Apple ( AAPL ) is worth more than the cryptocurrency market, at $2.36tn. The market value of bitcoin alone is more than $1tn, bringing it to number eight on the list of top assets by market cap, above Facebook ( FB ) and Tesla ( TSLA ). Bitcoin was up on Tuesday. Chart: Yahoo Finance UK (Yahoo Finance UK) Bitcoin seems unaffected by comments by Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co ( JPM ) chief executive, who said on Monday at a conference that cryptocurrencies will be regulated by governments and that he personally thinks bitcoin is "worthless". "No matter what anyone thinks about it, government is going to regulate it. They are going to regulate it for (anti-money laundering) purposes, for [Bank Secrecy Act] purposes, for tax," Dimon, head of the US's largest bank, said. Recent comments from the heads of the US Federal Reserve and US Securities and Exchange Commission, who said they have no intention of banning bitcoin, following a regulatory crackdown in China, have instead encouraged investors. Read more: European stock markets head lower amid weak global sentiment An anonymous investor, or group of investors, placed an order to buy $1.6bn worth of bitcoin on a cryptocurrency exchange on Wednesday. Such a large volume trade likely contributed to bitcoins price surge, pushing it above $57,000 for the first time since May. Ethereum ( ETH-USD ), the worlds second largest crypto by market cap, failed to mirror bitcoin's gains on Tuesday, falling 2.5% to trade at $3,456. Watch: What is bitcoin? || Crypto startup MoonPay sees valuation blast to $3.4 billion: The crypto world has a new multi-billion-dollar player. MoonPay, a three-year old software developer whose product lets people buy and sell cryptocurrencies using credit cards , mobile wallets and bank transfers, has seen its valuation blast off to $3.4 billion after securing $555 million in its first financing round, led by Coatue and Tiger Global. “This historic financing round is a vote of confidence for what we’re doing and where we’re headed next. It’s proof that people believe in our ability to bring the next billion people to crypto, a waystation to our final destination: the moon,” said Ivan Soto-Wright, MoonPay’s co-founder and CEO, in a blog post. The figure comes as several crypto players have seen increased interest from investors. The Winklevoss Twins’ Gemini exchange raised $400 million last week. MoonPay lets people exchange cryptocurrencies and fiat, or government-issued, currencies using major payment methods, including Apple Pay and Google Pay, along with debit and credit cards. Bitcoin.com was one of the earliest customers. MoonPay is now looking to streamline the checkout process in the NFT world, saying it believes NFTs to be the next big growth area. “With the meteoric rise of NFTs, crypto encompasses a booming revolution in digital ownership,” said Soto-Wright. “In the arts this has sparked nothing short of a renaissance—an explosion of activity that’s bound to reach other industries as new use cases for digital tokens are discovered. We believe the ticketing industry, for example, will likely be radically disrupted by NFTs.” The company says it views its mission as bringing “the next billion people” to the crypto world by 2030. It says its software “democratizes crypto,” letting any business have access to the necessary infrastructure to remain compliant with regulations. It plans to use the Series A funds to increase its staff, add more payment methods and expand its footprint. MoonPay has processed more than $2 billion in transactions since beginning operations. And business has gotten exponentially busier. Transaction volume increased 35-fold in the past two years, Soto-Wright said. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com || ProShares Bitcoin ETF Already Approaching Limit on Futures Contracts: BeInCrypto –
The Proshares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) is already approaching the limit on the number of futures contracts it is permitted to hold by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
This storywas seen first onBeInCryptoJoin our Telegram Groupand get trading signals, a free trading course and more stories likethisonBeInCrypto || ProShares Seeks Waiver From CME for Position Limits on New Bitcoin Futures ETF: Report: ProShares, the sponsor of the first-ever exchange-traded fund (ETF) backed by bitcoin futures, has applied for a waiver to limit the amount of bitcoin futures a buyer can purchase in the new fund, Barron’sreported.
• Starting with the November front-month contract, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) will limit the number of futures a buyer can buy in the new ETF to 4,000, dropping to 2,000 three days before expiration. As each contract represents five bitcoin, total ownership is limited to 20,000 bitcoin.
• To get around this limit, ProShares has already split its futures portfolio, with half in October and half in November.
• CEO Michael Sapir told Barron’s that if the CME doesn’t grant the waiver, ProShares could shift assets into later-dated contracts, structured notes or swaps. Barron’s also noted that ProShares’ prospectus for the ETF says the fund could also invest in equities with crypto exposure. || USD/CAD Daily Forecast – Test Of Support At 1.2550: USD/CADis currently trying to get below the support at 1.2550 while the U.S. dollar is gaining ground against a broad basket of currencies.
The U.S. Dollar Index has recently made an attempt to settle above the 94 level but failed to develop sufficient upside momentum. As a result, the U.S. Dollar Index remains in the 93.75 – 94 range. In case the U.S. Dollar Index manages to settle below the support at 93.75, it will move towards the 20 EMA near 93.40 which will be bearish for USD/CAD.
Today, foreign exchange market traders had a chance to take a look at the final reading of U.S.Services PMIreport for September. The report indicated that Services PMI declined from 55.1 in August to 54.9 in September compared to analyst consensus of 54.4.
The yield of 10-year Treasuries managed to get above 1.50% and is currently trying to settle above 1.53%, which is bullish for the American currency.
However, USD/CAD failed to gain upside momentum and found itself under pressure as strong oil provided support to the Canadian dollar. Currently,WTI oilis trying to settle above the $79 level. In case this attempt is successful, it will move towards the $80 level which will be bullish for commodity-related currencies, including Canadian dollar.
USD to CAD managed to settle below the support level at 1.2590 and is trying to settle below the next support at 1.2550. In case this attempt is successful, it will move towards the support at 1.2525.
A move below 1.2525 will open the way to the test of the support at 1.2500. If USD to CAD declines below this level, it will move towards the next support level at 1.2475.
On the upside, the previous support at 1.2590 will serve as the first resistance level for USD to CAD. A move above this level will push USD to CAD towards the resistance which is located near the 50 EMA at 1.2625. In case USD to CAD manages to settle above the 50 EMA, it will get to the test of the next resistance at 1.2650.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
• USD/CAD Daily Forecast – Test Of Support At 1.2550
• E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis – Nearest Upside Breakout Price is 14883.50
• USD/JPY Price Forecast – US Dollar Tries to Regain Momentum
• Gold Price Forecast – Gold Markets Get Hit
• JPMorgan’s Dimon Calls Bitcoin ‘Fool’s Gold’
• Crude Oil Price Forecast – Crude Oil Markets Continue Extension to The Upside || Crypto Exchange Gemini Trust Could Have $7B Valuation After $400M Funding Round: Report: Crypto exchange Gemini Trust is raising $400 million in a new funding round that would bring its valuation to $7 billion, Bloomberg reported , citing people familiar with the matter. The round has not yet been finalized and could change, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. Gemini, which was co-founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, could not be reached for comment at the time of publication. Several crypto firms are taking advantage of current market conditions to raise money, including ConsenSys and (reportedly) OpenSea . ConsenSys is planning a massive expansion after it raised $200 million at a $3.2 billion valuation, the company said yesterday . Bitcoin hit a new all-time high price of over $68,000 just 10 days ago, while a quarter of global fund managers expect bitcoin to hit over $75,000 in 12 months, a November Bank of America survey found. Read more: Winklevoss-Led Gemini Behind Bitcoin White Paper Excerpts on NYC Billboard || Axie Infinity (AXS) Goes for New All-Time High as Other Gaming Tokens Lag Behind: BeInCrypto – BeInCrypto takes a look at the price movement for three different gaming tokens : Axie Infinity (AXS), Smooth Love Potion (SLP) and The Sandbox (SAND). AXS Axie Infinity (AXS) has been moving downwards since it reached an all-time high of $155 on Oct 4. The downward movement however has been very gradual, leading only to a local low of $111 on Oct 11. The token has been moving upwards since. Technical indicators are mixed. The RSI, which is a momentum indicator, is decreasing. This means that the upward movement is losing momentum. However, the trendline is very close to breaking, which would be a bullish signal which often precedes upward movements. The same reading is given by the MACD, which is created by a short- and long-term moving average (MA). The next closest resistance levels are at $170 and $216. These are the 2.61 and 3.61 external Fib retracement resistance levels. When a token is at an all-time high, they are used to determine the closest resistance levels. Chart By TradingView The wave count indicates that AXS has most likely completed wave four of a bullish impulse (black). A bullish impulse is a five wave upward movement, and wave four most often takes the shape of a symmetrical triangle . Using the length of waves 1-3, the most likely targets for the top of the upward movement would are at $186 and $226. Since the latter coincides with the previously outlined $216 fib resistance, it would be more likely to act as a high. Chart By TradingView Highlights AXS is breaking out from a symmetrical triangle. It has possibly begun wave five of a bullish impulse. SLP Smooth Love Potion (SLP) had been decreasing inside a descending wedge since July 13. The descending wedge is considered a bullish pattern, meaning that a breakout would be expected in the majority of the cases. On Oct 1, SLP did break out from this pattern. However, it has failed to initiate a significant upward movement and is back at the $0.066 horizontal support area. This is the final support area prior to a new all-time low. Story continues Both the MACD and RSI give a bearish/neutral reading. The former is negative, meaning that the short-term trend is slower than the long-term one, while the latter is below 50, a sign of a bearish trend. Chart By TradingView Highlights SLP has broken out from a descending wedge. There is support at $0.066. SAND The Sandbox (SAND) has been increasing since Sept 30, when it broke out from a descending resistance line. The breakout indicated that the previous downward movement had come to an end. The increase is supported by both the MACD and RSI, which are moving upwards. The former is positive, meaning that the short-term trend is faster than the long-term one, while the latter is above 50, a sign of bullish momentum. The closest resistance area is at $0.97. This is the 0.618 Fib retracement resistance level and a horizontal resistance area. If SAND manages to reclaim it, it would likely increase towards a new all-time high price. Chart By TradingView Highlights SAND has broken out from a descending resistance line. There is resistance at $0.97. For BeInCrypto’s latest Bitcoin (BTC) analysis, click here. What do you think about this subject? Write to us and tell us ! This story was seen first on BeInCrypto Join our Telegram Group and get trading signals, a free trading course and more stories like this on BeInCrypto || SEC Rejects VanEck Bitcoin Spot ETF Application: BeInCrypto – The SEC continues its rejection of applications for bitcoin spot ETFs, even as enthusiasm around the futures ETF thrives. This story was seen first on BeInCrypto Join our Telegram Group and get trading signals, a free trading course and more stories like this on BeInCrypto || Cryptocurrency Evolution: Adoption Rates, Regulatory Approaches and Attitudes Towards Risk: The cryptocurrency market’s rate ofadoptionis astonishing. With more than 100 million people around the world invested in them and the number of Blockchain wallet users worldwide at an all time high of 76 million in September 2021, this market is indubitably on its way into the mainstream.
Q2 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
However, this popularity increase in the asset, based on shifts in general attitudes towards the level of risk associated with them, has steered multiple governments towards applying a greater level of regulatory scrutiny tocryptocurrencies. The ensuing search for a stable framework of regulation and monitoring is important because it gives rise to two salient issues: is regulation needed at all, and if so, what might be the best regulatory approach?
According to Statistica, the largest names in the cryptocurrency market are currently:
• Bitcoin (NASDAQ:BTC)
• Ethereum (NASDAQ:ETH)
• Ripple (NASDAQ:XRP)
• Bitcoin Cash (NASDAQ:BCH)
Cryptocurrencies were first conceptualised in 2009 bySatoshi Nakamotowith the creation of Bitcoin, the original decentralised currency. This was swiftly followed by the emergence of rival ‘altcoins’ from 2011 (such as Litecoin and Namecoin) which tried to improve on the original design of Bitcoin and offer some advantages over it, such as faster transaction times or enhanced anonymity.
Nevertheless, the core ethos endorsing cryptocurrency remains the creation of a safe and anonymous method of currency transfer between users, its initial goal in 2009. Since then, cryptocurrency is finally reaching mainstream adoption globally, with the WEF citing itsgrowing adoption in developing countries.
In the last year alone, the Africancrypto marketgrew by over 1200% in the value received; it is estimated that around $105.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency was received by African countries between July 2020 and July 2021. Furthermore, a Statista report found Nigeria owned the most out of emerging countries: nearly a third of its population owned some form of crypto. High rates of adoption were also found in: Vietnam, Turkey and South Africa.
The main factor contributing to the widespread acceptance in these developing countries is the chance at financial inclusion. According to the World Bank, nearly one-third of the world’s adults don’t have access to traditional banking services, the majority of which are concentrated in these countries. Since a software wallet is all that is needed to make use of cryptocurrency, many facing difficulties with formal financial services are turning to it instead.
Moreover, themass adoptionof mobile phones and internet in developing countries (two-thirds of the ‘unbanked’ 2 billion have mobile phones), has indirectly led to the increased adoption of cryptocurrency. Add to this that the exchange of money through cryptocurrencies is easier and cheaper, rendering it more affordable for people living a middle standard of living in developing countries, and it’s no wonder they are so widespread.
With that said, this increased interest in cryptocurrency is not limited to these developing countries. Institutional investors are beginning to observe it more closely, and it is coming to be viewed as an increasingly legitimate safeguard against currency instability and the risk of inflation. Managers like Skybridge, Blackrock, and Tudor have all announced the addition of crypto to their portfolio, and even the launch of funds dedicated to it.
It is expected that this surging interest will continue to grow, kicked off by the rising number of new uses for crypto, as well as extensive acceptance by traditional banks. Its increased adoption coupled with greater innovation bodes well for the democratisation of the financial system. However, it also means cryptocurrency can no longer be ignored by regulators.
Cryptocurrency investing is risky because of its frequent episodes ofvolatility. Despite its often tumultuous journey in price (e.g. Bitcoin fell from $60,000 in April 2021 to $30,000 in May, then rose back to $50,000 by September 2021), mainstream attitudes towards the risk of cryptocurrency are changing. This arises as eyes are opened to its many applications.
For example, stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that can be pegged to other assets (i.e. the U.S. dollar), and in so doing, protect them from drastic devaluations. Anyone living in Nigeria would have lost nearly 50% of their net worth since 2016 as a result of the Nigerian Naira plummeting from 200 N per USD to a record low of 527 N per USD in August 2021. However, had these assets been invested in a stablecoin pegged to the USD no such loss would have been suffered.
Alongside the protection of assets, cryptocurrency is also a potent grower of wealth. It grants access to stocks such as Apple, Amazon and Tesla to anyone in the world with tokenised stocks. These tokenised variants of traditional stocks allow users to buy fractional portions of a token, which equates to a portion of a stock. Suddenly, the requirement for a large amount of investable assets in order to access such wealth-building tools has been vanquished and can be invested in with as little as $5.
These attitudes towards risk are mirrored by mainstream institutions, who are beginning to recognise cryptocurrency as a credible asset class. Rick Rieder,BlackRock’s chief investment officerof global fixed income has previously gone on record in support of cryptocurrencies by stating that “[he] thinks it could have some real upside [and that] … it’s an asset class [he] thinks is durable”.
Other major players from the traditional finance sphere are starting to recognise the shift that is occurring: Morgan Stanley is considering funding bitcoin with its $150 billion investment fund, BNY Mellon and Deutsche Bank are offering crypto custody and JPMorgan has admitted it will have to be involved in bitcoin.
This increased participation offinancial institutionsin cryptocurrency is expected to only lead to greater success and acceptance generally. With the support of these traditional firms, who are comfortable liaising with the red tape and political games of regulation, there is a greater chance of a regulatory framework being established that is tailored and favourable for crypto.
Cryptocurrencies are being faced withgreater regulatory scrutinynow than ever before. Bitcoin’s volatile price changes are feeding the concerns of financial regulators regarding the absence of a regulatory framework for this swifty developing market. The G7, ECB and UK CFA have all expressed concerns about the unregulated growth of crypto, primarily bitcoin.
Regulation of cryptocurrency is still lagging behind in many countries. Many haven’t yet passed specific legislation or regulatory guidance for the sector holistically, while others are biding their time with a step-by-step approach. However, the attitudes of regulators are changing; officials worldwide have expressed worries about the lack of regulation over the growth of cryptocurrencies.
Central banks and regulators do not agree that crypto can be described as a currency, but a highly volatile asset. This volatility is caused by small volumes in the market and the influence ‘whales’ possess over its value because of their concentrated holdings. It is almost unanimously agreed that retail investors should be protected against this, and a regulatory framework can achieve this.
The broad trend in regulation appears to be more favourable towards cryptocurrency, with governments attempting to package it as a less risky product for consumers. This comes as regulators begin to notice that crypto is here to stay, and adapt their policies accordingly. For example, crypto took a step closer to mainstream exposure when PayPal announced it would allow US customers to hold, buy or sell Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and BitcoinCash.
Considering regulators to date: In the US, theOCC take on interest bearing accountsto date largely focussed on conventional methods excluding cryptocurrency. Other countries are more pro cryptocurrency and are very open about it. Looking to the future, the next frontier of money-making opportunities in crypto appears to have been presented by interest earning platforms. Several businesses (such as Hodlnaut, Nexo or BlockFi) offerinterest bearing accountsthat remunerate account holders in the cryptocurrency they fund their account with. In fact, platforms like Hodlnaut allow users to earn interest in the cryptocurrency of their choice from the six supported assets including Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The interest rates for these accounts will differ based on the selected cryptocurrency, and interest on most accounts should accrue on a weekly basis or shorter. This is optimal for investors since compounding interest allows for much faster account growth. Given the way compounding interest works, this means time is in the user’s favour since the longer money is kept invested, the faster it will grow.
Thus a clear benefit of using crypto to earn interest are the competitive rates offered. It is unheard of for a traditional savings account to offer anywhere near to yielding 7% interest, but since ablockchaincuts out overhead costs, higher interest rates are able to be offered. Additionally, there is no minimum lock up time on crypto funds and no minimum account required to open such interest bearing accounts.
That being said, there are disadvantages to earning interest on crypto, namely that the floating interest rates don’t guarantee they will stay high in the long-term, and that if the cryptocurrency held by the user depreciates, so too must the earned interest.
It has been asserted by Elon Musk (and many other bitcoin critics for years) that another disadvantage of cryptocurrency is that it is bad for the environment as it pollutes the planet. However, research by Cambridge University reflects that the damage isnot nearly as bad as suggested.
Since large scale miners are competing in an industry with low-margins, where the only cost that can vary is energy, they are motivated to migrate towards the world’s cheapest sources of power in order to be profitable. The first six months of 2021 saw America jump from fifth to second place globally for the region with the most crypto miners. This is likely due to the fact that green energy is on the rise in the U.S, and as illustrated by Lazard’s 2020 report, most renewable energy sources are either equal to or less expensive than conventional sources. || RocketFuel Announces Closing of $5 Million Equity Round, Outlines Growth Plan for the Next 12 Months: Proceeds to fund continued increases in sales and marketing, software development, and other key drivers of growth San Francisco, Nov. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RocketFuel Blockchain, Inc. (OTC QB: RKFL), a global provider of payment solutions via Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, announced that it had closed a $5 million equity raise from a group of institutional investors. H.C. Wainwright & Co. was the placement agent for the offering. RocketFuel believes that the capital will enable it to execute on its aggressive growth plan, which includes its strategic partnership with ACI Worldwide, a leading global provider of real-time digital payment software and solutions. The partnership will enable ACI Secure eCommerce to offer RocketFuel’s crypto-payment solution via a single integration, enabling ACI’s more than 80,000 merchants to accept cryptocurrency payments with zero processing fees—an industry first. RocketFuel also announced that it had repaid its outstanding convertible note, resulting in the company becoming debt free and eliminating any potential equity dilution from conversions. “We’re honored by the confidence our partners and investors have shown in our vision, product, and team and we look forward to further accelerating the execution of our business plan and aggressive growth strategy over the next 12-18 months” said CEO Peter Jensen. “We are expanding our sales, marketing, and support teams to execute our partnership with ACI Worldwide, as well as other partners, merchants, and credit card processors looking to add crypto payment solutions to their existing product lines.” RocketFuel intends to use the net proceeds of the offering for general corporate purposes and to fund ongoing operations and expansion of its business. RocketFuel plans to expand its in-house software development team and add personnel in compliance, customer service and other key areas, and to add independent directors to its board. RocketFuel’s goal is to uplist to Nasdaq or the NYSE American market in 2022. Story continues At the annual Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas, RocketFuel announced a new Zero Fee business model where merchants pay zero fees to accept crypto and partners earn commissions on 100% of all revenue and transactions generated by merchants. RocketFuel also recently released its revamped partner dashboard allowing partners to sign up and manage their merchants, including full transparency of transactions, revenue generated, commissions earned, and more. About RocketFuel Blockchain, Inc. RocketFuel is a global payments solution company that provides online shoppers with a simple, easy-to-use, one-click checkout process that accepts payments with bank transfers, Bitcoin and 50+ cryptocurrencies. RocketFuel delivers a highly secure and efficient shopping cart experience with significantly low fees for merchants, along with the benefits of no chargebacks and no card declines. RocketFuel's solutions focus on enhanced customer privacy protection eliminating the risk of a data breach while improving speed, security, and ease of use. Shoppers on RocketFuel powered online stores enjoy seamless check-out and forget the clunky cart paradigm of the past. RocketFuel merchants can implement new impulse buying schemes and generate new sales channels that are unavailable in other present-day e-commerce solutions. More information about RocketFuel is available at: www.RocketFuelBlockchain.com Registration Statement The securities described above were offered by RocketFuel pursuant to a registration statement on Form S-1 (File No. 333-260420) previously filed with and declared effective by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on October 28, 2021. The offering was made only by means of a prospectus forming part of the effective registration statement. Copies of the final prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained for free by visiting the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov . This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities, nor shall there be any sale of the securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction. Forward-Looking Statements The Company believes that this press release contains forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Terms such as “may,” “might,” acceptance of the company’s products and services; competition from existing products or new products that may emerge; the implementation of the company’s business model and strategic plans for its business and our products; estimates of the company’s future revenue, expenses, capital requirements and need for financing; current and future government regulations; and developments relating to the company’s competitors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements because of the risks and uncertainties related to them. For further information on such risks and uncertainties, you are encouraged to review the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021 and its Quarterly Report for the fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2021. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events or developments, except as required by law.“would,” “should,” “could,” “project,” “estimate,” “pro-forma,” “predict,” “potential,” “strategy,” “anticipate,” “attempt,” “develop,” “plan,” “help,” “believe,” “continue,” “intend,” “expect,” “future,” and terms of similar import (including the negative of any of these terms) may identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding the plans and objectives of management for future operations, are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Actual results and the timing of certain events and circumstances may differ materially from those described by the forward-looking statements as a result of these risks and uncertainties. Factors that may influence or contribute to the accuracy of the forward-looking statements or cause actual results to differ materially from expected or desired results may include, without limitation, market ROCKETFUEL CONTACT Kurt Kumar, VP Contact@RocketFuelBlockchain.com INVESTOR CONTACT Ben Yankowitz, CFO B.Yankowitz@RocketFuelBlockchain.com
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 56280.43, 57274.68, 53569.77, 54815.08, 57248.46, 57806.57, 57005.43, 57229.83, 56477.82, 53598.25
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2022-01-10]
BTC Price: 41821.26, BTC RSI: 30.38
Gold Price: 1798.40, Gold RSI: 49.17
Oil Price: 78.23, Oil RSI: 59.30
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
3 Coins With The Potential To Be The Next SHIBA in 2022: Therefore, in this list, we are going to discuss 3 coins with the highest potential to reachSHIBAlevels or maybe even beyond in 2022.
After the launch of theMetaverse, and still being in beta, it’s very likely that any cryptocurrencies associated with this particular project could see some serious gains in the future.
Naturally, the coin that’s likely to benefit the most out of this isETH, but not as much asAxie Infinity’sAXS. The thing is that ETH 10x-ing is like a world-changing phenomenon, which is unlikely to happen in 2022. However, AXS 10x-ing is realistic considering its current trading volume and price.
Even if it may falter in long-term gains, current charts show a pretty good set-up for short-term consolidations considering the last week’s volatility.
Although it’s 2 coins, SAPE and SPEP are part of the same project, so it’s likely that when one of them grows, the other will follow suit just a bit more behind.
The SAPE & SPEP project, created byStadium.Financerevolves around community involvement in price movements of their chosen crypto. 3 times every day, these tokens fight a virtual battle to determine which one’s supply will be burned. The community decides the winner by being as active as possible with transactions.
Considering that the project has been live for a little more than 2 months thecurrent growth is astounding. Add to that the recent announcement of a Whitepaper launch as well as a successful audit, and we see a project walking the exact same journey that took SHIBA to the moon.
Both coins already have a combined market cap of $20 million and a daily trading volume currently in its recovery phase. Both SAPE and SPEP have huge potential both in the short and long terms.
CAKEis a part of thePancakeSwapexchange, which is currently the highway that every newly launched cryptocurrency is taking.
In one way or another, many people are comparing CAKE toBNBconsidering just how many projects are appearing on its native PancakeSwap exchange. The history of performance is in many ways similar to BNB as well.
Although the coin is going through its many bearish markets, its growth is expected in the short term due to many new projects being added to PancakeSwap as well as the potential to incorporate CAKE in all PancakeSwap transactions.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• USD/JPY Price Forecast – US Dollar Has Noisy Session Against Yen || TechCrunch+ roundup: 2022 enterprise predictions, Justworks IPO, startup theses to watch for: Happy new year! As is our custom, you'll see quite a few TechCrunch+ articles in the coming days that share predictions for 2022. Upcoming topics include fintech, crypto/blockchain and growth marketing, but yesterday, TechCrunch reporter Ron Miller shared his predictions for enterprise companies this year . As he noted, making enterprise forecasts is tricky: In 2021, who expected Salesforce to snap up Slack for almost $28 billion, or that Jeff Bezos would hand over the reins of Amazon to Andy Jassy? Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to members. Use discount code TCPLUSROUNDUP to save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription. "I sure didnt see that coming, and Im betting most people didnt," wrote Ron. "The tech world moves so quickly, its often hard to keep up." With "the usual caveats," his prognostications encompass ongoing supply chain issues, the impacts of increased regulatory oversight in Europe and the U.S., and his thoughts on a M&A market where table stakes are measured in the tens of billions. His boldest, spiciest take? Salesforce
was quiet in 2021, busy closing the Slack deal. It wont be too unrealistic to expect something in 2022. Maybe something SaaS-y like Zoom, Box or Dropbox. Maybe Benioff finally gets Twitter, a company he desperately wanted in 2016, as Casey Newton suggested in The Platformer this week. Thanks very much for reading, Walter Thompson Senior Editor, TechCrunch+ @yourprotagonist AWS will buy a SaaS company, and other 2022 enterprise predictions Justworks targets multibillion-dollar valuation in upcoming IPO Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window) Justworks, an SMB-focused HR software company, released an updated S-1A filing today, which Alex Wilhelm dissected in this morning's edition of The Exchange. "For those of you in search of a single number, using a simple share count, Justworks could be worth more than $2 billion at the top end of its current range," says Alex. Story continues Justworks targets multibillion-dollar valuation in upcoming IPO Your mom owns Web 2.0 BlockChain Blocks. Concept. 3D render Image Credits: BlackJack3D / Getty Images If you add a sizzling hot take to Twitter beef, you might end up with some delicious news analysis. Block CEO and Bitcoin fan Jack Dorsey recently tweeted that despite steadfast claims from investors, "you don't own 'web3.'" In reality, "the VCs and their LPs do," wrote Dorsey. "It will never escape their incentives. Its ultimately a centralized entity with a different label." In a subtweet, Chris Dixon, general partner at a16z, shared charts depicting how much financial holding companies own of Web 2.0 companies like Airbnb, Meta and Block. "But Vanguard and Fidelity dont really own that stock," writes Alex Wilhelm. "I know that because I do." In reality, control of Web 2.0 is "pretty decentralized," because shares are held widely by external investors like pension and index funds. "Yes, your mom owns Web 2.0. At least part of it." Your mom owns Web 2.0 When fundraising, New Zealand startup founders should play the "Kiwi card" Kiwi crossing sign and Ngauruhoe Volcano, Tongariro National Park, North Island, New Zealand Image Credits: Jami Tarris (opens in a new window) / Getty Images In the final article in a series about New Zealand, Rebecca Bellan spoke to four stakeholders to learn more about how foreign investment and a fund of funds program are juicing up the nations burgeoning startup ecosystem: Peter Beck, CEO/CTO Rocket Lab Cecilia Robinson, founder and co-CEO, Tend Health Phoebe Harrop, principal, Blackbird Ventures Robbie Paul, CEO, Icehouse Ventures While starting on a rock at the bottom of the world comes with challenges, there are plenty of advantages, too, said Paul, who advises native founders to play the Kiwi card. Almost one of every five New Zealanders lives abroad, and that diaspora has helped the nation build a great deal of international goodwill. Its an easy conversation starter and chances are most interesting people offshore have some sort of affinity or connection to New Zealand, Paul said. When fundraising, New Zealand startup founders should play the Kiwi card The coming reckoning: Showing ROI from threat intelligence Egg between bricks on green background Image Credits: Vladimir Godnik (opens in a new window) / Getty Images In the fast-evolving world of cybersecurity, being proactive can make or break companies and brands. But threat intelligence teams are still siloed and focus mostly on funneling data to security operation centers instead of communicating important information to other parts of the business. This tendency, writes Chris Jacob, global vice president of Threat Intelligence Engineers at ThreatQuotient, forces CISOs to justify the cost of threat intelligence teams, despite their importance to the modern security framework. Jacob shares three key recommendations CISOs can implement to become more effective advocates: Think of threat intelligence as providers of a product. Prioritize integration. Formalize executive reporting. The coming reckoning: Showing ROI from threat intelligence 3 views: Pay attention to these startup theses in 2022 Yellow, Orange And Fuchsia Blank Notes In The Shape Of Comic Bubbles. Blue Background. Image Credits: Javier Zayas Photography (opens in a new window) / Getty Images Startup theses are malleable and prone to evolution, and as the market matures and evolves, it's going to be harder than ever to predict what will work in the coming years. Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim lay down their views on the major trends they expect to see in 2022 and beyond: Alex: 2022 is when open source will become the de facto startup model. Natasha: Hybridize. Everything. Anna: A majority of SaaS companies will adopt usage-based pricing in 2022. 3 views: Pay attention to these startup theses in 2022 Why Delivery Hero is acquiring a majority stake in Spanish delivery company Glovo Image Credits: Nigel Sussman (opens in a new window) M&A is arguably one of the best and most efficient ways to significantly scale a business, and Delivery Hero took that path last week with its deal to acquire Spanish delivery startup Glovo. In an in-depth analysis of the deal, Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim explore how acquiring Glovo is more about growing its share of the food delivery market for Delivery Hero. "Glovo's focus beyond restaurants put it in line with a very hot trend: quick commerce, or q-commerce. Its rise is exemplified by companies such as Zapp and Gopuff, and Delivery Hero took notice." "That the last page was the two companies deciding to just team up is perhaps less of a twist ending than we thought at first blush." Why Delivery Hero is acquiring a majority stake in Spanish delivery company Glovo || Crypto gaming giant Dapper Labs takes its next shot with Genies NFT platform 'The Warehouse': As they near the end of a blockbuster year for NFTs that saw more than $10 billion in transaction volume, today's NFT project developers are finding themselves facing a dilemma -- whether to chase today's dollars or tomorrow's users.
Dapper Labs, maker of one of the year's more mainstream breakout NFT hits NBA Top Shot, has been looking to convince investors that it can court developers to bet on the latter. Today, the startup recently valued at $7.6 billion is showcasing some of the fruits of this pursuit, debuting the product of its partnership with avatars-for-the-stars startupGenies-- an ambitious NFT storefront which the startups hope will serve as a hub for web3 digital identity, allowing users to create animated avatars and outfit them with NFT accessories.
The new platform, called The Warehouse, is launching today to a small network of invite-only users before gradually going out to a wider audience in the coming months, both startups tell TechCrunch.
The new platform will allow users to outfit 3D cartoon avatars that they create inside the Genies app with masks, shoes, backpacks and other digital accessories minted on Dapper's blockchain network called Flow. Genies tells us that the majority of items in the store will be sold for less than $20, though that's notably just for primary sales; owners of those goods will decide the market for secondary sales of individual items. The Warehouse notably won't have its secondary marketplace enabled at launch, an effort the Genies team hopes will give the community some time to focus on the product rather than resale values.
Image Credits:Genies
Genies has notably already experimented with selling digital apparel and accessories inside its native mobile app, though that venture did not include a blockchain or NFT-related element. Genies' foray into NFT economics is a bet on Dapper's particular brand of blockchain, one that may be less decentralized than networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum, but one which offers a number of baked-in user benefits, including lower fees, higher transaction capacity and a developer platform that's friendly to web3 "luxuries" like processing credit cards and users forgetting their passwords.
Flow is certainly not the only bet on a more consumer-friendly blockchain with lower fees and friendlier onboarding, though Dapper has raised some $600 million from investors on the promise of its future success. Competing Layer 1 chains like Wax and Solana have seen more action from native NFT projects in recent months as developers aim to tap into the platform's strengths and the wallets of coin holders. Venture investors have also minted several new crypto unicorns this year that are aiming to scale the Ethereum blockchain with "rollup" products that allow developers to leverage the network's security while processing and bundling transactions on a secondary chain.
NBA Top Shot creator on the NFT craze and why Ethereum still isn’t consumer friendly
NBA Top Shot's meteoric rise earlier this year brought a lot of attention to Dapper, which saw monthly transaction volume go from less than $1 million in December 2020 to nearly $225 million in February 2021. These days, Top Shot's network of buyers and transactions sits far below those of its most notable competitor, Axie Infinity, which had over 520,00 unique buyers in November compared to Top Shot's 64,000 according to crypto analytics siteCryptoSlam. While the broader NFT market has exploded in value since Top Shot kickstarted the party, the vast majority of new high-traffic projects have embraced Ethereum, aiming to tap into the hundreds of billions of liquid crypto wealth flowing through that network.
Image Credits:Genies
The launch of The Warehouse is a particularly big moment for Dapper, as it looks to court developers and catch fire again while learning from its mistakes with Top Shot, which struggled early on to keep up with a scaling audience and has frustrated some early adopters who have seen the value of their NFTs sink as Dapper has continued issuing more and more NFT Moments.
“The Genies Warehouse is the biggest release on Flow since NBA Top Shot and we’re looking forward to a similar success,” Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou said in a statement.
While Genies is far from a household name today, the startup's high-profile partners most definitely are. For years avatar startups have been popping up, hoping to capture a piece of the "digital identity" pie, but game makers have been uninterested in adopting third-party systems and celebrities have been too busy dissecting social media influence to bother thinking about virtual worlds.
Genies has been more successful than any startup in recent memory at building out a network of celebrity partnerships for a product that has a decidedly niche vision of the future of the web, albeit one increasingly shared by investors as the startup has more fervently embraced NFTs publicly this year. Last week, Genies announced a partnership with Universal Music Group to host avatars and digital goods from the group's roster of recording artists. Genies has already enjoyed partnerships with a who's who of entertainers, including figures like Justin Bieber, J Balvin and Cardi B.
In May, Genies scored the endorsement of Mary Meeker's venture fund Bond, which bankrolled the startup's$65 million Series B.
While NFTs have enjoyed a fair-weather embrace by the tech industry and venture investor class, there seems to be plenty of evidence that consumers are still skeptical of how expensive digital items that look identical to the ones they've bought inside games for years are supposed to revolutionize their online experience.
Last month, chat app Discord found itself at the receiving end of a wide user backlash after CEO Jason Citron tweeted a screenshot of an integration with NFT wallet platform MetaMask. After thousands of replies poured in, many of them critical, Citron followed up with atweetclarifying that it was merely an "internal concept" the the company had "no current plans to ship" and that "Web3 has lots of good but also lots of problems we need to work through at our scale."
Discord pushes pause on exploring crypto and NFTs amidst user backlash
Both Dapper and Genies are aiming to cut through some of the NFT industry's baggage with The Warehouse's debut.
"This is not an avatar 10K profile picture project or us bringing culture to NFTs and crypto," notes Genies CEO Akash Nigam. "We see this as the first step in creating a digital identity across the metaverse for consumers and plan to give the wearable creation tools to consumers and talent down the road." || Market Wrap Year In Review: Remembering Bitcoin’s FUD-Fueled Crash: Hello, Market Wrap readers! During the final two weeks of 2021, we’re using this space to recap the year’s most dramatic moments in cryptocurrency markets – and highlight the key lessons from this fast-evolving corner of global finance. Over a series of eight posts starting on Dec. 20 and running through Dec. 30, we’ll recap what shook crypto markets this year. (For the latest digital-asset prices and news headlines, please scroll down.)
OnWednesday, we recapped how Tesla’s bitcoin acceptance and Coinbase’s direct listing helped send bitcoin’s price to a new all-time high near $65,000, which turned out, in hindsight, to be the market peak. Today, we’ll show how some traders and investors began to cash out in April and May as concerns mounted over U.S. capital gains taxes, bitcoin’s environmental footprint and an outright crypto ban in China. It seemed like the fear, uncertainty and doubt – FUD, or crypto-speak for negative news – was coming all at once.
All it took was a New York Times headline in mid-April that U.S. President Joe Biden wasplanningto roughly double the tax on capital gains or proceeds earned from selling assets – with provisions deemed unfriendly toward cryptocurrencies – to end hopes of a rally back toward bitcoin’s all-time high near $65,000. After a powerful bull run earlier in the year, bitcoin’s price decline suddenly accelerated.
“The cryptocurrency was already on the defensive,” Pankaj Balani, co-founder and CEO of the Singapore-basedDelta Exchange, told CoinDesk in an email at the time. “The tax news invited more profit taking.”
“The U.S. actions were not bullish for bitcoin, as tax increases could be a thorn in the recovery and will drag down investments,” Edward Moya, analyst at Oanda, a foreign exchange brokerage firm, wrote in an email.
Some analysts pointed to a stronger U.S. dollar as a potential headwind for bitcoin (BTC). Warmer weather was coming in the Northern Hemisphere, and more coronavirus vaccines were getting distributed around the world, leading to a sunnier economic outlook. It appeared as though the U.S. was on its way to improving the budget deficit, which widened during the pandemic stimulus program.
All that meant there might be less need for extra economic support from governments and central banks, which had bolstered bitcoin’s attractiveness among investors as a possible hedge against fast inflation.
But bitcoin had other problems. In the months ahead, many investors in traditional markets – perceived as a key target for mainstream cryptocurrency adoption – would start to question the cryptocurrency’s environmental footprint – due to the blockchain network’s heavy electricity usage.
Tesla’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, for example, mad a U-turn from his earlier bullish stance on bitcoin and decided to no longer accept BTC as payment for his company’s electric cars, citing concerns about the use of fossil fuels in crypto mining.
Musk’s tweet triggered an immediate 6% drop in the bitcoin price. Suddenly, the environment became front and center as an impediment in the 12-year-old cryptocurrency’s path to becoming a widely acceptable asset class. And with environmental, social and governance (ESG) becoming the new buzzwords on Wall Street, it became harderto convincebig money managers that energy-intensive bitcoin was a good addition to portfolios.
For example, asurveyof 600 people in the fund management industry found that 96% expected their firms to increase prioritization of ESG during 2021. John Reed Stark, former chief of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Internet Enforcement,toldCoinDesk’s Lyllah Ledesma in May that the bitcoin ESG concerns would certainly dampen institutional investment in crypto.
And just when bitcoin traders thought they had seen enough of the fear, uncertainty and doubt, China officially banned all financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions.
China had been banning things related to crypto since2013, but the fresh crackdown made it clear that crypto trading activity involved “legal risks” and that “any legal person, unincorporated organization or natural person” investing in virtual currency and related derivatives was violating “public order and good customs,” CoinDesk’s Muyao Shenreported.
News of the China ban sent bitcoin sharply lower, which left the price down roughly 50% from the April record near $65,000. By almost any definition, the bitcoin market had entered a new, bearish phase.
The China-related sell-off wiped$400 billionoff the crypto market, which encouraged some “whales” – large BTC holders – to move their coins onto exchanges for sale. Crypto markets were inpanic mode.
It also dawned on investors just how vulnerable cryptocurrencies were to regulatory risk. Whether it was concerns about capital gains taxes or the outright crypto ban in China, bitcoin’s euphoric rise appeared stunted by the increased scrutiny from governments and supervisors of the traditional financial system.
More work would be needed before environmentally conscious investors would start piling into bitcoin.
In Monday’s episode of this year-in-review series, we’ll feature one institutional investor who planned a bitcoin exit right around the price top.
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• Bitcoin (BTC): $50,976, +4.1%
• Ether (ETH): $4,127, +3.1%
• S&P 500: +0.6%
• Gold: $1,809, +0.4%
• 10-year Treasury yield closed at 1.495, +0.04 percentage point.
Here are the biggest gainers and losers among theCoinDesk 20digital assets, over the past 24 hours:
[{"Asset": "Internet Computer", "Ticker": "ICP", "Returns": "+16.5%", "Sector": "Computing"}, {"Asset": "Cardano", "Ticker": "ADA", "Returns": "+8.9%", "Sector": "Smart Contract Platform"}, {"Asset": "Chainlink", "Ticker": "LINK", "Returns": "+6.4%", "Sector": "Computing"}]
There are no losers in CoinDesk 20 today.
Sector classifications are provided via theDigital Asset Classification Standard (DACS), developed by CoinDesk Indices to provide a reliable, comprehensive and standardized classification system for digital assets. TheCoinDesk 20is a ranking of the largest digital assets by volume on trusted exchanges. || Thanksgiving 2021: When did the holiday start and why does the US celebrate it?: Americans started preparing their Thanksgiving menus weeks ago, with the requisite turkeys and stuffing ingredients likely already purchased for the holiday , which is celebrated today. Apart from the food, arguably the main component of the day, the holiday is a beloved time of year when Americans come together to celebrate what they are thankful for either with family or friends. In America , Thanksgiving is a cultural holiday that symbolises peace, thankfulness, and the beginning of the holiday season. What is Thanksgiving and where did it come from? Thanksgiving is a national holiday in the United States celebrated in November. The annual feast is in honour of the first Thanksgivings in America, in 1619 in Virginia, and in 1621, when colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts, later known as the Pilgrims, shared a meal with the Wampanoag Indians, who were native to the land. The later feast was in honour of the help the Pilgrims received from the Native Americans in cultivating crops and surviving their first harsh winter and it lasted three days. Later, US Presidents including George Washington, John Adams and James Madison called for days of thanks throughout their presidencies. However, it was not until 1863, during the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln declared a national Thanksgiving Day would be held each November to be celebrated by all of the country. When is Thanksgiving? Thanksgiving takes place each year on the fourth Thursday of November. This year, Thanksgiving falls on 25 November. Why do Americans celebrate it and what do they do? Although Thanksgiving may originally have had religious significance, the day has become a mostly secular holiday. Most Americans consider the holiday a day to gather and express their thanks through food, family, and football with multiple NFL teams playing on the holiday. During some Thanksgiving celebrations, people write down what they are thankful for and then read aloud from the pieces of paper. Story continues In schools, children learn about the holiday by colouring in pictures of Pilgrims and turkeys and the Mayflower, the ship the colonists arrived on. The day is also celebrated with the annual Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. The worlds largest Thanksgiving parade includes giant balloons of cartoons that float above the city sky, as well as marching bands and dancers. Following Thanksgiving, the month-long shopping for the winter holidays begins, with Black Friday kicking off the season. Where is it celebrated? Thanksgiving is one of the the most important cultural holidays in America, however, Canada also has its own Thanksgiving Day, on the second Monday in October, and Liberia celebrates Thanksgiving on the first Thursday of November. What do people eat on Thanksgiving? In America, turkeys are an integral part of Thanksgiving Day, with most dinners including the bird. An estimated 46m turkeys are killed annually for the holiday, however, one turkey is pardoned each year by the president . But Americans who dont eat meat or follow a vegan lifestyle dont have to worry about missing out, as there are numerous vegan and vegetarian Thanksgiving options . Americans also indulge in Thanksgiving favourites such as yams topped with marshmallows, stuffing, cranberry sauce, cornbread, and pumpkin pie. Read More A hassle-free Thanksgiving menu Woman complains as in-laws reveal theyre charging for family Christmas dinner Five easy weeknight dinners Woman complains as in-laws reveal theyre charging for family Christmas dinner Five easy weeknight dinners Bitcoin price in limbo as El Salvador announces BTC city follow live || While Economic Data Puts the GBP in Focus, COVID-19 News Updates Will Be Key: It was a quiet start to the day on theeconomic calendarthis morning. The Kiwi Dollar was in action early this morning. On the monetary policy front, the PBoC also set loan prime rates for the final time this year. While leaving the 5-year unchanged at 4.65%, the PBoC cut the 1-year LPR from 3.85% to 3.80% this morning.
Consumer sentiment waned in the 4thquarter. The Westpac Consumer Sentiment Index fell from 102.7 to 99.1%.
According to the4thquarter survey,
• Rising mortgage rates, as well as ongoing concerns over COVID and its variants weighed.
Looking at the sub-components:
• Compared with the 3rdquarter, the current financial situation sub-index fell by 7.1 to -10.7 versus an average -8.5.
• The outlook also darkened, with the expected financial situation sub-index falling from 16.1 to 6.9.
• With regards to the economy, the 1-year economic outlook sub-index fell from -5.6 to -11.2.
• The 5-year economic outlook sub-index saw a more modest decline from 11.5 to 10.0.
• Bucking the trend, was a rise in the Good time to buy index from -5.2 to 0.4. This remained well below the 24.4 average, however.
In November, New Zealand’s trade deficit narrowed from NZ$1,302m to NZ$864m. Year-on-year, the deficit widened from NZ$4,900m to NZ$6,040m.
According toNZ Stats,
Compared with November 2020,
• Goods exports rose NZ$668m (13%) to NZ$5.9bn.Milk powder, butter, & cheese rose by NZ$258m (14%).Aluminium and aluminium articles up NZ$141m (151%).Aircraft and parts fell by NZ$113m (89%).Food preperations declined by NZ$82m (36%).
• Goods imports rose NZ$1.8bn (37%) to NZ$6.7bn.Mechanical machinery & equipment up NZ$244m (36%).Vehicles, partes, & accessories rose by NZ$187m (32%).Petroleum & products increased by NZ$150m (53%).Ships, boats, & floating structures up NZ$146m.
The Kiwi Dollar moved from $0.67333 to $0.67448 upon release of the figures. At the time of writing, theKiwi Dollarwas down by 0.30% to $0.6730.
At the time of writing, theJapanese Yenwas down by 0.04% to ¥113.580 against the U.S Dollar, with theAussie Dollardown by 0.14% to $0.7115.
It’s a particularly quiet day ahead on the economic calendar. There are no material stats to provide the EUR with direction.
The lack of stats will leave COVID-19 news updates in focus.
At the time of writing, theEURwas flat at $1.1240.
It’s relatively quiet day ahead on theeconomic calendar. CBI Industrial Trend Orders for December will be in focus this afternoon. With little else for the markets to consider, expect Pound sensitivity.
Away from the economic calendar, COVID-19 news updates will also need continued monitoring.
At the time of writing, thePoundwas down by 0.14% to $1.3227.
It’s a particularly quiet day ahead on the economic calendar. There are no major stats to draw interest, leaving any FOMC member chatter to influence.
At the time of writing, the Dollar Spot Index was up by 0.04% to 96.599.
It’s also a particular quiet day ahead on the economic data front. There are no material stats due out to provide the Loonie with direction. The lack of stats will leave the Loonie in the hands of crude oil prices and market risk sentiment.
At the time of writing, theLooniewas down by 0.05% to C$1.2895 against the U.S Dollar.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Crude Oil Price Update – Short-Term Direction Determined by $71.39 and $70.90 || 4 Top Stock Trades for Monday: Bitcoin, ARKK, MSFT, XPEV: Stocks have struggled all week and now they’re getting obliterated on Friday, ending the week on a sour note after a poor monthly jobs report. With that in mind, let’s look at a few top stock trades going into the weekend.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
Like the stock market,Bitcoin(CCC:BTC-USD) has not been having a good run lately. After its recent flush, the cryptocurrency could not reclaim the $59,000 area.
After repeated efforts, this area — along with the declining 21-day moving average — continued to reject Bitcoin this week. Now pushing lower, the $53,500 level is in focus.
InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
If this level fails to hold, it could put the 61.8% retracement and the 21-week moving average on deck. Below that opens the door to the 200-day moving average.
On a bounce, however, bulls need to see Bitcoin reclaim the 21-day and 10-day moving averages in order to have a sustainable upside rally.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
What a brutal run it’s been for theArk Innovation Fund(NYSEARCA:ARKK), which is now down 40% from its all-time highs.
ARKK is breaking below the May low at $97.22, whichwasthe bear-market low before a strong $30-plus per share bounce.
It’s coming right into the 10-quarter moving average, which is not everyone’s go-to measure necessarily, but it could provide some sort of stabilization. Despite mild losses in the broader market, growth stocks have been decimated.
Should ARKK continue lower, we’ll need to see how it handles the 200-week moving average and the 61.8% retracement.
On the upside, though, bulls need this baby back above $97.22, then $100-plus.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
A favorite among many investors,Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT) has been pulling back as well.
This nice winner is pulling back right into its 10-week and 50-day moving averages. If this area holds, I’m looking for a bounce into the $328 to $330 area. Above that puts the 10-day and 21-day moving averages in play.
On the downside, however, there are two zones that interest me should support fail.
Below the 50-day is the gap-fill level at $312.40. If shares continue lower, the $305 breakout area and the 21-week moving average are in play.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
Xpeng(NYSE:XPEV) shares cratered on the day, down almost 10%.The stock gave us a greatbearish reversal trade earlier in the week, but not many were expecting such a decline.
Now below the $45 breakout area, bulls will need to see if the 50-day moving average can hold as support.
If it can, a move back over $45 could quickly put the $48 to $50 zone on deck.
A move below Friday’s low would put the 200-day moving average in play, along with the $38 to $40 zone.
On the date of publication, Bret Kenwell did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
Bret Kenwell is the manager and author ofFuture Blue Chipsand is on Twitter@BretKenwell.
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The post4 Top Stock Trades for Monday: Bitcoin, ARKK, MSFT, XPEVappeared first onInvestorPlace. || Breakout year for crypto as trade surges 550% to reach $15.8 trillion: A bitcoin ATM (PA Archive) Cryptocurrency trading volumes surged last year to rival some major currencies, a new report shows. Chainalysis, a US crypto data company, said cryptocurrency transactions rose 550% last year to reach $15.8 trillion, equivalent to daily volumes of around $43 billion. That would put daily crypto turnover on a par with foreign exchange dealings for the Danish krone and more than the Polish zloty, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements . The surge in trading came in a year when Tesla founder Elon Musk helped drive a rally in dogecoin by Tweeting memes, crypto-enabled NFTs grew from almost nothing to a $41 billion market , and bitcoin reached a new all-time high . 2021 was a banner year for the emerging sector. While last year was a breakout for crypto, 2022 has had a rougher start. Bitcoin is in a bear market and fell another 6.8% overnight to reach $46,163, its lowest level since September. It came as tech and other growth stocks sold off sharply in the US amid rate rise fears. Chainalysis data on the market size was included in its latest Crypto Crime report, which measures illicit activity in the sector. Crypto crime hit a new all-time high last year, with $14 billion linked to fraud and theft. That was up from $7.8 billion in 2020. However, much stronger growth for the broader market meant criminal proceeds as a percentage of the overall space fell to a record low of just 0.15%. The figure stood at 3.3% just two years ago. Chainalysis said: The yearly trends suggest that with the exception of 2019 an extreme outlier year for cryptocurrency-based crime largely due to the PlusToken Ponzi scheme crime is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Law enforcements ability to combat cryptocurrency-based crime is also evolving. Criminals continue to exploit emerging areas, the company said, such as decentralised finance, which grew rapidly last year. || 'Omicron' the cryptocurrency rides new variant rollercoaster: By Tom Wilson LONDON (Reuters) - As global markets fell last week on news of the new Omicron coronavirus variant, one cryptocurrency with the same name soared after the Greek letter entered the investor lexicon. The price of the hitherto-obscure digital token, whose Twitter feed has little more than 1,000 followers, rose almost ten-fold from Friday to Monday morning when it hit $688, before tumbling as much as 75%, crypto tracker CoinGecko said. Omicron the token, which its website describes as "a decentralized treasury-backed currency protocol," was trading at about $371 at 1435 GMT. On Thursday it was worth about $65. The World Health Organization, which on Friday named the new COVID-19 variant Omicron, said as more countries reported cases it carries a "very high" global risk of surges, although scientists have said it could take weeks to understand its severity. Bitcoin suffered its worst day in two months on Friday, dropping by more than 8% as investors dumped stocks and other riskier assets in favour of perceived safe havens like the dollar. It has since recovered nearly all of its losses, with global markets gaining a semblance of calm on Monday. From "squid game" to dogecoin, minor cryptocurrencies have this year benefitted from links to memes or web culture, recording rapid booms and busts while more mainstream names such as bitcoin soar in popularity. It was not clear when the Omicron token was launched. Data on its price at CoinGecko was only available from Nov. 8, while a Telegram channel under the name OmicDAO was launched a day earlier. Reuters was not able to reach anyone representing Omicron for comment. (Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Alexander Smith) || Uber’s Excellent Week Translates Into Stock Price Rally: Uber has underperformed since the start of the year, with the numerous challenges in Europe affecting its stock price. Uber CEO Says Company Recorded its Best-Ever Week Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed earlier today that the company just had its best week ever in terms of overall gross bookings. The ridesharing company has underperformed since the start of the year but is now performing excellently. Khosrowshahi said, “Our overall mobility business continues to get closer to pre-pandemic levels. We’re starting to inch up to call it like the 90% mark, we’re not quite there. Last week was our best week, you know, post-pandemic.” Gross bookings are Uber’s combined bookings for its ridesharing and delivery businesses. The CEO said the ridesharing business is recovering slowly as economies resume normal operations since the pandemic began. The CEO also revealed that Uber is looking to sell its stakes in what it considers non-strategic investments in other companies. The company is set to sell its stakes in entities such as Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Global. UBER Rallies Following CEO’s Statement Rideshare companies and other travel stocks have been negatively affected by the pandemic, with the demand for their services declining during that period. However, as vaccines and restrictions eased, consumers are traveling again, and ridesharing services are now in demand. Uber reported 1.64 billion on its platform in the current quarter, up by 9% from the previous quarter and 39% from the fourth quarter of last year. The comment by the CEO sent UBER’s price soaring higher. At press time, UBER is trading at $37.51, up by more than 5% since the US market opened earlier today. However, year-to-date, the stock has underperformed, down by more than 26% over the past twelve months. In the past month, Uber has underperformed due to its regulatory troubles in Brussels , the Belgian capital. The ridesharing platform no longer operates in Brussels following the latest court ruling. Story continues This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: USD/CAD Exchange Rate Prediction – The Dollar Breaks Out USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis – Trader Reaction to 113.588 Sets Early Tone Ahead of Fed Announcements E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis – Sellers Targeting 15567.25 – 15284.00 Support Bitcoin (BTC) Eyes a Return to $50,000 after Tuesday’s Gain Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Fall and Form Bear Flag Myanmar Adopts Tether as a Legal Currency While Japan Seeks to Regulate Stablecoins
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Trend: down || Prices: 42735.86, 43949.10, 42591.57, 43099.70, 43177.40, 43113.88, 42250.55, 42375.63, 41744.33, 40680.42
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
The Oil Market Problem No One Is Talking About -- Yet: At the moment, the world has more than enough oil to meet its needs. In fact, it has too much, which is why OPEC is holding back some of its production to drain off a portion of the excess crude sitting in storage depots around the world. Furthermore, according to an estimate from the International Energy Agency (IEA), the oil market will remain well supplied through at least 2020 even though demand should continue expanding at a brisk pace . It's a different story post-2020, where there's a growing concern that the oil industry might not be able to keep up with continued demand growth because it's not reinvesting enough money into longer-term projects. That could result in a big shortfall in supplies, potentially fueling a significant spike in oil prices in the coming years. The worst year ever In its latest market report, the IEA pointed out that the oil industry only discovered 4 billion barrels of new oil resources last year. While that might sound like plenty, it fell well short of the 36 billion barrels consumed by the global economy last year. It was also a record low for the industry and followed up a similarly poor showing in 2016 when the industry found the fewest barrels in 70 years . Driving the dearth of discoveries is the fact that oil producers have significantly cut exploration spending in recent years. Oil field worker with a laptop at sunset. Analysts are crunching the numbers and don't like what they see ahead. Image source: Getty Images. While low oil prices played a major role in the discovery drop, a string of drilling expensive dry holes caused several explorers to abandon their efforts in recent years. One of the most notable failures was Royal Dutch Shell 's (NYSE: RDS-A) (NYSE: RDS-B) big flop in the Arctic waters off Alaska . The big oil giant spent upwards of $7 billion to acquire leases and drill an exploration well only to come up dry . U.S. oil giant ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) also had big ambitions in the Alaskan Arctic, but they never got off the ground. Those failed exploration efforts were among many by ConocoPhillips in recent years, which also drilled a string of dry holes all across the Atlantic. The company decided to abandon its deepwater exploration efforts a few years ago. Story continues An even bigger problem in the near term The decline in discoveries in recent years could hurt the industry down the road. However, the more pressing issue is that oil companies have spent less money developing previous finds to meet medium-term global needs. The IEA noted that investment spending barely budged last year and will only be 6% higher this year. That level remains well below the peak before oil prices plunged a few years ago, and it's a concern because producers aren't spending very much of it on long-term projects that will boost supplies after 2020. That's leading the IEA to warn that the market might struggle to meet growing demand in the future. Offshore oil and rig platform in sunrise on frozen sea. Image source: Getty Images. While the steep decline in the price of oil has driven the spending reduction, another issue is where oil companies have allocated capital. Instead off spending money on major long-term projects, companies like ConocoPhillips shifted the bulk of their investments into drilling shale wells in the U.S., which unleash a quick gusher of oil that they need to continually replace with new wells. While the exceptional returns on these wells enable companies to produce more oil for less money, they can't maintain that strategy forever, because they are rapidly depleting the inventory of prolific shale locations , which leads the IEA to believe that output from this resource will probably peak within a few years. The industry therefore needs to invest in more longer-term projects such as developing deepwater discoveries or new oil sands facilities because these assets deliver a steadier production rate. The issue is that only a handful of oil giants are currently pursuing these long-term projects. ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) and Hess (NYSE: HES) , for example, sanctioned the first phase of their offshore discovery in Guyana last year. The $3.2 billion project should produce 120,000 barrels per day when it comes online in 2020. Exxon and Hess have two more phases in development, which could ultimately produce 500,000 barrels per day. That development is part of ExxonMobil's big push to add 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of new production by 2025. While that will help, it's just a drop in the bucket for an industry that will need to produce more than 100 million barrels each day in the coming years. Meanwhile, other projects take much longer to develop. For example, Canadian oil giant Suncor Energy (NYSE: SU) recently applied to build a new oil sands facility in the country. The 160,000-barrel-per-day Lewis project would cost CA$6.2 billion ($4.7 billion). However, Suncor Energy probably won't even break ground on construction until 2024 and wouldn't produce a drop of oil from it until 2027. That long lead time on large-scale projects is one of the reasons the IEA remains concerned about whether the industry can provide enough crude to meet demand in the early part of the next decade if shale output begins tapering off as anticipated. Keep a close eye on this issue While the world remains awash in oil right now, that might not be the case a few years from now. If oil demand grows as much as anticipated, there might not be enough fuel in the shale growth tank to both offset the decline of legacy wells and meet this growing need for crude. Oil companies therefore must start work now on longer-term projects that will come online around the time shale could run out of gas. If they wait too long, the world could find itself short of the fuel it needs, which could potentially cause another super-spike in crude prices. That's why investors with an eye toward the future should watch industry investment levels -- it could have significant future ramifications. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Matthew DiLallo owns shares of ConocoPhillips. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Is This the Beginning of the End of Healthcare as We Know It?: The U.S. pays more on healthcare costs than any other developed nation -- 17.9% of our gross domestic product in 2016, according to a recently released report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the U.S. government agency charged with tracking those costs. This amounts to $3.3 trillion, or an astounding $10,348 for every man, woman, and child in the country. Three of the biggest companies in the U.S. have decided to do something about it. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) , Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) (NYSE: BRK-A) , and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) have banded together to form an independent company to address the healthcare issue. This enterprise will be "free from profit-making incentives and constraints" and seeks to provide U.S. employees of the three companies with less expensive healthcare options. A medical doctor using a stethoscope to touch medical icons on a virtual screen. Can this partnership disrupt the healthcare industry? Image source: Getty Images. Large potential impact, minimal details While the ambitions of the group are vast, details regarding how they hope to achieve these goals are sparse. In a press release , the partners said that the newly formed venture has an "aim of improving employee satisfaction and reducing costs," and will be initially focused on "technology solutions." The three companies have an estimated 1.1 million employees globally, though it is not known how many of those are located in the U.S. While the initial focus will be on lowering costs for the workers of the three companies, it isn't inconceivable -- particularly given Amazon's history of disruption -- that success in the endeavor might lead it to participation by other companies, an outcome alluded to by Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase. He said (emphasis mine), "The three of our companies have extraordinary resources, and our goal is to create solutions that benefit our U.S. employees, their families and, potentially, all Americans ." Story continues Legendary investor and Berkshire CEO Warren Buffet stated "The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy." Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos chimed in saying "Success is going to require talented experts, a beginner's mind, and a long-term orientation." The business triumvirate made it clear that the effort was in early stages and the group admitted to not yet having answers. It also stated that the undertaking would be a "long-term effort." Been on the drawing board for months The plans for this partnership have likely been ongoing for some time, with details emerging as early as May. Warren Buffett said at the company's annual shareholder meeting in May that "healthcare [once] was 5% of GDP, and now it's about 17% of GDP." He also said that the country was getting "more and more out of whack with the rest of the world" regarding the healthcare system. Berkshire's vice chairman and Buffet's top lieutenant Charlie Munger had his own choice words on the subject: The whole system is cockamamie. It's almost ridiculous in its complexity, and it's steadily increasing cost, and Warren is absolutely right. It gives our companies a big disadvantage in competing with other manufacturers. They've got single-payer medicine and we're paying it out of the company. Companies in the healthcare industry have been watching Amazon closely for months. Reports emerged in May that the company was hiring a new general manager tasked with developing a strategy and finding a path into the highly regulated and complex healthcare industry. In October 2017 it was revealed that Amazon had received approval to be granted wholesale pharmacy licenses in 12 states, with applications pending in others. Not happening overnight There is room for improvement in a system some believe is ripe for change. Clinical waste, administrative complexity, excessive prices, and fraud and abuse caused an estimated $1 trillion in wasteful spending in the U.S. healthcare system, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review. Investors had a visceral reaction to news of the collaboration, bidding down shares of insurers and pharmacy benefit managers alike. It is important to remember, however, that the healthcare industry is notoriously complicated and heavily regulated, and changes will not occur overnight. Still, with three of the country's most preeminent businessmen lending their support to the effort, those in the healthcare sector should take heed. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Danny Vena owns shares of Amazon. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || 3 Reasons Apple Isn't Buying Snap: The latest round in "Let's Spend Apple's Money" comes from a Wednesday nightVanity Faircolumn, arguing that the tech giant should buySnap Inc.(NYSE: SNAP). The case forApple(NASDAQ: AAPL)buying Snapchat's parent company isn't outrageous. Snap is still a major player in social media whereApple has stumbled before. Snap is also at the forefront of augmented reality, a priority at Apple. Apple is also loaded, something that comes in handy in this never-ending game of financial journos trying to separate the class act of Cupertino from its 12-figure bank balance.
Tech columnist Nick Bilton is no hack. He's a well-regarded author with several best-selling books, a popular podcast, and an enviable list of columns. However, he may be aiming too high here. It's hard to fathom Apple cutting a check for Snap.
Image source: Snap, Inc.
Snap commands an enterprise value north of $20 billion, but the costliest acquisition that Apple has completed in its long history was the roughly $3 billion it paid for Beats Electronics four years ago. Apple isn't afraid to go shopping -- it has bought dozens of companies. It just prefers to make smaller deals.
Apple is good for the money, and kinder tax repatriation laws will make it easier to tap into its massive vault. The problem is that Apple prefers to bunt rather than swing for the fences with its gobs of cash.
The deal for Beats Electronics made sense. Apple would get the popular line of high-end headphones that it can sell to its affluent iOS users who don't flinch at a $350 pair of headphones. The Beats Music end of the business it acquired helped set the stage for Apple Music, which currently trails only Spotify in the premium on-demand market.
Snapchat isn't a haven for big spenders. The social sharing hub is free, and monetizing that traffic has been challenging. Snap's lone foray into hardware is its line of Spectacles wearable camera glasses, and the$130 specs have largely flopped.
It would make sense for a company to buy Snap now if said company thinks the stock will be worth a lot more down the line. But it's hard to rally behind that notion. Snapchat's coming off of ablowout quarter, sure, but the stock has fallen after three of its first four financial reports as a public company.
Snap has also been taking some heat in recent months for a site redesign that many people in Snapchat's core audience arenot happy with. The redesign was evendissed by an influential young celebrity. Snap's also reportedly in the process of laying off dozens of engineers -- a move that may rattle morale.
Snapchat is getting some things right. Revenue growth accelerated to 72% in its latest quarter, and the 8.9 million daily active users increase is Snap's biggest gain since going public. However, with losses continuing to mount -- another way of saying that the purchase would be dilutive to a potential buyer -- one can argue that a buyer can wait and get Snap when the stock is cheaper if it really wants to inherit the good, bad, and ugly of Snapchat. Apple has to have other things on its mind.
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Rick Munarrizowns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Term Sheet -- Thursday, February 22: THE KING OF RIDE-HAILING Good morning, Term Sheet readers. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is pushing back on earlier statements made by its newest investor, SoftBank. SoftBank CEO and Uber board member Rajeev Misra said he wants to see the ride-hailing giant focus on growing in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Australia not Asia. Recently, reports emerged that Uber has decided to sell its Southeast Asia business to ride-hailing startup, Grab. Media reports suggested that this meant Uber was throwing in the towel in Asia, but Khosrowshahi weighed in on the issue. He said, We expect to lose money in Southeast Asia and expect to invest aggressively in terms of marketing, subsidies etc. He added: Right now, the plan for Southeast Asia is to go forward, lean forward and to invest. Asia has been among the most costly and competitive regions for Uber where it has slipped behind Grab and Indonesia-based Go-Jek. Things are getting pretty tangled as it may seem like SoftBank has invested in everything. For instance, the Japanese giant is also an investor in Singapores Grab, Chinas Didi Chuxing, and Indias Ola. As a result, Softbank has emerged as, the real king of ride-hailing. As my colleague David Z. Morris put it , An Uber deal with Grab could serve SoftBanks push to streamline the competitive environment for ride-hailing services or, put another way, to divide up its global kingdom into small, relatively sheltered fiefdoms. SEIZED BITCOIN: Ever wonder what happens to Bitcoin once its seized by Uncle Sam? The federal government has seized at least $1 billion worth of Bitcoin after busts in criminal cases. Where does it all go? Fortunes Jeff Roberts wrote about the large and shadowy Bitcoin hoard amassed by federal law-enforcement agencies. Heres an excerpt: Finding illicit currency wont get any less challenging. For years, bad actors have been moving to other currencies that didnt leave the same digital bread crumbs, says Jud Welle, a former cybercrime prosecutor who is now a consultant with Aon. Story continues Many have abandoned Bitcoin for coins like Monero and ZCash, which offer the same sort of secure payment options but are all but impossible to trace. And more online black markets now bake so-called tumblers, which scramble transaction records, right into their checkout services, says James Smith, the CEO of forensic firm Elliptic. It adds up to a potentially endless digital cat-and-mouse game. And if law-enforcement agents ever do go rogue, the currency they steal will be that much easier to hide. Read the full feature here. THE LATEST FROM FORTUNE
How The Lean Startup Turned Eric Ries Into an Unlikely Corporate Guru (by Adam Lashinsky) 5 Big Companies Practicing The Startup Way (by Adam Lashinsky) Here Are the 26 Big U.S. Companies With the Most Cash Stashed Overseas ( by Nicolas Rapp and Brian OKeefe) Why Apples Tim Cook Is No Fan of the Quarterly Earnings Report (by David Meyer)
AND ELSEWHERE VCs get advice from their lobbyists on addressing sexual misconduct . To give A.I. the gift of gab, Silicon Valley needs to offend you . Blockchain is entering the valley of despair . How gargantuan can private equity get ? Fed officials say economy is ready for higher rates. VENTURE DEALS PROCEPT BioRobotics , a Redwood Shores, Calif.-based surgical robotics company, raised $118 million in financing. Viking Global Investors LP led the round, and was joined by investors including Perceptive Advisors and CPMG Inc. Wealthsimple , a Canada-based provider of digital based advisory services, raised $51 million ($65M CAD) in funding. Investors include Power Financial Corp. Cota Inc , a New York City-based healthcare real-world evidence and data analytics company, has raised $40 million in Series C financing. IQVIA led the round with participation from other investors that included EW Healthcare Partners. Capillary Technologies , an India-based startup that helps e-commerce businesses manage their marketing and customer engagement, raised $20 million in funding. Investors include Warburg Pincus and Sequoia. Prophesee SA , a Paris-based creator of a bio-inspired vision system, raised $19 million in funding. Investors include 360 Capital Partners, Supernova Invest, iBionext, Intel Capital, Renault Group and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. Tinyclues , a Paris-based provider of a AI-focused marketing campaign intelligence solutions, raised $18 million in Series B funding. EQT Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Alven, Elaia Partners and ISAI . Greenlight Financial Technology Inc , an Atlanta-based producer of a smart debit card, raised $16 million in Series A funding. TTV Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including New Enterprise Associates Inc, Relay Ventures, SunTrust Bank, Ally Financial, nbkc bank, Canapi and the Amazon Alexa Fund. Zagster , a Cambridge, Mass.-based bike-sharing platform provider, raised $15 million in funding. Edison Partners led the round. Mabl , a Boston-based automated testing service that fixes broken tests and identifies regressions using machine learning, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Investors include CRV and Amplify Partners. Meritize , a Frisco, Texas-based educational lender, raised $6.8 million in seed funding. Colchis Capital, Chicago Ventures and Cube Financial Holdings led the round, and was joined by investors including ECMC, College Loan Corporation, University Ventures, City Light Capital, PC Squared and Meritize management. Dover Microsystems , a Framingham, Mass.-based developer of security software solutions, raised $6 Million in seed funding. Hyperplane Venture Capital led the round, and was joined by investors including Draper, Qualcomm Ventures, and the Hub Angels Investment Group. Teampay , a New York-based workflow software, raised $4 million in seed funding. C rosscut Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including KEC Ventures, Precursor Ventures, and CoVenture. Beauty By Design , a personalized platform that offers customized skincare solutions based on a customers skin data, raised $2.2 million in seed funding. Resolute Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Ludlow Ventures, TenoneTen Ventures, and Troy Capital Partners. Serial Box , a New York-based provider of serialized entertainment for readers and listeners, raised $1.65 million in seed funding. Boat Rocker Media led the round. Intello , a New York City-based provider of intelligent SaaS optimization, raised $1.3 million in funding. Emerge led the round, and was joined by investors including BoxGroup, Blacktop, Kaedan and Tectonic. Lindora , a Costa Mesa, Calif.-based provider of weight loss and weight management programs, raised funding of an undisclosed amount. Investors include Montage Capital, Solis Capital Partners and Innovate Partners. HEALTH AND LIFE SCIENCES DEALS Kallyope Inc. , a New York-based biotechnology company focused on identifying therapeutic opportunities involving the gut-brain axis, raised $66 million Series B funding. Investors includ e Lux Capital, The Column Group, Polaris Partners, Illumina Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, Euclidean Capital and Two Sigma Ventures . PRIVATE EQUITY DEALS Strattam Capital agreed to make an investment in SSB , a data management and analytics platform provider for the sports and entertainment, education and healthcare sectors. Financial terms werent disclosed. Leeds Equity Partners LLC will invest in Endeavor Schools LLC , a Miami-based owner and operator of 37 private schools. Financial terms werent disclosed. Marlin Equity Partners acquired Propelics Inc , a San Jose, Calif.-based mobile strategy and app development provider. Financial terms werent disclosed. General Atlantic will buy a 25.1% stake in NuCom Group , a Munich-based omnichannel platform for consumer services and lifestyle brands. The deal values NuCom at 1.8 billion euros ($2.2 billion). Gauge Capital LLC completed a majority recapitalization of Comprehensive EyeCare Partners, a Las Vegas-based vision care management services organization. Financial terms werent disclosed. RAB Ventures LLC acquired a majority stake in HouseWorks LLC , a Newton, Mass.-based provider of home care, elder care and senior home care services. Financial terms werent disclosed. OTHER DEALS Ryan Reynolds bought a majority stake in Aviation Gin , a Portland, Ore.-based spirit company, from Davos Brands. Eli Global agreed to acquire Finanzen , a Berlin-based online marketplace for retail customer leads in the finance and insurance sectors. Financial terms werent disclosed. Solium acquired Advanced-HR , a San Francisco-based provider of compensation data, according to TechCrunch. Financial terms werent disclosed. Read more. IPOs Opes Acquisition , a Mexico City-based SPAC formed to acquire a firm in Mexico, filed to raise up to $100 million in an IPO of 10 million units priced at $10 a piece. Axis Capital Management backs the firm. EarlyBirdCapital is bookrunner in the deal. The firm plans to list on the Nasdaq as OPESU. Read more . EXITS Antin Infrastructure Partners agreed to acquire FirstLight , an Albany, N.Y.-based fiber-optic bandwidth infrastructure services provider, from Oak Hill Capital Partners . Financial terms werent disclosed. Robert Bosch acquired Splitting Fares , a Detroit, Mich.-based ride services company, according to Reuters. Financial terms werent disclosed. Splitting Fares had raised approximately $1.3 million in venture funding from investors including Verizon Ventures, Wells Fargo, and InMotion Ventures. Read more. FIRMS + FUNDS IK Investment Partners , a U.K.-based private equity firm, raised 550 million euro ($676 million) for its second small cap fund, IK Small Cap II. SaaS Ventures , a Washington D.C.-based enterprise technology SaaS focused fund, raised $10 million for its first fund. Tangled Little Dragon, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, raised $9.3 million for a venture fund, according to an SEC filing . PEOPLE Invesco named Carl Stanton as managing director and head of private equity. Previously, Stanton was at Wellspring Capital Management. SHARE TODAYS TERM SHEET View this email in your browser . Polina Marinova produces Term Sheet, and Lucinda Shen compiles the IPO news. Send deal announcements to Polina here and IPO news to Lucinda here . || 3 Stocks That Doubled in Just the Last 6 Months: It takes the average stock about seven years to double in value while the S&P 500 typically gains about 10% each year. However, three stocks accomplished that feat in just the past six months: Bristow Group (NYSE: BRS) , W&T Offshore (NYSE: WTI) , and California Resources (NYSE: CRC) . But before you run out to buy them in hopes of riding their current momentum, it's important to know the reason why they've rocketed higher and if they still have enough fuel to keep going. Taking flight Shares of helicopter services company Bristow Group soared 104% in the last six months, but not before investors had to first endure a bumpy ride. In the three years before that rally, the stock had tumbled nearly 90%, including crashing more than 33% last May after the company reported disappointing quarterly results. Shares, though, have since bounced sharply off that bottom. A helicopter taking off from an offshore oil rig. Image source: Getty Images. Several factors ignited the rally, including the release of expectation-beating quarterly results in November, which alone fueled a jaw-dropping rally of nearly 45% that day. While the company gave back some ground a month later after issuing new debt , it has recovered since then by riding the coattails of scorching-hot oil prices, which have risen by a third in the past six months. The reason for this rebound is the belief that higher oil prices should cause oil companies to increase their offshore drilling activities, which could fuel demand for the company's helicopter services as it ferries more oil workers to those rigs. That said, if crude takes a tumble, it could cause the turbulence to return to Bristow's stock. Striking oil at just the right time W&T Offshore's stock has been on a tear for the last six months, climbing more than 135% over that period and about 40% in the past month. That has helped it begin crawling back from its nearly 85% tumble during the oil market downturn. The offshore oil producer's stunning run started in September after the company provided the market with an operational update following Hurricane Harvey. W&T Offshore noted that it only deferred about 43,000 barrels of oil equivalent production in the wake of the storm and that none of its production platforms sustained any damage. As a result, it quickly restarted operations and returned to pre-storm production levels. A subsequent update in late December added more fuel to the rally when the company noted that it struck oil in two of its three most recent exploration wells. One of those wells is already producing and the other should come on line in the next year. This flurry of production is happening just as oil prices are improving, which should provide the company with a gusher of cash flow in the coming year if crude prices hold up. Story continues An oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Image source: Getty Images. Riding the oil wave higher California Resources led this trio with a remarkable 157% gain in the last six months as the company began the long road to recovery after crashing 90% in the previous three years due to plunging oil prices. Those much lower prices had a dramatic impact on the California oil producer's operations. Because of its elevated debt levels, it wasn't producing enough cash to meet its financial obligations and invest into maintaining its production. In fact, output through the third quarter of last year was down 8% versus the same period in 2016 because the company was using much of its cash flow to pay down debt instead of investing in new oil wells. However, with crude prices bouncing back, California Resources should begin generating enough cash to both meet its financial obligations and grow production again. That has already started easing market fears that this still-deeply indebted oil company will survive the market downturn without having to restructure through bankruptcy. What oil gives it can quickly take away One single factor fueled the triple-digit rebound in these stocks: oil. The rapid rebound in crude prices in the last six months has provided them all with more cash flow to improve their financial situations, which is causing investors to buy up their beaten-down shares. Consequently, these companies need oil to continue going higher to maintain their momentum. Meanwhile, if crude gives back some of its gains, these three will undoubtedly give back a substantial portion of theirs. That's why investors are better off avoiding this troubled group and instead consider investing in oil stocks that can thrive even if oil heads much lower . More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Matthew DiLallo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || The Creator Of GBTC Launches New Products For Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin And XRP: Grayscale Investments, the firm that runs the popularBitcoin Investment Trust(OTC:GBTC), has announced it's launching four new funds focused on other popularcryptocurrencies.
What Happened
Grayscale said it's launching a Bitcoin Cash Investment Trust, an Ethereum Investment Trust, a Litecoin Investment Trust and an XRP Investment Trust, presumably all structured in a similar way as the Bitcoin Investment Trust.
“Our team is committed to bridging the gap between the global investment community and the digital currency asset class,” Grayscale managing director Michael Sonnensheinsaid in a statement.
Why It's Important
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin are the five largest global cryptocurrencies by market cap and represent the only five digital currencies valued at more than $1 billion each.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange has yet to approve a cryptocurrency fund for listing on a major U.S. exchange, leaving the GBTC fund as one of the only games in town for traders. As the popularity of bitcoin has skyrocketed in the past year, so too has the GBTC fund. The GBTC fund is now up 1,150 percent in the past year.
Bitcoin prices have cooled since peaking at around $19,000 in December. Bitcoin was priced at just under $10,900 in Tuesday afternoon trading.
What's Next
Unfortunately for retail investors, only qualified investors can participate in the new funds’ private placements, and all of the private placement shares are subject to a one-year holding period. In other words, it may be a year before shares of the new funds begin trading on the OTC market along with shares of the Bitcoin Investment Trust.
Qualified investors who wish to receive more information on the new cryptocurrency funds should contact Grayscale to receive a copy of the private placement memorandum for each fund.
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© 2018 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Japan Toughens Oversight, Penalizes Cryptocurrency Exchanges: JapanCrypt.jpg In its most sweeping crackdown yet, a Japanese regulator has penalized seven cryptocurrency exchanges, requiring two to halt operations for one month. Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) announced today, March 8, 2018, that it came down on the exchanges due to their failure to provide proper internal-control systems. All of the exchanges were ordered to step up efforts to improve security and prevent money laundering. Business suspension orders were issued for FSHO and Bit Station , effective today. The FSA said FSHO was not properly monitoring trades and employees at the exchange had not undergone proper training. The FSA also alleged that a senior employee at Bit Station had used customers’ bitcoin for personal use. The five other exchanges punished were GMO Coin , Tech Bureau , Mister Exchange , Increments and Coincheck . Coincheck was served with its second business improvement order since its security breach earlier this year, when $530 million worth of NEM (XEM) tokens were stolen . In a news conference today, Coincheck also announced that it will begin compensating users who had their cryptocurrency stolen, beginning as soon as next week. The exchange was hacked on January 26, 2018, after a hacker used malware to gain access to an employee’s computer. All of the 260,000 users impacted by the theft will be paid back in Japanese yen, based on NEM rates at the time of the theft, the Tokyo-based company said. At the root of the problem, the cryptocurrency exchange had been keeping all its NEM in a hot wallet connected to the internet. In contrast, at any one time, U.S.-based exchange Coinbase keeps 98 percent of its funds in a more secure cold wallet. The vice president of the NEM Foundation, Jeff McDonald, also told Bitcoin Magazine that if Coincheck had been using a multisignature wallet, the problem would not have occurred. It is still not clear who was behind the Coincheck hack. The Coincheck hack was one of the largest thefts of cryptocurrency in the world since Mt. Gox, another Tokyo exchange, was brought to its knees by hackers in 2014. What happened at Coincheck highlighted the risks of storing funds in cryptocurrency exchanges, and since then, Japan’s FSA has taken strong measures to protect its citizens and ensure the security of cryptocurrency exchanges across the country. Following the Coincheck breach, Japanese authorities announced on January 29, 2018, that they would investigate all cryptocurrency exchanges in the country for security gaps, and ordered Coincheck to, essentially, get its act together. The FSA gave Coincheck until February 13, 2018, to submit a report summarizing the actions it would take to improve security and customer support. Last year, Japan became one of the first countries to regulate cryptocurrency exchanges when it set up a licensing system. Some 16 exchanges in the country are currently registered, while another 16, including Coincheck, have been allowed to continue operating unregistered while they apply for licences. Five of the seven exchanges punished by the FSA are unregistered, including the two forced to suspend business. Subsequent to its business suspension, Bit Station withdrew its application for a license. Japan’s crackdown on exchanges follows a series of efforts by U.S. regulators to tighten reins on the industry. Yesterday, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proclaimed that anyone selling initial coin offering (ICO) tokens are unregistered money transmitters, while the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) warned that any exchange selling tokens deemed as securities must register with the agency. Overall, Japan remains one of the more cryptocurrency-friendly countries, distinguishing itself from crackdowns in South Korea and China. Story continues Coincheck to Repay Victims Tough Measures This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine . || Volume Vexes Bitcoin Traders: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
Bitcoin, by far the largest digital currency, is not starved for attention, but that does not mean trading volume in the cryptocurrency is always robust.
In fact, some data points suggest that when the price of the digital currency falls, so does its volume.
“The average number of trades recorded daily has roughly dropped in half from the December highs and touched its lowest in two years last month, even as Bitcoin became a household name and roared back above $10,000,”reports Bloomberg.
Bitcoin futures debuted on the Cboe in December, followed by a launch on the CME. Nasdaq Inc. is still considering entering the bitcoin futures competition. Market observers previously expected Nasdaq to launch futures on the digital currency this year, perhaps as early as the second quarter.
However, bitcoin futures volume is not yet taking off due in part to the large margin requirements associated with these derivatives. Derivatives help increase liquidity and improve markets for an asset category by allowing investors to bet on ups and downs of an asset, evening allowing individuals to adopt market-neutral strategies.
“The transaction data may be bad news for Bitcoin bulls, according to Charles Morris, chief investment officer of Newscape Capital Group in London, who invests in cryptocurrencies. Trading and purchases on the Bitcoin network, which can be measured by metrics like transaction volume, is indicative of price direction, he said,” according to Bloomberg.
Exchange traded funds linked to bitcoin could bolster volume in the digital currency, but U.S. regulators have not approved any such ETFs. Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) told several issuers to scrap plans for bitcoin ETFs.
“Average transaction confirmation times have tumbled — though that may be in part because the technology that underlies Bitcoin has already been adapted to address some of these delays,” reports Bloomberg. “Not everyone agrees that lower volumes signal trouble for Bitcoin. It may be a healthy return to normality and signs that the market is maturing.”
Some media reports also indicate U.S. exchanges could be nearing futures trading on other digital currencies, such as Ripple and Ethereum.
For more information on the cryptocurrency, visit ourBitcoin category.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || How to Buy Litecoin Cash: The Essential Guide: What is Litecoin Cash (LCC)? How to Buy Litecoin Cash (LCC)? Create Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) Digital Wallet Buy Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) Coin Litecoin Cash Digital Wallets Litecoin Cash Exchanges Litecoin Cash Price The Differences: Litecoin Cash, Litecoin, and Bitcoin What is Litecoin Cash (LCC)? Litecoin went through a hard fork at block 1371111 on Sunday evening, resulting in the creation of Litecoin Cash (“LCC”). There was plenty of noise in the lead up to the fork, with Litecoin founder Charlie Lee and others from the Litecoin community calling the announcement of the fork a scam. Regardless, Litecoin rallied 60% to a week high $237.72 on Thursday, as investors moved into Litecoin in anticipation of receiving 10 Litecoin Cash coins for each Litecoin held in a Litecoin wallet at the time of the fork. Now that Litecoin Cash does in fact exist and is already tradable, there are some distinct differences between Litecoin and Litecoin Cash, with the Litecoin Cash team looking to deliver a cryptocurrency that is miner-friendly, whilst tweaking some other key attributes. Key characteristics of Litecoin Cash include: Litecoin Cash will be run with Bitcoin’s SHA256 algorithm as opposed to Litecoin’s Scrypt algo. The use of Bitcoin’s SHA256 algo provides prospective miners to mine for Litecoin Cash, with the SHA256 proof-of-work algorithm allowing Litecoin Cash mining using old and obsolete Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (“ASICs”) Bitcoin mining hardware. The total supply of Litecoin Cash is 840 million LCC coins, far greater than Litecoin’s 84 million coins. Litecoin Cash has a different difficulty adjustment to Litecoin, with Litecoin Cash seeing the mining difficulty adjusted with every block, using Evan Duffield’s DarkGravity V3 algorithm from Dash, compared with Litecoin’s approximately 3.5 days. Litecoin Cash transaction fees are reported to be 90% cheaper than Litecoin’s fees. The use of the DarkGravity V3 algorithm provides a more predictable block time environment, supporting a target block time of 2.5 minutes, resulting in the lower transaction fees. The Litecoin Cash team’s objective is to deliver a cheap and fast SHA256 coin that has a favorable difficulty adjustment. How to Buy Litecoin Cash (LCC)? The first step in buying Litecoin Cash is to set up a Litecoin Cash wallet that can store your Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) coins following the purchase. The same wallet will also be used when wanting to sell LCC coins, with the coins transferable to an exchange that accepts Litecoin Cash for sale, or to a merchant in the case of a purchase. Story continues Step 1 – Create Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) Digital Wallet On the Litecoin Cash website , a number of wallets have been recommended by the team to cater for Windows, MAC OSX, Linux, and mobiles. As it is always recommended to store coins in a wallet supported by the team behind the coin, we propose that one of the wallets recommended by the Litecoin Cash team be downloaded to store the Litecoin Cash coins. Once the wallet has been downloaded to your desktop, run the executable and follow the instructions in order to set up the wallet on your desktop. At this point, you will need to go to File>>Import Private Key, with the private key entered needing to be backed up somewhere safe to avoid loss of the coins held within the wallet. The wallet will also need to be encrypted for added security before being backed up, though do note that the Litecoin Cash blockchain will need to be downloaded and synchronized before this step. The Litecoin Cash website contains a “Bootstrap” download. This is an optional file that is there to synchronize your blockchain faster when you initially install Litecoin Cash. Once synchronized, the wallet will no longer be “behind”, as it was upon download. At this point, you will need to obtain the Receive Address, by selecting the Receive tab and copy the address somewhere safe so that the LCC coins can be transferred to the wallet upon purchase. It is recommended that a new address is generated on each occasion. Now, click on settings>>Encrypt Wallet and create a secure password that must be at least ten or more random characters, or eight or more words. It is recommended to use at least 16 characters that include letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Upon completion, an icon on the bottom right-hand corner of the wallet will indicate that the wallet has been encrypted and locked. The password will need to be stored in a safe place as this will be needed each time you want to access the wallet and will result in losing the coins in the event of loss of the password. Step 2 – Buy Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) Coin With the wallet now created, LCC coins can be bought with, either U.S Dollar or Russian Roubles, or they can be purchased with one of 3 cryptocurrencies, these being Bitcoin DOGE and Ethereum. Buying Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) with Fiat Currencies At present, Litecoin Cash can only be bought and sold on YObit , which caters for purchasing Litecoin Cash with the pairings LCC/USD and LCC/RUR for those interested in purchasing with fiat currencies. Buying Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) with Cryptocurrencies While it is possible to currently purchase with fiat currency, a common way to purchase Litecoin Cash will also be with one of the three crypto pairings offered by YObit . Below is a Step-by-Step guide to buying Litecoin Cash (“LCC”) with other cryptocurrencies: Open an account – In the event that you don’t already have an account on an exchange and are not holding Bitcoin, DOGE or Ethereum, open an account at Coinbase , and purchase Bitcoin, DOGE or Ethereum. It’s worth noting that, while there are higher transaction fees when purchasing with debit or credit card, the purchase is immediate. Sign into Yobit – Once you have bought BTC, DOGE or ETH, sign into YObit and open an account. (Remember to always use strong passwords and to also enable the 2FA option when prompted). Transfer your BTC, DOGE or ETH coins from Coinbase into your newly opened YObit In order to do that, click the “Funds” tab and search for BTC or DOGE or ETH, depending on the cryptocurrency you bought, choose “Deposit”, copy the deposit address and paste it to the exchange that you intend to withdraw the cryptocurrency from, by selecting send. This process can take up to an hour, depending on backlogs. Return to the YObit trading platform, search for the pairing, whether it’s LCC/BTC, LCC/DOGE or LCC/ETH and proceed with the transaction. Upon completion of the transaction, you will find the newly purchased LCC coins in the Deposits ‘Withdrawals’ tab located in the ‘Funds’ section of your account. We would highly recommend transferring the coins into the recently downloaded Litecoin Cash wallet and to not leave them on the exchange. Select ‘Withdrawal’, enter the details and select submit. You had previously saved your Litecoin Cash wallet address safely when setting up the wallet. The LCC coins will then transfer from your Coinbase account to your Litecoin Cash wallet and will remain there until you wish to sell them Litecoin Cash Digital Wallets Digital wallets are virtual wallets that allow coin holders to hold their cryptocurrencies privately as opposed to on the exchange from where they were purchased. The wallet allows coin holders to send and receive cryptocurrencies from the wallet to an exchange or merchant. It is always advisable for coin holders to store their coins in a private wallet and not on an exchange, with many cases of coin theft having been reported from exchanges in recent times. In the case of Litecoin Cash, the website recommends Coinomi for mobiles, which is a free secure source-available multi-coin multi-asset HD wallet for Bitcoin altcoins and tokens. For Windows, the team recommends QT Wallet for Windows and MAC OSX and QT & headless Linux Binaries for Linux, the wallets are available for download from the Litecoin Cash website . It is always recommended that a wallet is used that has been endorsed by the company or team behind the cryptocurrency, whilst also ensuring that the wallet has private keys and encryption of the private keys. Wallets and private keys should always be backed up in order to avoid the loss of coins held within a wallet, as the loss of either the wallet or the private keys will result in the loss of coins held. Litecoin Cash Exchanges At present, Litecoin Cash has only been made available on YObit according to Coincodex , though there have been reports that exchanges TradeSatoshi , MEANXTRADE , Mercatox and CryptoBridge are also scheduled to list Litecoin Cash following Sunday’s fork. As demand builds, we will expect other exchanges to begin including Litecoin Cash, with exchanges having a tendency to hold back immediately after a fork to assess the performance and demand for a resultant cryptocurrency. As we have seen with Bitcoin Cash and other fork cryptocurrencies, any time lapse from creation to inclusion is not reflective of general sentiment towards the cryptocurrency, with some of the major cryptocurrencies yet to have been included on larger exchanges. Litecoin Cash Price Unlikely previous forks, Litecoin Cash became tradable almost immediately, with cryptocurrency exchange YObit making Litecoin Cash available for trade, removing the need for a futures or synthetic price. Litecoin Cash surged to a first hour high $8.00 before sliding to a low to $0.63 in the hour after launch. Since then, Litecoin Cash has found its legs and sits at $7.52 at the time of writing, a since launch gain of 437% (Launch Price Estimate: $1.40), whilst having hit a 24-hour high $9.99. Investors who bought low and sold high would have made quite a tidy sum. We have seen other cryptocurrency launches lead to sizeable rallies in the early days and the moves over the last 24-hours will certainly be called speculative in nature by some of the skeptics. For those originally holding Litecoin and receiving the 10 Litecoin Cash coins for each Litecoin held, there won’t be any complaints and for miners with obsolete ASICs hardware sitting around, the surge in price is certainly an incentive to support the network. The Differences: Litecoin Cash, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Litecoin Cash and Bitcoin are perhaps to be considered more comparable than Litecoin and Bitcoin by the fact that both cryptocurrencies are on a SHA256 proof-of-work algorithm that allows the cryptomarket to make a more direct comparison from a performance and cost perspective. It’s no crypto secret that Bitcoin has its troubles, with transaction speeds of 10-minutes and extortionate fees. Litecoin Cash has taken some elements of Bitcoin and some elements of Litecoin and delivered a hybrid, whilst also looking to drive support for the transaction speeds by making Litecoin Cash mining more accessible. Other differences to Bitcoin include the maximum supply, with Bitcoin having just 21 million coins and a difficulty adjustment of 2-weeks, compared with each block for Litecoin Cash and the 840 million LLC coins. While we have looked at the key differences between Litecoin and Litecoin Cash, it’s also important to note that the Litecoin Cash team have no affiliation with Litecoin, something that Litecoin founder Charlie Lee was quick to point out last week and the Litecoin Cash team have also highlight on their website . In the creation of Litecoin, the team focused on transaction fees and speed, when switching from Bitcoin’s SHA256 algorithm to Scrypt. While there were certain improvements, the shift to Scrypt left older mining machines obsolete. While the algorithms differ, the blockchain size of approximately 13Gb is the same, both of which are far smaller than those of Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s 145Gb. The nuances between the various cryptocurrencies and those that result from hard forks are all in an effort to become the leading crypto in the market. To-date, Bitcoin continues to sit at top of the tree, with various hybrids and enhancements having yet to test Bitcoin. We will expect the day to come, however, when Bitcoin’s mantle as the #1 coin is tested and it may well come from a fork that delivers a hybrid too good to be ignored. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Natural Gas Price Fundamental Daily Forecast – Rally Trying to Gain Traction Over $2.661 E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis – February 20, 2018 Forecast Bitcoin Moving Towards Mid-Term Highs The Crypto Menagerie: a Collection of the World’s Weirdest Altcoins Potential of Euro Reversal Higher Near Term How to Buy Litecoin Cash: The Essential Guide View comments || Bitcoin Slips Below $6,000 as Cryptocurrency Rout Deepens: The rout in cryptocurrenciesrolled on, sending Bitcoin to its lowest level since October, as worries over tighter regulation by U.S. authorities and central bankers elsewhere gave traders fresh reasons to sell after a brutal start to 2018.
The selloff has now knocked more than half a trillion dollars from digital coins since early January. That’s shaken a nascent market whose core attraction — anonymity and decentralization — is being challenged as never before by regulators.
Bitcoin, the biggest virtual currency, sank 8.8% to $6,477 at 12:03 p.m. London time, after earlier sliding to as low as $5,922, according to Bloomberg composite pricing. Alternative coins Ripple, Ether, and Litecoin also tumbled at least 9%.
“Crypto is being driven by daily negative news,” said Craig Erlam, a senior market analyst in London at online trading firm Oanda Corp. “There’s regulation speculation in India, South Korea, and the U.S. And then there’s hacking, theFacebooksituation and finally the Tether story has people worried as well.”
Read:Here’s Why Bitcoin Purchases Using Credit Cards Are Getting More Expensive
The slump got fresh momentum after a Bloomberg News report that America’s two top market watchdogs are planning to ask Congress to consider federal oversight for digital-currency trading platforms, many of which have been operating in a regulatory gray zone. Chiefs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission will appear together at aSenate Banking Committee hearing to discuss cryptocurrencies on Tuesday.
In Europe, Bank for International Settlements General Manager Agustin Carstens said there is a “strong case” for authorities to rein in digital currencies because of their links to the established financial system. He argued that central banks — along with finance ministries, tax offices and financial market regulators — should police the “digital frontier.”
“The market is feeling regulatory pressure,” said Zhou Shuoji, a founding partner at FBG Capital, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency investment company.
Cryptocurrencies tracked by Coinmarketcap.com have lost more than $500 billion of market value since early January as governments clamped down, credit-card issuers halted purchases and investors grew increasingly concerned that last year’s meteoric rise in digital assets was unjustified. This week’s selloff has coincided with a rout in global equities, with markets in Asia extending losses on Tuesday following a white-knuckle day for U.S. stocks.
Some technical indicators suggest the rout in Bitcoin has further to go. The cryptocurrency’s Moving Average Convergence Divergence indicator, the most profitable of 22 trading signals tracked by Bloomberg over the past year, is flagging further downside after turning bearish in December.
Bitcoin also dipped below its 200-day moving average for the first time in more than two years on Tuesday. The last time that happened, in August 2015, the cryptocurrency sank as much as 24% over the following two weeks.
“We’re possibly heading back to where the true value of what Bitcoin should be,” Oanda’s Erlam said.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#BTC 24hr Summary:
Last: $7597.50
High: $8088.00
Low: $7537.00
Change: -3.83% | $-302.50
Volume: $95,775,756.45
$BTC #Bitcoin #Pricebotspic.twitter.com/G05f3z9CHJ || BTC Price: 10719.29$,
BTC Today High : 10745.85$,
BTC All Time High : 19903.44$
ETH Price: 855.00$ #bitcoin #BTC $BTC #ETH $ETH #cryptopic.twitter.com/SKIgvV0sRh || $BTC düşmanlarına ve FUD severlere gelsin...
https://youtu.be/qzuM2XTnpSA || Bitcoin puzzle worth £35,000 solved
Read more HERE https://europeunion.press/?p=72442 pic.twitter.com/ztLTB4ifFK || Bitcoin is sometimes funny || #XEM Price is 0.00007394 (+0.00000582) #BTC / 0.563497 (+0.03086) #USD. Market rank is 10. #nem #bitcoin #blockchain || Kuwaiti investors lose millions in Bitcoin - report http://ift.tt/2GUo5Dd #Dubai #properties #UAE || Hello World ... This is my new project on Behance !
Here is This #Design Link : https://www.behance.net/gallery/61279525/FOODCART-Web-Mobile-Apps-Design-Concept … …
#Amazon #TuesdayThoughts #Cadet_Bone_Spurs #الا_الحرمين_الشريفين #Chelsea Crypto coldrain #SID2018
Hashtags TAEHYUNG DAY #SuperBowl Brady #Bitcoin #Vote100 Maldives bd indpic.twitter.com/YiwDQ5XHUr || 【ビットコイン #BTC/JPY 24時間変動比】-22.29% (-194747) 678834 #仮想通貨 #Coincheck pic.twitter.com/PkGqcG5n1t http://sekai-kabuka.com/bitcoin.html || RT @coinspectator: Ethereum Falls Below $600, Bitcoin Rekt #blockchain #altcoin #ico https://coinspectator.com/news/266097/ethereum-falls-below-600-bitcoin-rekt …pic.twitter.com/GF6QGBUUe7
|
Trend: down || Prices: 6973.53, 6844.23, 7083.80, 7456.11, 6853.84, 6811.47, 6636.32, 6911.09, 7023.52, 6770.73
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2015-10-05]
BTC Price: 240.38, BTC RSI: 57.85
Gold Price: 1138.10, Gold RSI: 54.81
Oil Price: 46.26, Oil RSI: 53.63
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
SunGard And HSBC's Massive IT Glitches: Why Customers Freaked Out Last Friday: Last Friday, two major banks were reported to be experienced big IT problems, affecting thousands of customers.
HSBC Leaves Thousands Without Salaries
According to a recent Finextraarticle, a big tech issue surfaced on Friday morning when HSBC customers checking their account balances noticed their latest monthly salaries were not accounted for. Apparently, the glitch affected roughly 275,000 Bacs payments – Bacs is the system used for fund transfers in the UK.
Bacs released a statement assuring that it is "aware of an isolated issue that has affected one of its member organizations. The Bacs system is operating as normal and we [Bacs] are currently working with our partners to help them resolve this as quickly as possible."
Related Link:Barclays Becomes First Big UK Bank To Accept Bitcoin
The HSBC bank is owned byHSBC Holdings plc (ADR)(NYSE:HSBC), which fell 0.65 percent on Friday trading and continues to tumble on Monday.
BNY Mellon, Mispriced Funds Cause Panic
Another third-party service provider that had trouble on Friday is SunGard. It seems like its InvestOne system, used by custody bankBank of New York Mellon Corp(NYSE:BK) to price funds, failed on Friday, causing panic among the bank’s U.S. fund management clients.
The main fear was that the system failure had led to a mispricing of hundreds of funds “during a week of especially high market volatility,” another Finextraarticleexplained.
In a public statement, SunGard assured that, while they “are confident that no data was lost as a result of the incident, calculation and processing of net asset values (NAVs) of certain mutual funds and ETFs was disrupted."
They added that, despite the speculation, no “external or unauthorized systems access” had caused the glitch, which wasn’t a result of "recent turmoil in the equity markets” either. Instead, the issued derived from “an unforeseen complication resulting from an operating system change carried out by SunGard last Saturday.” SunGard pledges this was an isolated incident, and that it is now working with Bank of New York Mellon to resolve the problems caused.
Research firm Morningstar calculated that approximately 796 funds were missing NAVs as of Wednesday.
Image Credit: Public Domain
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© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin Gaining Traction At Colleges Around The World: The purpose of higher education is to provide students with the tools they need to enter their chosen profession. Real-world skills have long been an emphasis at top schools around the world, and now those skills include an in depth study on cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
As digital currencies gain momentum across the globe, universities are taking notice andadding bitcoin coursesto their syllabuses in order to keep up with the quickly changing fintech landscape.
Teaching In An Evolving Field
American Universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University only recently launched bitcoin classes, but others around the world have been offering such courses for years. The University of Cumbria was the first U.K. university to offer bitcoin courses and the University of Nicosia in Cyprus was one of the first to offer a free bitcoin course in 2013 to any interested parties.
Related Link:New Ruling Defines Bitcoin As A Commodity In The US
Bitcoin Adoption
Universities that offer bitcoin studies are creating a major stepping stone for the cryptocurrency as it expands further. Not only do the classes give the best and brightest the tools to solve real-world problems related to digital currencies, but they draw awareness to cryptocurrencies as well.
Canadian McGill University and MIT both offered bitcoin giveaways to students in an effort to give the cryptocurrency more traction on campus. Others like the U.K.'s Imperial College have dedicated research to the expanding field and given students and staff the opportunity to collaborate in order to solve some of the cryptocurrency's pressing issues.
Bitcoin Payments
Not only are schools offering their students a chance to learn more about bitcoin, but many are accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for their studies as well. In 2013, the University of Nicosia in Cyprus was the first college in the world to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. The school announced that its students could pay for courses and other fees using the cryptocurrency, and had its first student pay in bitcoin just weeks later.
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© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || 4 buys for retail stocks ahead of earnings: The bar has been reset in the retail space, and Macy's (NYSE: M) is now the stock to buy for the near term, CNBC "Fast Money" trader David Seaburg said Friday. "Macy's is the one to own here for the short term, but long term, I caution you: I think they're going to have some real struggles," he said. "I think right now is the time to buy it for a trade: I think the stock's been beaten up, there are no expectations they're going to make numbers-I think you'll get a trade to the upside." Still, Seaburg reiterated his caution for investors looking to go long into the retailer, as he predicted that Amazon will displace the company by 2017. For his part, trader Brian Kelly said he "might pick at" Macy's, but similarly cautioned that "it's not really a long-term type of investment." Kelly said he doesn't like the retail space in general because consumer spending is not seeing much boost from the decline in oil. "Fast Money" Trader Steve Grasso, meanwhile, said that "if you have to play in that retail space," go with Target (NYSE: TGT) . That company, he said, has been an outperformer with a more than 4 percent year-to-date gain. He also suggested buying Deckers Outdoor (NYSE: DECK) , saying, "It makes an excellent takeout target." He noted that it would also work as a seasonal buy in October. Disclosures: Steve Grasso Grasso is long AAPL, BA, BAC, CC, DD, DECK, EVGN, FIT, KBH, MJNA, MU, PFE, PHM, T, TWTR, GDX. His kids are long EFA, EFG, EWJ, IJR, SPY. His firm and some of its partners are long NEM, LYB, WDR, SHLD, STRP, UDR, ACI, AVP, TEX, CLI, TWTR, WYNN, PCRX, AXP, FNMA, SALT, AMD, CUBA, HSPO, ICE, AMZN, FCX, IBM, KDUS, KO, MAT, MCD, MJNA, NE, NEM, OXY, RIG, STAG, TAXI, TITXF, TSE, VALE, ZNGA. Guy Adami Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck. Brian Kelly Brian Kelly is long BBRY, BTC=; ITB, TAN, TLT, TSL, the VIX, GDX call spread, TWTR call spread, US dollar; he is short DAX, Yuan and Yen. Today he closed his Oil and Ruble shorts. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || Bitcoin startups lure quant whizzes from Wall Street: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - Armed with a doctorate in financial engineering, 34-year-old Timo Schlaefer was on his way to a promising career at Goldman Sachs in London. Previously with the bank's mergers and acquisitions team, he became an executive director of credit quantitative modeling at Goldman, where quants like Schlaefer are highly valued. In February he gave that up, and launched a company called Crypto Facilities Ltd, a bitcoin derivatives trading platform, which now has six employees. For now, the platform trades bitcoin forwards, which are directly linked to the price of bitcoin, but it's also developing other digital currency derivative products. "This is uncharted territory," said Schlaefer. "It's an exciting opportunity to participate in a new area of technology that has massive potential." Bitcoin is a virtual or online currency created through a "mining" process where a computer's resources are used to perform millions of calculations. Once mined, bitcoins can be stored in an online wallet, traded in an online exchange, or used to buy goods and services. Once the province of small-time investors driven by their distrust of government-backed currencies, now Wall Street bankers and traders are leaving high-paying jobs to join bitcoin start-ups, while big firms hire in-house to get their arms around bitcoin and the related 'blockchain' technology. "A lot of people are entering the bitcoin space as the sector has reached an overall level of funding that's hard to ignore," said Jaron Lukasiewicz, founder and chief executive officer at New York-based bitcoin exchange Coinsetter. Lukasiewicz, 29, moved to the bitcoin world in late 2012, having left behind a six-figure salary in private equity at The CapStreet Group in New York. Bitcoin is not backed by a government and its value fluctuates. On Thursday, it was trading at $278, making the value of outstanding bitcoin worth about $4 billion. It has had a volatile history, with a rapid rally in 2013 that boosted its value to more than $1,150 per bitcoin at one point. Story continues Right now, Crypto Facilities' Schlaefer probably won't make anywhere near the kind of money that he would potentially earn at Goldman. But it's less about the compensation for Schlaefer and more about being part of the growth in bitcoin and its underlying technology, the blockchain. The blockchain - a ledger or list of all of a digital currency's transactions - is viewed as bitcoin's main technological innovation, allowing users to make payments anonymously, instantly, and without government regulation. Software engineers have started developing multiple applications for the blockchain, including a land title record system in Honduras to the clearing of trades in financial markets. Meanwhile, Wall Street firms are doing their own hiring in the cryptocurrency realm. In June, online bitcoin job ads surged to a record high of 306, according to data from Wanted Analytics, with demand coming from banks such as Capital One and tech companies such as Intel and Amazon. In previous months, Citigroup and TD Canada Trust posted bitcoin job ads as well. RISKY BUSINESS For 31-year-old Paul Chou, founder and chief executive officer of Ledger X, an institutional trading and clearing platform for bitcoin options, moving into the digital currency space represents what he hopes results in lucrative profits down the road. But there are other reasons for his shift. LedgerX is awaiting regulatory approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to trade and clear options on bitcoin. Chou said the firm hopes to operate the first regulated exchange and clearinghouse to list and clear fully-collateralized, physically-settled bitcoin options for the institutional market. "I took a very large salary pay cut to do this, in return for equity in a start-up that can be worth a lot someday," Chou said. Before LedgerX, Chou worked at Goldman Sachs in New York as a quant equity trader after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in computer science and mathematics. Chou said his hours are much longer as an entrepreneur - he's constantly refining ideas for strategy and thinking which areas to focus on. "The domain expertise, relationships, and career equity I've built are things I never could have done while at Goldman," Chou said. "As a former trader, I'm glad I made this trade-off at the stage of my career that I did." It's a risky move, however. There are already several tales of bitcoin company failures and mismanagement. U.S. bitcoin marketplace Buttercoin, for instance, shuttered its operations in April this year despite raising $1.3 million in funding. Bitcoin exchange MyCoin closed its doors in February of 2015, leaving about 3,000 investors out of pocket. Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, once one of the most dominant bitcoin exchanges, closed its doors without warning in February last year, filing for bankruptcy and leaving investors approximately $500 million in the red. BITCOIN INVESTMENTS, HIRING Total investments in bitcoin companies for the first half of 2015 - totaling $375.4 million - have already exceeded 2014's total of $339.4 million, data from CB Insights showed. Last year's venture capital funding of bitcoin start-ups grew roughly 280 percent from 2013. The number of bitcoin start-ups has increased by more than 80 percent from last year. As of end-July, there were 814 start-up digital currency companies, up from 444 a year earlier, according to Angel List, an online marketplace for start-ups seeking to raise money from angel investors. As banks defer compensation and add more clawback provisions that give them the right to limit bonuses, traders are seeing better risk opportunities elsewhere, said San Francisco-based Rick Henri Chan, chief operating officer at Airbitz, a digital wallet platform. Chan, 47, who joined the bitcoin industry three years ago, worked for Deutsche Bank as head of its over-the-counter derivatives technology in Japan, and was a trader at UBS and Morgan Stanley. He works long hours at Airbitz, doing everything from strategy to raising money, but the work environment is more flexible. At Deutsche, Chan had a multi-million dollar package, and he admits to missing that paycheck. "But we're doing something special here at Airbitz. And I do think our company will be valued at a lot more in the future," he said. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss, editing by David Gaffen and John Pickering) || Will The New York Times Piece Damage Amazon?: On August 15, the New York Times published anarticleslamming e-commerce giantAmazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) for its unforgiving corporate culture. The piece describes in with anecdotal stories how employees are pushed to their limits in an environment that thrives on tension and inspires fear.
The piece gained traction on social media and many customers said it was enough to stop them from using the service in the future. However, shares of Amazon are up 72.46 percent year-to-date, leading many to wonder just how much damage the article will do.
Bezos Strikes Back
Following the release of the article, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sent outa staff memoin which he asked employees to contact him directly if they'd received the kind of treatment the New York Times had described. He maintained that Amazon's culture is very different from what was depicted and said he was shocked by the stories told. Other current Amazon employees took to the Internet in defense of Amazon, saying that the descriptions were inaccurate and that the company has been misrepresented.
Related Link:Amazon's Quarter Was A 'Full-On Crusher'
Solid Performance
While the article may have temporarily tarnished Amazon's glow, the company's solid Q2 performance is likely to overshadow complaints about management from an investors' perspective. In July, the company released strong Q2 sales and impressive financials which suggest that Amazon is on an upward trajectory.
From a money-making point of view, the article has done little hurt the retail giant's appeal.
Public Perception
In the social media age, public perception is a huge part of a company's success.SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (NYSE:SEAS) lost a huge volume of customers after being slammed in the media for its treatment of orcas and Amazon similarly runs the risk of being known as a cruel company that treats its workers poorly, something that could deter shoppers from using the site.
However, so far the fallout from the article appears to be minimal, with most expecting more outrageous comments from the 2016 Presidential hopefuls to redirect the public's attention in the coming days.
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• Bitcoin Rewards Gain Popularity
• Bitcoin, Marijuana And Drones: Meet Trees
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || itBit hires former NY financial regulator's general counsel: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin exchange itBit has hired Daniel Alter as the company's new general counsel and chief compliance officer, the firm announced on Wednesday. Alter, who spent three years as general counsel to the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS), said there was no impropriety in his employment at itBit. "The New York State Public Officers law requires that I have a two-year recusal before I can appear before the New York Department of Financial Services on behalf of the company," said Alter, who left the DFS in mid-February and joined itBit last week. "And it will certainly apply to itBit. I will not step near or have any communications with the New York Department of Financial Services. Those will be handled by outside counsel or qualified compliance people within the company," added Alter, who is also an adjunct professor of law at New York University School of Law. In June, Benjamin Lawsky, former superintendent of the New York DFS also left the agency to form his own consulting firm that will advise companies on regulation and other matters. Lawsky was widely criticized by the bitcoin community that he may have generated consulting work for himself by issuing controversial regulations for virtual currency firms before he left his post. itBit also announced the appointment of Kim Petry as the company's chief financial officer. Petry joins itBit from her post as CFO of global operations and technology at Broadridge Financial. Prior to Broadridge, Petry served as the CFO and vice president of global commercial/corporate card payment at American Express Co. itBit's new appointments are the latest in a series of high-profile additions to the company's leadership team. Sheila Bair, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Company, Senator Bill Bradley, and Robert Herz, former chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, joined itBit's Board of Directors in May this year. The New York-based exchange was recently granted a trust charter by the DFS. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Diane Craft) || Bitcoin Gaining Traction At Colleges Around The World: The purpose of higher education is to provide students with the tools they need to enter their chosen profession. Real-world skills have long been an emphasis at top schools around the world, and now those skills include an in depth study on cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. As digital currencies gain momentum across the globe, universities are taking notice and adding bitcoin courses to their syllabuses in order to keep up with the quickly changing fintech landscape. Teaching In An Evolving Field American Universities like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Duke University only recently launched bitcoin classes, but others around the world have been offering such courses for years. The University of Cumbria was the first U.K. university to offer bitcoin courses and the University of Nicosia in Cyprus was one of the first to offer a free bitcoin course in 2013 to any interested parties. Related Link: New Ruling Defines Bitcoin As A Commodity In The US Bitcoin Adoption Universities that offer bitcoin studies are creating a major stepping stone for the cryptocurrency as it expands further. Not only do the classes give the best and brightest the tools to solve real-world problems related to digital currencies, but they draw awareness to cryptocurrencies as well. Canadian McGill University and MIT both offered bitcoin giveaways to students in an effort to give the cryptocurrency more traction on campus. Others like the U.K.'s Imperial College have dedicated research to the expanding field and given students and staff the opportunity to collaborate in order to solve some of the cryptocurrency's pressing issues. Bitcoin Payments Not only are schools offering their students a chance to learn more about bitcoin, but many are accepting the cryptocurrency as payment for their studies as well. In 2013, the University of Nicosia in Cyprus was the first college in the world to accept bitcoin as a form of payment. The school announced that its students could pay for courses and other fees using the cryptocurrency, and had its first student pay in bitcoin just weeks later. Story continues See more from Benzinga As Adults Embrace Marijuana, Teens Turn Their Noses Up Here's How The Fed's Decisions Will Affect Central Bankers Around The World Pentagon Working To Overhaul Cybersecurity Protocol © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin Gains Deeper Foothold In Latin America Through MercadoLibre: Latin America's version ofeBay Inc(NASDAQ:EBAY), MercadoLibre, hasannouncedthat it will be integrating bitcoin payments into its services. The move represents a big win for the cryptocurrency community, which has long promoted bitcoin usage in regions like Latin America where a large percentage of the population are still unbanked.
Bitcoin Improves Service
MercadoLibre sent anemail notificationto users announcing its plans to integrate bitcoin and saying that the decision will give merchants a wider reach and customers more options. The site is planning to make bitcoin integration subtle and said that merchants won't see much change to their user experience other than a note in their transaction history saying which payments were made via digital currencies.
Related Link: Charlie Shrem Weighs In On Bitcoin From His Prison Cell
Not Quite Yet
While MercadoLibre has announced its plans, it is still unclear how the rollout will take place. The site currently serves 13 Latin American countries and it is unknown how many will receive a bitcoin option. The site will also have to deal with the changing regulations regarding bitcoin payments as the cryptocurrency evolves and spreads across the globe.
Latin American Potential
Bitcoin has long been touted as a good option for countries where much of the population has limited access to banking facilities. Bitcoin has also proven to be a viable alternative for those living in a country where the currency is prone to volatility. For that reason, many believe that bitcoin's expansion into Latin America is an important step forward. However, the cryptocurrency is likely to face some obstacles there as well since over half of the population doesn't have access to the Internet.
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© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Flow to Establish State-of-the-Art Customer Call Centre of Excellence Bringing More Than 300 New Jobs to Jamaica: KINGSTON, JAMAICA--(Marketwired - Aug 31, 2015) - Flow, the newCable & Wireless CommunicationsPlc (CWC) consumer retail brand, today announced plans to establish a new, state-of-the-art Customer Call Centre of Excellence in Kingston, Jamaica and create more than 300 full-time jobs over the next two years. The innovative Customer Call Centre of Excellence is part of the Company's bid to become the leader in service excellence and revolutionise customer experience across the Caribbean.
The Customer Call Centre of Excellence, to be established in the coming months, follows the recent merger with Columbus International Inc and is part of Flow's new compelling plan to provide an enhanced customer experience. This initiative is also consistent with plans laid out by CEO Phil Bentley last year that will see C&W invest US$1.5bn over 3 years to upgrade infrastructure and overhaul service delivery throughout the Caribbean and Latin American region.
"Through investments like these, we are putting the customer at the heart of the business," said Bentley. "We are committed to anticipating their needs at every contact point and to delivering a customer care experience that is unparalleled across the region. Together, with our other existing Call Centre in Trinidad, we will revolutionise customer service in the Caribbean, and be the leader in recruiting the best talent in the region. We want Flow to be a business that everyone in the Caribbean is proud of," said Bentley.
Branded as an innovative Customer Call Centre of Excellence, the facility is being designed to provide customers with multiple touch points including warm and friendly service agents, Email, Virtual Chat, Mobile App and other technology-enabled support systems.Combined with increased service agent efficiencies, state-of-the-art technology tools will improve call routing and reduce call waiting time, making for an overall superior customer experience.
Managing Director, Flow Jamaica, Garry Sinclair is extremely pleased that the new Centre will be located on the island. "It is a testament to the growing confidence of Jamaica as a central hub for investment, the large pool of skilled labour that exists here, and the rapid growth of the ICT sector led by Flow, that we are making this investment here in Kingston." He added, "In addition to the investment in the new Customer Call Centre of Excellence, Flow is also investing in the best mobile and fibre networks across the island to deliver more technologically advanced quad play products, better value, and superior broadband connectivity to exceed our customers' expectations." Sinclair also stated that, "We are excited to recruit the best team on the island for this Centre and we will implement an extensive training programme to deliver an incomparable customer experience."
Responding to the announcement, Hon. Phillip Paulwell, Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining commended Flow's decision to establish the Customer Call Centre of Excellence in Jamaica. "The establishment of Flow's Customer Call Centre of Excellence in Jamaica attests to the tremendous growth potential of the nation's ICT sector and affirms Flow's commitment to development of the local and regional economies. With the commitment to create new jobs, the investment also supports the country's goals to reduce unemployment, builds new skill sets and advances the country's vision to make Jamaica a place of choice to live, work, raise families and do business."
Since 2012, the Jamaican Government has had an ongoing drive to engage the private sector in the 'Jamaica Employ' programme, which seeks to increase prospects for job seekers and to bring critical new jobs to the island. "We love doing business in Jamaica and we are happy to partner with the Government in their various initiatives, including the 'Jamaica Employ' programme," Phil Bentley concluded.
About Cable & Wireless Communications:
Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) is a full service communications and entertainment provider, operating in the Caribbean and Latin America. With annual sales of over $2.4bn, it operates both mobile and fixed networks, supported by submarine and terrestrial optical fibre backhaul capacity. Through the acquisition of Columbus International Inc. on 31 March 2015, CWC now delivers superior high-speed mobile data, broadband and video services. It has leading market positions in Mobile, Fixed Line, Broadband and Video consumer offers.
Through its business division, CWC provides data centre hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customised IT service solutions, utilising cloud technology to serve business and government customers.
The company also operates a state-of-the-art subsea fibre optic cable network that spans more than 42,000 km -- the most extensive in the region -- as well as 38,000 km of terrestrial fibre providing wholesale and carrier backhaul capacity.
CWC has more than 7,000 employees serving over 6 million customers (Mobile 3.8m; Fixed Line 1.1m; TV 460k and Broadband 665k) as well as over 125k corporate clients across 42 countries. The Company's leading brands include; LIME and Flow in the Caribbean; BTC in The Bahamas; Mas Movil in Panama; C&W Business and C&W Networks. CWC is the market leader in most products offered and territories served. It is a major contributor to local communities through its corporate social responsibility programmes.
Cable & Wireless Communications' shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker CWC. The company is headquartered in London with its operational hub located in Miami, within close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America.
For more information please visit:www.cwc.com || How Bitcoins Have Evolved: CFTC Rules to Define Bitcoins as Commodities
Introduction of the bitcoin
The bitcoin, which made its debut in 2009, is often referred to as the world’s first decentralized digital currency, and it has the highest market capitalization when compared to its peers. Its invention is credited to Satoshi Nakamoto. Like other virtual currencies, bitcoins can be used as a form of payment.
Bitcoins are initially created by an activity known as mining, where a person who completes a specific online task is rewarded with bitcoins. As with any conventional currency, inflation affects bitcoins too, so a control process was set up so that the reward goes on decreasing over time for a work of similar difficulty. The major advantages of using bitcoin as a payment method includes anonymity, no taxes on sales through bitcoins, and low transaction costs.
Bitcoin price movements since inception
The Cyprus bailout in 2013 was a major break for bitcoins, as people tried to preserve their wealth before the bailout condition took effect by buying bitcoins. As a result, the bitcoin price nearly tripled in March 2013. After the Cyprus bailout, the bitcoin was trading nearly flat for some time, as virtual currencies like bitcoins were under the radar, as they began to be used for criminal activities.
The next major boost for the bitcoin came towards the end of 2013 with both the US Senate and the People’s Bank of China giving positive remarks about the virtual currency. This drove more investments, especially from China, as the bitcoin scaled all-time high levels in November 2013. In December 2013 however, the Chinese government took action to curb the increasing popularity of the bitcoin, as the official currency, the renminbi, was under pressure. The government banned financial institutions from the use of bitcoins.
After the Chinese governments’ measures, bitcoins failed to recover and have been on a downward trend since then. Part two of the series will look into the latest development in bitcoins with the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) declaring bitcoins and other virtual currencies as commodities.
Market impact
Companies like WPCS International (WPCS) will be sensitive to updates on bitcoins, since they own a bitcoin trading platform. Other stocks that will be majorly impacted are pro bitcoin companies like Tesla Motors (TSLA), Zynga (ZNGA), and eBay (EBAY).
The registration process is ongoing for bitcoin ETFs with the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF (COIN) set to become the first bitcoin ETF if authorities approve it. The bitcoin ETF is expected to be similar to other commodity ETFs like the SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD) and the United States Oil Fund ETF (USO), which deal with gold and crude oil, respectively.
Continue to Next Part
Browse this series on Market Realist:
• Part 2 - CFTC Rules Bitcoins Be Regarded as Commodity
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price: 160.35£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-09-08 21:00:02 BST || buysellbitco.in #bitcoin price in INR, Buy : 17559.00 INR Sell : 16997.00 INR. Buy and sell bitcoin in #India using #buysellbitcoin || Current price: 142.8£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-08-25 19:00:02 BST || Current price: 143.67£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-08-26 03:00:02 BST || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges:
Cryptsy: Error
Bittrex: 0.00000004
Average $9.0E-6 per #reddcoin
00:15:02 || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 22 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $133.30 #bitcoin #btc || Current price: 234.98$ $BTCUSD $btc #bitcoin 2015-09-05 14:00:01 EDT || Jeff Garzik’s Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP1 00) now has more than 60% of the network’s hashrate http://dlvr.it/C1w9XQ || LIVE: Profit = $286.99 (1.54 %). BUY B70.72 @ $262.00 (#BTCe). SELL @ $264.06 (#HitBTC) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges:
Cryptsy: Error
Bittrex: 0.00000005
Average $1.1E-5 per #reddcoin
03:00:02
|
Trend: up || Prices: 246.06, 242.97, 242.30, 243.93, 244.94, 247.05, 245.31, 249.51, 251.99, 254.32
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2016-07-19]
BTC Price: 672.86, BTC RSI: 53.82
Gold Price: 1331.50, Gold RSI: 56.62
Oil Price: 44.65, Oil RSI: 42.48
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin Is Up 30% This Week And 200% This Year: Here Is What You Need To Know: The attention given to bitcoin by the broader investment community might have peaked years ago, but its price is surging yet again, implying renewed focus and attention toward the digital currency.
The price of one bitcoin was trading at $740.84 early Friday morning. In fact, the value of bitcoin has gained around 30 percent this week and 200 percent this year.
Bitcoin bottomed at around $230 a year ago and has been slowly gaining in value before gaining momentum in late May when it was trading at around $450.
What Happened?
According toTech Crunch,bitcoin was designed to eventually have a total float of 21 million coins and none can be added or taken away from the market. As time goes on, fewer Bitcoins will be mined and enter into circulation.
Related Link:China & The Code: Keys To Bitcoin Hitting A 2-Year High
Bitcoin's core dictates that every 210,000 blocks mined will result in the mining reward being slashed in half. In about three weeks, the reward will fall to 12.5 BTC per block, down from 50 BTC per block in 2012. This cuts in to the miners profits but represents the natural and designated evolution of the bitcoin economy.
Tech Crunch also suggested major updates to the core technology that powers Bitcoin is driving up demand for the digital currency.
Finally, the rise in Bitcoin could also be attributed to the same themes causing uncertainty in the equity market such as an uncertain economic outlook in Asia, the upcoming Brexit vote and the U.S. election.
"One last parting piece of advice — as exciting and tempting as it is to watch any form of real money appreciate so quickly, remember to remain rational," Tech Crunch warned. "Almost anyone who has ever been involved in Bitcoin is probably kicking themselves right now for not stocking up a year ago or even a week ago. Others may feel a temptation to stock up right now because they think the price is only going up. This is probably an awful idea. As we've learned, Bitcoin is its own beast, and will do what it wants. If you try to time any public market you most likely are going to lose a lot of money."
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© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Brexit Weighs on Big Oil ETFs: The United States Oil Fund (USO) , which tracks West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures, and the United States Brent Oil Fund (BNO) , which tracks Brent crude oil futures, are among the various commodities exchange traded products that have been stung by the Brexit result.
A stronger dollar coupled with downward revisions to U.K. economic growth forecast are among the factors pressuring crude in Brexit’s wake and there could be more near-term pain for oil because some market observers see Brexit also affecting Chinese economic growth.
Related:The Worst Could be Over for Oil ETFs
“The Brexit also likely has a negative impact for China by strengthening the Japanese Yen and triggering a sell-off in the Yuan. The future of EU Oil imports is also brought into question, given the risk of other countries following England’s lead in exiting the Union. Despite the risks, inventory levels are expected to inch lower over the summer months, which may underpin Oil prices. US production is expected to decrease over the coming months, which may offset decreased UK/EU demand,” according to OptionsExpress.
Brexit’s subsequent volatility could drag on riskier assets like commodities and add to concerns over a global slowdown in energy demand. Moreover, commodities may find pressure from a strengthening U.S. dollar as many expect the British pound to depreciate following a break.
Trending on ETF Trends
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A Gold Boon for these Glistening ETFs
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Elevated levels of production remain an issue for oil as well. OPEC has kept up production to pressure high-cost rivals, such as the developing U.S. shale oil producers. The International Energy Agency expects it will take several years before OPEC can effectively price out high-cost producers.
Saudi Arabia previously said it would join a production freeze deal if Iran agreed to curb output. However, Iran has maintained that it should be allowed to raise production to previous levels before the introduction of Western sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program, instead arguing for individual-country production quotas.
Related:Oil ETFs at 7 Month High on Falling U.S. Inventories
“Turning to the chart, we see the August Crude Oil contract forming what could become a double top formation. If confirmed, the measure of the double top could result in a test of the $40 level. The recent closes below the 20-day moving average (“MA”) suggest that a near-term high may be in place,” adds Options Express.
For more information on the oil market, visit ouroil category.
United States Brent Oil Fund || Spain's Santander names ex-JPMorgan executive Masters blockchain guru: (Reuters) - Banco Santander SA, Spain's largest lender, named former JPMorgan executive Blythe Masters its senior blockchain adviser as banks race to find new uses for the technology behind virtual currency Bitcoin.
Proponents of blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, say it has the potential to shake up how financial markets operate. The technology creates a shared database in which participants can trace every transaction ever conducted.
Santander is one of several banks investing in this sector to avoid being left behind by fintech start-ups.
Citigroup, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs are among other big global banks that have invested in the technology.
Masters, who spent 27 years at JPMorgan, has been leading the charge into blockchain by financiers.
The blockchain software firm she started, Digital Asset Holdings, has raised more than $60 million from investors such as Goldman Sachs and the Australian Securities Exchange, which is partnering with the firm to work on using the technology in the cash-equities market.
Masters was previously the chairman of Santander Consumer USA Holdings' board. She rose to prominence during the 1990s when she helped to create the credit-derivatives market.
Her appointment comes shortly after Santander became the first British bank to start using blockchain to record international payments.
The lender said at the time that it may start rolling out the service to customers next year.
(Reporting by Richa Naidu in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Jemima Kelly in London; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) || Your first trade for Thursday, June 23: The " Fast Money " traders gave their final trades of the day. Dan Nathan is a seller of the iShares Dow Jones Transport ETF (IYT (NYSE Arca: IYT) ). Steve Grasso is a buyer of Altria Group (MO). Brian Kelly is a seller of iShares Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate ETF (IYR (NYSE Arca: IYR) ). Guy Adami is a buyer of the Intercon Exchange (ICE (: .TOY) ). Trader disclosure: On Wednesday, June 22 the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck. Steve Grasso is long BA, CC, EVGN, GDX, KBH, MJNA, MU, OLN, PFE, PHM, T, TWTR, UA Steve Grasso's Kids are long EFA, EFG, EWJ, IJR, SPY Stuart Frankel & Co Inc. and some of its Partners are long AAPL, AMZN, AVP, CUBA, CVX, DAL, FCX, HSPO, IBM, ICE, KDUS, KO, LDP, LUV, MAT, MCD, MJNA, NE, NEM, NXTD, OLN, OXY, RIG, STAG, TAXI, TEX, TITXF, UAL, URI, VALE, WDR, WYNN, ZNGA Brian Kelly is long Bitcoin, GLD, SFK, SLV, TLT, US Dollar UUP; he is short CS, DB, UBS Dan Nathan is BABA june / aug put spread, JD Call spread Long PFE, Long TWTR, IWM long Sept put, XLF long Sept Put spread, XLK long Sept Put spread, FXI long aug put spred, SMH long aug put spread, long PYPL call calendar, long TLT Sept risk reversal, XLV july calls, long C sept puts, VZ July August put spread More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || Bitcoin spikes as yuan hits five-and-a-half year low on Brexit: The price of global cryptocurrencybitcoin (: BTC=) spiked on Friday as the yuan dipped after Britain voted to leave the European Union. Bitcoin moves are often counter-linked to the yuan because the majority of trade in the cryptocurrency comes from China. The yuan hit a five-and-a-half-year low on Friday, while the price of bitcoin jumped around 8.7 percent from the day's opening price, hitting highs of around $680.19, according to Coindesk which tracks the price of the cryptocurrency. "We are seeing trading volumes almost $100 million traded in the past 24 hours, it's two or three times compared to a slow day," Bobbly Lee, chief executive of BTCC, one of the largest bitcoin exchanges in the world based in China, told CNBC by phone on Friday. The value of bitcoin continues to be volatile. On Thursday, it plunged 25 percent since hitting a two-and-a-half year high on June 17 of $774.94. It is still not back at that level. But it's important to note that Brexit is just one among several factors that have affected the bitcoin price in recent times. Sentiment was dampened when earlier this week, Hong Kong-based bitcoin exchange Bitfinex was closed for a few hours because of "networking issues" in the company's data center, it said on Twitter. The issues were fixed on the same day. "The correction from a day or two ago had more to do with a technical correction that it did with Brexit," Lee said. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || Spain's Santander names ex-JPMorgan executive Masters blockchain guru: (Reuters) - Banco Santander SA, Spain's largest lender, named former JPMorgan executive Blythe Masters its senior blockchain adviser as banks race to find new uses for the technology behind virtual currency Bitcoin. Proponents of blockchain, or distributed ledger technology, say it has the potential to shake up how financial markets operate. The technology creates a shared database in which participants can trace every transaction ever conducted. Santander is one of several banks investing in this sector to avoid being left behind by fintech start-ups. Citigroup, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs are among other big global banks that have invested in the technology. Masters, who spent 27 years at JPMorgan, has been leading the charge into blockchain by financiers. The blockchain software firm she started, Digital Asset Holdings, has raised more than $60 million from investors such as Goldman Sachs and the Australian Securities Exchange, which is partnering with the firm to work on using the technology in the cash-equities market. Masters was previously the chairman of Santander Consumer USA Holdings' board. She rose to prominence during the 1990s when she helped to create the credit-derivatives market. Her appointment comes shortly after Santander became the first British bank to start using blockchain to record international payments. The lender said at the time that it may start rolling out the service to customers next year. (Reporting by Richa Naidu in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Jemima Kelly in London; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) View comments || Chamber of Digital Commerce Gathers at Federal Reserve Annual Meeting to Discuss Blockchain Technology: WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - Jun 6, 2016) - The Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world's largest trade association representing the blockchain industry, helped facilitate discussions at an event hosted by the Federal Reserve, World Bank, and IMF in Washington, DC on June 1 through 3, 2016. Central banks from over 90 countries participated at the event titled "Finance in Flux: The Technological Transformation of the Financial Sector." The theme of this year's conference was on blockchain and FinTech.
In her remarks, the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Janet Yellen, addressed heightened concerns about cybersecurity. She also said that it's undeniable that the global financial system has benefited from FinTech and encouraged central banks to do all they can to learn about financial innovations including bitcoin, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.
Adam Ludwin, CEO of Chain, delivered the keynote address in the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System's Board Room."Blockchain technology will provide central bankers, regulators and policy makers with new tools to enhance the safety, soundness and capabilities of the financial markets and payments systems globally. As participants on industry blockchain networks, regulators will gain real-time transparency to measure systemic leverage and monitor compliance. And as potential operators of networks for issuing central bank digital currencies, policy makers have the opportunity to forge a payments system that will enhance security, reduce settlement times and create new possibilities for monetary policy,"said Ludwin.
Jeff Garzik, CEO of Bloq and Bitcoin Core Developer, outlined the innovative elements of blockchain technology, including trust shifting, decentralization, cryptography, immutability and others."Some of the greatest potential benefits of blockchain technology are going to be first seen and actively leveraged in emerging nations,"said Garzik.
Perianne Boring, Founder and President of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, encouraged the Federal Reserve and central banks to focus on and embrace innovation in blockchain and distributed ledger technology."We believe blockchain technologies are capable of providing the Fed and other regulators with next generation tools to fulfill their mission of monitoring the safety and soundness of the financial system more effectively,"said Boring.
The conversations with senior level directors of central banks from around the world were very encouraging and indicated a high level of interest in blockchain technology.
About the Chamber of Digital Commerce:The Chamber of Digital Commerce is the world's leading trade association dedicated to promoting the understanding, acceptance and use of digital assets and blockchain technology. For more information, please visit:DigitalChamber.org.
Image Available:http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3018127 || British bitcoin market sent extraordinary signals ahead of the Brexit vote: The price of the digital currency bitcoin rose 6.5% in the 24 hours directly after Britain voted to leave the European Union. And while the coin had already been on a ride over the two weeks before the vote (it's up 25% in the last month),for a number of factors besides the Brexit, it is likely that uncertainty over the situation stoked interest in the cryptocurrency, which is seen as an investment asset uncorrelated to the broader economy.
New data from Coinbase, which offers the leading bitcoin wallet and a popular bitcoin exchange, proves that the prospect of Brexit had an impact on bitcoin even before the referendum vote.
In the week leading up to the vote (June 13-20),Coinbase saw a55% increase in new account sign-ups from Great Britain, and a 350% increase in bitcoin purchases from UK customers.
On the day of the Brexit vote, Coinbase saw an 86% increase in Great Britain signups.
It's one of the largest spikes in activity Coinbase has ever seen from one region in one week.
The British bitcoin bump is a reminder, a Coinbase spokesperson says, that bitcoin "has long been a hedge against turmoil in Greece, capital controls in China, and macro-economic issues." Indeed, many compare the coin to gold as an investment vehicle. The current market cap of all bitcoins is $10.1 billion.
Coinbase, founded in 2012, has 4 million users and is now operable in 32 countries. Itlaunched in the UK just one year ago, giving Brits the ability to buy bitcoin using pounds, euros or dollars. In the US, it recentlyadded the ability for customers to buy bitcoin instantly using a debit card, making it even easier to buy up coin.
Expect the fervor around Brexit to show a continued impact on the price of bitcoin.
For a conversation with Coinbase cofounder Fred Ehrsam, watch the above video.
--
Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
Read more of Yahoo Finance’s Brexit coverage:
The latest Bitcoin price hike is not all about Brexit
This crazy Brexit flowchart shows how the UK could still remain in the EU
Brexit might not be so bad for... Burberry
Harry Potter author JK Rowling unleashes fury at Brexit voters || Baidu Among Companies Working Together To Use Bitcoin Technology To Create Global Bank: Bitcoin’s whiplash-inducing volatility continued this week when the cryptocurrency surged to new two-year highs on Monday before plunging 10 percent the following day. One of the major drivers of Bitcoin’s recent rise has been demand from China.
A group of Chinese companies, including Internet search giantBaidu Inc (ADR)(NASDAQ:BIDU), has raised $60 million in funding for Circle Inc, a U.S. startup based on Bitcoin’s underlying technology.
Circle is a blockchain-based digital payment app. Blockchain technology is the public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions and is often viewed as the major underlying innovation of Bitcoin.
Related Link:Self-Proclaimed Inventor Of Bitcoin Reportedly Seeks Hundreds Of Patents On Blockchain Technology
“If you look at the trends, China very well could be the driver of the adoption of blockchain consumer services,” Circle CEOJeremy Allairesaid.
One potential hurdle Circle and other blockchain-based startups may soon have to clear is potential patent disputes. Australian Craig Wright, who claims to be Bitcoin founder “Satoshi Nakamoto” has now filed at least 50 patent applications via Britain’s EITC Holdings Ltd.
The London Review of Books claims that Wright is in the process of filing hundreds of patents that will eventually be sold for more than $1 billion.
In the meantime, Circle and its investors will continue to try to apply blockchain technology toward Allaire's goal of building a global bank that makes sending payments “as easy as sending an email.”
Disclosure: The author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.
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© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || EU proposes stricter rules on Bitcoin, prepaid cards in terrorism fight: By Foo Yun Chee STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Tuesday stricter rules on the use of virtual currencies and prepaid cards in a bid to reduce anonymous payments and curb the financing of terrorism. Virtual currency exchange platforms will have to increase checks on the identities of people exchanging virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, for real currencies and report suspicious transactions. Under the Commission's proposals the threshold for making anonymous payments with pre-paid cards was lowered to 150 euros ($167.28) from 250 euros. "Member states will be able to get and share vital information about who really owns companies or trusts, who is dealing in online currencies, and who is using pre-paid cards," EU Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said. Following attacks in Paris last November by Islamic State militants the EU executive said it would step up measures to cut off terrorists' access to funds. French authorities have proved that pre-paid cards were used by the Paris attackers. Prepaid cards are issued by a wide range of operators including banks using major networks, such as Visa and MasterCard. They are different from debit and credit cards because they need to be loaded before payments can be made, but can carry substantial amounts of money. MasterCard said it supported the Commission's objective of strengthening the security of prepaid cards while ensuring that people less well-off could still use them. The proposed higher controls on virtual currencies and pre-paid cards "are important in tackling black market and terrorist financing", said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at ACCA, which represents the interests of the accountancy sector. The Commission proposed increasing the amount of checks banks have to carry out on financial flows from risky third countries, namely states with poor anti-money laundering rules and difficulties countering terrorism financing. In a bid to end tax evasion after the publication in April of the Panama Papers - which revealed widespread tax avoidance practices by wealthy individuals - the Commission also proposed rules requiring the beneficial owners of trusts to be recorded in registers that in many cases will be accessible to the public. Story continues Existing and new accounts will be subject to due diligence controls and the Commission will look into finding effective ways for each member state to share information on beneficial owners of companies and trusts. "These proposals for public registers will be welcomed by citizens and anti-corruption activists who want to follow the trail of dirty money," Laure Brillaud, Transparency International EU policy officer, said. "However, we are concerned that it will be all too easy to evade being on the registers in the first place by gaming the rules on trusts. By simply nominating a non-EU resident as a trustee the secrecy can carry on as before," she added. Tuesday's proposals will need to be approved by the EU Parliament and EU states before they become law. ($1 = 0.8967 euros) (Writing by Julia Fioretti and Ines Kagubare; editing by Susan Thomas)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
$473.33 at 15:00 UTC [24h Range: $450.60 - $478.16 Volume: 10939 BTC] || Los organizadores de la #BTC resaltan los aportes de estas figuras al quehacer turístico pic.twitter.com/glojvt7yEV || $689.59 at 21:00 UTC [24h Range: $655.00 - $707.02 Volume: 11117 BTC] || #BTA Price: Bittrex 0.00001200 BTC YoBit 0.00001022 BTC Bleutrade 0.00001164 BTC #BTAprice 2016-06-05 15:00 pic.twitter.com/tMXNaI3XRE || One Bitcoin now worth $739.60@bitstamp. High $764.00. Low $725.00. Market Cap $11.598 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/rZCiUyAasc || 1 KOBO = 0.00000723 BTC
= 0.0032 USD
= 0.6370 NGN
= 0.0501 ZAR
= 0.3225 KES
#Kobocoin 2016-05-25 03:00 pic.twitter.com/Qpd2anaEmW || $650.18 at 22:15 UTC [24h Range: $625.00 - $736.84 Volume: 32974 BTC] || #TrinityCoin #TTY $ 0.000006 (-9.83 %) 0.00000001 BTC (-0.00 %) || #TrinityCoin #TTY $ 0.000007 (0.82 %) 0.00000001 BTC (-0.00 %) || One Bitcoin now worth $728.43@bitstamp. High $732.00. Low $672.12. Market Cap $11.411 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/k4Zo7YF6in
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Trend: down || Prices: 665.68, 665.01, 650.62, 655.56, 661.28, 654.10, 651.78, 654.35, 655.03, 656.99
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Disneyland Is Rolling Out the Red Carpet for Marvel Superheroes: When The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) acquired Marvel in 2009, it would have been difficult to imagine the success that has come out of that deal. Over the last decade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has produced 18 films that have grossed $14.7 billion in worldwide box office, and its characters have become household names. It's no wonder the superheroes in these films have become an enduring part of pop culture, not only among the original comic book fans that are grownups with kids of their own, but also among the movie-going public at large. Now the Earth's mightiest heroes are getting a hero's welcome at Disneyland. Disneyland castle lit up at night during the winter. Disneyland will be getting some new additions. Image source: Author. A worldwide expansion Disney announced that the Avengers would assemble in new themed areas at Disneyland Resort, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland. "At Disneyland Resort, the new Super Hero-themed land will begin recruiting guests in 2020, with even more new experiences to follow," the company said in its statement. Disney's California Adventure already houses the Guardians of the Galaxy -- Mission: BREAKOUT! attraction, which will be joined by Spider-Man and the Avengers to provide a "completely immersive Super Hero universe." Hong Kong Disneyland is already in the throes of superhero fever, with the Iron Man Experience, the first ever Marvel-themed ride at a Disney park. Visitors can become Iron Man at the Stark Expo, and ride the Iron Wing. which allows visitors to take "a thrilling aerial tour of the city to get a unique perspective of the latest and tallest addition to the Hong Kong Skyline -- Hong Kong Stark Tower." The attraction is already the most popular at the resort. Iron Man will be joined by Ant-Man and The Wasp in the coming months The company has similar plans for Disneyland Paris, part of a multi-year, 2 billion euro expansion Disney announced last month. The park will feature a new Marvel-themed area "where riders will team up with Iron Man and their favorite Avengers on a hyper-kinetic adventure in 2020." Disneyland Paris already has big plans, hosting the Marvel Summer of Super Heroes, an event which will run from June through September, and mark the finale of the parks 25th anniversary celebration. Story continues Disney's heroes Disney announced the acquisition of Marvel in Aug. 2009, and in less than a decade, the company has had a lasting impact on the House of Mouse. Of the 33 movies that have achieved more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales, Disney produced more than half of those , and the Marvel moniker appears on five. The company's most recent box office smash, Black Panther , has moved up to No. 14 on the all-time global box office list, and should have topped Iron Man 3 to move up another place by the time you read this. Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Title Worldwide Box Office Domestic Ticket Sales Marvel's The Avengers $1.52 billion $623 million Avengers: Age of Ultron $1.40 billion $459 million Iron Man 3 $1.21 billion $409 million Black Panther $1.20 billion $610 million Captain America: Civil War $1.15 billion $408 million Spider-Man: Homecoming * $880 million $334 million Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 $864 million $390 million Thor: Ragnarok $854 million $315 million Guardians of the Galaxy $773 million $333 million Captain America: The Winter Soldier $714 million $260 million Doctor Strange $678 million $233 million Thor: The Dark World $645 million $206 million Iron Man 2 $624 million $312 million Iron Man $585 million $318 million Ant-Man $519 million $180 million Thor $449 million $181 million Captain America: The First Avenger $371 million $177 million The Incredible Hulk $263 million $135 million Total $14.7 billion $5.9 billion Data source: Box Office Mojo . Chart by Author. *Marvel Studios produced Spider-Man: Homecoming on behalf of Sony, which retains the rights to the character. In exchange for the deal, Spider-Man appeared as a character in MCU movies. The next addition to the billion-dollar club will likely be Avengers: Infinity War , which will debut April 27, 2018. Advanced ticket sales have already broken the record set by Black Panther , and will be the culmination of a decade-long story arc. Looking ahead If you're a fan of the superhero genre , fear not. Beyond Infinity War , Ant-Man and The Wasp will debut this year, followed by Captain Marvel and an untitled Avengers film in 2019. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said, "we've got another 20 movies on the docket that are completely different from anything that's come before -- intentionally." In the same interview, Disney CEO Bob Iger chimed in saying, "We're looking for worlds that are completely separate -- geographically or in time -- from the worlds that we've already visited." When asked about the future of the MCU and its characters, Feige recounted a story about none other than Walt Disney. "On opening day, when people asked Mr. Walt Disney if Disneyland was finished, he said, as long as there's imagination in the world, Disney will never be complete." Looks like Marvel will be adding to Disney's coffers for years to come. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Danny Vena owns shares of Walt Disney and has the following options: long January 2019 $85 calls on Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 15/04/18: Bitcoin Cash slipped 0.81% on Saturday, reversing Friday’s 0.78% gain, to end the day at $736.4, with the moves through the day continuing to support the near-term bullish trend formed at 6thApril’s swing lo $600.1.
A morning intraday high $761 failed to test the day’s first major resistance level of $759.8, while Bitcoin Cash slipped through the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $741.8 to test buying appetite at the 38.2% FIB Retracement Level of $714.7 through the middle part of the day, Bitcoin Cash managing to avoid a pullback through the day’s first major support level of $711.17.
Bitcoin Cash found the necessary support, with investors looking to hold on and support the latest bull-run, Bitcoin Cash recovering through the afternoon to the closing $736.4.
There was no material news to sway the markets, with investor sentiment continuing to be influenced by the positive, as the news wires drip feed some relatively promising updates that have provided direction to the market, including news that India had not banned cryptocurrencies.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash was up 2.69% to $756.1, in what’s been a steady start to the day, with Bitcoin Cash moving through to a morning high $760, off a start of the day $736.
The morning’s high hit the day’s first major resistance level of $759.8, leading to a pause in the intraday moves after breaking out from the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $741.8 to continue on with the near-term bullish trend.
For the day ahead, a move through to $760 levels will bring the day’s 2ndsupport level of $783.2 into play with Bitcoin Cash now needing to move through to $800 levels to support a sustainable bullish trend for the week ahead.
Failure to move through to $760 levels could test investor appetite before the end of the day, which could see Bitcoin Cash see a pullback the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $741.8, with the broader market sentiment then dictating the level of support, though we would expect the day’s first major support level of $714.2 to be left untested.
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Litecoin gained 0.88% on Saturday, partially reversing Friday’s 3.14% loss, to end the day at $126.56.
While it was a relatively range bound day for Litecoin, a morning intraday high $129.96 and middle of the day intraday low $124.3 left the day’s major support and resistance levels untested, Litecoin needing some lunch time support at the 38.2% FIB Retracement Level of $125.3.
The lack of direction through the day left Litecoin below the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $128.5, the day’s gains pinned back by the broader market, the lack of an early weekend rally or dip providing little incentive to jump in.
At the time of writing, Litecoin was up 1.68% to $128.54, with Litecoin having spent the early part of the day in a tight range, the morning’s $126.43 low and $128.55 high leaving the major support and resistance levels untested, while looking to break out from the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $128.5.
With the day’s first major resistance level sitting at $129.58, a move through to $130 levels would support a run at the day’s 2ndresistance level of $132.6 and a run at the Saturday’s $133.5, with any failure to move through to $130 levels likely to see some investors look to lock in profits before the start of the week.
A pull back through to the 38.2% FIB Retracement Level of $125.3 would bring the day’s first major support level of $123.92 into play, though any fall back to sub-$120 levels would be unlikely with the current market sentiment and bullish trend intact.
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Ripple’s XRP slipped 0.53% on Saturday, following Friday’s 0.3% fall, to end the day at $0.63895.
A second consecutive day of declines was of little concern however, with Ripple XRP’s moves, following last week’s rally, more of a consolidation than a correction.
A morning $0.676 high came up short of the day’s first major resistance level of $0.6932, with a post high sell-off seeing Ripple’s XRP pull back to a day low $0.62157 before recovering to just shy of $0.64, the day’s first major support level left untested, with buyer appetite at around the 38.2% FIB Retracement Level of $0.6111 providing the necessary support to avoid a pullback to sub-$0.60 levels.
At the time of writing, Ripple’s XRP was 2.67% to $0.65592, with Ripple’s XRP moving from a start of the day $0.63746 low through to a morning high $0.66716, breaking out from the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $0.6475 to test the day’s first major resistance level of $0.6694.
For the day ahead, with the day’s major support levels untested early, the bullish sentiment across the cryptomarket in the early part of the day will support a run at the day’s 2ndresistance level of $0.6999 and Friday’s $0.70626 high.
A failure to move through to Saturday’s $0.676 high could see a pullback later in the day, though barring a broad market sell-off, Ripple’s XRP should find plenty of support at the 23.6% FIB Retracement level of $0.6475, with the bullish trend formed at 6thApril’s swing lo $0.45716 intact.
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Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Interview with Chance Du, Founding Partner at Coefficient Ventures || Royal Dutch Shell Management Presents Its "World-Class Investment Case": It's hard for a $250-billion-plus business to change its stripes, butRoyal Dutch Shell's(NYSE: RDS-A)(NYSE: RDS-B)has done a rather incredible job over the past few years transforming the company into one of the most compelling investments in the integrated oil and gas industry.
Now that Shell has weathered the storm of low oil prices and is back to generating returns, management has plans both within and without the oil industry to preserve what it calls a "world-class investment case." Here are several quotes from the company's most recent earnings conference call that highlight some of the efforts Shell is taking to both grow the business and make the stock a better investment.
Image source: Getty Images.
One thing that is becoming a larger fixture of every investor conference call for Shell and other big oil companies istouting one's alternative energy strategy. Shell is around the middle of the pack when it comes to shifting away from oil and gas, but CEO Ben van Beurden was quick to point out some of the investments the company made recently as well as the framework for its alternative investment strategy.
So we expect our capital investment in New Energies to be $1 billion to $2 billion on average per year until the end of the decade. But as it is dependent on both organic and inorganic investment opportunities, this might be a little bit more or a little bit less depending on the year. But that's, of course, without changing the overall group capital investment budget for that year.
This past year, investment in this segment was a little high because it made several acquisitions related to charging stations in Europe. It appears that management wants to use its existing network of retail stations as a scalable platform for fast-charging electric vehicle stations. It's a relatively low-risk investment for Shell since it gets to use so much existing infrastructure and not have to commit high levels of new capital to individual stations.
When Shell bought BG Group back in 2015, it was clear that Shell intended to treat its combined portfolio like a car going to a chop shop. It would take the most valuable portions of each business as well as any assets that became better as a result of the combination, then ditch the rest via asset sales. One area of particular interest during the merger was off the coast of Brazil. The combination of Shell and BG in Brazil made for a vast portfolio that has become even more valuable as Brazil has loosened some regulations around its oil and gas sector. So as part of his prepared remarks, Van Beurden went out of his way to show how important Brazil is to Shell's future production.
So we produced 350,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day from Brazil in Q4, and the majority, of course, is coming from the pre-salt. That's more than 3x BG's last reported pre-salt volume in Q4 2014, which was 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. But in Q4, we also started up Lula South, the FPSO there. The two FPSOs, or Libra and Lula, represent 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day production capacity on a Shell share basis. And growth will continue in 2018 as we expect three more FPSOs to start up. We have P-67 coming on Lula North. We have P-68 in Berbigao. We have P-69 in Lula Extreme South. And altogether, that represents over 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day peak production capacity, all Shell share.
Historically, Brazil has been one of the higher-cost places to develop around the world, but Shell says it has made lots of improvements to lower breakeven costs for both its and BG's holdings in the region. If that is the case, then Brazil will be a core position for Shell over the next decade or so.
Shell used to have a bad habit: It spent a lot of money developing challenging reservoirs in remote or hard to drill locations. The company's exploration efforts in Arctic waters off the coast of Alaska is probably the highest-profile example of this. As a result, the company's capital spending tended to be a bit high and free cash flow was a little harder to come by.
According to Van Beurden, though, that isn't the case anymore. The combination of walking away from some expensive projects, cutting operational expenses, and targeting high-return projects has made Shell a much more cash-efficient business.
In 2017, we delivered $39 billion in cash flow from operations, excluding working capital, and that is in a $55 oil price environment. That's, what I believe, an impressive number. It's a number, which is 60% higher than in 2015 when the oil price was at a comparable level. In fact, it's close to the 2014 number when the oil price was at $99 per barrel. This exceptional delivery illustrates the cash-generating capabilities of our current portfolio, with each of our businesses successfully following a strategy, which is focused on operational excellence, but also activities with high margins.
RDS.Bdata byYCharts.
The greatest benefit to generating lots of free cash flow is that it gives management options. When cash was tight, Shell had resorted to measures such as a scrip dividend program -- issuing additional shares in lieu of a cash dividend -- taking on debt and issuing shares to pay for the BG Group acquisition. Now that it has overcome those challenges, Van Beurden wants to repair some of the balance-sheet damage it inflicted.
We have canceled the scrip [dividend] program. And subject to progress with debt reduction and recovery in oil prices, we will start a buyback program of at least $25 billion in the period '17 to '20. And that will be another factor to enhance the per-share metrics in the next decade.
When asked how management is going to prioritize debt reduction and share repurchases, both Van Beurden and CFO Jessica Uhl emphasized that it wants to get its net debt to capital below 20% first -- at the end of the fourth quarter,net debt to capital stood at 24.8%-- then start allocating cash toward share repurchases.
There are a lot of things working in Shell's favor right now. Its cash-generating abilities are strong, it has a greatgrowth opportunity in LNG, and management seems to be avoiding prior pitfalls such as pursuing overly complex and challenging projects that tend to do little but burn through capital spending dollars. This isn't the same Royal Dutch Shell from years prior, and investors should probably take a second look.
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Tyler Crowehas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Bolivar to Bitcoin Trading Surpasses a Record $1 Million per Day: Venezuela’s economic situation has been steadily declining in the past few years, bringing Venezuelans to turn to cryptocurrencies.
According toVeneBlocdata, the bolivar-to-bitcoin market recently reached a new record, as the equivalent of $1.009 million in bolivars were exchanged for bitcoin on April 17.
VeneBloc tracks transactions made on peer-to-peer exchange LocalBitcoins on the South American nation. It currently posts a rate of over 800,000 bolivars per dollar. Venezuelans are turning to cryptocurrencies as the government has enforced strict foreign exchange controls back in 2003.
These controls see individuals and businesses who aren’t able to obtain government approval to purchase dollars at legal rates turn to the black market. Cryptocurrencies help Venezuelans access foreign goods, and effectivelysurvive government failures.
Last year Jorge Farias, the co-founder of Venezuelan-based cryptocurrency brokerage Cryptobuyer, which had over 10,000 users at the time, said:
“The transaction takes a few minutes, our commission is three to seven percent lower than the banks, and our exchange rate is regulated by supply and demand, making it more realistic than the official”
Venezuelans have limited access to official foreign exchange markets, which makes it hard to get a sense of what their fiat currency is worth. Cryptocurrency exchanges help them here, along with websites tracking the rate to dollar auctions, and WhatsApp groups.
Prices in Venezuelasurged by 454 percentin the first quarter of this year, and a whopping 8,900 percent over the past 12 months. The hyperinflation has left the country on the brink of economic collapse, a problem that the government seemingly isn’t addressing.
Instead, Venezuela’s government is focusing on its oil-backed cryptocurrency the Petro (PTR), which recently received the“Satoshi Nakamoto Prize”from the Russian Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Association. The Petro, through its initial token sale, is said to have raised more than $5 billion from investors throughout the world.
While the country’s National Assembly and other entities bashed the Petro’s sale, some analystsdoubtit even exists. Meanwhile, the country has implied it maycharge for exportsin it and ordered state-owned businesses to accept it, which could create demand.
As for its economy, the executive secretary of the country’s Blockchain Observatory, Daniel Peña, revealed he believes the oil-backed cryptocurrency will positively impact it within“three to six months.”In an interview to the country’s Cuatro F newspaper, he said:
“There are many advantages, among them is that the inflationary scheme of the Venezuelan economy breaks down. Stolen or stolen tickets, because it is a digital currency that is safe to handle and has more functionality. The intermediaries will disappear, it will be a directional purchase. The waiting time for transactions will be reduced, because it will be faster than the banking system.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
The postBolivar to Bitcoin Trading Surpasses a Record $1 Million per Dayappeared first onCCN. || Gold Price Futures (GC) Technical Analysis – Bullish Over $1342.00, Bearish Under $1318.30: April Comex Goldtraded steady to lower most of the session on Thursday as investors reacted to the European Central Bank’s latest monetary policy statement and concerns over a possible trade war. Traders are no preparing for Friday’s U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls report.
The main trend is down according to the daily swing chart. Wednesday’s closing price reversal top took the wind out of the sail of the four-day counter-trend rally. The chart pattern was confirmed earlier on Thursday when sellers took out yesterday’s low at $1323.00.
The main trend will change to up on a move through $1364.40. Taking out $1303.60 will signal a resumption of the downtrend.
The minor trend is also down. A trade through $1342.00 will negate the closing price reversal top and change the minor trend to up.
The major support is the $1306.60 to $1291.50 retracement zone. This zone provided on March 1 when buyers stopped the sell-off at $1303.60.
The main range is $1364.40 to $1303.60. Its retracement zone at $1334.00 to $1341.20 stopped the rally at $1342.00 on Wednesday.
The short-term range is $1303.60 to $1342.00. Its retracement zone at $1322.80 to $1318.30 provided support on Thursday.
Traders need to watch the price action and read the order flow on tests of the retracement zones at $1334.00 to $1341.20 and $1322.80 to $1318.30.
Trend traders are going to try to stop the rally at $1334.00 to $1341.20 in an effort to form a potentially bearish secondary lower top. Taking out $1342.00 should trigger an acceleration to the upside.
Aggressive counter-trend buyers are going to try to stop the selling on a test of $1322.80 to $1318.30 in an effort to form a potentially bullish secondary higher bottom. The trigger point for an acceleration to the downside is $1318.30.
Basically, we’re looking for a sideways trade inside $1342.00 to $1318.30. These two prices are also the breakout levels, however, we’re going to need a spike in volume to make them work.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• USD/CAD Daily Fundamental Forecast – March 8, 2018 || What Are Arista Investors Really Scared Of?: There's no question thatArista Networks(NYSE: ANET)has tapped into an important part of the technology sector. The need to provide anopen-source alternativeto conventional network-development tools has provided the company with a devoted, loyal, and fast-growing customer base. Over the years, Arista has done a good job of bringing clients on board and then gradually getting them to build on their existing slate of services. Yet despite that success, fears about slowing growth rates have led Arista shares to fall, sometimes even after what appeared to be solid quarterly performances.
Coming into Thursday's first-quarter financial report, Arista shareholders expected extremely strong growth for the network-tool provider.As we've seen before, Arista's results were strong, but seemed to be not quite strong enough, and the stock fell sharply in response. Whether the stock bounces back as quickly as it did last quarter remains to be seen, but it's important not to take today's swoon as an isolated event, as it seems to reflect something that continually scares investors: the eventual slowing of Arista's growth rates.
Image source: Getty Images.
Arista Networks' first-quarter results remained extremely healthy, although those who aren't as optimistic about the stock will note that not all of its growth rates were able to move higher. Revenue grew 41%, to $472.5 million, outpacing the 38% growth rate that most of those following the stock were expecting to see, but slowing from its 43% pace in the fourth quarter of 2017. However, adjusted net income skyrocketed 87%, to $134.1 million, outdoing its 77% growth rate last quarter. Adjusted earnings of $1.66 per share far exceeded the $1.51-per-share consensus forecast among those following the stock.
Arista's segment results gave investors most of what they wanted to see and were well-balanced. Product sales were up 40%, while revenue from services was higher by 47%. Gross margin inched higher, to 64.1%, compared to year-ago numbers, although the figure deteriorated by more than 1 1/2 percentage points from where it was three months ago.
A look at Arista's expenses shows even tighter cost controls than we've seen in past quarters. Research and development expenses were higher by 25%, but sales and marketing expenses were up at a slower pace in the mid-teens. Overhead expenses actually fell by double-digit percentages during the quarter, reflecting the true success of Arista's efforts.
CEO Jayshree Ullal'scomments showed just how well Arista did: "As we kick of 2018, I am pleased with our performance this quarter. We continue to experience meaningful relevance and expansion as customers shift to cloud networking."
CFO Ita Brennan also noted how strong fundamental performance showed up clearly in revenue and earnings growth on the financial statements.
Part of what will drive Arista forward is its capacity to generate new product lines and enhancements. The company said that it plans to release an expanded family of platforms to enhance switching and routing performance, with systems that can take advantage of the move to 25G and 100G capability and add features that will make it even easier for cloud-computing and enterprise clients to migrate networks toward the enhanced service. Serving clients throughout upgrade cycles is a key part of Arista's long-term strategy, which emphasizes retention and cross-selling of additional services over time.
Yet part of what might have stoked fear among Arista investors was the company's second-quarter guidance. The company set a range of $500 million to $514 million for revenue for the quarter, with adjusted gross margin of 62% to 64% and adjusted operating margin of 32% to 34%. Those figures are in line with the consensus forecast among those following the stock, and the margin figures didn't change much from what the company has projected previously.
Still, some shareholders seemed to forget that Arista has done a good job of topping its guidance, and the stock therefore dropped almost 9% in after-hours trading following the announcement. Those skeptics might be scared of slowing growth rates, but long-term investors understand that fears about a slowdown have been in the works for a long time. There's little to suggest that Arista can't keep defying the skeptics to produce above-expected growth in the months and years to come.
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Dan Caplingerhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Arista Networks. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Billionaire Mark Cuban Hates Bitcoin and Gold Equally: ‘I’d Buy a Pet Rock First’: Tech billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, hates both gold and bitcoin, saying they’re not viable alternatives to currency.
“I hate gold. Gold is a religion,” Cuban toldKitco(video below). “I do not see gold as an alternative to currency. Not at all. Let’s put it this way: I don’t see people in Puerto Rico carrying around big bags of gold to try to save things.”
Cuban said both gold and bitcoin derive their values from supply and demand, but have no inherent value. He said “hate” is not strong enough a word to capture his antipathy for gold.
“Hate with extreme prejudice, with an ounce of hot sauce” is how the billionaire star of “Shark Tank” says he feels about gold, and by extension, bitcoin.
“I see gold and bitcoin as being the same thing,” he said. “They’re book collectibles. Their value is based off of supply and demand…I’d sooner buy a pet rock.”
Cuban added: “The good news about bitcoin is that there’s a finite supply that’ll ever be created, and the bad news about gold is that they’ll keep mining more.”
Despite Mark Cuban’s bearish stance on bitcoin, he will allow fans to use bitcoin to pay for tickets to Dallas Mavericks games starting next season.
Cuban made the revelation on Twitter in January 2018 in response to a fan who asked: “Mark, when will I be able to purchase Mavs tickets with bitcoin?” He replied: “Next season.”
“We will be adding a crypto payment ability,” Cuban said (viaCNBC). “We will accept BTC, ETH, possibly some other currencies. [That’s] to be determined.”
Interestingly, Cuban — whose net worth reportedly tops $3.7 billion — owns bitcoin and has invested in the cryptocurrency industry, but warned fans about throwing their money behind speculative investments such as crypto.
Cuban has long been skeptical of bitcoin because of its erratic price swings based seemingly on nothing. “It’s still very much a gamble,” he toldMoney. “It could go to $15,000 or zero, and maybe both on the same day.”
Cuban is right. Bitcoin prices are prone to wild, unexpected swings. After scoring an all-time high of $19,000 in December 2017, BTC prices have tanked below $7,000 this week. But keep in mind that BTC hovered at just $1,000 in January 2017.
Fundstrat co-founder Tom Lee said bitcoin prices crashed recently because U.S. investors were rapidly selling off their crypto holdings to avoid paying capital-gains taxes.
But Lee, a noted bitcoin bull, projects BTCwill rise againafter Tax Day passes on April 17. Is that a given? As with anything crypto, the answer is: Nope, we’ll have to wait and see.
Cuban said you should invest in virtual currencies only if you can handle losing all the money.
“If you’re a true adventurer and you really want to throw the Hail Mary, you might take 10% and put it in bitcoin or ethereum,” he said. “But if you do that, you’ve got to pretend you’ve already lost your money.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
The postBillionaire Mark Cuban Hates Bitcoin and Gold Equally: ‘I’d Buy a Pet Rock First’appeared first onCCN. || Why the Market Hated Micron's Earnings: Memory chip manufacturer Micron (NASDAQ: MU) once again put up impressive numbers when it reported its fiscal second-quarter results on Thursday. Revenue soared 58%, driven by both volume and price increases for its DRAM chips, and the company's third-quarter guidance came in above analysts' expectations. Overall, it was an apparently solid report that earned the stock some analyst price-target bumps. Yet the stock tumbled the next day: As of noon Friday, shares of Micron were down about 6.5%. What's going on? There are two likely reasons why the market didn't applaud Micron's report. A Micron facility in Boise, Idaho. Image source: Micron. NAND trouble While Micron's DRAM business is booming, its NAND business is more mixed. NAND bit volume increased during fiscal Q2, both compared to Q1 and the prior-year period. But the NAND average selling price slumped. Compared to Q1, Micron saw a mid-teens percentage decline in NAND per-bit pricing. That led to a two percentage-point drop in adjusted gross margin in the NAND business. The storage segment, comprised of solid state drives and other storage products, saw revenue slump by 9.4% compared to Q1, with operating margin falling nine percentage points to 20%. Both revenue and operating margin were up year over year, however. One thing we don't know is how Micron's per-bit costs for NAND changed during the second quarter. The company stopped disclosing that key metric in its first quarter report, so investors were left in the dark. These NAND issues led at least one analyst to downgrade Micron stock on Friday. An analyst at Citi dropped his rating from buy to neutral, concerned that the NAND market could be "rolling over." Because NAND pricing is based primarily on supply and demand, oversupply can lead to steep declines in price. The concern is that NAND pricing will continue to deteriorate going forward. Increased investments Demand and pricing for DRAM, which represented 71% of Micron's revenue in Q2, remains strong. Volumes rose by a mid-single-digit percentage compared to the first quarter, and average selling price jumped by a low double-digit percentage. Story continues But Micron may have spooked investors with word about its plans to expand its production facilities. During the earnings call , the company disclosed that its fiscal 2018 capital expenditures would be at the upper end of its previous guidance range, thanks to the build-out of additional clean room spaces in Singapore and Japan. The Japan project will come online for production at the beginning of 2019, with the Singapore project following toward the end of the year. As with NAND pricing, DRAM pricing is largely determined by supply and demand. When demand growth is outpacing supply growth, high prices and fat profits follow. When the opposite is true, prices can plunge and take the bottom line down with them. The risk for Micron is that it's overestimating what demand will be. A miscalculation on its part -- or on the part of Samsung , which is also reportedly building out new production space -- is all it will take to torpedo the current healthy market environment. This is exactly what you'd expect to happen in a commodity market. A period of surging prices encourages market participants to increase production to take advantage of that demand and maintain market share. That increased production, coming online years later, brings supply and demand closer into balance. But it can also go too far, creating oversupply and pushing down prices dramatically. There's no telling exactly when the market for DRAM chips will normalize. In fact, demand could very well be strong enough to offset these planned production increases. But investors are clearly concerned that the seeds of the next downturn are being planted. One important thing about Micron's outlook Micron provides a general outlook for both the NAND and DRAM markets in all its quarterly earnings presentations. This time around, the company said it expects a "more balanced industry dynamic" for NAND in 2018, and a "healthy demand environment with secular growth drivers" for DRAM. Investors should take that outlook with a grain of salt, though, because forecasting the memory chip markets is mostly a guessing game. Here's an example: In Micron's earnings presentation for Q4 2015, which ended in August of that year, the company said this: "We expect industry supply and demand for both DRAM and NAND to be relatively balanced in 2016." What happened in 2016? DRAM average selling prices plunged 35%, NAND average selling prices fell 20%, and Micron reported a net loss for the fiscal year. Micron's forecasts tend to be accurate until they're not. There's no disputing it: Micron's Q2 results were spectacular. But its performance almost certainly won't remain spectacular forever. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Timothy Green has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Shares of Cooper Tire & Rubber Plunge 12% on Earnings Miss: What happened Shares of tire manufacturer Cooper Tire & Rubber (NYSE: CTB) are down 12.2% as of 12:15 p.m. EDT today after the company reported first-quarter earnings results. Needless to say, they weren't what Wall Street was expecting. So what Cooper checked with earnings per share of $0.16 for the first quarter compared to $0.57 per share this time last year. That $0.16 EPS result was also well below consensus Wall Street estimates of $0.57. Weak sales from high levels of replacement tire inventories across North America and increasing manufacturing costs were the biggest culprits of this quarter's weak performance. Close-up of a tire on a car. Image source: Getty Images. Now what According to management, it expects these challenging market conditions to ease in the second half of the year as it scales back its unit production and lets these high levels of inventory draw down. Then again, this high level of inventory and weak pricing environment have been going on for several months now, so one has to be a little skeptical about predictions of this inventory reduction that management has been saying these challenging conditions would ease several quarters ago . With shares down 12% today and 37% over the past year, I don't doubt there are some people out there looking at this company as a value investment. It still has a healthy balance sheet, growing markets in truck and bus radial tires in China, and some strong brands in the aftermarket tire business. So there is certainly something there for investors. At the same time, though, this business has been slogging through a tough period of an oversupplied North American market for more than a year with no clear signs of it letting up despite what management says. With all that in mind, it's hard to get excited about Cooper Tire & Rubber's stock today, but if management is right and the glut does start to clear in the second half, then it may be worth revisiting down the road. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Tyler Crowe has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 02/04/18: Another slide for Bitcoin Cash on Sunday, left Bitcoin Cash down 5.98% to $642 by the day’s end, making it 7 consecutive days of decline, as investors continue to part ways with the Bitcoin Cash and the broader market, the total cryptomarket cap now down to $259.2bn, with Bitcoin Cash’s market cap sitting at just $11.3bn.
A positive start to the day on Sunday saw Bitcoin Cash break back into $700 levels, with an intraday high $700.8, but that was about it for the day, with the day’s high falling well short of the first major resistance level of $722 and 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $760.
The bearish trend that formed back at 21stMarch’s swing hi $1,084 continued through to the end of the weekend, with an intraday low $621 falling through the first major support level of $660.87 and 2ndsupport level of $637.6, before support led to a partial recovery to the day’s end $642.
That was a 34% slide for the week…
At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash was up 2.66% to $660, with an early morning low $636.4 managing to avoid the day’s first major support level of $608.4, driving Bitcoin Cash to a morning high $667.6.
For the day ahead, the news wires will need to be particularly kind to support a run at the day’s first major resistance level of $688 that would bring the $700 levels into play, though for a move through to the day’s 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $730, there’s going to need to be something exceptional on the news front.
Failure to break through to $700 levels through the middle of the day would continue to support the prolonged bearish trend and bring the day’s first major support level and the possibility of sub-$600 levels into play towards the end of the day.
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Litecoin slipped 1.2% to end Sunday at $114.85, the second sub-$115 level close since before the mid-December rally.
An early morning intraday high $118.83 provided some early hope for Litecoin investors, but a broader sell-off across the market saw Litecoin fall short of the day’s first major resistance level of $123 and 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $124.9, sliding to a day low $110.01, falling through the day’s first major resistance level of $112.73.
There was plenty of support a $110 levels, with Litecoin bouncing back through the 2ndhalf of the day to $117 levels, before easing back to the day’s end $114.85, a 28% slide for the week, Monday’s open through to Sunday’s close.
Sentiment had improved through the early part of this morning, with Litecoin up 2.47% to $117.8, with a morning high $119.72 testing the day’s first major resistance level of $119.12 early, before a pullback to $117 levels.
For the day ahead, a move back through to $119 levels would support a run at the day’s 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $124.9, but for investors to become convinced of a shift in the extended bearish trend, a move through to the day’s 38.2% FIB Retracement Level of $134.57 will be needed, which may well be a step too far with the 2ndand 3rdresistance levels wedged in between the two retracement levels.
Litecoin will need to avoid a pull back to Friday’s $109.27 low to avoid the prospects of sub-$100, caution continuing to weigh on market sentiment in spite of this morning’s $119.12 high.
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Ripple’s XRP fell 3.95% to $0.48012 on Sunday, following Saturday’s 0.44% gain, to end the week down 24.3%, faring better than some of the majors.
A start of the day $0.50853 high was all that Ripple had to offer for existing investors, the day’s high falling short of the first major resistance level of $0.5186 and 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $0.5285 as a broad market sell-off led to Ripple’s XRP sliding to an intraday low $0.45292 by the middle of the day. The sell-off saw Ripple’s XRP fall through the first major support level of $0.4877 and 2ndsupport level of $0.4741 before support kicked in around the day’s 3rdsupport level of $0.4431.
A rebound in the 2ndhalf of the day eased the pain, with Ripple’s XRP testing resistance at the $0.50 psychological level before easing back to $0.48012 by the day’s end.
Sentiment had not improved too much through the early part of this morning, with Ripple’s XRP up just 0.01% to $0.48019.
An early morning $0.46709 low held above the day’s first major support level of $0.4525, with an early run at $0.50, falling short of the day’s first major resistance level of $0.5081 and 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $0.518, Ripple’s XRP hitting a morning high $0.4978.
For the day ahead, a move through to $0.50 levels would support a possible reversal of the extended bearish run, though Ripple’s XRP would need to break out to the day’s 38.2% FIB Retracement Level of $0.5583 to restore some confidence in Ripple’s XRP and broader market.
Failure to move through to $0.50 levels will likely bring the day’s first major support level into play and test investor nerves through the 2ndhalf of the day.
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Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#BTC Average: 7182.66$
#Bitfinex - 7138.00$
#Poloniex - 7140.14$
#Bitstamp - 7137.18$
#Coinbase - 7140.00$
#Binance - 7142.99$
#CEXio - 7082.40$
#Kraken - 7149.90$
#Cryptopia - 7140.00$
#Bittrex - 7120.00$
#GateCoin - 7636.00$
#Bitcoin #Exchanges #Price || Price of 1 LTC to USD: $119.13 (Change: +0.46 %)
Price of 1 LTC to BTC: 0.0175703 Ƀ (Change: -0.47 %)
#litecoin #LTC $LTC || #FCC serves #Bitcoin #miner notice for static on #T-Mobile calls https://walkertecharts.com/blog/2018/04/06/fcc-serves-bitcoin-miner-notice-for-static-on-t-mobile-calls/ … || まさかの戻しからの上抜け？ || SC/BTC Volume Advance - Siacoin (SC) 24h volume advances above 30 day average - $SC $BTC #siacoin #investing #finance || Major blockchain group says Europe should exempt Bitcoin from new data privacy rule https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/5/17199210/blockchain-coin-center-gdpr-europe-bitcoin-data-privacy … via @verge @John_Jeckmans || 2018 BITCOIN… https://www.instagram.com/p/BhQyYRXHmTM/ || Try Webgatorz at https://LocalBitcoins.com/ad/497038?ch=w7m … only £6,640.00 per BTC. (BPI +0.79%) #buy #bitcoin #banktrans || By that time either cryptos would have vanished or india would have regulated them..Keep increasing btc no . || Added 1000 shares on $DWT at the 9 ema #money #trading #stocks #bitcoin #cryptocurrency I´ll add more at the structure if it gets therepic.twitter.com/JMdhxL7VBv
|
Trend: down || Prices: 9654.80, 9373.01, 9234.82, 9325.18, 9043.94, 8441.49, 8504.89, 8723.94, 8716.79, 8510.38
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2019-02-14]
BTC Price: 3616.88, BTC RSI: 51.42
Gold Price: 1309.80, Gold RSI: 60.88
Oil Price: 54.41, Oil RSI: 57.51
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
This Price Resistance Level May Hold Key to Bitcoin Bull Market: That bitcoin (BTC) may be closing on a long-term bottom is generally accepted by now.
After all, the leading cryptocurrency by market value hasdroppedby close to 70 percent over the last 13 months.
The challenge now is to pick up early signs of a long-term bearish-to-bullish trend change, which may be possible with the help of the 10-week simple moving average (SMA).
Bitcoin Risks Return to December Lows After Price Drop to $3.5K
Acting as resistance, that moving average proved a tough nut to crack in the eight weeks to Nov. 14 â the day BTC reentered the bear market with a big drop below $6,000.
Further, BTC has charted bearish-lower highs above the 10-week SMA in the last 13 months. Hence, acceptance above that hurdle could be considered a sign that the process of bearish-to-bullish trend change has begun.
As of writing, BTC is trading at $3,630 on Bitstamp, representing a 2.5 percent gain on a 24-hour basis. Meanwhile, the 10-week SMA is located at $3,919.
It is worth noting that a full confirmation of a longer-term bullish reversal would be a convincing break above theformer support-turned-resistance of the 21-month exponential moving average (EMA), currently at $5,400.
Bitcoin Will Still Bite the Dust
As seen above, BTC repeatedly failed to cross the 10-week SMA on a weekly closing basis (Sunday’s, as per UTC) before falling below $6,000 on Nov. 14.
Prior to that, BTC did cross the 10-week SMA in the last week of both February and April, the third week of July and in the last week of August. These bullish breakouts, however, were short-lived: BTC fell back below the 10-week SMA in the following two weeks, trapping the bulls on the wrong side of the market (marked by arrows).
Put simply, the cryptocurrency has struggled to breach the 10-week SMA throughout the ongoing bear market.
As a result, only a sustained break above the 10-week SMA (at least four weekly candles above the average) would imply bullish reversal.
The outlook remains bearish as long as prices are trading below the downward sloping 10-week SMA of $3,919.
BTC closed back above $3,566 (Dec. 27 low) yesterday, establishing a sideways channel on the daily chart.
With the weekly chart still biased toward the bears, the lower end of the channel, currently at $3,465, could be breached soon. A channel breakdown, if confirmed, would boost the prospects of a drop to the December low of $3,122.
• A sustained break above the 10-week SMA could be considered an early sign of long-term bullish reversal, although prospects of a near-term move above that average look bleak.
• A channel breakdown on the daily chart would bolster thebearish setupand allow a test of demand around the December low of $3,122.
ÂDisclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency assets at the time of writing.
Bitcoin image via Shutterstock; Charts byÂTrading View
• Bitcoin Price Looks South After Worst Daily Loss Since November
• Bitcoin Price Slips Below $3.8K as Bullish Bets Tank || Bitcoin: 'Security token offerings' are the new buzz in crypto: Moving fast: A person holds a visual representation of bitcoin at the Bitcoin Change shop in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. Photo: JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images. Facing increasing regulatory scrutiny and tumbling prices, cryptocurrency enthusiasts are looking for reasons to be cheerful in 2019. One potential positive? The STO. STO, which stands for security token offering, has become a recent buzzword in the crypto sector. At the MJAC & CryptoCompare London Blockchain Summit in November one keynote was titled: Will STOs replace IPOs? Advocates hope STOs offer a legally compliant new growth area for crypto that will allow companies to put everything from stocks to artworks onto tradable crypto tokens. What is an STO? To understand the STO, you first have to understand an ICO. An ICO short for initial coin offering is where a startup issues digital tokens in exchange for money to fund its business. It is essentially crowdfunding, but investors are given tokens instead of equity. Usually, they are linked to the project in some way. Its a little like raising funds to build a cinema by selling tickets in advance. These digital tokens are usually structured similarly to ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency, in that they are digitally storable, tradable, and cryptographically based. READ MORE: Unsustainable crypto startup funding bubble has burst The first ICO was ethereum in 2014 but the fundraising method exploded in popularity in 2017, fuelled by a general crypto boom. By the end of that year, over 800 projects had raised more than $6bn through ICOs. This momentum continued into the first half of 2018. However, the pace of ICOs slowed over the last six months as crypto prices sunk and ICO projects that had already raised money failed to live up to the hype. Weve got the massive bear market which is slightly intertwined with the capital cycle slowing up and its created this negative reputational debt with this acronym ICO, Edd Carlton, the head of institutional trading at BlockEx, told Yahoo Finance UK. If you say ICO now, you get the air through the teeth. The stick approach Regulators have also cracked down on the fundraising method. In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that most ICO tokens in fact qualify as securities. As a result, companies that issued them are breaking the law by offering unregistered securities. Story continues Basis, an ICO project aiming to create a stable cryptocurrency, shut down last month and blamed generally onerous securities laws. The project had raised $133m from investors including Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and Bain Capital Ventures. (Remaining funds were returned to investors.) You cant ignore the fact that regulators in the US are driving people with the stick approach, scaring people away with orange jumpsuits and subpoenas, said Carlton. However, while historic ICO projects look to be in trouble, the SEC did not explicitly ban ICOs. As a result, lawyers and crypto advocates now see a new market for SEC-compliant ICOs. These have been dubbed security token offerings, to reflect the fact that they are now classified as securities. As well as offering the potential for legally compliant ICOs, advocates argue that STOs allow companies to put existing securities such as stocks and bonds on to a cryptographic blockchain. This would allow people to trade these securities without the need for a middleman. In theory, any form of value could be tokenized stock certificates, diamonds, even art collections. Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Goldman Sachs-backed crypto company Circle, likes to talk about the tokenization of everything. A strong narrative for why this makes sense BlockEx is currently working in the UK Financial Conduct Authoritys regulatory sandbox to develop a sterling-denominated bond token, an example of an STO. It will target small businesses that usually cannot afford the fees associated with underwriting a bond. The benefits are clear: time to market and cheaper. You could also throw in the fact that they have complete oversight of whos bought the bond, Carlton told Yahoo Finance UK. In terms of the participants, settlement is now instantaneous between cash and security, he said. Weve got a really strong narrative for why this makes sense. So far, STOs have been few and far between. But several projects are currently advertising plans to launch STOs in 2019 and the Swiss Stock Exchange is building its own platform to issue and trade security tokens in anticipation of a boom. 2019 could be the year of the STO. LinkedIn is always a fantastic gauge, Carlton said. The number of people whose profile has now changed from ICO advisor to STO advisor makes me laugh. However, he fears that STOs could be the subject of the same sort of overkill and excessive hype that ended up damaging ICOs. I think we really risk falling into the same trap now everyones like, Im going to stick STO on this and then all of a sudden the clouds will part and people will drop gold into my lap and everything will be fine. Thats absolute rot. When people say, well why dont I just do an equity raise via an STO whats the benefit? he said. For security tokens, there has to be a need for it. Oscar Williams-Grut covers banking, fintech, and finance for Yahoo Finance UK. Follow him on Twitter at @OscarWGrut . Read more: A shocking stat shows venture capitals diversity problem and theres a moral duty to address it This ex-Googler wants to help high street banks be more like Monzo UK government prepares to spend £2bn on Brexit prep as no deal looms Pound close to parity with euro and dollar at airport currency brokers Nine grey swan risks to watch in markets in 2019 || Newsflash: Dow Climbs 1,050 Points in Largest-Ever Rally While Bitcoin Slumps: The US stock market may be in dire straits relative to its early-year performance, but don’t call it a recession yet. Bolstered by strong showings from the retail and energy sectors, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 each posted stellar post-Christmas rallies, even as the bitcoin price slumped several percentage points to headline a generally-sluggish day for the cryptocurrency market.
Both theDowandS&P 500had waded into the red earlier in the day, but the two stock market indices roared back to life heading into the afternoon, breaking away from theirrecent bearish trends. As of the time of writing, the Dow had rallied by 1,086 points for the day — its largest single-day gain ever — while the S&P 500 gained 4.95 percent after Mastercard SpendingPulse releaseddatashowing that retailers had experienced their best holiday spending season in six years.
On the crypto front, however, investors were much less enthusiastic. The bitcoin price traded down approximately 0.32 percent to a composite average of $3,819 over the previous 24 hours, and most other top 10-cryptocurrency assets posted minor pullbacks as well. Outside of the large-cap index, however,ethereum classic— ranked 17th by market cap — headlined with a 10.31 percent rally to $5.15.
Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts fromTradingView.
The postNewsflash: Dow Climbs 1,050 Points in Largest-Ever Rally While Bitcoin Slumpsappeared first onCCN. || Will Valentines Day End in Heartbreak for Bitcoin Bulls?: bitcoin crypto valentine's day The cryptocurrency market held above $120 billion heading into Thursday evening, but could Bitcoin be setting up investors for a post-Valentines Day heartbreak? Bitcoin and the rest of the top 5 cryptocurrencies had a pretty boring 24-hour period. The notable moves happened at the opposite end of the market cap spectrum, with Steem gaining 3% and NEM, 2%. Of the top 10 non-stablecoins, only Bitcoin Cash saw any positive movement, with a less than 0.2% global gain. As we reported earlier today, Bitcoin SV is now available for withdrawal at Coinbase . In a related note, Waves Platform is making Bitcoin SV balances available and will be adding a trading market as well. The question is whether the newly available Bitcoin SV poses a risk to the coins price. Bitcoin Cash believers at the time of the hard fork who held BCH in either place have been waiting some time for their Bitcoin SV. Theyve long since missed the peak of more than $200. The market at large has advanced into scarier and scarier bear territory. Read the full story on CCN.com . || Inside Ethereum’s Plan To Reduce Energy Consumption by 99%: Ethereum intends to move to proof-of-stake in the future. Making a move to POS will supposedly cut the energy consumed by a hundredfold, or around 99%. There have been repeated claims that cryptocurrency uses too much energy and is therefore inefficient and environmentally unfriendly. Some reports find that mining cryptocurrency uses more energy than gold mining , some the opposite . Some researchers find that mining is overall bad for the environment. Ethereum started out with the goal of becoming a world computer, with the blockchain being the first to introduce smart contracts, and along with it a thriving developer community. The price of Ether peaked around $1400 earlier in 2018, and was recently trading well below $200 . Similar to Bitcoin, Ethereum uses Proof-Of-Work as a consensus mechanism in order to secure the blockchain. However, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stressed the importance of the energy expended in order to secure the Ethereum blockchain. Even if one wouldn’t care for the ecological issues posed by PoW based blockchains, there are real people who are deprived of basic needs such as electricity. This is largely due to the fact that in PoW based blockchains, miners race to cryptographically secure transactions. This calls for miners to equip themselves with an edge in terms of computational capacity, which results in burning millions of dollars worth of electricity and mining-related costs. According to Vitalik, Proof-Of-Work is based on the concept of large quantities of electricity and mining hardware purely based on the premise that it generates rewards in the form of mined cryptocurrencies. This means that the more mining power is directly proportional to revenue. Proof of work necessarily operates on a logic of massive power incentivized into existence by massive rewards Proof-Of-Stake applies a completely contrasting philosophy towards securing the network Proof of stake breaks this symmetry by relying not on rewards for security, but rather penalties. Story continues Enter Proof Of Stake With Proof-Of-Work, miners race to process the same set of transactions. However, Proof-Of-Stake randomly picks validators to process and secure transactions. In a Proof-Of-Stake System, validators are the equivalent of miners. Secondly, the primary concern within a POS system is to ensure that the validators are honest at all times. This is tackled by requiring validators to put up a stake denominated in ether as collateral. The “one-sentence philosophy” of proof of stake is thus not “security comes from burning energy”, but rather “security comes from putting up economic value-at-loss” The greater a validator’s stake, the greater the chances at being picked to validate transactions. More importantly, validators caught cheating have their stake to lose. This asymmetric difference between the potential rewards vs. the risks of cheating force a validator to remain honest at all times. One of the most interesting things with respect to PoS is the fact that given validators are not expending as much energy(compared to PoW) to secure the network, the reward may be significantly lower. According to the Casper Github wiki: Because of the lack of high electricity consumption, there is not as much need to issue as many new coins in order to motivate participants to keep participating in the network. Competition Within POS Landscape Ethereum having its first mover advantage has definitely made strides of progress in terms of building out the first world computer of sorts. We now have many protocols being built on top of Ethereum, such as MakerDAO , which is a decentralized stablecoin that has locked up nearly 1% of ETH supply. Apart from this, theres a burgeoning DeFi(Decentralized Finance) community comprising of project such as Compound , dYdX , CDx However, there are other teams racing to build POS complaint chains such as EOS , Cardano , Dfinity , and Cosmos among others. It is yet to be seen whether Ethereum will maintain its #1 position as smart contract platform, while overcoming the energy consumption issue, and most importantly – scaling . Images from Shutterstock. The post Inside Ethereum’s Plan To Reduce Energy Consumption by 99% appeared first on CCN . || Brent Crude Oil Price Update Getting Close to Erasing Nearly 3-Year Rally: International-benchmark Brent crude oil futures are trading lower early Wednesday as investors return from the one-day holiday. Volume is below average and volatility is low. Both factors could remain under pressure until after the New Years holiday. The risk-off scenario in the stock market is helping to drive prices lower during the pre-market session. Traders also continue to express doubts that the OPEC-led production cuts, due to begin on January 1, will have any impact on the global supply glut. At 0732 GMT, March Brent crude oil is trading $50.47, down $0.30 or -0.59%. Daily March Brent Crude Oil Daily Swing Chart Technical Analysis The main trend is down according to the daily swing chart. Todays early weakness reaffirmed the downtrend. The main trend will change to up on a move through the last main top at $63.91. Although a change in trend is highly unlikely, the market is in the window of time for a potentially bullish closing price reversal bottom because of the prolonged move down in terms of price and time. If successful, this move could trigger a 2 to 3 day counter-trend rally. Daily Swing Chart Forecast Based on the early price action, the direction of the March Brent crude oil market on Wednesday is likely to be determined by trader reaction to Mondays close at $50.77. Bullish Scenario Given the prolonged move down in terms of price and time, and todays lower-low, recapturing Mondays close at $50.77 will indicate the return of buyers. This move will put the market in a position to form a daily closing price reversal bottom. This could trigger a strong intraday, counter-trend rally with the first upside target Mondays high at $54.88. Taking out this level will form a new minor bottom. A close over $50.77 will produce a daily closing price reversal bottom. If confirmed on Thursday, this could trigger the start of a 2 to 3 day counter-trend rally. Bearish Scenario A sustained move under $50.77 will signal the presence of sellers. If this move creates enough downside momentum then look for the selling to extend into the June 21, 2017 main bottom at $49.16. If this level fails to hold as support then look for a further decline into the April 5, 2016 main bottom at $47.28. Story continues The latter is the trigger point for a potential acceleration to the downside with the January 20, 2016 bottom at $42.99 the next significant bottom. This price is important because it launched the nearly three year rally in crude oil. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Bitcoin Look out for the Holiday Bear Trap Stellars Lumen Technical Analysis Resistance Levels in Play 26/12/18 E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM) Futures Analysis Nearing Cluster of Potential Support Levels at 21283 to 21011 AUD/USD and NZD/USD Fundamental Daily Forecast Firming on Renewed Demand for Risk Brent Crude Oil Price Update Getting Close to Erasing Nearly 3-Year Rally The USD Could be in for a Swing, But Twitter Will Need to be Silent || Bitcoin, Altcoins Are Vulnerable to New Lows, Fundstrat Warns Clients: Cryptocurrencymarkets could soon hit lower lows and continue their record bear market, investment and analysis firm Fundstrat Global Advisors warned in an email quoted byBloombergon Feb. 6.
Writing to traders, one strategist at the firm, Robert Sluymer, forecast that on the basis of current performance, there was a chanceBitcoin(BTC) andaltcoinprices could dip further.
BTC/USD has fallen around 2.2 percent over the past week to trade at $3,370 as of press time Thursday, as many altcoins haveseenbigger drops. Sluymer said:
“The price structure for most cryptocurrencies remains weak and appears vulnerable to a pending breakdown to lower lows.”
Fundstrat is known within the cryptocurrency space forprovidingsome of the more upbeat narratives on the future of Bitcoin in particular. Enthusiasm appeared to wane in recent months, however, with popular senior Fundstrat strategistTom Leeannouncing he would no longer make public predictions about BTC/USD in December 2018.
“We are tired of people asking us about target prices,” Bloombergquotedhim as telling clients at the time, nonetheless adding he thought Bitcoin’s fair value should be worth $150,000.
Belief in a broad market resurgence in 2019 remains patchy among other major proponents. WhileJohn McAfeehas infamously stuck by his $1 million prediction for next year,cryptocurrency exchangeQuoine’sCEO alsotoldCointelegraph he thinks Bitcoin will break its all-time highs of $20,000 within the next eleven months.
• Stock Market Sees Significant Growth, While Bitcoin Keeps Stability Over Past 7 Days
• Report: Bitcoin Transactions Per Day Increase to January 2018 Levels
• Bitcoin Stuck Around $3,400 as the Stock Market Sees a Minor Downturn
• Bitcoin Could Experience a Resurgence of Interest on Wall Street: JPMorgan Strategist || Report: Fidelity Sets March Launch Date for Bitcoin Custody Service: American investment firm Fidelity, which administersover $7.2 trillionin client assets, will purportedly launch its Bitcoin (BTC) custody offering in March, Bloombergreportson Jan. 29
Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, Bloomberg states that this is the next step in a plan that started in October 2018, when Fidelityannouncedthe launch of a new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services.
The new company will purportedly offer custody and trade execution services for digital assets, targeting institutional investors like “hedge funds, family offices and market intermediaries,” but willnotfor now be open to retail investors.
Fidelity reportedly said in a statement, “We are currently serving a select set of eligible clients as we continue to build our initial solutions. Over the next several months, we will thoughtfully engage with and prioritize prospective clients based on needs, jurisdiction and other factors.”
Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson is an outspoken proponent of digital currencies, havingintroducedBitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) mining at the firm in 2017. She stated at a conference in New York “I’m a believer. I’m one of the few standing before you today from a large financial services company that has not given up on digital currencies.”
Custody services, which are commonplace in traditional stocks and bonds markets, are third party services that offer to hold an asset to reduce the likelihood of theft. Custody services differ frombanksin that they are not allowed to use the stored financial assets to their own ends. Major firms like BNY Mellon,JPMorganand Northern Trust offer custody for assets like money, securities,goldand diamonds.
While traditional financial institutions like Fidelity are beginning to step into the crypto sphere, firms likecryptocurrency exchangeandwalletserviceCoinbasehave introduced their own custody solutions. Coinbase’s custodial service, which targets institutional clients,launchedin July 2018. The exchange then stated that it had already been storing over $20 billion worth of clients’ crypto over the past six years.
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• UAE-Saudi Arabian Digital Currency 'Aber' to be Restricted to Select Banks at Start
• NYSE Operator Enhances Cryptocurrency Data Feed
• Bitcoin Skeptic, Ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz Considers 2020 Presidential Run || Coinbase Adds Tax Support Resources for US Customers, Including TurboTax Integration: American cryptocurrency exchange and wallet service Coinbase has added resources for customers in the United States to claim crypto trades on their taxes , according to an official blog post on Jan. 24. In addition to adding an educational guide on crypto and taxes, Coinbase has also integrated with popular tax software TurboTax. According to the blog post, users of Coinbase.com and Coinbase Pro will be able to automatically import transactions into a new, crypto-specific section of TurboTax Premier. Coinbase says that it provided the new resources in order to make the platform easier to use after hearing confusion from the community regarding crypto transactions on their taxes. The legal definition of cryptocurrency in the U.S. — and by extension the way by which holders are obliged to claim it on their taxes — remains unclear as a slew of regulatory agencies each view cryptocurrencies differently. While the Securities and Exchange Commission considers cryptocurrencies to be securities, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission considers them commodities. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network classifies crypto as money, while in the view of the Internal Revenue Service — the agency responsible for collecting taxes and distributing refunds — digital assets like Bitcoin ( BTC ) are property. Coinbase expanded its offerings significantly in 2018, adding support for several new tokens including Ethereum Classic ( ETC ), Zcash ( ZEC ), and Basic Attention Token (BAT). In November 2018, the exchange added an over-the-counter ( OTC ) trading desk for institutional investors. Christine Sandler, head of sales at Coinbase said: “We launched our OTC business as a complement to our exchange business because we found a lot of institutions were using OTC as an on-ramp for crypto trading.” Coinbase has previously launched educational programs to teach users about the basics of cryptocurrencies. In December 2018, the exchange introduced “Coinbase Earn,” a platform wherein users can learn about cryptocurrencies as they earn them. The idea behind the initiative was purportedly to teach users about an asset “while getting a bit of the asset to try out.” Related Articles: US Crypto Exchange Launches Spot Trading for Institutional Investors Coinbase Adds Cross-Border Wire Transfers for High-Volume Customers in Europe, Asia US: Bill Exempting Non-Custodial Crypto Services From Certain Laws Reintroduced to Congress JPMorgan Chase Analysts: Bitcoin Price Could Sink Even Further, Crypto Values Unproven || A bitcoin ETF is 'virtually certain,' finance expert Ric Edelman says: The road to a bitcoin ETF has seen many roadblocks, but one finance expert said it's an inevitability.
"It's virtually certain. The only question is when," Ric Edelman, founder of Edelman Financial Engines, said Monday on CNBC's " ETF Edge " at the Inside ETFs Conference in Hollywood, Florida. "The SEC has several legitimate thoughtful concerns that the industry has to overcome but I'm confident they will. Eventually we will see a bitcoin ETF and it's at that stage that I will be much more comfortable recommending that ordinary investors participate."
The Securities and Exchange Commission has long had concerns over the cryptocurrency market and how to regulate it. For one, bitcoin trading lacks a secure chain of custody like other financial markets. Secondly, the SEC has little control over price manipulation given it has no governance over overseas trading platforms.
Major financial institutions' interest and investment in finding a solution should mean a bitcoin ETF eventually comes to market, Edelman contended.
"We've got some serious players. Fidelity has made a major announcement in the custody issue. We've got Kingdom Trust and a number of other very serious players on the custody side. I'm confident that in very short order VanEck or Bitwise will satisfy the custody concern to the SEC," said Edelman.
Tom Lydon, editor-in-chief of ETFTrends.com , said he's already seen massive demand for a product like a bitcoin ETF.
"There is pent-up demand. We interview advisors all the time. Seventy-four percent say they've talked to clients about their interests in bitcoin so they need to step up when this happens because that money is going to go elsewhere," Lydon said Monday on "ETF Edge."
The Cboe refiled an application for a VanEck and SolidX bitcoin ETF to the SEC in late January. It had pulled the ETF submission roughly a week earlier on concerns the partial government shutdown would cause delays.
More From CNBC
• Bitcoin ETF 'virtually certain,' finance expert Ric Edelman says
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• Hot ETFs to watch in 2019: Bitcoin & media
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
★★相互フォロー大募集★★
#sougofollow #followback
#followme #refollow || Of course the bottom is 2200$ || Xapo Transfers Key Operations to Switzerland http://bit.ly/2Mu0b4E #bitcoin || The #btc etf was only shut down till government reopens they will reapply then. #eth #xrp #crypto #cryptotrading #cryptocurrencies #cryptocurrency #trx || #HUBRISONE #HBRS #bitcoin #ethereum #cryptocurrency #ICOhttps://twitter.com/HubrisOne/status/1087898466502627330 … || Robinhood Crypto to roll out in New York after receiving BitLicense https://www.xbt.money/robinhood-crypto-to-roll-out-in-new-york-after-receiving-bitlicense/ … #XBT #BTC #Bitcoin || Daha net bir balonlaşma ve kriz göstergesi olabilir mi?
Bu krizde kuratırıcı;sınırlı arzı olan değerli metaller(altın,gümüş) ve yine sınırlı arzı olan kripto paralar olacak.
FED'in buna uyandığı için acilen para yakmaya başladığını düşünüyorum.
Ama geç kaldılar. Kriz kapıda.
$btc || The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting Into Class Supported by The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting Into Class The post The Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting Into Class appeared first on #Money #Health Finance. http://www.moneyhealthfinance.com/the-hard-part-of-computer-science-getting-into-class/ … #news #stocks #bitcoin || Yes I am always wrong.
no. you. are assuming implied supply inflation. why?
You fail to understand that by definition im talking about a token that is a legitimate part of the Bitcoin economy, in fact, they are Bitcoins most natural users! || Funding Hate: The Far-Right’s Pivot to #Crypto http://twib.in/l/GBMK7Ad9dnRE #blockchain #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/71DGdv49P7
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Trend: up || Prices: 3620.81, 3629.79, 3673.84, 3915.71, 3947.09, 3999.82, 3954.12, 4005.53, 4142.53, 3810.43
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2018-03-02]
BTC Price: 11086.40, BTC RSI: 55.92
Gold Price: 1321.10, Gold RSI: 48.06
Oil Price: 61.25, Oil RSI: 44.98
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Kodak slaps its name on a sketchy bitcoin-mining business: Kodak's attempt to ride the cryptocurrency wave isn't limited to offering its own virtual coins . CES attendees have learned that Kodak has attached its name to a Spotlite-run bitcoin-mining business that will lease you a Kodak KashMiner computer for a two-year contract. It'll cost you $3,400 plus half of the value the machines earn, but Spotlite argues that it's effectively a license to print money. If you believe the company's math, you'd be paid $375 per month if bitcoin maintains an average price of $14,000. However, there's just one problem: The math ignores the very nature of how bitcoin works. Bitcoin becomes progressively more difficult to mine over time, reducing the amount of coins a computer can generate without upgrades. Kodak and Spotlite, however, pretend this mounting difficulty doesn't exist: They incorrectly assume that you'll generate the same amounts forever. Economics Professor Saifedean Ammous noted to BuzzFeed that the price would actually need to hover around $28,000 to offset the increased challenge -- in other words, you're unlikely to come anywhere close to the promised earnings. Kodak has so far declined to comment on the calculations behind the claims. However, the dodgy math casts doubt on not only the bitcoin-mining strategy but also its own KodakCoin currency, launching later in January. The two launches suggest that Kodak is treating cryptocurrency as a short-term revenue boost to shore up its struggling finances rather than a sustainable, trustworthy business. And that's a big problem for both investors and KashMiner customers, as they may be expecting returns that might never materialize. Here's a photo of Kodak's magic money making machine. pic.twitter.com/wjWeJqMUBF — Chris Hoffman (@chrisbhoffman) Jan. 9th, 2018 Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018. || The Top 4 Tech Stocks the Smart Money Is Selling and the 2 They're Buying: Hedge funds have over $6 trillion worth of assets under management, so when the smart money starts moving into a stock, it's not unwise for investors to take notice, because it just might signal the start of an upswing in its value. Similarly, when the smartest guys in the room withdraw their money from a holding, you may want to pay attention to that, too, because it may be that they see problems others are missing. Certainly, investors should not blindly follow hedge fund operators into or out of a stock, since many times they can be wrong, but the movements of these billionaire investors can put a stock on your radar, or tip you off to dig more deeply into their businesses to ferret out areas of concern. To find out which stocks the smart money has formed a consensus on, personal finance website WalletHub examined the most recent SEC disclosures filed by more than 400 hedge funds to find their biggest holdings, newest positions, and recent exits. Below are the four top tech stocks the smart money crowd is selling -- and the two big tech names they're buying. Stock traders looking at computer screens Image source: Getty Images. On the outs Most of the four tech stocks the hedge funds were dumping by the end of the fourth quarter had been high fliers, generating an average 47% return for all of 2017, compared to a 19% return for the S&P 500. But there was one dud in the bunch, IBM (NYSE: IBM) , that lost 8% last year, making it understandable why it was the No. 1 tech holding the smart money wanted to get rid of. Last year was not a good year for IBM, which recorded 22 straight quarters of declining revenues as its legacy hardware and software business weighed down its efforts to transition to Big Data, the cloud, and mobile. However, did the hedge funds exit their position too early? IBM reported its first quarter of higher revenues in the fourth quarter, rising 3.6% to $22.5 billion. Its shares are up 1.4% year to date, but they had been 10% higher until it was revealed that Warren Buffett cut his stake in the old-line tech name to invest elsewhere. Story continues The other high-flying tech leaders that saw their shares dumped include Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) , Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) , and Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) . It could be that the hedge funds were simply taking profits since over the last five years, their valuations have soared and were among the best-performing stocks on the market. AMZN Chart AMZN data by YCharts . Getting in on a good thing When it came to buying stocks, the smart money wasn't wasting its money on some tech start-ups hailing themselves as the next Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) . Instead, they were actually buying shares of Apple and Microsoft, with the former being the top stock all around that hedge funds were scooping up. It's also probably no coincidence that Buffett's biggest purchase in the period was Apple. Although there seem to be perennial concerns that its latest iPhone will crater -- and while Apple sold a reported 77.3 million devices, down 1% from the year-ago period -- the $1,000 price tag for the iPhone X and higher prices on its other models more than offset the decline. Still, analysts at Gartner say smartphone sales dipped in the fourth quarter for the first time ever as consumers purchased 5.6% fewer handsets, or almost 408 million devices, a trend that, if it continues, could be problematic. Microsoft has shown remarkable resilience as well, and its shares are up 45% over the last 12 months, doubling in value over the last three years, and tripling over the past five years. And it looks like the good times will continue to roll as it blew past analyst expectations in January as strong demand for its Office products and Azure cloud computing services continue running higher. In fact, Azure is reportedly taking share from Amazon.com 's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Amazon Web Services as quarterly cloud revenue for Microsoft has nearly doubled since early 2016. Certainly, investors should not blindly follow the moves of hedge fund operators exactly -- oftentimes they can make bad calls -- but the movements of these billionaire investors can serve as a weathervane for seeing where the smart money thinks the best opportunities lie. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Rich Duprey has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A and C shares), Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. The Motley Fool is short shares of IBM and has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple, short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple, short March 2018 $200 calls on Facebook, and long March 2018 $170 puts on Facebook. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || How to Save for Retirement When Your Income's Low: If you're squeezing just enough money out of your paychecks to get by month after month, then you're not alone. In fact, 78% of workers say they live paycheck to paycheck, according to a CareerBuilder survey earlier this year. In this financial situation, it's incredibly difficult to save money, but it's still possible to squeeze some retirement savings out of even the scantiest paycheck.
If you spend every cent you make every month and never seem to get ahead, that means your income is the same as your expenses. An even worse situation arises when your expenses arehigherthan your income, in which case you're likely sinking deeper and deeper into debt with every month that passes. In either case, resolving the situation requires you to either reduce your expenses or increase your income until they come into a better balance.
Image source: Getty Images.
Before you can do anything constructive, you need to know just where your money is going. That means you need to create at least a basic budget to get you started. And while many people wince at the mere idea of budgeting, it's not difficult or even particularly time-consuming.
At the end of every day, simply write down (or better yet, type into a spreadsheet) everything you spent money on and how much you spent. This is easier if you get receipts for everything during the day; after you've written down your expenses, you can toss the receipts out. Keep this going for at least a month (two or three months is even better), and you'll have a pretty good idea of where all the money you earn is going. To make this process easier, tryMint, a free budgeting program from Intuit that you can use to track spending, pay bills and generate reports. Mint is also available as an app for both Apple and Android devices.
Once you know what your expenses are, you can start looking at fairlypainless waysto cut them back. The best place to start is with expenses that are a complete waste of your money. For example, many people have memberships to gyms they never go to. This is money going down the drain, so cancel that membership immediately, and you'll have an excellent start to correcting your income issues. You may also be able to identify monthly expenses that you can reduce or remove entirely without missing out on anything. For example, look at your cellphone plan and see if you're really using as many minutes, texts, and gigabytes of data as you're paying for. If not, see if a cheaper plan would work just as well for you.
Let's say you've gone through the above budgeting exercise and have freed up $50 per month that you can now save for retirement. That may not sound like much money, but it can make an amazing difference to your retirement savings over the long term. For example, let's say you're 30 years from retirement and you invest your $50 monthly contribution in a stockindex fundwithin yourIRAor401(k). Assuming you get an average annual return of 8% on that investment, you'll end up with $73,408 by retirement. That's not enough to live on by itself, but it's sure a whole lot better than nothing. And remember, your income will likely go up in the future -- which means you'll be able to increase that contribution over time.
When your contributions are this small, you need to do everything in your power to maximize returns. Consider the above example: If you were lucky enough to get a 10% average annual return instead of 8% over 30 years of saving, you'd end up with $108,566 instead of $73,408. And when it comes to getting the highest possible average returns, stocks are king. Since 1926, large company stocks have returned an average of 10% per year -- far higher than most other types of investments.
However, stocks do have one big disadvantage: They're unpredictable. While long-term average returns are very high, in the short term, returns can vary tremendously. The good news is that while you're still working, a plummeting stock market that tanks your retirement investments won't hurt your finances directly as long as you don't sell (though it might cost you a few sleepless nights). As you get closer to retirement, you'll need to shift your holdings away from stocks and toward bonds, but keeping your stock investments as long as possible can compensate somewhat for small contributions. It's a relatively risky approach, but if you can't save more than a tiny percentage of your income, it may be the best option for you.
Once you've been contributing to retirement savings for six months or so, you can try pushing the envelope a bit by raising that contribution level slightly. For example, if you've been saving $50 per month, try raising your contribution to $60 per month. You'll likely find that you won't even notice such a small difference in your available income. After a few more months, you can try raising your contribution by another few dollars. This approach isn't glamorous, but it is a lot easier to live with than trying to immediately save the recommended 10% to 15% of your income for retirement.
Contributing even a tiny percentage of your income can, over time, produce impressive funds in your retirement savings accounts. By harnessing the high average returns that stocks can produce, combined with careful budgeting, you can end up with more money than you ever dreamed possible.
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The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Activision Blizzard Goes All Out on Its Esports League: Activision Blizzard(NASDAQ: ATVI)kicked off the first regular season ofOverwatchLeague on Jan. 10, and it had a great start with millions of viewers from around the world tuning in.
Activision's visionary CEO, Bobby Kotick, is making a bold bet thatOverwatchLeague can generate revenue on a scale similar to the NFL or NBA. Although that will take time, the early results look very promising.
Read on for details about viewership, what obstacle Blizzard needs to overcome forOverwatchLeague to grow its audience, and when investors can expectesportsto be the revenue generator that management envisions.
Image source: Overwatchleague.com.
Before the opening week, Activision andAmazon.com's Twitch announced an agreement to make the leading game-streaming site the exclusive third-party destination to watchOverwatchLeague matches through the first two seasons. Outside of China, the only two ways to watch games are either on Twitch or Blizzard's own site.
The deal helpedOverwatchgain the top spot on Twitch's list of most-watched games during opening week.OverwatchLeague attracted more than 10 million views in total through opening weekend, with opening day drawing 408,000 viewers per minute. Normally, the most-watched games on Twitch receive about 100,000 viewers on a good day, so with six months to go and 456 matches to be played until the playoffs,Overwatchwill gain a lot of free marketing.
And viewership likely won't peak until later in the summer when the playoffs start. The gold standard that every esport event is judged by is theLeague of LegendsChampionship Series, which reached more than 40 million viewers in 2016 -- eclipsing the 2016 NBA Finals.Overwatchprobably won't get anywhere close to that (no other game does), but this is just the first year for Blizzard's popular shooter, and there's no other esport that rivalsOverwatchLeague's scale.
The first season ofOverwatchLeague features 12 games per week from January through June, for a total of 480 regular season matches across all 12 participating teams. There will likely be more teams added for future seasons, representing major cities around the world. This will give fans even more games to watch, which could grow viewership even larger over time.
ALL OVERWATCH LEAGUE GAMES ARE HOSTED AT THE BLIZZARD ARENA IN LOS ANGELES. IMAGE SOURCE: OVERWATCHLEAGUE.COM.
OverwatchLeague features a fast-paced, team-based action shooter, with an infinite number of variables that go into winning and losing. These qualities make the game a natural fit as an esport. But at the same time, there's one hurdle that Blizzard has to overcome to make the game easy to watch for a large audience.
With 12 players (six on each team) moving around in a virtual environment, it can be difficult for even hardcoreOverwatchplayers to keep up with what's going on while spectating. It's the nature of any first-person shooter, where you see the action only from the viewpoint of one in-game character.
Blizzard has addressed this problem by implementing smart cameras, with frequent cuts made during a game to focus on the players who are perceived to be making the biggest impact at any given point. There are also different top-down camera angles so the audience can see where every player is positioned on the in-game map.
Plus, Activision Blizzard is relying on the talented commentators at its Major League Gaming network -- which Kotick has envisioned turning into the "ESPN of esports" -- to break down all the action for viewers with the same excitement and professionalism you would find for any football or basketball game on a TV network, such as ESPN.
Blizzard will no doubt receive lots of feedback about improvements for viewers. I would expect the audience to be more engaged and expand in future seasons as management continues to tweak the viewing experience. Not to mention that asOverwatchLeague continues to trend as a most-watched event on Twitch, it could help the company sell more games and bring in new players to the base.
Sponsorships will be a key part of monetizingOverwatchLeague, and Activision has already begun signing up major brands as sponsors. After the first week of games, Activision announcedToyotahas signed up as a North American launch partner. The automaker joinsHPandIntelas official sponsors ofOverwatchLeague, and there should be more if viewership levels remain strong.
In the long run, a large, growing audience should lead to more sponsorships, ticket sales, advertising, and sales ofconsumer products, which are all the ways Activision Blizzard plans to make money withOverwatchLeague.
Managementpreviously guidedthat investors shouldn't expectOverwatchLeague to generate meaningful revenue in the first year. The inaugural season is all about laying a foundation for long-term growth and profitability, which may take at least a few years. Even so, this is a good start for Activision Blizzard, as it sets out to grow esports into a significant new revenue channel over the long term.
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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors.John Ballardowns shares of Activision Blizzard. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Activision Blizzard and Amazon. The Motley Fool recommends Intel. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Crypto Legend Who Bought Pizza With 10,000 Bitcoin Is Back At It: It’s one of the best-known cryptocurrency legends: The guy who bought two pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoin back in 2010 to prove the digital currency worked. Now he’s at it again. This time, early Bitcoin developer Laszlo Hanyecz wanted to test the Lightning Network, a technology that runs parallel to a blockchain like Bitcoin’s network and aims to speed up transactions. He ended up paying 0.00649 Bitcoin for two pizzas, or $67, and the transaction cost about 6 U.S. cents. When Hanyecz bought pizza with Bitcoin about eight years ago, it was one of the first purchases done with the cryptocurrency, and it showed the Bitcoin community that it could actually be used as a means of exchange, he said. That was put in doubt late last year as transaction fees skyrocketed to as a high as $55, according to data provider BitInfoCharts, making everyday purchases impractical. Developers, including those for the Lightning Network, are working on ways to solve this problem. “I wanted to show that yes, you still can buy pizzas with Bitcoin,” Hanyecz said in a telephone interview from Jacksonville, Florida. “But if it’s a $50 pizza and a $100 transaction fee, that doesn’t work. The idea is that on Lightning Network we can get the security of Bitcoin and instant transfers. You don’t have to wait for a blockchain confirmation.” Lightning Network works when two parties open a payment channel between each other, committing funds to the channel. The parties can then transact without having to broadcast the transactions to the Bitcoin blockchain, avoiding delays and costs. Once the channel is closed, only the resulting balances are recorded on the blockchain, not the full transaction history of the channel. The mechanism is far from frictionless at this stage as the technology is still in a beta, or a testing stage. Hanyecz opened a payment channel with another blockchain enthusiast, who ordered the pizza for him. The delivery person was instructed to only deliver the pizza if Hanyecz showed him the first and last four characters of the string of code that proved he had made the payment. He showed him the numbers he had written down on a notebook, the driver saw they matched with what Hanyecz’s friend had told him, and he delivered the pizza. The pizza Hanyecz bought was worth about $30 on May 22, 2010, compared to $100 million for 10,000 Bitcoin today. That day has been remembered as Bitcoin Pizza Day since. || Is the Sun Rising or Setting for SunPower?: SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ: SPWR) has been through a lot in the past year, from a major strategy shift to solar tariffs being slapped on all of its U.S. imports. Amid the chaos, the company has slowly improved its core residential and commercial solar businesses, and recently sold its stake in yieldco 8point3 Energy Partners (NASDAQ: CAFD) . As investors consider what's next for this solar energy stock, here's a look at how both the 8point3 Energy Partners sale and the tariffs could impact the company. A SunPower installation with a cleaning robot washing panels. Image source: SunPower. Cashing in on 8point3 Energy Partners One of the biggest risks for SunPower has been its highly leveraged balance sheet, which is a particular problem now that it's reporting losses. But the $350 million or so in proceeds it will reap from the 8point3 Energy Partners sale should help the balance sheet. Below I've outlined what the debt side of the balance sheet may look like after the sale closes. I've eliminated the 2018 debt due in June and also subtracted the $176.9 million of debt from the El Pelicano facility that was sold earlier this year. Debt Type As of Q3 2017 Projected Pro Forma Convertible debt due 2018 $300 million $0 Convertible debt due 2021 $400 million $400 million Convertible debt due 2023 $425 million $425 million Non-recourse debt $637.8 million $460.9 million Other loans $30 million $30 million Total $1.79 billion $1.32 billion Source: SunPower SEC Filings. The company will likely have around $1.32 billion of debt by midyear, still a high level, but the next convertible debt tranche is due in 2021, and most of the remaining debt is backed by solar projects and is non-recourse to SunPower. If operations turn around and SunPower starts generating a significant operating profit, that debt won't be a problem. But that's where the picture gets a little less clear. Where does SunPower sit after solar tariffs? One of the reasons SunPower's stock hasn't recovered the last few quarters is that fears of solar tariffs have been hanging over the company -- and President Trump made those tariffs a reality. Unless it gets an exemption from the administration, SunPower will have to pay a 30% tariff on its imported panels, just like everyone else. The problem for SunPower is that its solar panels are already more expensive than those of most rival manufacturers, so it will be hit with even stiffer tariffs. Below I've put together a table showing SunPower's potential position in the industry after tariffs. In this example, I've assumed a commodity solar panel is $0.35 per watt, a SunPower panel is $0.60 per watt, the balance of system (BOS) costs are the same per watt no matter the system, and total tax benefits are 40% of the installation cost. Story continues Item Commodity SunPower Post-Tariff Commodity Post-Tariff SunPower Solar Panel $0.35 $0.60 $0.46 $0.78 BOS $2.65 $2.65 $2.65 $2.65 Total Cost $3.00 $3.25 $3.11 $3.43 Tax Benefits (40%) $1.20 $1.30 $1.24 $1.37 Net Cost $1.80 $1.95 $1.86 $2.06 Table by the author based on industry data. You can see that SunPower's cost disadvantage grows from $0.15 to $0.20 in this scenario; the company is definitely going to be hit harder by tariffs than competitors. One factor that may marginally reduce the impact on SunPower is that it has a pilot plant in Silicon Valley that's producing solar panels. Being U.S. made, those will be tariff-free, but that plant will provide less than 5% of total demand for the year. We also don't know yet how customers will react. The tariffs are pushing costs for solar power systems upward across the board, but SunPower was already charging a premium. It's possible that it will be able to balance out some of the tariffs by lowering its prices slightly. To put prices and margins into perspective, SunPower reported total residential revenue per watt (which includes inverters, racking, and other components) of $2.17 in Q3 2017 and a gross margin of 21.5%. If it simply absorbed my projected higher net cost of $0.11 per watt, its margins would fall to 16.4%. That wouldn't be a good number, but it wouldn't be the end of the world either. Where does SunPower go from here? When the company reports earnings next week, we'll get a better picture of how management views U.S. solar under a tariff regime. We know it's won at least 505 MW of tenders in France , over one-third of a year's worth of production, and its sales are growing in countries like China as well. We'll have to wait and whether the U.S. market is going to dry up, or if margins will shrink because of tariffs. What may be even more important to investors is how its power plant business is doing. Gross margins in power plants have been in the single digits for the past year, and SunPower has decided to shift to selling more components like panels, trackers, and inverters to third-party developers. The new strategy, along with 1.2 GW of panel capacity in China, could lead to strong margin growth in power plants; a gross margin in the mid-teens would be welcome news for investors. But there's no evidence yet that revenue or margin is being contracted for 2018 or beyond. SunPower's stock has fallen so far that it's tough to give up on at this price. But the company will have a lot of questions to answer when earnings come out. At least for now, though, we know the debt's it has coming due in 2018 probably won't be a problem. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Travis Hoium owns shares of 8point3 Energy Partners and SunPower. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . View comments || Bitcoin Roller-Coasters Back Above $11,000 After a Frantic 24 Hours: The roller coaster January for cryptocurrency investors eased for a few hours on Thursday as Bitcoin held steady after roaring back from its first plunge below $10,000 since December . The largest digital currency climbed 2.1% to $11,620 at 11:34 a.m. in London, Bloomberg composite pricing showed. It held fairly steady for much of the Asia trading day as investors took a breath following a frantic 24 hours in which the digital coin swung through a trading range of $2,600. Rivals ethereum and litecoin were little changed, while Ripple jumped 12%. This market is volatile and there is not enough capital in it to stabilize, Darren Franceschini, chief executive with Blockchain Technologies Consulting, said in an email. Bitcoins gyrations in 2018 has investors, regulators and onlookers debating whether the speculative bubble has popped after a 1,400 percent ascent last year. Jitters across the globe over a potential bloodbath helped wipe about $400 billion off the global market value of digital assets in 10 days through Wednesday. Read: Did Bitcoin Just Burst? How It Compares to Historys Big Bubbles While Bitcoin and peers staged multiple comebacks in 2017 following double-digit daily losses, the digital coin has not been able to string together a rally through the first three weeks of this year. Cryptocurrencies across the board are coming under increasing scrutiny from regulators around the world, with South Korean authorities debating a potential ban on local exchanges while China is widening its crackdown on the industry. Bixin, one of Chinas larger operators for the so-called wallets that hold digital coins, said it was suspending all OTC trading and escrow trading on Wednesday, blaming uncertainties regarding regulation policies. No re-start date was set.B || 5 Texas Stocks You Can Buy Now: When it comes to investing, Texas has long been associated with the energy industry... and for good reason. Many of the world's biggest energy companies are headquartered there, and a significant portion of North America's oil and gas reserves are found deep under Texas soil. But the Lone Star State offers far more to investors than just black gold: Texas is a great state in which to do business, or to locate a company's headquarters, thanks to its relatively low taxes, strong transportation infrastructure, access to major shipping terminals, and central U.S. location. This is why some of the biggest non-oil companies in the U.S. are based there. And with a dynamic and growing population of well-educated residents, Texas also is a great place for growing businesses. Welcome to Texas highway sign. Image source: Getty Images. If you're looking to boost your portfolio and go big with Texas, here are five stocks with ties to the state that might be perfect for your portfolio. Expanding where the growth is Over the past several years, it's been tough to invest in the energy sector, but with oil prices steadily climbing for much of the past year and holding steady around $70 per barrel, there are a lot of signs that the worst cycle in many years has finally run its course. Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) is set for years of profits no matter what happens to oil prices. Phillips 66 is best known for its refining and gas-station businesses, but there's a lot to like about the Houston-based midstream and downstream giant beyond these slow-growth segments. Since spinning out as a stand-alone company, Phillips 66 has steadily invested in high-growth opportunities in petrochemical manufacturing and oil and gas infrastructure. In 2018, the company will spend $2.3 billion on capital projects, with the majority of that -- $1.4 billion -- dedicated to expanding its export and chemical manufacturing capacity and adding to its pipelines and other terminals. Story continues The company's past investments in those segments have paid off. Earnings in the midstream and chemicals units were up 15% through the first nine months of last year. But after a huge bounce-back year in refining , it's easy to miss out on the long-term prospects for those segments to eventually become the most important parts of the business. Looking at the long term, however, the company's focus on the best-growth segments of the industry, along with a strong record of dividend growth and share buybacks, makes it an ideal long-term holding. PSX Dividend Chart PSX Dividend data by YCharts. A rising tide Offshore drillers may have struggled more than any part of the oil and gas industry during the downturn, as this subsector went through its worst patch in decades. But with oil steadily moving higher and producers announcing plans to finally start spending a little more offshore, several of the companies that have managed to ride out the downturn are in very good positions to profit going forward. High-spec offshore driller Ensco PLC (NYSE: ESV) is one of my top picks. While Ensco is domiciled in the U.K., it has deep roots in Texas, where its main operations are based, and where its predecessor company was founded over 40 years ago. And with many of the world's biggest oil producers -- the companies Ensco contracts to drill for -- also headquartered in Texas, it makes strategic sense for the company to have a major presence there. What's exciting about Ensco? In short, it has managed to not just ride out the downturn, but come through it stronger with its acquisition of Atwood Oceanics adding to its fleet of high-spec drilling vessels. ESV Price to Book Value Chart ESV Price to Book Value data by YCharts. Lastly, Ensco is dirt cheap, trading for barely more than one-third of the book value of its assets. Now's an excellent time to invest in this top-tier offshore driller. It could be rough seas for a bit yet, especially if oil prices fall. But even if that happens, the company's prospects over the next several years look very good. A dividend as big as Texas Telecom giant AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) may not offer the growth prospects you can find with other companies, but at recent prices, it pays a very impressive 5.3% yield -- more than double that of the S&P 500 average. It also has increased the payout every year for three-plus decades. T Dividend Chart T Dividend data by YCharts. It hasn't been a great year-and-change for "Ma Bell" investors, with a share price that's down almost 15% since mid-2016. But with one of the biggest wireless networks and expanding pay-TV and broadband holdings, AT&T is an ideal stock for investors looking for a predictable source of regular income. And it's trading for less than 13 times next year's earnings, a cheap price that helps create some margin of safety, as well. AT&T may not be a very exciting investment, but if you're seeking a dependable source of income at a reasonable price, the Dallas-based Dividend Aristocrat deserves to be on your list . Building something big Millennials often get a bad rap for being entitled, lazy, and overeducated but undermotivated. The stark reality is that this generation came of age in the worst economic environment since the Great Depression. After years of challenges to get established, they're starting to come into their own. And as the biggest demographic in the U.S., they're turning into a real financial powerhouse. This is becoming especially true in the housing market, and The Woodlands-based LGI Homes Inc (NASDAQ: LGIH) is taking full advantage of that, investing a lot of resources to build homes aimed squarely at first-time homebuyers, of which more than 40% fall squarely into the millennial generation . That's paying off with record earnings and home-closing growth for LGI Homes. LGIH Chart LGIH data by YCharts. In the third quarter of 2017, the homebuilder closed on 1,729 homes, the most ever in a quarter, and its earnings per share surged 63% as a result. LGI Homes operates in numerous markets, including five of the 10 fastest-growing real estate markets in the U.S., but Texas continues to be a huge part of its business. With nearly a decade of real estate sales growing faster than the national average, that's likely to remain the case for years ahead. LGI Homes' strong presence in the state, as well as its plans to continue expanding into other high-growth markets with strong millennial demand, make it an ideal growth stock to buy and hold for years to come. A Texas original turning big burritos into bigger profits Founded in Austin in 1982, Chuy's Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: CHUY) didn't go public and really start expanding until late 2012. And frankly, it hasn't been a great ride for investors so far, as the "restaurant recession" of the past couple of years has impacted almost every casual-eatery chain in the country. Add in the impact of last year's hurricanes on Chuy's results, and investors in the chain, which is best known for its giant burritos, irreverent and unique decor, and reasonable prices, have experienced an up-and-down ride so far. Even as the general slowdown in traffic at most casual eateries affected Chuy's, it tended to outperform the averages and report smaller comps and traffic declines than its peers. And with the national metrics starting to improve, Chuy's looks primed to start bucking the trend and return to growth . Here's what investors should focus on the most: The restaurant business goes through these cycles, where consumer demand ebbs and flows from one year to the next. With Chuy's, the opportunity is long term. With only 91 locations, the company should be able to steadily grow its restaurant count -- and profits -- for many years to come. There are a million Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants in the U.S., but Chuy's unique brand, excellent prices, and high-quality food make it very appealing to hungry customers in every economic environment. Because it has some of the strongest returns of any public chain and is trading for some of its cheapest earnings multiplies since going public, Chuy's is likely to be a great investment that's worth buying right now. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Jason Hall owns shares of Chuy's Holdings, Ensco, LGI Homes, and Phillips 66. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chuy's Holdings. The Motley Fool owns shares of Ensco and LGI Homes. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || 3 Companies Set to Lose From Apple's 2018 iPhones: Apple(NASDAQ: AAPL)is rumored to be launching three new iPhones later this year -- two ultra-premium models with advanced organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays and one cost-effective model, with a less sophisticated liquid crystal display (LCD).
This smartphone lineup is expected to strengthen Apple's leadership position in ultra-high-end devices as well as in the more typical flagship smartphone price points. To the extent that this lineup can help Apple drive unit-shipment growth, the suppliers of components inside the devices should benefit, too.
But companies such asQualcomm(NASDAQ: QCOM),Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company(NYSE: TSM), andSamsung(NASDAQOTH: SSNLF)appear poised to lose some business as a result of next year's iPhone lineup.
Today, Qualcomm supplies Apple with stand-alone cellular modems, which are composed of a cellular baseband processor and supporting components to enable cellular connectivity.
Apple sources cellular modems from both Qualcomm andIntel(NASDAQ: INTC), though it's widely believed that Qualcomm has the majority share in the current lineup.
Image source: Qualcomm.
That being said, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, whose track record is solid with respect to publishing details about future Apple products and suppliers of components for those products, recently claimed that Intel would win the entirety of the modem orders for the next iPhone models.
If that report is true, Qualcomm's iPhone-related revenue is set to decline substantially during the coming product cycle, as only legacy iPhone models (which don't tend to be Apple's best-selling models in any product cycle) will have Qualcomm components.
The modems that Intel currently sells to Apple for the iPhone 7 series, iPhone 8 series, and iPhone X devices are designed by Intel but manufactured by contract chip manufacturing giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
However, Intel'slatest XMM 7560 modem-- the model that's expected to power this year's new iPhones -- is going to be manufactured using Intel's own 14-nanometer chip manufacturing technology.
Image source: Intel.
Although TSMC's iPhone modem revenue won't go to zero since it will still be producing the older Intel modems for older iPhone models (as well as the Qualcomm modems in the iPhone 7 series devices), Intel's move to manufacture the XMM 7560 in its own factories should lead to a significant drop in TSMC's iPhone modem manufacturing revenue.
Fortunately for TSMC, the company is believed to be the sole manufacturer of the applications processors that'll power the upcoming iPhones -- a much higher-value part than the cellular modem -- and the company will likely manufacture chips for other key Apple suppliers as well. So despite some losses, it seems TSMC's Apple exposure will remain high in the upcoming iPhone product cycle.
Samsung was a big winner in the most recent iPhone product cycle as it won the orders to manufacture the OLED displays found on the ultra-premium iPhone X. Samsung is also the manufacturer of the Qualcomm modems used in the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X.
If it's true that Qualcomm won't be supplying any modems in the upcoming iPhones, then Samsung's chip manufacturing business should see a decrease in chip sales (all else being equal that is) from Apple's move to Intel modems in the latest iPhones.
Samsung will still supply chips for the discounted iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus models, should Apple keep them on the market.
On top of that, it's widely believed that Samsung won't be the exclusive OLED display supplier to Apple for this upcoming product cycle, withLG Displayreportedly supplyingsome of the panels for the rumored iPhone with a 6.46-inch OLED display.
Samsung is still anticipated to be a critical supplier of this year's new iPhones, but its importance looks like it may diminish.
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Ashraf Eassaowns shares of Intel and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Qualcomm and has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Intel. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Americans Are Putting Retirement Savings Ahead of Regular Savings: We hear a lot about the importance of saving for retirement, and it looks like more Americans might finally be listening. In a recent GOBankingRates survey , more of us store our wealth in 401(k)s than any other type of account. Specifically, 28% of adults have most of their money in 401(k)s, compared to 18% who keep their money in a savings account. Now, on the one hand, this data makes sense. While the typical worker needs anywhere from three to six months' worth of living expenses to be adequately prepared for emergencies , that sort of savings level won't cut it in retirement. Therefore, it's logical for Americans to have more money in their 401(k)s than in the bank. Savings jar filled with coins IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES. There's just one problem: Most adults aren't close to having fully funded emergency accounts. An estimated 57% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, while 39% have no near-term savings at all. (This data, incidentally, comes from the same source as the aforementioned statistics above.) So why are Americans focusing more on retirement than regular savings? For one thing, 401(k) contributions are pretty seamless -- you tell your employer how much you wish to set aside, and that amount gets automatically deducted from your paycheck, just like that. Putting money into regular savings often takes more willpower and effort, though there is the option to automate the process as with a 401(k). Furthermore, because there's a lot of mystery and trepidation surrounding retirement expenses, some folks may be more inclined to save for the unknown, even if it means letting their immediate savings fall by the wayside. The problem, however, is that without an adequate level of accessible savings, you run the risk of landing in major credit card debt the moment you're hit with an unplanned expense. And that mistake, in turn, could haunt you all the way into retirement. You need emergency savings Make no mistake about it: Saving for retirement is a responsible move, so if you're presently funding a 401(k), that's something to be proud of. That said, your immediate savings should always come first. Story continues Now as I said earlier, a healthy emergency fund is one with three to six months of living expenses. Which end of that range should you stick to? It depends on your circumstances. If you're single and don't own property and work in a mostly thriving industry, then you might choose to settle on three months of savings. On the other hand, if you're the sole earner in a household with several dependents and you own a home, you're safer socking away six months' worth of living costs. The same holds true if your income is variable. What happens when you don't have a solid emergency fund? It's simple: You risk racking up major credit card debt that may not only cost you money but also compromise your retirement savings goals. Imagine you get hit with a $5,000 home repair bill unexpectedly. If you don't have that kind of money on hand, and instead put it on a credit card charging 20% interest, you'll end up having spent roughly $8,000 if it takes you five years to pay off that balance. This means two things: First, you'll end up wasting $3,000 on interest, which is money that could've funded your nest egg instead. Second, it means that during that five-year repayment period, you may not get to contribute to a retirement account because all of your spare cash will be going toward your credit card payments. Now you may be thinking: "If I don't have $5,000 in regular savings but have it in my 401(k), I'll just remove it from there." Big mistake. If you touch that money before age 59 1/2, you'll be hit with a 10% early withdrawal penalty. A better bet? Amass a decent chunk of near-term savings and then start socking money away for retirement. This way, you'll have an easier time staying out of debt during your working years. Remember, credit card debt can be harder to shake than you'd expect -- so much so that 68% of U.S. adults worry they'll never manage to pay off what they owe in their lifetime. Another option? Fund your retirement account and emergency savings simultaneously. This strategy makes sense if you work for a company that offers a 401(k) match, since you'll earn free money just for contributing. While saving for retirement is a respectable goal, saving for emergencies should always come first. Follow that rule and you'll be in pretty good shape on the whole. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price of Bitcoin is $10960.00 @Chain || The fake value has to be continuously created somewhere - if asset bubbles give up then the FED will have to take over. All part of the fiat journey to zero. Got Bitcoin ? || Correct, but if you take a look the graphs slightly differ. Which would also slightly alter the total so instead of a bullish trend to let’s say 7.5k bitcoin to USD equivalent. The alt coin may see a slightly Lower trend in terms of usd || Current Bitcoin Price = $13559.12 --- Includes Sum of Forks, Core $11544.00 (85.14%) + Cash $1793.94 (13.23%) + Gold $221.18 (1.63%) || Order your secure and smart Bitcoin hardware wallet - Only 69.60 EUR https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/4518?path=/products/ledger-nano-s … #bitcoin #btc 00:17 pic.twitter.com/9hn1wHG28J || #bitcoin @bitcoinrts How Budbo is Using Blockchain Technology to Legitimize the Cannabis Industry http://dlvr.it/QFFMrl | http://bit.ly/2vIfQaF pic.twitter.com/DLPXrrnS3S || Get Free Bitcoin https://qoinpro.com/55e9e71f51eafc907bb6d9da24d898e6 … || so bitcoin cash is crashing http://ift.tt/2E4QSag #reddit #bitcoincash || 0x5c6787cffa9D5c50cb082a69836928f2e85E1e8b || Till it gets to the point that it is over regulated and only a select few are able to profit from the massive and restrictive arbitrary rules put in place by their friends in Government. Examples would be..... Oh I don't know.....Every other fucking market on the fucking planet!
|
Trend: down || Prices: 11489.70, 11512.60, 11573.30, 10779.90, 9965.57, 9395.01, 9337.55, 8866.00, 9578.63, 9205.12
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2018-11-21]
BTC Price: 4602.17, BTC RSI: 16.54
Gold Price: 1225.80, Gold RSI: 55.34
Oil Price: 54.63, Oil RSI: 22.79
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Newsflash: Bitcoin Cash Price Careens Below $390 as Hard Fork Approaches: The bitcoin cash price crashed below the $400 level on Thursday, less than two hours before the fourth-largest cryptocurrency’s network is expected to splinter into competing versions following a contentious hard fork.
The crypto market had already beenbatteredover the previous 48 hours, with every major cryptocurrency posting losses in excess of 10 percent and the combined value of all cryptocurrenciesslinking below the $200 billion markfor the first time in November.
Bitcoin cash had been among this week’s worst performers, as it rapidlyshed the gainsit had made last week in advance of today’s hard fork. The BCH carnage ramped up even further on Thursday around 14:40 UTC, as a wall of sell pressure forced thebitcoin cash pricebelow support at $400, taking the coin to a new yearly low of $382 as of the time of writing.
The sell-off occurred just two hours before today’shard fork, which is expected to introduce even further volatility into BCH as multiple cryptocurrency networks compete for the “bitcoin cash” moniker and ticker symbol.
Stay tuned for CCN’s continuing coverage of today’s BCH hard fork.
Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts fromTradingView.
The postNewsflash: Bitcoin Cash Price Careens Below $390 as Hard Fork Approachesappeared first onCCN. || Bitcoin Trading Volumes in Hyperinflation-Struck Venezuela Hits Record Highs: Venezuela Bitcoin As the economic crisis in Venezuela worsens leading to a growing exodus of citizens out of the country, the demand for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has exploded. According to Coin Dance, Venezuelans traded bitcoins worth nearly 300 million bolivars last week and the record could be broken again as so far this week bitcoin worth more than 292 million bolivars has already been traded. This is in continuation of a trend on the BTC/VES pair that began earlier in the year. The worsening economic conditions have resulted in reports of Venezuelans fleeing the country in large numbers on foot and by bus after finding life intolerable in the socialist country. Per statistics from the International Organization for Migration, since 2015 around 1.6 million have fled and the number is still rising. Most of them have fled to other South American countries such as Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Argentina. 95% Devaluation Besides an increase in demand for bitcoins as a hedge against the high inflationary conditions in the country, part of the reason for the record trading volumes in the BTC/VES pair has to do with the devaluation of the currency a few weeks ago. On August 10, five zeros were stripped off from the countrys currency after inflation levels that had risen to stratospheric levels, as CCN reported. However, this seems not to have solved matters as already the inflation rate is estimated to have reached a 100% even though the new Venezuelan currency is less than two months old, per Bloomberg. Other than devaluing the currency by 95% and renaming it the sovereign bolivar, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro also announced that the bolivar would be pegged to the Petro cryptocurrency which was unveiled earlier in the year. This was in the hopes of circumventing sanctions and gaining access to international finance besides bringing the persistent hyperinflation under control. Low Uptake Adoption of the petro cryptocurrency has, however, been low amidst wide skepticism with some questioning whether it exists at all. Despite this the government has soldiered on making efforts to boost the cryptocurrency by, for instance, decreeing that it would be the official currency of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA), the state oil company. Maduro has also pushed for the Petro to become the second unit of account, as CCN reported in late August. As of next Monday, Venezuela will have a second accounting unit based on the price, the value of the petro, Maduro remarked on national television. It will be a second accounting unit of the Republic and will begin operations as a mandatory accounting unit of our PDVSA oil industry. Story continues Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Bitcoin Trading Volumes in Hyperinflation-Struck Venezuela Hits Record Highs appeared first on CCN . View comments || How Intel's Modem Business Could Benefit From the 2019 iPhone Cycle: Chip giant Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) was one of two sources for Apple 's (NASDAQ: AAPL) cellular modems for the iPhone 7, iPhone 8, and iPhone X products. The company is believed to be the sole modem supplier for the recently launched iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR devices -- something that Intel modem rival Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) indicated on its July 25 earnings conference call. Intel's share of Apple's modem needs over the course of the current product cycle is likely to be quite high, but it's not 100% -- Qualcomm CFO George Davis said that the company "will continue to provide modems for Apple legacy devices." (Apple still currently sells the older iPhone 7 series and iPhone 8 series products at discounted prices.) A person holding an Intel 5G modem between their fingers. Image source: Intel. Here's why Intel could be set to gain further iPhone modem market share in the coming iPhone product cycle. If Intel wins it all again... Apple generally keeps three generations' worth of iPhones available in the market. At the top of its iPhone product stack are its newest models, with last year's models below them and the iPhones from the year before that another notch below. Today this means that the Intel-only iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR sit at the top of the stack, the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus -- which come in either Intel- or Qualcomm-powered versions -- are a step below, and then the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus (also offered in variants with either Intel or Qualcomm modems) sit at the bottom of the stack. Next year, I expect today's iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max to be discontinued in favor of their replacements. However, I believe the current iPhone XR will live on as the replacement for today's iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus and then the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus will replace the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, respectively, with the latter two being discontinued entirely. In that case, if Intel were to win all of the modem orders for next year's iPhones, Intel would be the exclusive vendor for both the latest models as well as the discounted previous-generation models. It would only split modem orders with Qualcomm for the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, which will presumably be Apple's cheapest offerings in the coming product cycle. Story continues Could Intel have it all by fall of 2020? If Intel manages to win the entirety of Apple's modem orders for both the iPhones that launch in 2019 as well as the iPhones that launch in 2020, then assuming that Apple discontinues the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus at that point (as Apple's history would indicate), Intel should be in every new iPhone that Apple sells -- increasing Intel's share within Apple and, presumably, boosting Intel's Apple-related modem revenue, too. At that point, Intel wouldn't be able to grow its modem business by grabbing additional share in the iPhone -- it'd have to rely on other factors for growth, such as growth in overall iPhone unit shipments. Additionally, interim CEO and CFO Bob Swan did say during the company's July 26 earnings call that "as we migrate to a 5G world, we expect margins in the modem business to improve." This could be a clue that the company is counting on dollar content increases in future iPhones as its modems become more complex. That's not a new strategy. In fact, Broadcom , a fellow Apple supplier, has enjoyed significant per-device dollar content increases for years, which has helped to fuel the growth of its own wireless chip business (which, like Intel's cellular modem business, depends heavily on sales to Apple). The bigger picture Intel's modem business is just one part of its overall client computing group (CCG). In 2017, CCG generated about $34 billion in revenue. Of that, about $31.22 billion came from sales of platforms, while the remaining $2.78 billion came from what the company calls "adjacency" products. Cellular modems are a part of the company's CCG adjacency revenue. Through the first half of 2018, Intel's CCG adjacency revenue was up 9.4% . I'd expect that revenue growth to accelerate in the second half of 2018 as a result of the company's apparent sole-source position in Apple's latest iPhones. However, in the scheme of things, though Intel's modem business has grown quite nicely and there's an opportunity for this segment to keep growing for a while, it's still ultimately nowhere near as important as, say, the company's notebook and desktop processor businesses . More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Ashraf Eassa owns shares of Qualcomm. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Qualcomm and has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom Ltd. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Can Baidu Overcome Trade War Fears When It Reports Earnings?: The past several months haven't been kind to investors in Chinese stocks. The ongoing economic saber-rattling between Washington and Beijing has created an atmosphere of worry that's weighing on companies from the Middle Kingdom. EvenBaidu(NASDAQ: BIDU), China's search leader, hasn't been immune. Though the companycrushed earnings expectations last quarter, the combination of trade tensions and the possibility ofAlphabet's Google search unit reentering the Chinese market have helped sink its share price. Baidu stock has lost nearly a third of its value since it peaked in mid-May.
The company reports on its third quarter after the market close on Oct 30, and shareholders are hoping that strong results will be enough to pull the stock out of its slump . Let's take a look at the company's results from last quarter and see if they provide any context for the future.
Baidu's Silicon Valley AI Lab. Image source: Baidu.
Forthe second quarter, Baidu reported revenue of $3.93 billion, an increase of 32% year over year, which surpassed analysts' consensus estimate and landed at the high end of management's guidance. The bottom line was similarly robust, with adjusted earnings per share of $3.18, significantly higher than the $2.44 expected by analysts.
In Q2, Baidu delivered on all the metrics that count. Online advertising sales increased 25% year over year, while the number of its digital marketing customers grew 9% to more than 511,000. The company not only added new advertisers, but its customers spent more, as revenue per customer grew 16% to $6,200.
Baidu's recently spun-off streaming serviceiQiyi(NASDAQ: IQ)added $932 million in revenueto Baidu's coffers, a 51% increase over the prior-year period. Content costs grew to $788 million, up 68% year over year, as the company continued to invest in programming for the subsidiary. Baidu still owns a controlling stake in iQiyi, so it will continue to have an impact on its parent's results.
The search giant has been divesting itself of a number of businesses outside its core operations so it can focus its resources on search and a variety of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including voice control, real-time translation, facial recognition, and self-driving cars.
Escalating trade tensions had already knocked the stock down somewhat from its May highs by the time Baidu reported in late July. The sell-off intensified when rumors surfaced that Google was planning to bring a version of its search product back to mainland China, in a move that would challenge Baidu's dominance in what was a fairly captive ad market.
Alphabet has since confirmed that it's testing a censored version of its Google search that could eventually go online in China, if given the go-ahead by officials in Beijing. The company still must deal with protests about the move from its employees, and criticism from Congress about the plan, which some have described as unethical.
Baidu received permits to test self-driving cars in Beijing. Image source: Baidu.
For Q3, Baidu has forecast revenue of between 27.37 billion yuan and 28.77 billion yuan, (between $3.94 billion and $4.15 billion at current exchange rates), which would represent year-over-year growth of between 23% and 30% in local currency. It's in the process of selling off a number of non-core businesses -- excluding those from the results, it's anticipating revenue in a range of 26.56 billion yuan to 27.92 billion yuan ($3.83 billion to $4.02 billion), or year-over-year growth of between 26% and 33%.
Analysts' consensus estimates call for revenue of $4 billion, up 18% year over year (in dollars), and for earnings per share of $2.43, a decline of 35%.
While the potential for increased competition and global affairs to drag on its Baidu's business certainly bear watching, investors will eventually have to return their focus to the company's performance -- which lately has been just fine.
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Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors.Danny Venaowns shares of Alphabet (A shares), Baidu, and iQiyi. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), and Baidu. The Motley Fool recommends iQiyi. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Strong Demand: Crypto Hedge Funds are Still Raising $100 Million+: Throughout 2018, the cryptocurrency market has lost 75 percent of its valuation. Yet, crypto hedge funds are raising hundreds of millions of dollars from accredited investors and institutions.
On November 1, CCNreportedthat Grayscale Investments, a subsidiary company of cryptocurrency venture capital behemoth Digital Currency Group, raised more than $330 million from both existing and new investors.
After recording a 1,200 percent increase in the amount the firm had raised across three quarters in 2017, Michael Sonnenshein, managing director of Grayscale Investmentstatedthat the substantial 69 percent drop in the price of Bitcoin had minimal impact on the company’s client base.
“Bitcoin prices doing nothing but go down the entire year has not deterred our existing clients from putting more capital to work. Asset inflows are really strong despite these price declines. Investors are taking the pullback as an opportunity to increase their exposure. The price has not slowed down the pace of investments — it’s actually caused us to broaden our relationships.”
As a publicly tradable instrument provider of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Zcash that allow investors in the stock market to invest in the cryptocurrency market, Grayscale has a strong reputation as a digital asset asset manager and investment firm.
But, over the last several months, other major cryptocurrency hedge funds such as Pantera Capital and former Point72 portfolio manager Travis Kling-founded Ikigai Asset Management have raised over $100 million to invest in the asset class.
The cryptocurrency sector has fallen by a significant margin within a 11-month period, but to many investors exploring the asset class as a long-term investment opportunity, the correction of the market has been considered an opportunity.
Throughout the past 10 years, the cryptocurrency market recorded four major corrections, all of which demonstrated drops of over 80 percent in valuation. Hence, as Travis Kling emphasized, the cryptocurrency market is merely at the start of exponential growth and the correction is a viable opportunity for new investors to enter.
“Same as that earlier invention, I believe crypto will create trillions of dollars along the way. Already the market for virtual coins is valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. And it’s all just getting started. So I left Point72, billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s hedge fund, in December to continue my investing career, but in a new asset class,” Klingwrote on August 1.
In August, Pantera Capitalraised more than $100 millionand is targeting to raise $75 million more to establish a venture capital-style fund to invest in cryptocurrency startups.
Over 140 investors participated in the $100 million fund of Pantera with a 10-year long-term vision to invest in the cryptocurrency industry and emerging startups rather than cryptocurrenies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Historically, the cryptocurrency market has rebounded strongly from large corrections and consistently achieved new all-time highs.
2018 has evidently shown that cryptocurrency as an asset class is strong and robust, supported by a rapidly growing industry. It is not a fad but rather a newly emerging technology, consensus currency, and computing system that is competing against existing centralized systems.
The postStrong Demand: Crypto Hedge Funds are Still Raising $100 Million+appeared first onCCN. || Nail in the Coffin? BTC.top Shifts Hash to Bitcoin Cash ABC to ‘End Chaos’: Significant cryptocurrency mining outfit BTC.top has begun mining bitcoin cash on the blockchain supported by Bitcoin ABC (BCHABC), potentially putting another nail in the coffin of the minority Bitcoin SV (BSV) chain. Including its BTC operation, the pool has more hash by itself than all of BSV combined, meaning that the threat of a potential attack byCalvin Ayre’s CoinGeekis essentially neutralized as long as the BCH mining landscape remains otherwise consistent.
BTC.top CEO Jiang Zhuoer announced the move Saturday morning, stating that it was time to “end [the] chaos” caused by last week’scontentious hard fork.
Intervening blocks of BCHABC have been largely mined by BTC.com and Bitcoin.com. BTC.top regularly mines up to 6 percent of the regularBitcoinnetwork, and their contribution to BCHABC has resulted in a rate of about 5 percent of all blocks mined.
Zhuoer has written extensively in his native Chinese on the subject of the Bitcoin Cash debate. Some translations have been hard to decipher as they have had to be done from OCR images. All the same, he can be quoted as saying in anEnglish-language blog post on the subject:
“Therefore without an effective arbitration mechanism to prevent unnecessary splitting of the BCH chain, it will impede adoption, which implies a reduction of users. This conflicts with the ideology of high-frequency use for a cash system. […] [H]ash voting is not a segmentation based on power, but rather it assumes the role of a jury which reflects the opinion of all participants in the system. The community has the right to signal their preference using all sorts of methods to affect voting. […] Hash vote is not the same as miner vote, but rather acts like a jury to reflect opinions of everyone in the community.”
In Proof-of-Work (PoW) systems, the longest chain wins, and currently, BCHABC is consistently ahead of BSV. Zhuoer has not indicated how long his pool will support ABC’s Bitcoin Cash chain, but at present, it seems the pool is mining both bitcoin cash and bitcoin proper. In fact, over the week it had mined 10 percent of the blocks in the regular Bitcoin network.
As for the BSV chain, four pools have primarily mined all of its blocks – CoinGeek, BMG Pool, and SV Pool. At time of writing, BSV was effectively seven blocks behind BCHABC, and its blocks were much larger in size.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
The postNail in the Coffin? BTC.top Shifts Hash to Bitcoin Cash ABC to ‘End Chaos’appeared first onCCN. || Crypto is Property: Chinese Court Upholds Citizens Rights to Own Bitcoin: The Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration (SCIA) has recently affirmed that cryptocurrencies, specifically bitcoin and several of its hard forks, are considered legal property and Chinese citizens have a right to own and transfer them.
The SCIA recentlypublishedan analysis of a contract dispute over WeChat, describing the legal proceedings of a case in which one individual managed nearly $500,000 worth of crypto assets on behalf of another private individual. The manager then refused to return these assets after their client dealt with a third party.
The defendant in this case argued that the whole arrangement between the three parties was invalid, as bitcoin, ICOs and other cryptocurrencies are not recognized as currencies under Chinese law.
The arbitrator sided against this reasoning, ruling instead that the holding of these assets as property is not itself illegal, so it is not illegal to include the transfer of crypto assets as a binding clause in business agreements. Further, the arbitrator was careful to note that bitcoin “is not a currency issued by the monetary authority nor electronic legal tender,” though this should not preclude it from being protected as personal property.
“Bitcoin is not a legal currency, but it is no doubt that it deserves protection by law as property. Bitcoin has property attributes...economic value, and can bring economic benefits,” the court claims.
The case only involved bitcoin and two of its hard forks, bitcoin cash and bitcoin diamond, and, therefore, arguably does not rule out further legal disputes in the future over other cryptocurrencies not derived from the original Bitcoin protocol.
It’s important to note that the SCIA is not a lawmaking body itself, and the arbitrator in question does not have any influence over the future status of crypto assets as a legal currency in Chinese jurisdictions. Nevertheless, this does set a judicial precedent for citizens to treat crypto assets as legal property.
Although the Chinese legal space often seems opaque to outside audiences, this case should serve as a clear example to show that the courts are not intractably hostile to the rights of private citizens over bitcoin ownership.
This article originally appeared onBitcoin Magazine. || Ex-Bitcoin Skeptic Ron Paul Says Crypto Could Prevent Recession: Retired US Congressman Ron Paul, a one-time bitcoin skeptic, called for a tax exemption on all cryptocurrencies, saying the move could prevent an economic recession.
Ron Paul, the father of current United States Senator Rand Paul, made the suggestion in ablog postentitled “Trump Is Right, the Fed Is Crazy,” where he blasted the Federal Reserve for manipulating interest rates.
“It is likely that the next Fed-created recession will come sooner rather than later,” Paul wrote. “This could be the major catastrophe that leads to the end of fiat currency.”
Paul said the only way to avoid such a crisis is to allow people to use alternative currencies and to exempt “all transactions in precious metals and cryptocurrencies from capital gains taxes and other taxes.”
Paul said central banks constantly increase and decrease the money supply to control the economy by controlling interest rates.
He said theFederal Reserve‘s cyclical manipulation of interest rates actually fuels recessions by creating an artificial economic boom.
“This can create an illusion of prosperity,” he wrote. “Eventually, reality catches up to the Federal Reserve-created fantasies. When that happens, there is a recession or worse, leading the Fed to start the whole boom-and-bust cycle over again.”
Ron Paul is a libertarian who opposes government intervention in the free market. This is a sentiment shared by many in the cryptocurrency community, who prefer the decentralized and unregulated market that crypto operates in.
Paul — a frequent critic ofPresident Donald Trump— agrees with Trump’s recent criticism of the Federal Reserve.
Paul, true to form, also called for abolishing the Fed, saying a limited government and an economy that is not manipulated is better for society. “Not only should we audit the Federal Reserve, we should get rid of it!” he said.
As recently as December 2017, Ron Paul was a bitcoin skeptic and staunch advocate of the gold standard, asCCN has reported. At the time, Paul expressed surprise that an informal Twitter poll revealed that more than half of his Twitter followers would rather invest in bitcoin than in gold.
“Bitcoin is very exciting, and it’s booming, but [bitcoin investors] don’t have a long-term perspective,” Paul said at the time. “What’s it going to be like in 10 years? Nobody knows. But we have a pretty good idea of where gold will be, in a general sense.”
Paul has since changed his outlook on crypto, and now says he believes that bitcoin and a gold-backed currencycan co-existin a free society.
Ron Paul’s son, Senator Rand Paul,accepted bitcoincontributions when he ran for president in 2016, as CCN reported. He lost the election but made history for becoming the first US presidential candidate to accept bitcoin to fund his campaign.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
The postEx-Bitcoin Skeptic Ron Paul Says Crypto Could Prevent Recessionappeared first onCCN. || Bitcoin tanks as cryptocurrencies join in global market bloodbath: Markets Insider
• Cryptocurrencies across the board are nursing big losses on Thursday as the global market sell-off hitting traditional assets spreads.
• All major crypto assets are down on Thursday, with the likes of ethereum and bitcoin cash losing more than 10% of their value.
• Bitcoin plunged more than 7% overnight, but has now recovered a little, and is trading down roughly 5%.
• You can follow all the latest cryptocurrency prices at Markets Insider.
Cryptocurrencies across the board are nursing big losses on Thursday asthe global market sell-off hitting traditional assetsspreads.
Bitcoin, the benchmark cryptocurrency, dropped suddenly and sharply in Asian trading overnight, losing as much as 7%, before rebounding a little.
It is now holding at a loss of around 5% on the day, trading at $6,266 per coin.
While bitcoin has led the way lower on Thursday, other major cryptocurrencies including Ether, Ripple, and bitcoin cash have witnessed even larger falls. Here's the scoreboard:
• Ether -11.2% at $200.28
• Ripple's XRP -11.5% at $0.4097
• Bitcoin cash -12.6% at $450.80
• Litecoin-10.8% at $51.79
Previously, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies tended to rally during periods of poor performance for traditional assets like stocks, reflecting their status as something of a haven. However, in recent months that has flipped, with cryptocurrencies tending to follow traditional stock markets in their moves.
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SEE ALSO:Global markets are getting pounded as fear grips investors || Crypto Startups Move to Hong Kong Skyscrapers While Major Banks Check Out: BitMEX Crypto The real estate market of Hong Kong is said to be one of the most expensive in the world, alongside New York, London, and Sydney. Yet, crypto startups are moving into the most valuable skyscrapers in the city. On August 22, CCN reported that BitMEX, a popular cryptocurrency exchange that facilitates Bitcoin and Ethereum margin trading, moved its headquarters to Cheung Kong Center’s 45th floor, renting out 20,000 square feet at $28.66 per square foot. Its old headquarters were based in Victoria Harbor, a region within Hong Kong that is known for expensive residential properties. In Victoria Harbor, BitMEX paid around $3.18 per square foot and in Cheung Kong Center, BitMEX is paying $573,200 per month, at a rate of $28.66 per square foot. BitMEX will operate its office in the most valuable skyscraper with Hong Kong alongside major financial institutions such as Bank of America Corp, Barclays Plc, Bloomberg LP, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong. Banks are Moving Out of Skyscrapers According to a report released by SCMP, a mainstream media outlet in Hong Kong, even major banks like Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas have started to explore cheaper locations for their offices in Hong Kong due to rising rental fees. Annual office rental costs in Hong Kong Central average around US$307 per square foot a year, a rate that easily surpasses London’s West End and Beijing’s Finance Street. BitMEX and Diginex Global, two crypto startups based in Hong Kong, are renting out 72,000 square feet in total, paying around $1.3 million per month. “Blockchain companies show no signs of slowing their expansion in Hong Kong. These firms are leasing space in top-tier office buildings to attract and retain talent.” Philip Pang, an associate director of office services at Colliers, told SCMP. The local publication reported that Goldman Sachs is relocating from Hong Kong Central to Causeway Bay in the next few months to save 30 percent on rent. BNP Paribas has also relocated its office to Swire Properties’ Taikoo Place. Story continues While JPMorgan has leased the Quayside in Kwun Tong near Victoria Harbor, the cost of rent comes nowhere close to the rent BitMEX will be paying throughout the years to come. Landlords Not Confident in Crypto Over the past nine months, despite the 80 percent drop in the valuation of the crypto market, cryptocurrency-related businesses have prospered. Specifically, exchanges have continued to generate large revenues. However, local publications have reported that Cheung Kong Center demanded BitMEX to pay a year’s rent upfront, which is estimated to be around $6.8 million, demonstrating the lack of confidence in crypto-related businesses by major landlords in the Hong Kong real estate market. “It’s pretty common for landlords to ask for larger deposits from tenants with weaker covenant strength. Landlords are always open to taking on new tenants, it’s just a matter of balancing rent against flight risk,” said Denis Ma, head of research at Jones Lang LaSalle. With the one year’s rent at Cheung Kong Center, it is possible to purchase multiple story buildings in many major cities like Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Min, Tokyo, and Busan. Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Crypto Startups Move to Hong Kong Skyscrapers While Major Banks Check Out appeared first on CCN .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Cotización del Bitcoin Cash: 497 60.€ | -0.16% | Kraken | 09/11/18 19:00 #BitcoinCash #Kraken #BCHEUR || https://t.co/5EcMFq3tRt || USD: 111.890
EUR: 127.570
GBP: 143.566
AUD: 79.364
NZD: 72.829
CNY: 16.112
CHF: 112.204
BTC: 716,981
ETH: 22,570
Sat Oct 27 10:00 JST || ツイート数の多かった仮想通貨
1位 $TRX 805 Tweets
2位 $BTC 665 Tweets
3位 $WABI 93 Tweets
4位 $ETH 76 Tweets
5位 $BCH 54 Tweets
2018-11-05 22:00 ～ 2018-11-05 22:59
COINTREND いまTwitterで話題の仮想通貨を探せ！
https://cointrend.jp/ || We have the only ICO with external audit!
Don't lose your sight money and work with us in:
http://socialremit.com
#SocialRemit #CryptoCurrency #Blockchain #Bitcoin #AltCoin #Currency #Ethereum #AirDrop #ICO #redditpic.twitter.com/Kxzct8xAHY || 最もBTC/JPYの取引量が多いのは？(2018-11-09 23:00:01 現在)
Liquid 20899.890781
bitFlyer 3695.416603
bitbank 1710.177000
Zaif 1650.814300
coincheck 1319.669337
BITPoint 668.408512 || Block 538779
Hash: 0x...239b625ce7dc73a68e3b16698d027399b624be00be51e0
Size: 0.19MB
Txs: 340
SegWit spends: 48%
1,009 in → 883 out
Out/In Ratio: 0.88
Out Value: $6,013,712 | 898 btc
Fees
Total: $889 | 0.13 btc
Highest: $496.45
Median: $0.14
Lowest: $0.00 pic.twitter.com/xNMMIuXgr7 || Udah pernah jajan brain-brain belum gaes?
Iya BRAIN BRAIN
Enak loh ini biasa mangkal di depan BTC.
.
Dibanderol 10K/ 5 biji ya.
Kalau mau mborong, si bapak jualan dari Jam: 11.30 - 17.00… https://www.instagram.com/p/BolZd-fhWu8/?utm_source=ig_twitter_share&igshid=5m2liafsaw6j … || 2018/10/12 22:00
#Binance 格安コイン
1位 #HOT 0.00000017 BTC(0.12円)
2位 #NPXS 0.00000024 BTC(0.17円)
3位 #DENT 0.00000033 BTC(0.23円)
4位 #NCASH 0.00000075 BTC(0.53円)
5位 #KEY 0.00000090 BTC(0.63円)
#仮想通貨 #アルトコイン #草コイン || #cryptocurrency Price Analysis for #Bitsend #BSD :
Last Hour Change : 0.52 % || 17-11-2018 21:00
Price in #USD : 0.1147345917 || Price in #EUR : 0.1004845554
New Price in #Bitcoin #BTC : 0.00002069 || #Coin Rank 665
|
Trend: down || Prices: 4365.94, 4347.11, 3880.76, 4009.97, 3779.13, 3820.72, 4257.42, 4278.85, 4017.27, 4214.67
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Coronavirus sows doubt over bitcoin's rally after third 'halving': By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As bitcoin investors brace for a long-awaited technical adjustment that will halve new supply of the cryptocurrency, the coronavirus pandemic has cast uncertainty over the expected rally that has historically accompanied such events.
This "halving," the third in bitcoin's 11-year history, has been widely flagged. The previous events fueled huge surges in bitcoin's market value, but there is a wildcard this time in the form of the coronavirus pandemic, some analysts said.
"From an efficient market perspective, any fundamental reaction to the halving should be heavily priced in at this point," said Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital. "After all, it's hard to imagine a more predictable event than an unalterable supply reduction that has been scheduled for more than a decade in a liquid, heavily-traded ... asset."
Bitcoin relies on "mining" computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. In return, the first miner to solve the puzzle and clear the transaction is rewarded new bitcoins.
The technology was designed in such a way that it cuts the reward for miners by half after every 210,000 blocks mined or roughly every four years, a move meant to keep a lid on inflation. That reduction in the rate at which new bitcoin enters the system should theoretically push the price up.
The halving could happen as soon as Monday or Tuesday, with most Bitcoin platforms showing that only about 100 blocks needed to be mined before hitting the halving threshold.
The mining reward is currently 12.5 bitcoins per block mined. In this week's halving, the reward will fall to 6.25 new bitcoins.
In the run-up to this week's halving, bitcoin had surged nearly 40% since the beginning of the year and climbed more than 85% from its lows. It was last at $8,630, down 14% from last week's peak.
By comparison, the dollar index is up 3.3% so far this year.
HALF, AND HALF AGAIN
The first halving occurred in November 2012 when the mining reward was reduced from 50 bitcoins to 25, and the second occurred in July 2016 when it was further cut to 12.5 bitcoin. This deflationary event has historically signaled the start of bitcoin's most dramatic bull runs over a period of several years, although not before a brief sell-off.
The previous two bitcoin halvings propelled rallies of about 10,000% from late 2012 to 2014, and roughly 2,500% from mid-2016 to the currency's all-time high just shy of $20,000 in December 2017, according to traders.
"Historic events don't necessarily predict future events, but there's a psychological level to it as well," Changpeng Zhao, Founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance.
"As it will cost the miners almost double to produce bitcoin, they are not willing to sell when the price goes below the psychological level."
There are only 21 million bitcoins in existence and more than 18 million are already in circulation.
Ryan Watkins, a research analyst at crypto data platform Messari, believes the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak could be one major obstacle to bitcoin's bull run after the "halving".
Jake Yocom-Piatt, co-founder and project lead at cryptocurrency Decred, however, believes halving will be a positive event for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, especially in a pandemic.
"A pandemic is very much a deflationary type event. Economic activity is going to take a real nosedive. The 'halving' of bitcoin is a necessarily deflationary action," said Yocom-Piatt, adding that such a scenario would be bullish for cryptocurrencies.
Some analysts said there are signs a major rally may be under way, with retail or individual investors involved.
Bitcoin bulls say the price should go up as supply runs down and assuming demand is steady.
Dan Morehead, co-chief investment officer at investment firm Pantera, said bitcoin could peak at $115,212 based on supply and demand dynamics.
"I realize that price may sound ludicrous to some today. But $5,000 sounded equally ludicrous as our first written price forecast when we launched Pantera Bitcoin Fund at $65 per bitcoin," Morehead said.
"Just saying that there's more than a 50-50 chance bitcoin goes up – and goes up big."
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Additional reporting by Winni Zhou in Shanghai and Vidya Ranganathan in Singapore; Editing by Alden Bentley, Paul Simao and Sam Holmes) || Ethereum Dips Below 128.07 Level, Down 7%: Investing.com - Ethereum fell bellow the $128.07 level on Saturday. Ethereum was trading at 128.07 by 03:21 (07:21 GMT) on the Investing.com Index, down 7.06% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since March 22. The move downwards pushed Ethereum's market cap down to $14.18B, or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Ethereum's market cap was $135.58B. Ethereum had traded in a range of $125.48 to $132.30 in the previous twenty-four hours. Over the past seven days, Ethereum has seen a drop in value, as it lost 2.27%. The volume of Ethereum traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $11.37B or 0.00% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $120.1977 to $142.8971 in the past 7 days. At its current price, Ethereum is still down 91.00% from its all-time high of $1,423.20 set on January 13, 2018. Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading Bitcoin was last at $6,173.2 on the Investing.com Index, down 8.15% on the day. XRP was trading at $0.16995 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 1.93%. Bitcoin's market cap was last at $113.13B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while XRP's market cap totaled $7.47B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Related Articles India Crypto Renaissance: Industry Sees Rebirth as RBI Crypto Ban Lifts Pantera Capital CEO: BTC Will Come of Age in Crisis, May Top All Time High Blockchain Jobs Continue to Rise Despite Global Recession View comments || Why Warren Buffett’s Bearishness Should End V-Shaped Recovery Talk: NLW unpacks a meaningful shift as the famously optimistic Warren Buffett struck a more sober note at Berkshire Hathaway’s first-ever virtual annual meeting. For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocketcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Stitcher , RadioPublica , IHeartRadio or RSS . This episode is sponsored by ErisX , The Stellar Development Foundation and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Investment Fund . Related: Why Crypto Matters for Financial Inclusion, Feat. Celo’s Marek Olszewski One month after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathway wrote an op-ed saying he was buying stocks. Yet, during the coronavirus crisis he is sitting firmly on the sidelines. On Saturday night, the “Oracle of Omaha” spoke for 4.5 hours in the first virtual Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting – an event some have called the “Woodstock of Capitalism.” See also: The History of the Dollar System From Bretton Woods to QE Infinity, Feat. Luke Gromen On this episode, NLW examines some of the key topics of the presentation, including: Why Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway sold its entire $6.5 billion stake in the airline industry Why it is sitting on $137 billion in cash Why Berkshire hasn’t made any investments How the Federal Reserve gave companies better terms than they were willing to make Related: Blockchain Bites: Hyperledger Makes Inroads, Bitcoin Gets ‘Harder’ and Buffett’s Not ‘Halving’ It It was hard not to watch the presentation without concluding Buffett thinks there are simply too many unknowns in the world going forward to feel comfortable doing much in the market right now. For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocketcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Stitcher , RadioPublica , IHeartRadio or RSS . Related Stories Bitcoin News Roundup for May 5, 2020 First Mover: Amid Economic Meltdown, Bitcoin Is Winning as ‘No Value’ Buffett Eats Crow || Mass Surveillance Threatens Personal Privacy Amid Coronavirus: COVID-19 is rapidly changing people’s day to day lives across the globe.
China has instituted large-scale lockdowns on travel, quarantining whole cities, while France has banned large gatherings and the U.S. has taken moves to allow huge sections of the workforce to work from home and is even exploring measures to pay hourly workers who are sick or forced to self-quarantine. As the headline of a New York Times op-ed succinctly put it, “Everyone’s a Socialist in a Pandemic.”
As governments look to contain the spread of COVID-19, they’re turning to every tool at their disposal, including large surveillance networks, personal cell phone tracking, and AI and facial recognition. In the interest of preserving a society’s health, it makes sense to use every option available. But it does raise privacy questions that will need to be addressed when the virus (hopefully) has moved on. What’s good in an emergency response situation may not be suitable for normal day to day life, as we arguably learned in theaftermath of 9/11, as government surveillance capacities have greatly increased and big tech has built whole businesses models based on sifting through and finding value in our data.
Related:Crypto Prepped Before Coronavirus Went Global
In China, SenseTime, a highly valued AI firm, is being deployed in multiple cities in order to identify people with elevated temperatures, as well as those who aren’t wearing face masks. On its website, the companytouts its“Smart AI Epidemic Prevention Solutions.” The company calls it a “quick and effective system in screening and detecting individuals with elevated temperature in a crowd. The AI-powered solution can be deployed at building entrances and public spaces including airports, train and subway stations, as well as office buildings. The solution enables supporting staff to identify individuals with a fever – an indicating symptom of coronavirus infection – without direct body contact, minimizing the risk of cross-infection.”
See also:Chinese Crypto and Blockchain Firms Grapple With Coronavirus Outbreak
SenseTimetold the BBCits tech has been deployed in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Other companies such asMegvii advertise a similar product, which has been rolled out in Beijing, according to the company, and describes it as an “AI-enabled temperature detection solution that integrates body detection, face detection and dual sensing via infrared cameras and visible light.”
In Russia, facial recognition technology hasbeen deployedto ensure that quarantined individuals do not leave their homes or hotels.
Related:Bitcoin Shopping Gets a Boost From Social Distancing
It’s not just external cameras being used to track individuals. It’s also the very device many people take with them everywhere, our smartphones. Telecom companies in China are handing over records of customers’ movements to the government as well as letting users know if they have been in an impacted area recently, while places such as Singapore have worked totrace infected individuals’ movementsthrough data from ride-sharing apps,Monash University academics, in Australia, found.
Events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the 2010 Shanghai Expo, have allowed mass surveillance techniques to become the norm in China. The same could happen with Coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) launched a new government platform,Close Contact Detector,which pulls publicly available transit data from the Ministry of Transport, China Railway and China’s aviation authority and combines it with information from health authorities. Users can access the service via Alipay, WeChat and QQ.
Apps themselves can be used to track users’ locations over the course of their lifetimes. One of the most egregious examples is thethe system called Health Code,which dictates freedom of movement, whether people should be quarantined, or even allowed into public spaces, while also sharing location data with police.
Analysis by the New York Times“found that as soon as a user grants the software access to personal data, a piece of the program labeled ‘reportInfoAndLocationToPolice’ sends the person’s location, city name and an identifying code number to a server.”
There is little to no transparency as to how the app functions, what data it collects and where the data is sent.
“With the coronavirus outbreak the idea of risk scoring and restrictions on movement quickly became reality,” Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch,told the Guardian.“Over time we see more and more intrusive use of technology and less ability of people to push back.”
“It’s mission creep,” she said.“The techniques of mass surveillance became more permanent after these events.”
Events such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai Expo have allowed mass surveillance techniques to become the norm in China. The same could happen with the coronavirus.
See also:China Has Many Strategic Reasons to Invest in Blockchain
Officials in Wuhan are stepping up their data collection requirements, looking at retail purchases and taxi rides as data for pandemic predictive analysis,according to the South China Morning Post.
It’s fair to argue these measures are necessary as the world grapples with a pandemic it hasn’t seen the likes of in a decade. But the Chinese government has a habit of saying the quiet part loud.
“In the era of big data and internet, the movements of each person can be clearly seen,” Li Lanjuan, an adviser to the National Health Commission, said on national television, according to the BBC.
But these are extreme measures taken to address an extreme situation. They should not be treated as normal, reasonable or inevitable. To do so means they might just outlast the scope of the pandemic and fundamentally change the lives of billions of people.
CORRECTION (March. 21, 12:51 UTC):This article incorrectly identified the Health Code system as Alipay Health Code. The Health Code program is developed by the Chinese government and hosted on the Alipay app through an API.
• CoinDesk Takes Consensus 2020 Virtual
• Defining Cryptocurrency Is the Best Way to Kill It || Binance launches social payments app ‘Bundle’ in Africa: Crypto exchange Binance has rolled out a new social payments app called "Bundle."Targeted at the African market, theappallows users to send and receive cash, as well as buy, sell and store cryptocurrencies.
At launch, the supported fiat currency is Nigeria naira (NGN), and the supported cryptocurrencies are bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and Binance coin (BNB).
Binance said “many more” fiat currencies would be supported “in the coming weeks.” Bundle can process transactions via cards and bank transfers, as well as mobile money.
“We built Bundle with the digitally native African user in mind. They are social, online, and connected across geographical boundaries. They prefer their financial services delivered digitally via mobile apps as opposed to visiting brick and mortar bank branches,” said Bundle founder Yele Bademosi, formerly a director at venture arm Binance Labs.
Bundle plans to support 30+ African countries by the end of the year. It aims to grow into a “super-app,” which would become widely used in Africa and the world.
Bundle, operating as an independent entity from Binance, is a Binance-incubated project. Bundle raised $450,000 from Binance last September in a pre-seed funding round.
Social payments appear to be a growing trend in the crypto space. Just yesterday, Dharma, an Ethereum-based peer-to-peer lending platform,launcheda similar initiative. Dharma now allows users to send U.S. dollars to any Twitter handle.
© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. || The Gross Law Firm Announces Class Actions on Behalf of Shareholders of WWE, CAN and HAFC: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 23, 2020 / The securities litigation law firm of The Gross Law Firm issues the following notice on behalf of shareholders in the following publicly-traded companies. Shareholders who purchased shares in the following companies during the dates listed are encouraged to contact the firm regarding possible Lead Plaintiff appointment. Appointment as Lead Plaintiff is not required to partake in any recovery. World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. ( WWE ) Investors Affected: February 7, 2019 - February 5, 2020 A class action has commenced on behalf of certain shareholders in World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. The filed complaint alleges that defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: Defendants perpetrated a fraudulent scheme which: (i) deceived the investing public regarding WWE's business and prospects; (ii) artificially inflated the price of WWE Class A common stock; (iii) permitted certain senior executives of WWE to sell more than $282 million worth of their personally held shares at fraud inflated prices; and (iv) caused the public to purchase WWE Class A common stock at artificially inflated prices. Shareholders may find more information at https://securitiesclasslaw.com/securities/world-wrestling-entertainment-inc-loss-submission-form/?id=6161&from=1 Canaan Inc. ( CAN ) Investors Affected: publicly traded securities of Canaan, including its American Depository Shares pursuant and/or traceable to the Company's registration statement and related prospectus issued in connection with the Company's November 20, 2019 initial public offering. A class action has commenced on behalf of certain shareholders in Canaan Inc. The filed complaint alleges that defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the purported "strategic cooperation" was actually a transaction with a related party; (2) the company's financial health was worse than what was actually reported; (3) the company had recently removed numerous distributors from its website just prior to the initial public offering, many of which were small or suspicious businesses; and (4) several of the Company's largest Chinese clients in prior years were clients who were not in the Bitcoin mining industry and, thus, would likely not be repeat customers. Shareholders may find more information at https://securitiesclasslaw.com/securities/canaan-inc-loss-submission-form/?id=6161&from=1 Hanmi Financial Corporation ( HAFC ) Investors Affected: August 12, 2019 - January 28, 2020 A class action has commenced on behalf of certain shareholders in Hanmi Financial Corporation. The filed complaint alleges that defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the $40.7 million troubled loan that the Company disclosed on conference calls would necessitate further and future specific provisions for the Company - in the millions; (2) the same $40.7 million troubled loan would necessitate the Company to appraise and take personal property securing a portion of the amount of the loan; and (3) as a result, Defendants' public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. Story continues Shareholders may find more information at https://securitiesclasslaw.com/securities/hanmi-financial-corporation-loss-submission-form/?id=6161&from=1 The Gross Law Firm is committed to ensuring that companies adhere to responsible business practices and engage in good corporate citizenship. The firm seeks recovery on behalf of investors who incurred losses when false and/or misleading statements or the omission of material information by a Company lead to artificial inflation of the Company's stock. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. CONTACT: The Gross Law Firm 15 West 38th Street, 12th floor New York, NY, 10018 Email: dg@securitiesclasslaw.com Phone: (212) 537-9430 Fax: (833) 862-7770 SOURCE: The Gross Law Firm View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/586714/The-Gross-Law-Firm-Announces-Class-Actions-on-Behalf-of-Shareholders-of-WWE-CAN-and-HAFC View comments || The best VPNs to protect yourself from hackers.: Yahoo Lifestyle is committed to finding you the best products at the best prices. We may receive a share from purchases made via links on this page. Pricing and availability are subject to change. Guard against prying eyes with a reputable VPN. (Photo: Getty Images) A VPN (or virtual private network) can do everything from outsmart hackers to allow you to access additional movies and TV shows. A VPN basically hides your identity and activity online. Think of it as an encrypted tunnel that covers the data you’re sending and receiving—no one can see into the tunnel but you, not even your ISP (internet service provider)—or the VPN itself. Without a VPN, anyone can view what you’re doing and track your whereabouts. Need proof? Visit WhatIsMyIPAddress.com —if your IP address shows up, your location is easily available to creepers who can access your favorite websites, passwords, personal info, and credit cards. A VPN also comes in handy for when you’re using public Wi-Fi, like at a coffee shop or library. Another great benefit of a VPN is that you can watch Netflix shows streaming in other countries like Canada, Australia, or Hong Kong. Bring on the binge-watching. Just know that a VPN won’t be as speedy as what you’re used to, but it’ll be fast enough to stream and enjoy a ton of Netflix options. We rounded up the seven best VPNs below. ExpressVPN One of the fastest VPNs out there. (Photo: ExpressVPN) With fast speeds and more than 3,000 servers in 94 countries and regions, ExpressVPN is a beast. You’ll find a list of recommended servers in places like Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland, plus options for India, Iceland, Pakistan, The Philippines, Israel, Kenya, and more. Check out the full list of servers here . ExpressVPN is available for Windows 10, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android, ChromeOS, plus Chromecast, Roku, Fire TV, PS4, Xbox One, and more. It can work on five devices at the same time—see the list of supported devices here . Cost: There are various plans: $13 a month; $60 for six months; or $100 for 15 months (was $194). There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. You can even use Bitcoin as payment to remain anonymous. Story continues Shop it : ExpressVPN, expressvpn.com CyberGhost The whole family can watch different things at the same time. (Photo: CyberGhost) CyberGhost is so powerful that it can support up to seven devices at once, making it great for families. It’s on the lower end of the spectrum, price-wise, and offers connectivity to 89 countries, including Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, and Nigeria. Check out a full list of countries here . Compatible with Windows 10, macOS, and Linux, it also works with Chrome and FireFox. For mobile, Android and iOS are fully supported, but it’ll only work with Xbox (sorry PlayStation fans). It’s also available for Roku, Chromecast, Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, and select smart TV brands, like LG and Samsung. Cost: $3 per month for a three-year subscription. You can also go month-to-month, for $13 a month. There’s a 45-day money-back guarantee. Shop it : CyberGhost, cyberghostvpn.com VyprVPN Stream safely with VyprVPN. (Photo: VyprVPN) VyprVPN touts itself as the safest and most secure service, thanks to its proprietary Chameleon Protocol, which encrypts all data while hiding the fact that you’re even using a VPN. This means it’s ideal for those living in or visiting countries with strict censorship laws. It can successfully unblock Netflix in Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and more; check out a full list of streaming services here . Working with up to five devices at once, VyprVPN is compatible with Windows 10 and macOS. It also works with Android and iOS mobile devices, plus Android TV and Apple TV. See all the supported smart TVs here . Cost: Packages start at $2.50 per month for a two-year subscription (billed as $60). You can also go month-to-month, at $13 a month. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop it : VyprVPN, vyprvpn.com PureVPN Try PureVPN for seven days for just $1. (Photo: PureVPN) While PureVPN isn’t as fast as ExpressVPN or NordVPN, it features a lot of customization settings—such as, additional Firewalls, dedicated IP addresses and dedicated VoIP (Voice-over Internet Protocol) servers for internet calling—that suit just about anyone—whether you’re a casual or pro web user. You can watch Netflix, Hulu, HBO Now and the BBC iPlayer internationally—thanks to PureVPN’s 2,000+ servers in more than 180 locations in over 140 countries around the world. Click here for a list of countries and locations available. The service supports Windows 10, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, iPadOS, Fire TV and Android TV via the PureVPN app. It also supports Chromebook, Chromecast, Xbox One, PS4, Apple TV, Roku and others through manual set-up. PureVPN offers 24/7 support to walk you through the process of setting up your devices, if necessary. Click here for a complete list of supported devices. Cost : If you’re a first time user, score a seven-day trial for just $1. If you keep the service, it’s about $6 per month—which is 47 percent off the $11 per month standard plan. The VPN service also accepts cryptocurrency for additional privacy. Shop it : PureVPN, purevpn.com Ivacy VPN Get more out of Netflix without spending a fortune. (Photo: Ivacy) Want the most budget-friendly option? Try Ivacy VPN for just over a $1 month. Speeds are solid, but not as fast as ExpressVPN, NordVPN, or CyberGhost. This is due to its small server count—21 locations in 17 countries like Australia, China, and the United Kingdom; here’s the full list. You’ll be able to stream things like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and BBC iPlayer. Like most major VPNs, Ivacy doesn’t track online activity but it does collect your name, email, payment method, app crash reports, and diagnostics, plus Google Analytics info (others in this list don’t). Ivacy supports most platforms, including Windows 10, macOS and iOS, Android, Linux, Roku, PS4, and Xbox One, plus Kodi and Raspberry Pi. Cost: $1.16 a month for a five-year subscription (billed as $70) or $10 a month for month-to-month. The service takes cryptocurrency. Shop it : Ivacy VPN, ivacy.com TunnelBear VPN The cutest VPN available (Photo: Tunnelbear VPN) TunnelBear is probably the cutest VPN available with their bear mascot featured throughout the service. The VPN’s bear is not just cute, but it’s also a great visual cue to how a VPN works. You can plainly see the bear tunnel underground and later pop its head out in the country where you want to mask or hide your IP address on a digital map. How clever. The VPN service provides speedy connectivity with servers in 23 countries from around the world. This means you can browse the internet, as if you were in Germany, Italy, Singapore, Brazil, India and more, while you can keep your data safe from being hacked or stolen when surfing the web. Unfortunately, you might run into roadblocks, if you try to stream Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, BBC iPlayer or Disney+ with TunnelBear . It seems like some streaming services are just too much for this VPN to handle. However, YouTube appears to be unblocked in most regions and countries, so we recommend TunnelBear , if you’re a YouTube-only user. Otherwise, the other VPN services on this list could be a better fit for you. Cost : Right now, you can get a one-year subscription to TunnelBear VPN for just $20, or $40 off at Amazon. This is a 67 percent savings, which is lower than how much the VPN is from TunnelBear itself. But, if you want to go month-to-month, the VPN service goes for $10 per month, or $3 per month for a three-year subscription. Shop it : TunnelBear VPN, $20 (was $60), amazon.com NordVPN This VPN offers the best bang for your buck. (Photo: NordVPN) NordVPN is the way to go if you’re on a budget but still want one of the most popular VPNs. The service works in 59 countries and regions; find the full list of locations here . And it supports six devices at a time. NordVPN supports Windows 10, MacOS, ChromeOS, and Linux, as well as mobile devices for Android and iOS. It works with Android TV devices, but doesn’t support Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, or Fire TV. Cost: The best deal is $3.50 per month for a three-year subscription—that’s an upfront cost of $126. You can also get a one-year subscription for $7 a month or two years for $5 a month, or go month-to-month for $12 a month. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop it : NordVPN, nordvpn.com Read More from Yahoo Lifestyle : eBay just slashed $150 off Bose’s most popular noise-canceling headphones—get them for just $200 From 'Contagion' to '28 Days Later:' 10 pandemic movies that are worth streaming right now Everyone's baking bread, but there's no 'regular' flour left—here's a solution Follow us on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day Want daily pop culture news delivered to your inbox? Sign up here for Yahoo Entertainment & Lifestyle's newsletter. || Bitcoin Climbs 10% In Bullish Trade: Bitcoin Climbs 10% In Bullish Trade Investing.com - Bitcoin was trading at $6,876.8 by 12:20 (16:20 GMT) on the Investing.com Index on Thursday, up 10.01% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage gain since March 23. The move upwards pushed Bitcoin's market cap up to $124.9B, or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Bitcoin's market cap was $241.2B. Bitcoin had traded in a range of $6,567.9 to $6,882.9 in the previous twenty-four hours. Over the past seven days, Bitcoin has seen a rise in value, as it gained 2.62%. The volume of Bitcoin traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $43.0B or 0.00% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $5,872.5044 to $6,882.9121 in the past 7 days. At its current price, Bitcoin is still down 65.39% from its all-time high of $19,870.62 set on December 17, 2017. Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading Ethereum was last at $141.52 on the Investing.com Index, up 7.29% on the day. XRP was trading at $0.17999 on the Investing.com Index, a gain of 6.11%. Ethereum's market cap was last at $15.6B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while XRP's market cap totaled $7.9B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Related Articles EOS Dips Below 2.2769 Level, Down 4% Crypto exchange Binance to buy data website CoinMarketCap FATF Report: US Is Not Focusing Enough on Crypto Financial Risk || First Mover: Bitcoin Cash’s Halving Was Dull – Bitcoin’s May Be Much the Same: Bitcoin’s (BTC) upcoming halving – a once-every-four-years reduction in the supply of new units of the cryptocurrency – has got traders, analysts and gawkers abuzz over the potential price impact. German bank BayernLB predicted last year that bitcoin’s halving could drive its price to $90,000 , roughly 12 times the current level. Cryptocurrency markets got a sneak preview on Wednesday as a lesser coin, bitcoin cash (BCH), went through its own halving. Spoiler alert: There wasn’t much to see. Related: First Mover: As Fed Assets Top $6T, BitMEX Has Some Inflation-Busting Advice You’re reading First Mover , CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You can subscribe here . “All in all, this has been very anticlimactic,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Bequant, a cryptocurrency exchange and institutional brokerage, wrote in an email. Bitcoin cash prices rose 5.9 percent Wednesday, entirely in line with its trading range on most days. Cryptocurrencies have been volatile since long before the coronavirus hit. Bitcoin climbed 2.3 percent on the day. “In crypto, that’s normal,” Roger Ver, executive chairman of Bitcoin.com and a key proponent of bitcoin cash, said in an audio interview over Telegram from his home in St. Kitts. Related: Profit-Taking Keeps Bitcoin in Tight Range as Fed Reopens Spigot Ver says he hadn’t been expecting much from the event. He’s been around the crypto industry since the early days, and witnessed bitcoin’s halvings in 2012 and 2016. This week’s halving was the first for bitcoin cash, which split off from bitcoin in 2017. “A leap year happens every four years,” Ver said. “Life goes on. Nobody cares. After you’ve been through one leap year, it’s not interesting or exciting anymore.” Story continues The episode offers a dose of reality for crypto-industry newcomers who might be looking forward to something spectacular when bitcoin’s next halving arrives in May. It’s so hotly anticipated that clever web designers have erected pages featuring countdown clocks. As of the latest look, it’ll take place in an estimated 34 days, seven hours and 47 minutes. (On May 13, around 09:25 UTC.) If bitcoin cash’s halving is any guide, there really won’t be much to see. Maybe champagne glasses will clink somewhere, celebrating the passage of another four years of bitcoin’s remarkable existence since it was created in early 2009 atop what is now the world’s largest blockchain network. See CoinDesk Research’s report on the bitcoin halving Bitcoin’s price, currently around $7,300, has climbed 20-fold since the start of 2015, the first full year of historical data from the popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. There were a lot of days between then and now, many of them up, many of them down, and only one of those days in 2016 coincided with a halving. Blockchains like the ones powering bitcoin and bitcoin cash rely on high-speed computer operators and data centers known as “miners,” which collectively process quintillions of computations per second in an effort to maintain and protect the security and integrity of the network. To keep the miners affixed over the long term, according to Ver, “the price only has to double once every four years.” “I’ve always said that the price is the least interesting thing about cryptocurrencies,” Ver said. “The price is just a side effect of the amount of adoption you’re getting in the world.” Four years is quite a span – enough to frustrate investors, analysts and researchers who might prefer to clearly quantify the price impact of past halvings, or of the upcoming halving. Just think back to how much has happened in cryptocurrency markets in the past six months: Chinese President Xi Jinping said the world’s largest economy would “ seize the opportunities ” afforded by blockchain technology. (Bitcoin jumped 12 percent.) The U.S. killed a top Iranian general , threatening to escalate into a war. (Up 10 percent.) The coronavirus came along. (Bitcoin plunged, then recovered , and is now up 2 percent year-to-date.) “The market’s always pricing in everything,” Ver said. With many investors seeing bitcoin as a potential hedge against inflation – a digital and more portable form of gold, as it were – the unprecedented trillions of dollars of coronavirus-related aid and stimulus might ultimately make the halving an afterthought. Unlike the coronavirus, after all, the halving was telegraphed years in advance. Blockware Solutions, which brokers high-speed computers used for cryptocurrency mining, wrote Wednesday in an e-mail that price is “not just supply side economics,” but demand. “Bitcoin has the most robust ecosystem in the blockchain industry, and the fundamentals continuously improve due to the global macro improving sentiment and accelerating demand,” according to the note. The point was that bitcoin watchers shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from bitcoin cash’s halving. Rich Rosenblum, a former managing director of Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs who now oversees markets at the digital-asset trading firm GSR, noted bitcoin cash prices usually trade in sync with bitcoin’s – similar to the way gold and silver prices track, as do oil and gasoline. “The bitcoin halving in a month is going to have more impact on bitcoin cash than the bitcoin cash halving,” he said in a phone interview. Bitcoin cash’s halving took place at 12:19 UTC, when the blockchain network reached block number 630,000. The most immediate impact was also, perhaps, the most visible: The next data block took nearly two hours to close, well beyond the average of about 10 minutes. According to Ver, that probably happened because miners reallocated their computational power toward suddenly more profitable blockchains like Bitcoin and Bitcoin SV. The Bitcoin Cash protocol has a feature that automatically adjusts the difficulty of mining a new data block when there’s a sudden scarcity of miners; the mechanism is designed to lure some back. Block 630,001 took just 16 minutes to close, the data show. Just like adding an extra day to the calendar every four years, these halvings have to happen to make everything work right. So when bitcoin’s halving comes, will it be time to pop the champagne? Why not. Will it be entertaining? Better have YouTube queued up, just in case. Tweet of the day Bitcoin watch BTC : Price: $7,327 ( BPI ) | 24-Hr High: $7,399 | 24-Hr Low: $7,210 Trend : Bitcoin has found acceptance above the three-day 200-candle average and looks set to extend the ongoing rally toward $8,000. That would bring prices back to a level seen ahead of the massive sell-off on March 12. The cryptocurrency is changing hands near $7,312 at press time, while the long-term average is now located at $7,093. As seen on the three-day chart, the bulls repeatedly failed to keep gains above the crucial average in the three weeks to April 5, before flipping the hurdle into support during in the last few days. The breakout may prompt more buyers to join the market, leading to stronger price gains. Supporting the bullish case is the three-day chart MACD histogram’s crossover above zero, a confirmation of bearish-to-bullish trend change. The bullish case would be neutralized if the spot price drops below $7,050, violating the ascending trendline connecting the March 13 and March 30 lows. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. You can subscribe here . Related Stories Blockchain Bites: Canaan and Galaxy Digital Report Losses, Fold Joins Visa and Indian Exchange Volume Skyrockets What’s Next for Bitcoin After March’s Crash – CoinDesk Quarterly Review || German Startup Pitches Decentralized ID for Prescription Pickup During COVID-19: Berlin-based blockchain startup Spherity has developed a decentralized identity prototype that would help people get the medicines they need while maintaining proper social distance.
“We see a big opportunity when it comes to social distancing to get decentralized ID out the door,” said Spherity CEOCarsten Stocker. “Humans interact with smartphones, but governments and doctors’ offices interact with legacy infrastructure – so that means we need to bridge the gap.”
The“E-Rezept”prototype relies on self-sovereign identity (SSI), a way of managing the various attributes that comprise digital identity in a decentralized manner. Moving things away from password-based centralized architectures allows the real owners of sensitive personal data to control and share it without compromising their privacy.
Related:Remote Working Proves Unexpected Hero as Half of US Economy Shifts to Home Offices
Germany passed legislation last summer to helpdigitize pharmacies. Like many complex engineering transformations that would normally take months or years to complete, the coronavirus pandemic is kick-starting solutions for the coming weeks.
Spheritywas one of some 40,000 participants that applied to take part in theWirVsVirusvirtual hackathon organized by the German government. That number was whittled down to 2,000 actual participants, but the coronavirus-focused event still counts as “the biggest hackathon in Germany’s history,” according to German Chancellery Minister Helge Braun.
See also:World Health Organization Teams With IBM, Oracle on Blockchain-Based Coronavirus Data Hub
Stocker said the E-Rezept project was inspired by his mother, who didn’t want to go to an overcrowded doctor’s office just to renew a pharmaceutical prescription. A lack of faith in remote identity verification is the reason patients are required to renew prescriptions in person, he said.
Related:View From Manila: Life During Coronavirus
The Spherity prototype requires patients to carry their digital fingerprints in wallets that can be accessed by doctors. Once these know-your-customer (KYC) credentials are matched with their records, an electronic prescription can be issued.
“We are using smartphone wallets, cloud agent infrastructure, in combination with the Ethereum blockchain. But it could also be combined with other SSI solutions such as Hyperledger Indy,” said Stocker.
The next digital step would be connecting the patient’s wallet to an online pharmacy. Given the risks of contagion and the need to reduce traffic on critical infrastructure, urgent social distancing is the spur to push forward e-medicine, Stöcker said.
“There is an opportunity to do a quick fix using existing decentralized identity technology,” he said.
• Crypto Markets Can Never Close, and That’s a Good Thing
• Bitcoin, Stablecoins, DeFi and Privacy: How COVID-19 Is Changing Key Crypto Narratives
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 8601.80, 8804.48, 9269.99, 9733.72, 9328.20, 9377.01, 9670.74, 9726.58, 9729.04, 9522.98
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2021-08-09]
BTC Price: 46365.40, BTC RSI: 72.70
Gold Price: 1723.40, Gold RSI: 26.22
Oil Price: 66.48, Oil RSI: 36.56
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Dollar dips after Fed rally, Bitcoin slumps: By Karen Brettell
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The dollar retreated from two-month highs on Monday as investors evaluated whether a perceived hawkish tilt by the Federal Reserve last week will mark a pause in the dollar bear trend that has been in play since March 2020.
The dollar has surged since the U.S. central bank on Wednesday said that policymakers are forecasting two rate hikes in 2023. That led investors to re-evaluate bets that the U.S. central bank will let inflation run at higher levels for a longer time before hiking rates.
The greenback dropped on Monday but held above where it traded before the Fed's statement on Wednesday.
"There was a rush to clean out outstanding positions that were a little bit maybe too skewed towards dollar shorts," said Bipan Rai, North American head of FX strategy at CIBC Capital Markets in Toronto. Now, "the market's trying to catch its breath a little bit before it really decides whether or not to extrapolate this trend towards a stronger dollar."
The dollar had weakened on expectations that the Fed will hold rates near zero for years to come even as the economy rebounds from COVID-19 pandemic-related shutdowns.
Two regional Federal Reserve officials said on Monday that a faster withdrawal from the central bank's bond purchase program could give it more leeway in deciding when to raise interest rates.
New York Fed President John Williams also said that more progress is needed before the Fed should begin to scale back some of its economic support.
Comments by Fed Chair Jerome Powell will be in focus on Tuesday to see if he confirms the hawkish outlook or tries to row back market expectations of faster tightening.
Powell said last week there had been initial discussions about when to pull back on the Fed's $120 billion in monthly bond purchases, a conversation that would be completed in coming months as the economy continues to heal.
The dollar index against a basket of currencies fell 0.44% on the day to 91.849. The euro gained 0.41% to $1.1917 and the greenback gained 0.03% to 110.29 Japanese yen.
The British pound gained 1.03% to $1.3933.
Some analysts say the recent market moves have been exaggerated by investors unwinding crowded trades, and that the dollar still faces weakening pressures as the global economy recovers.
"The core thesis underpinning our USD weakness view has not changed drastically," Wells Fargo analysts said on Monday in a report.
"For one, the global economic recovery is still gathering pace and broadening in scope. Moreover, while the Fed's dots sent a hawkish signal, Chair Powell continued to talk down the risks of a near-term taper. In any case the Fed still looks likely to lag many of its G10 peers in reducing accommodation," they said.
Producer price inflation data on Friday will also be in focus for any signals that price pressures may stay higher for longer, which could prompt sooner-than-expected Fed tightening.
"If inflation data comes in a little bit firmer than expected, or is a little bit stickier than expected, then that could portend to more aggressive timelines for the Fed to remove accommodation," Rai said.
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin's poor recent run continued with a 8.89% drop to $32,390, as China expanded restrictions on mining to the province of Sichuan.
Cryptomining in China accounts for more than half of global bitcoin production.
(Reporting by Karen Brettell; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Will Dunham) || U.S. regulator delays VanEck ETF bid, seeks views on potential for manipulation: By Katanga Johnson WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Wednesday again delayed a decision on whether to approve an application for what would be the country's first bitcoin exchange traded fund (ETF), filing a request for public consultation over concerns about market manipulation. The move by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Wednesday was the second delay for the VanEck Bitcoin Trust's proposed bitcoin ETF after an extended delay in April. Analysts say the regulator is worried it is does not have proper surveillance over crypto exchanges to ensure adequate investor protections are in place. Any adoption of a bitcoin ETF by new SEC chair Gary Gensler could be key for mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies as it would allow financial institutions and retail traders to gain exposure without having to invest directly, they added. In its request for consultation, the SEC asked for views on the proposed Trust's susceptibility to manipulation and its ability to prevent fraudulent acts. It also sought comment on the liquidity and transparency of the bitcoin markets and the suitability of bitcoin as an underlying asset for an ETF. Applications are reviewed within 45-day windows and the agency can take up to 240 days to make a decision. VanEck filed its ETF proposal at the end of 2020, with Cboe BZX agreeing to act as VanEcks exchange partner earlier this year. (Reporting by Katanga Johnson; Editing by Richard Pullin) || Gensler’s Preference for Bitcoin Futures Products Is Likely Bad News for a Spot BTC ETF: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler’s comments this week have some digital asset managers realizing that the excitement in the first half of the year for a true bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) may have been premature. In remarks at the Aspen Security Forum on Tuesday, Gensler noted that he would be partial to ETFs based on bitcoin futures traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). “I think his comments are pretty clear that a pure spot bitcoin ETF isn’t coming soon and that futures products would potentially be considered,” Steven McClurg, chief investment officer for Valkyrie, which has filed an application with the SEC for a bitcoin ETF. “I think it’s certainly going to direct our conversations and our product road map.” Related: SEC Charges So-Called DeFi Company for Allegedly Fraudulent $30M Offering While many in the crypto world suspected that Gensler would favor investment vehicles that include bitcoin futures , this is the first time that Gensler has confirmed his preference explicitly, said James Seyffart, ETF research analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Some industry participants have said that this could lead to a spate of applications that include bitcoin futures. On Thursday, Atlanta-based asset manager Invesco applied for an ETF that would include exposure to futures, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Canadian bitcoin ETFs. (Grayscale is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent company.) The benefit of prioritizing bitcoin futures over bitcoin spot ETFs is unclear, McClurg said. “It’s a really bizarre world where you can launch a bitcoin ETF in Canada, U.S. people can buy it through their brokerages, and you can create a U.S. ETF that includes Canadian ETFs, but a bitcoin ETF isn’t available in the U.S.,” McClurg said. Related: CFTC Commissioner Says SEC Lacks Authority Over Commodities, Including ‘Crypto Assets’ Story continues Gensler may believe that an investment vehicle based on federally regulated bitcoin futures may offer more regulatory cushion than one based on bitcoin from spot exchanges that are regulated on a state-by-state basis, Seyffart noted. “I don’t really buy that, because … there’s a definitive relationship between spot bitcoin and the futures market, so no matter what you do here, there’s going to be some overlap [in] related markets,” Seyffart said. “I think the biggest thing here is that it’s basically a delay.” Bitcoin futures products would not only be more complex and costly to manage, but the market may not want them, Seyffart said. Historically, institutions have flocked to closed-end funds such as GBTC over trading bitcoin futures on the CME, Seyffart said. “Bitcoin futures are growing and they’re growing at a healthy clip, but they still don’t see anywhere near GBTC trading,” Seyffart said. “We’re talking about $25 billion in GBTC after a drawdown and trading at a discount.” Aside from surveys showing that investors want a bitcoin ETF, MicroStrategy’s stock acting as a proxy for a bitcoin ETF is also evidence that the market wants an investment vehicle based on bitcoin’s spot price, Seyffart added. MicroStrategy is a software company that holds a large amount of bitcoin in its treasury. Commodity futures also have the potential to trade with a negative premium, Valkyrie’s McClurg said. “I would argue that [a futures ETF is] not as safe for retail investors given that futures don’t always accurately track what’s happening in the spot market,” McClurg said. After Gensler’s comments this week, it’s likely that the SEC will continue to approve bitcoin futures mutual fund applications and then approve ETFs based on bitcoin futures, Seyffart said. “The benefit of the mutual fund is that if they get out of control or the size gets too big or whatever happens, you can close a mutual fund, but you can’t close an ETF,” Seyffart said. ETF provider Teucrium is the only issuer to have filed an application for an exchange-traded product (ETP) based solely on bitcoin futures, Seyffart added. But Teucrium has only filed its S-1 and has yet to kick off a review period at the SEC by filing a Form 19b-4. The SEC has 240 days after an issuer files its 19b-4 to make a decision on an application. The first expiration of one of those regulatory windows is coming in November with VanEck’s 19b-4 , and Seyffart said he expects the SEC to reject VanEck’s application and possibly other applications throughout the rest of the year and early 2022. VanEck was one of the first issuers to file for a bitcoin futures ETP before bitcoin futures existed, and has filed for a bitcoin futures mutual fund, according to Gabor Gurbacs, director of digital-asset strategy at VanEck. “Managing futures is expensive and the margin requirements are extremely high at an exchange level like the CME,” Gurbacs said. “You also have to roll the futures contracts every month which incurs costs and adds volatility.” Gurbacs would not comment on VanEck’s future strategy, but said he expects to see more bitcoin futures-based ETF applications in the future despite the costs and complexity associated with futures. Related Stories Invesco Files With SEC for Bitcoin Strategy ETF What’s Really Behind SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s Crypto Speech || Square Inc Making Hardware Wallet for Bitcoin: Payments service Square Inc is making a hardware wallet for Bitcoin, in an effort to make Bitcoin custody more mainstream.
Square hardware developer Jesse Doroguskertweetedthis announcement. He added that the team would continue to ask and answer questions out in the open. This was emphasized by Square CEOJack Dorsey, “from software to hardware design, and in collaboration with the community.”
In an effort to set the tenor for the types of questions he expected from the community, Dorsey shared some of his guiding principles. First, hebelievesthat “Bitcoin is for everyone.” He also believes in the need for an inclusive product that brings a non-custodial solution to the global market. He asks what some potential blockers could be for the next 100 million people?
Dorsey also broaches the subject of custody, and whether popular exchanges actually take custody of their customers’ crypto. He suggests that custody “doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing,” such as in the case of “assisted self-custody.” However, Dorsey stresses this would require exceptional product design, including minimal setup time, relying on existing devices, and end-to-end reliability.
The Twitter CEO naturally understands the significance of mobile accessibility. After all, most people access the internet on mobile. Could there be any dangers in this approach? He also stressed balancing availability and security. For instance, account access at customers’ fingertips, while still keeping secure. Dorsey wonders what the right balance should be.
For Dorsey any failure inwalletsafety would stem from one of three types of events, “availability failures (“sunken gold”), security failures (“pirated gold”), and discretionary actions (“confiscated gold”).” Additionally, how could recovery mechanisms protect information from damage, loss, and theft?
Dorsey said he believes customers depend too much on third party infrastructure. Because of that, he rather wants mainstream customers to be able to depend on them when they want to. “How should we think about his flow?,” Dorsey asks.
Next, Dorsey states that, “Layer 2 is essential for growth.” Only a different mix of custodial, off-chain, and second layer solutions could trigger the orders-of-magnitude growth expected. He inquires, “what tech investments can enable seamless, scalable, L2 native support for ahardware wallet?” || Crypto Exchange Listings Begin to Take Shape for EtherLite: The broader cryptocurrency market continues to feel the heat, andEtherLitehas not been left unscathed. The newly launched cryptocurrency, which was created as a hard fork of Ethereum, is down by a double-digit percentage in the last 24-hour period despite a couple of catalysts that should help with liquidity.
Cryptocurrency exchanges are starting to line up to list EtherLite, two of which are launching the coin on July 14.
• BitForex in the ETH pair
• P2PB2B in a trio of trading pairs: ETL/BTC, ETL/ETH and ETL/USDT
EtherLite on itsTelegram channelalso teased additional cryptocurrency exchange listings that are in the pipeline. These include Bitcoin.com, Changelly and HitBTC, which are targeting the second half of July for the listings. EtherLite could also make an appearance on decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap.
Meanwhile, some EtherLiteusersare clamoring for better marketing of the project so that it can reach its full potential. The EtherLite team has responded to those worries, assuring followers on its Telegram channel by saying,
“Funds are not an issue. There is no point in putting an ad on Burj Khalifa & Times Square just to be listed on small exchanges, right? 🙂 I hope you get the point I’m trying to convey. We will get there very soon.”
EtherLite also has an airdrop in the works, a chance to receive free coins that tends to drum up excitement in the cryptocurrency community. Both ETH and social airdrops are on the roadmap, with a start date of July 30. The EtherLite team has already captured snapshots on May 1 of non-custodial wallets with ETH balances.
Nothing seems to be lifting altcoins out of the doldrums lately. EvenDogecoin, a favorite of billionaire Elon Musk, has been stuck in a rut. The meme coin is up fractionally today but has shed about 15% in the month of July alone.
Dogecoin is increasingly making its way into the mainstream as its users eagerly await wide-scale adoption. Most recently, consumer products company AXE, which makes men’s deodorant, has jumped on the Dogecoin bandwagon. The companyin a tweetteased the Doge army, asking, “Who’s ready for the Dogecan?”
The tweethas received hundreds of responses so far as the Dogecoin community looks to send the DOGE price to the moon.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Slip Ahead of Inventory Report || Billionaire behind world’s biggest crypto exchange faces reckoning: The first time Changpeng Zhao left China, he was just 12 years old.
His father, an academic who had been forced out of university during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, had fled to Canada when Zhao was six, and it took until 1989 for the rest of his family to follow.
Almost three decades later, Zhao was forced out a second time. A Beijingcrackdown on cryptocurrenciesmeant his fledgling start-up, Binance, left Shanghai for Japan before hopping to Taiwan and Malta.
Today, the 44-year-old boss of what has become theworld’s largest cryptocurrency exchangeis conspicuously tight-lipped about where his business is actually based.
Binance describes itself as a company without headquarters, and Zhao’s LinkedIn profile lists his location as “Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Singapore”. The company has a registered office in the Cayman Islands but accounts for its UK entity, Binance Markets Limited, say its parent company is located in the British Virgin Islands.
When Zhao – referred to by fans as “CZ” – was asked about the company’s true home last year on a podcast, he stammered. “Wherever I sit is going to be the Binance office… we’re not hiding, we’re in the open.”
The ambiguous jurisdiction over Binance was brought into focus this week when the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)banned the companyfrom carrying out any regulated activity in the UK.
The watchdog said that the company’s British entity, Binance Markets Limited, was “not permitted to undertake any regulated activity in the UK” and added that “no other entity in the Binance Group holds any form of UK authorisation, registration or licence to conduct regulated activity in the UK.”
Binance was given until Wednesday evening to remove any advertising and to provide a notice telling customers it is not allowed to provide regulated services.
It is hardly the first brush with regulators for Binance and its founder, a true Bitcoin believer who has said he holds almost all of his estimated $1.9bn (£1.37bn) net worth incrypto assets.
Zhao learned computer programming at an early age, encouraged by his father, who had bought him an IBM 286 using most of the family’s savings. One of his first jobs was building software for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which he says gave him an understanding of how to make the trading systems he would later build for Binance run smoothly.
Having moved to Shanghai to set up a high-frequency trading start-up, Zhao was told about Bitcoin in 2013 from a technology investor he played poker with and who encouraged him to invest 10pc of his net worth.
He would go one better, selling his Shanghai flat to buy the cryptocurrency. “What I really liked about Bitcoin back then, and even now, is it’s borderless. Having lived in a lot of different countries, every time I had to convert money, I would lose a lot,” he told Bloomberg.
It was not until 2017, almost a decade after Bitcoin was invented, that Zhao would set up Binance in Shanghai.At first, it catered to Chinese cryptocurrency investors, sweeping aside the clunky and unreliable digital markets that then existed for buying Bitcoin with a lightning fast website modelled on the stock exchanges he had designed software for.
Within months it was forced to leave China amid a national ban on cryptocurrency exchanges, but that did not stop it becoming the world’s largest exchange, a position it reached by giving cryptocurrency traders discounts on fees for using its own “Binance coin” instead of cash.
More than $16bn of cryptocurrency purchases flow through Binance each day, according to industry tracker Coinmarketcap, compared to just over $2bn forUS giant Coinbase.
However, its size, and its founder’s often-dismissive attitude towards regulators, has brought growing regulatory attention.
According to Chainalysis, a company that tracks cryptocurrency transactions, Binance was the world’s most popular exchange forcriminalsto send money to in an attempt to cash out cryptocurrencies that had been stolen or laundered, accounting for 27.5pc of the $2.8bn in illicit Bitcoin identified. Binance said it was committed to fighting financial crime in response.
Binance remains banned in China, along with all other cryptocurrency exchanges. Earlier this month, China ordered payments apps to stop supporting cryptocurrency transactions, although it has not yet banned crypto outright.
Meanwhile, Binance has also been forced to block customers in the US from accessing its main website, setting up a separate, limited, American exchange.
This has not protected the company from US scrutiny, however, with a wave of cyber attacks demanding ransoms paid in Bitcoin leading to more calls for a crackdown. Regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are reportedly investigating whether the company allowed Americans to trade derivatives without permission.
The FCA’s intervention, however, is a newly aggressive stance. Binance’s operations span both “spot” trades, where users buy Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as high-risk products such as leveraged coins and derivatives, many of which are regulated by the FCA.
Although Binance insisted that restrictions on regulated activities would not affect services offered by the company’s offshore entities, the move potentially hits Zhao’s plan to launch a UK-based exchange. The FCA declined to comment on its reason for the ban.
The FCA’s power to impose its will on Binance is largely limited to the UK, says David Hamilton, a senior associate in financial regulation at the law firm Pinsent Masons. “The FCA’s powers in these kinds of cases are relatively limited. Clearly it can put up warnings as it has done. But it is very territorial.”
But it may have a domino effect. Many regulators are moving in lockstep in tightening rules on cryptocurrency exchanges. “If the FCA thinks its domestic powers are not enough it can pick up the phone,” says Hamilton.
Rabya Anwar, a partner at Keystone Law, says the ban on Binance “sends a clear signal not only to Binance but to the entire crypto market”.
Crypto firms should be “under no illusions,” she adds, “Binance is unlikely to be the only target.” || Bitcoin Miner Bit Digital Expanding With Second U.S. Office in Miami: BeInCrypto Bitcoin miner Bit Digital said it would be leasing space in Miami Beach for its second U.S. location. The new office will be managed and overseen by Bit Digitals existing U.S. management team. Headquartered in New York City, Bit Digital has one of the highest hash rates among all U.S. listed Bitcoin miners. This story was seen first on BeInCrypto Join our Telegram Group and get trading signals, a free trading course and more stories like this on BeInCrypto || Top Ranked Value Stocks to Buy for June 28th: Here are four stocks with buy rank and strong value characteristics for investors to consider today, June 28th:
USA Truck, Inc.(USAK): This truckload carrier operator has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), and seen the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current year earnings rising 27.2% over the last 60 days.
USA Truck, Inc. price-consensus-chart | USA Truck, Inc. Quote
USA Truck has a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 7.14, compared with 18.10 for the industry. The company possesses a Value Score of A.
USA Truck, Inc. pe-ratio-ttm | USA Truck, Inc. Quote
AutoNation, Inc.(AN): This automotive retailer has a Zacks Rank #1, and seen the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current year earnings rising 6.3% over the last 60 days.
AutoNation, Inc. price-consensus-chart | AutoNation, Inc. Quote
AutoNation has a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 9.34, compared with 11.60 for the industry. The company possesses a Value Score of A.
AutoNation, Inc. pe-ratio-ttm | AutoNation, Inc. Quote
Financial Institutions, Inc.(FISI): This banking and financial services provider has a Zacks Rank #1, and seen the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current year earnings rising 17.6% over the last 60 days.
Financial Institutions, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Financial Institutions, Inc. Quote
Financial Institutions has a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 8.34, compared with 11.10 for the industry. The company possesses a Value Score of B.
Financial Institutions, Inc. pe-ratio-ttm | Financial Institutions, Inc. Quote
Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional(SID): This servicing, origination, and transaction-based services provider has a Zacks Rank #1, and seen the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its current year earnings rising 73.4% over the last 60 days.
National Steel Company price-consensus-chart | National Steel Company Quote
National Steel has a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 2.73, compared with 4.90 for the industry. The company possesses a Value Score of A.
National Steel Company pe-ratio-ttm | National Steel Company Quote
See the full list of top ranked stocks here.
Learn more about the Value score and how it is calculated here.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency has sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the “Internet of Money” and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree we’re still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities.
Zacks’ has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly.
See 3 crypto-related stocks now >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportUSA Truck, Inc. (USAK) : Free Stock Analysis ReportNational Steel Company (SID) : Free Stock Analysis ReportFinancial Institutions, Inc. (FISI) : Free Stock Analysis ReportAutoNation, Inc. (AN) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research || Has Walt Disney Topped Out?: Dow component Walt Disney Co. (DIS) topped out just above 200 in March following a historic 257% advance off March 2020’s 6-year low. The stock has lost altitude since that time, despite the reopening of California Disneyland, moviegoers flocking back to multiplexes, and the success of highly-touted Disney+ entries “Loki” and “WandaVision”. Q2 2021 earnings in May failed to stop the slide, missing revenue expectations with a 13.4% year-over-year decline. Slowing Disney+ Subscriber Growth The entertainment giant’s cruise ships remain landlocked until at least Aug. 6 despite relaunching by Floridian rivals, further impacting 2021 income. “Black Widow” and other Disney films should do relatively well, as evidenced by the solid “F9” box office in the last two weeks. However, the slate of entries includes the next generation of Marvel films that could fall flat with an audience seeking raw entertainment, rather than Hollywood’s usual dose of heavy-handed political messaging. Worse yet, The Information reported last week that Disney+ U.S. growth slowed sharply in the first half of 2021, following a similar shortfall at Netflix Inc. (NFLX) . Its common knowledge the pandemic pulled future demand forward due to endless lockdowns, reducing 2021’s pool of available subscribers. As that publication notes “The slowdown in growth at Disney+ reinforces long-standing questions about Disney’s ability to expand the streaming service to its target of 230 million to 260 million subscribers globally by the end of the 2024 fiscal year.” Wall Street and Technical Outlook Wall Street consensus now stands at an ‘Overweight’ rating based upon 21 ‘Buy’, 2 ‘Overweight’, 6 ‘Hold’, and 1 ‘Underweight’ recommendation. Price targets currently range from a low of $147 to a Street-high $230 while the stock closed Friday’s session more than $30 below the median $212 target. This humble placement supports higher prices if recently-reported metrics are inaccurate and the company reports higher-than-expected subscriber growth in the Aug. 12 release. Story continues Disney failed a breakout above the 2015 high at 122 during the pandemic decline and rallied to a new high in December. The subsequent uptick stalled after mounting 200 in March, giving way to a persistent slide that broke 50-day moving average support in April. The failure to remount that barrier in the last three months raises a red flag, highlighting continued weakness. In addition, the pullback has flipped long-term relative strength readings into an active sell cycle that project continued weakness into the fourth quarter. For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out our economic calendar . Disclosure: the author held no positions in the aforementioned securities at the time of publication. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Morrisons in Multi-billion Pound Bidding War: Shares Rocket to Five-year High GBP/JPY Price Forecast – British Pound Quietly Positive Binance’s CZ Gives Baby Doge Fans Something to Talk About Bitcoin Price Prediction – Failure to Return to $35,000 Levels Would Bring sub-$34,000 into Play Levi Strauss Could Hit New All-Time High on Strong Q2 Earnings; Target Price $31.5 S&P 500 Price Forecast – Thin Holiday Trading Stable || eWorld Companies, Inc. Announces Upcoming Release of New Limited Edition Bitcoin Wine NFT: Escondido, CA, July 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- viaNewMediaWire-- eWorld Companies, Inc. (OTC: EWRC) announced today that they are in the process of releasing “Bitcoin Wine”, a limited edition NFT series featuring and showcasing fine wine. This exclusive “Bitcoin Wine” series will include a limited supply of only 10,000 bottles of carefully selected and readily identifiable fine wine and each bottle of wine in the series will immediately become a collectable because each bottle of wine in the series is accompanied by its own unique NFT.
Through use of blockchain technology, each “Bitcoin Wine” in the series will be comprised as a two-piece ensemble: 1.) an identifiable and tangible bottle of Bitcoin Wine, commonly referred to as a “physical token” that the owner can display in their home 2.) a digital asset, also referred to as “crypto art”, that can be added to their online NFT gallery. The physical token and the digital asset are only available as this two-piece ensemble and neither piece holds any value or authenticity by itself. Each bottle of wine will have a QR code and when scanned will take the viewer directly to the digital asset.
An NFT is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, music, collectables, visual highlights and videos. NFTs are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency, and they are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos.
For instance, famous digital artist Mike Winkelmann, better known as “Beeple”, crafted a composite of 5,000 daily drawings to create perhaps the most famous NFT of the moment, “EVERYDAYS: The First 5000 Days,” which sold at auction for a record-breaking $69.3 million. Another example is NBA Top Shot; a blockchain-based platform that allows fans to buy, sell and trade numbered versions of specific, officially licensed video highlights as NFTs and has a valuation of $2.6 billion.
Mirek Gorny, President of eWorld Companies, Inc. and COO of Angelini Trading Company, commented, “We believe that fine wines and NFTs make for excellent pairings so in our eyes Bitcoin, NFTs and fine wine are naturally cohesive. A fine wine is a collectable in and of itself, something that gets better and more valuable over time, so it makes perfect sense to us that we create unique and specific bottles of wine in the form of NFTs. And knowing that Bitcoin has a finite supply of 21 million coins, we also like the idea of creating a finite supply of just 10,000 bottles of Bitcoin Wine.”
The company plans to announce its official release date for the “Bitcoin Wine” NFT series very soon, along with information on where and how they can be purchased.
ABOUT EWORLD COMPANIES, INC.
eWorld Companies, Inc. is the Parent Company of Angelini Trading Company, a Los Angeles area-based company that distributes 26 varieties of wine from 5 different family-owned wineries, 2 different handmade Italian pasta factories, and a premier olive oil company that won the 2014 award for best olive oil in the world, and other specialty food items seldom seen in the U.S. market. eWorld’s top priority and sole focus now is the rollout of Angelini Trading’s line of Caponero and Benevento brand wines for the U.S. consumer market. Wines have already been delivered and purchase orders received from the first 200 retail outlets, with many additional orders and deliveries expected to be announced soon.
Angelini Trading Company was formed in 2012 by Richard Angelini and his cousin, Roberto Adamo, with the objective to source the highest-level products available from the Italian peninsula for export to the rest of the world, with primary focus on the U.S. market. The Angelini and Adamo families have been merchants and artists since the 1600's. Unfortunately, Richard Angelini passed away in 2017, but the company remains in family hands with his wife, Christina now serving as the company’s President.
For more information visithttps://ewrcinc.comand/orhttps://angelinitrading.co.
Safe Harbor Statement: This release contains forward-looking statements with respect to business operations and results of eWorld Companies, Inc., which involves risks and uncertainties. Actual future results could materially differ from those discussed. eWorld Companies, Inc. intends that all statements included herein, including those referring to future revenues and earnings, be subject to the "Safe Harbors" provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Pablo Gallardo Wagner, CEO8586349905contact@ewrcinc.com
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 45585.03, 45593.64, 44428.29, 47793.32, 47096.95, 47047.00, 46004.48, 44695.36, 44801.19, 46717.58
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
How One Bitcoin Options Trader Turned $638K Into $4.4M in 5 Weeks: In the run-up to the 2017 market peak, stories abounded of traders who bought bitcoin in the spot market just a few months before only to cash out to the tune of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
The days of tripling or quadrupling your money in just a week or two just by buyingbitcoinmay be behind us. But since those heady days of three years ago, the crypto derivatives market has taken up the mantle of being the place where astonishing returns can occasionally be had by taking huge risks.
Indeed, some traders with bullish outlooks have recently generated significant profits by taking long positions using the cheapout-of-the-money call options. That has given them the same reward as holding multiple bitcoins in the spot market but at a significantly less cost, albeit with more risk.
Related:Bitcoin News Roundup for Dec. 8, 2020
That’s what a bullish call options trade executed five weeks ago on the world’s largest crypto options exchange, Deribit, has achieved.
On Oct. 30, someone (a single trader or small group) bought 16,000 January expiry call options at the $36,000 strike for 0.003 bitcoin per contract, according to data shared by Deribit. The total cost was 48 bitcoin – the number of contracts (16,000) multiplied by the per-contract premium of 0.003 bitcoin.
In dollar terms, the per-contract premium at the time was around $39.90, and the entire trade required an initial outlay of approximately $638,400.
As bitcoin rallied from $13,400 to over $19,000, the premium drawn by the $36,000-strike January expiry call rose from 0.003 bitcoin to 0.0145 bitcoin, generating a paper profit of more than $4 million.
Related:First Mover: Wells Fargo Bitcoin Briefing Could Signal Bull Run Intact
Here is how the net return is calculated:
= [(Option’scurrent priceof 0.0145 BTC x 16,000 contracts) x bitcoin’s current spot market price of $19,200] minus (-) cost of trade.
If the position were to be liquidated now, and assuming dumping on the market 16,000 far-out-of-the-money calls wouldn’t drop the price, the net return ignoring the fees charged by the exchange would be seven times the initial outlay.
A call option gives the holder the right but not the obligation to buy the underlying asset at a predetermined price on or before a particular date. A put option represents a right to sell. Options on Deribit are also cash-settled, which means when they are exercised it is only the profits that are paid. One options contract represents the right to buy or sell one bitcoin.
As of now, the $36,000 call is an out-of-the-money call option – one which has no intrinsic value due to the spot price hovering below the strike price.
Theoretically, the purchase of the $36,000 call expiring on Jan. 29 is a bet that prices will rise above $36,000 before the end of January, making the option “in-the-money.”
The crypto derivatives market has taken up the mantle of being the place where astonishing returns can occasionally be had by taking huge risks.
However, as markets move higher, the probability of the out-of-the-money option turning into one that is in-the-money rises, boosting the option’s premium, as seen in this case.
If the bull market maintains its pace, the option premium will continue to rise, all things being equal. However, a potential price consolidation would reduce bitcoin’s probability of rising above $36,000 by the end of January and erode the option’s value as the time to expiration draws near (referred to as “theta decay” in options parlance).
Taking on an options trade brings with it even more risk than just buying bitcoin outright. For one, the trader could get wiped out. That’s because the long call position would expire worthless on Jan. 29, yielding a loss of $638,400 (the total premium the trader paid) if bitcoin settles below $36,000 on that day. Then again, the maximum loss the option trader can suffer is limited to the extent of premium paid, which is $638,400 in this case.
If the trader is seeking to liquidate a little bit of the position now, he or she may have a willing buyer out there near current prices for small amounts. As of now, the $36,000-strike call looks somewhat active. A few other traders seem to have bought call options at that strike price.
“Options offer a different strategy to make leveraged profit,” said Shaun Fernando, head of risk and product at Deribit. “In this case, extremely bullish sentiment could be done through buying leveraged futures. However from trading far out-of-the-money calls, it offered the trader a low-risk, high-reward strategy with limited down side. Increase in option price was as a result of underlying move and increased volatility. Underlying [bitcoin] does not necessarily have to cross the strike for a trader to profit.”
At press time, there are more than 20,000 call option contracts open at the $36,000 strike – that’s the highest concentration of open interest at a single strike.
A big open interest buildup in a deep out-of-the-money option is often considered a bullish sign. However, sometimes the data is skewed by a few large trades and thus not reliable as a market indicator, as in this case.
• How One Bitcoin Options Trader Turned $638K Into $4.4M in 5 Weeks
• How One Bitcoin Options Trader Turned $638K Into $4.4M in 5 Weeks || Fidelity’s Crypto Arm Responds to 6 Common Bitcoin Criticisms: Fidelity Digital Assets, a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments, has responded to some of bitcoin’s most frequent criticisms, suggesting clarity is needed amid heightened interest in the cryptocurrency.
In ablog poston Thursday, Director of Research Ria Bhutoria said she was addressing persistent “criticisms and misconceptions” about the cryptocurrency. These include whetherbitcoinis too volatile to be a store of value, has failed as a means of payment and is environmentally wasteful.
“Bitcoin’s volatility is a trade-off [that] makes for perfect supply inelasticity and an intervention-free market,” she said, but with greater adoption and introduction of derivatives and investment products, volatility may continue to drop.
Related:Market Wrap: Bitcoin Ascends to $16.8K; Uniswap and Tether 35% of Ethereum Transactions
According to the Bhutoria, the world’s first cryptocurrency’s “core” use case isn’t in payments. However, it uses its limited capacity for settling transactions that aren’t well-served by traditional rails, and offers “high settlement assurances.”
“Limited throughput is the trade-off bitcoin makes for decentralization, which is a direct result of cheap and easy validation,” she wrote.
The post responds to bitcoin’s reputation for sucking up vast amounts of energy in the mining process, arguing a “substantial portion” of its power consumption comes from renewable sources. Further, the energy it does expend is a “valid and important” use.
“Bitcoin transactions connected to illicit activity are very low,” Bhutoria went on, addressing a common criticism of cryptocurrencies in general. Like cash, bitcoin is “neutral and has properties that may be valuable to good actors and bad actors,” she said.
Related:First Mover: Vaccine Won't Come Fast Enough to Avoid More Stimulus
As for the argument that bitcoin isn’t backed by anything, such as real-world assets, it is in fact “backed by code and the consensus that exists among its key stakeholders” was Bhutoria’s response.
See also:Fidelity Report Says Bitcoin’s Market Cap Is ‘Drop in the Bucket’ of Potential
Bitcoin is growing because people recognize it offers “perfect scarcity … transaction irreversibility, and seizure and censorship resistance,” she said.
Finally, on the threat that a competitor might someday replace bitcoin, she argued that while alternatives have tried to improve upon bitcoin’s “limitations” (such as limited transaction throughput and volatility), “it has been at the cost of the core properties that make bitcoin valuable.”
• Fidelity’s Crypto Arm Responds to 6 Common Bitcoin Criticisms
• Fidelity’s Crypto Arm Responds to 6 Common Bitcoin Criticisms || The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers – December 20th, 2020: Bitcoin , BTC to USD, rose by 2.96% on Saturday. Following a 1.46% gain from Friday, Bitcoin ended the day at $23.808.0. It was another mixed start to the day. Bitcoin rose to an early morning high $23,240 before hitting reverse. Falling short of Friday’s high $23,287 and the major resistance levels, Bitcoin fell to a late morning intraday low $22,768.0 Steering clear of the first major support level at $22,562, Bitcoin rallied to a late afternoon intraday high and a new swing high $24,123.0. Bitcoin broke through the first major resistance level at $23,487 and the second major resistance level at $23,849. A choppy end to the day saw Bitcoin fall back to $23,600 before wrapping up the day at $23,800 levels. The second major resistance level at $23,849 pinned Bitcoin back late in the day. The near-term bullish trend remained intact, supported by the breakthrough to $24,000 levels. For the bears, Bitcoin would need to slide through the 62% FIB of $11,687 to form a near-term bearish trend. The Rest of the Pack Across the rest of the majors, it was yet another mixed day on Saturday. Binance Coin and Litecoin rallied by 7.44% and by 9.66% respectively to lead the way. Crypto.com Coin (+1.85%) and Ethereum (+0.66%), also joined Bitcoin in the green. It was a bearish day for the rest of the majors, however. Bitcoin Cash SV (-0.97%), Cardano’s ADA (-0.41%), Chainlink (-0.26%), Polkadot (-3.32%) and Ripple’s XRP (-1.14%) saw red on the day For the current week, the crypto total market cap fell to a Monday low $545.05bn before rising to a Saturday high $680.60bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $660.27bn. Bitcoin’s dominance fell to a Monday low 64.21% before rising to an early Sunday high 66.97%. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s dominance stood at 66.88%. This Morning At the time of writing, Bitcoin was down by 0.48% to $23,693.7. A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin rise to an early morning high $23,810.0 before falling to a low $23,668.0. Story continues Bitcoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. Elsewhere, it was a mixed start to the day for the majors. Chainlink and Polkadot bucked the trend early on, with gains of 0.01% and 0.63% respectively. It was a bearish day for the rest of the majors, however. At the time of writing, Litecoin and Ripple’s XRP led the way down, with losses of 1.07% and 1.05% respectively. For the Bitcoin Day Ahead Bitcoin would need to avoid a fall through the pivot level at $23.566 to bring the first major resistance level at $24,365 into play. Support from the broader market would be needed for Bitcoin to break out from Saturday’s high $24,123.0. Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and resistance at $24,500 would likely cap any upside. In the event of another extended crypto rally, Bitcoin could test resistance at $25,000 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $24,921. Failure to avoid a fall through the $23,566 pivot would bring the first major support level at $23,010 into play. Barring an extended crypto sell-off, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$22,500 levels. The second major support level sits at $22,211. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers – December 19th, 2020 Gold Price Futures (GC) Technical Analysis – Trader Reaction to Short-Term Retracement Zone Sets the Tone Crude Oil Price Forecast – Crude Oil Reaches Towards Major Figure S&P 500 Weekly Price Forecast – Stock Markets Choppy Ahead of Holidays The Weekly Wrap – COVID-19 Vaccine, Brexit, Stimulus Talks, and Stats Were in Focus U.S Mortgage Rates Slide to a 15th Low of the Year || US Stock Market Overview – Stocks Close Mixed Following Weak Retail Sales: The major US indices were down on Tuesday but the smallcap Russell 200 bucked the trend. Most sectors in the S&P 500 index were lower, led down to Utilities and Healthcare. Energy and Material outperformed. The dollar continued to move lower on Tuesday helping oil prices which in turn help the energy sector gain traction. Bitcoin prices also continued to break out. The Fed was on the tape saying that they will keep rates low for the foreseeable future. Judy Shelton, President Trump’s candidate for the Federal Reserve, was rejected by the Senate on Tuesday. Here feeling that the President and Congress should have greater sway on Fed decisions, eroding its independence hampered her candidacy. Retail sales came in weaker than expected as the decline in stimulus weighed on spending. US import prices also came in weaker than expected showing that inflation remains tame.
US retail sales increased less than expected in October according to the Commerce Department. Retail sales rose 0.3% last month, compared to expectations that they would increase by 0.5%. Data for September was revised down to show sales surging 1.6% instead of shooting up 1.9% as previously reported. Excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services, retail sales nudged up 0.1% after a downwardly revised 0.9% increase in September.
US import prices declined in October as oil and gasoline prices declined. According to the Labor Department, import prices dipped 0.1% last month. Data for September was revised down to show import prices gaining 0.2% instead of rising 0.3% as previously reported. Expectations had been for import prices, to rise by 0.2% in October. Year over year import prices fell 1.0% after declining by 1.4% in September.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• USD/CAD Daily Forecast – Attempt To Settle Above 1.3100
• Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Slip, but Hold Support Despite Warmer Weather Forecast
• Natural Gas Price Forecast – Natural Gas Markets Trying to Stabilize || Bitcoin Mining Company Riot Blockchain Passes $1B in Market Cap: Nasdaq-listed bitcoin mining company Riot Blockchain (RIOT) reached a $1.08 billion market capitalization Monday after surging nearly 13% in early trading hours. Shares of the Castle Rock, Colo.-based firm have gained over 1,250% in 2020, currently trading hands above $16. Over the same period, bitcoin gained nearly 280%. Riot has issued nearly 17 million shares since November, with a total of 67.5 million shares outstanding, according to data collected by ycharts.com . Riot has aggressively expanded the size and sophistication of its mining operations in 2020, including a planned pilot project in Texas to test water immersion cooling technology in addition to purchasing over 31,000 new ASIC mining machines this year, per CoinDesks prior reporting. Riot shares opened Monday nearly 18% higher than the Thursday close on Christmas Eve. Riot pivoted its business model from biotech to bitcoin mining in October 2017 when the companys value was less than $50 million. Riot did not immediately respond to a comment request from CoinDesk. Related Stories Bitcoin Mining Company Riot Blockchain Passes $1B in Market Cap Bitcoin Mining Company Riot Blockchain Passes $1B in Market Cap Bitcoin Mining Company Riot Blockchain Passes $1B in Market Cap Bitcoin Mining Company Riot Blockchain Passes $1B in Market Cap || Electrum Developers Apply Fix After Apple Update Bricks Bitcoin Wallets: After the most recent Mac update caused major problems for one of Bitcoins oldest wallets, its development team has rolled out a fix. Originally raised as an issue on Github , the Big Sur update is bricking MacOS Electrum clients, a bitcoin software wallet that is a favorite of power users because of its complex tooling and user controls. The Electrum team announced today that a new release fixes the issue. Currently, the latest release of Big Sur has completely broken Electrum [for Mac devices]. You cant open the app or load any of your wallets, one Electrum user, Nico, told CoinDesk. Related: New Mac Update Leaves Users No Room to Escape Data Collection The issue was opened on Electrums Github on Aug. 1, around the time Apple released Big Surs beta. While the root cause is still unknown, Electrum developer SomberNight said in the Github issue page, its related to Big Surs treatment of Python, the coding language in which Electrum is written. To work around the problem, Electrum users can run the software from source (that is, by manually compiling the source code) or they can bundle an older version of Python into their software. The Electrum teams fix incorporates the latter solution. For Bitcoin, Apples problems hit home The snafu is the first case of Apples latest release disrupting the Bitcoin realm, but its not the first time the update has caused issues. Related: Brainwallets: The Bitcoin Wallet You Probably Shouldnt Use (Unless You Have To) Upon the version 11.0 release last week, an error in Apples servers caused worldwide shutdowns of Mac hardware running the update. These servers process OCSP requests, or the data packets that verify user credentials for applications. Mac users soon discovered the Big Sur update and the error were related. Big Sur sends OCSP requests for every online and offline application that a user opens, and if these requests fail then the computer fails, too. Story continues This activity logging feature has been present since Apples Catilina update, but Big Sur makes it so Mac users cant trick the feature with firewalls and VPNs as they once could. These requests are transmitted unencrypted, raising privacy concerns over how this data may be intercepted and used by third parties. From the perspective of a Bitcoin user, this feature would broadcast every time a wallet, coin mixer or other Bitcoin-related service is used on his or her device. Related Stories Electrum Developers Apply Fix After Apple Update Bricks Bitcoin Wallets Electrum Developers Apply Fix After Apple Update Bricks Bitcoin Wallets || Market Wrap: Bitcoin Nears $29K While Ether Options Trader Makes Long-Shot Bet: The Takeaway:
• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $28,775 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 7.3% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $26,796.90 to $28,969.90 (CoinDesk 20)
• BTC above its 10-hour and 50-hour moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.
Another day, another all-time high in bitcoin as the cryptocurrency changed hands as high as $28,969.90, according to data compiled by theCoinDesk 20.
Bitcoin’s price began its upswing at around 17:00 UTC (12:00 p.m. ET) Tuesday and barely let up, taking off from $26,400 to the brink of $29,000 in just 26 hours.
Related:NFT Art Sales Reached All-Time High of $8.2M in December
According to analyst Alex Krüger, action in the bond market spurred gains in cryptocurrencies. “Rates came off in the 48 hours leading to yesterday’s [Tuesday’s] pump,” he told CoinDesk. On Monday, the U.S. 10-year bond yielded 0.950%. By Wednesday afternoon, it was 0.926%.
Calling Wednesday’s action a “strong market,” Chris Thomas, head of digital asset at Swissquote, said bitcoin’s price was “being pushed higher by retail flows. We have seen a few [institutional investors] but not too many,” adding that “most are on holiday until next Monday.”
And while Thomas said he had expected the market to trade sideway this week, “the fact that it has moved higher to me suggests we may see a short-term pullback,” he said.
Read more:Bitcoin Prices in 2020: Here’s What Happened
Related:Market Wrap: Bitcoin Closes 2020 Near Record Highs
“Bitcoin is extending its parabolic uptrend after gapping up at the start of the holiday week,” said technical analyst Katie Stockton, managing partner at Fairlead Strategies. “The rally has no new signs of exhaustion from an overbought/oversold perspective, and there is no resistance left to hold back bitcoin.”
Similar to Swissquote’s Thomas, Stockton warns a pullback is possible and, should it happen, “the gap from Monday is likely to be filled in an abrupt reversal.”
Meanwhile, a string of bad news hitXRPas more exchanges announced halts in trading the cryptocurrency U.S. regulators claim is a security. Genesis, owned by CoinDesk parent company DCG, announced it was suspending trading and lending in XRP. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is alsosuspending XRP tradingfor its customers, effective Jan. 13. The token was down 3.5% in the 24 hours leading up to publication time.
Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up sharply Friday and trading around $750. That marks a 3.5% gain in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).
Despite hitting a multi-year high, trading on ether was lighter than average Wednesday. Just $618 million worth of ether was traded on the eight exchanges tracked in the CoinDesk 20 compared to the previous seven-day average of $726 million.
Yet, at least one trader has sights set on an astounding rally in the months ahead. On Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange, someone bought 153 contracts of September 2021 calls with a strike of $5,000 for a premium of around $25 each. That means the trader bet roughly $3,825 that ether will rally sevenfold over the course of the next nine months. Calls give the owner the right, but not obligation, to buy the underlying asset (in this case, ether) at a set price on a set date.
Prices need not come close to $5,000 for the trader to make a profit; a mere spike in volatility or even a relatively modest rally could increase the now-low probability of the options being in the money, albeit by a very small percentage. Still, that could be just enough for the bet to pay off. As of now, though, it has the same risk profile of a lottery scratch-off game.
Digital assets on theCoinDesk 20were mixed Monday.
Notable winners as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):
• orchid (OXT) +2%
• bitcoin cash (BCH) +2%
• litecoin (LTC) +2%
Notable losers:
• chainlink (LINK) -2.2%
• eos (EOS) – 3%
• stellar (XLM) – 3%
Equity indexes:
• Japan: Nikkei 225: 27,444.17 (-123.98 or -0.45%)
• U.K.: FTSE 100: 6,555.82 (-46.83 or -0.71%)
• U.S.: S&P 500: 3,732.04 (+5.00 or +0.13%)
Commodities:
• Oil was up 0.6%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $48.29
• Gold was in the green, up 0.7% and at $1,896.40 as of press time.
Treasurys:
• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield fell Monday to 0.926%.
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Nears $29K While Ether Options Trader Makes Long-Shot Bet
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Nears $29K While Ether Options Trader Makes Long-Shot Bet || Number of Bitcoin ATMs Up 85% This Year as Coronavirus Drives Adoption: The number of bitcoin automated teller machines (ATMs) across the globe has surged this year amid the coronavirus-induced shift toward contactless payments.
BitcoinATM installations have increased by 85% to 11,798, outpacing the previous year’s near 50% rise by a significant margin, according to data sourceCoin ATM Radar.
The spike demonstrates the rising popularity of bitcoin as a payment mode. The fear of getting a coronavirus infection has accelerated the growth in the broader contactless payment market this year, according toGlobal Trade Magazine.
Related:98% of Bitcoin's 'Unspent Outputs' Are Worth More Than When Made
Bitcoin’s borderless network facilitates a seamless transfer of money in any amount from anywhere across the globe, through any mobile or computer, and at relatively lower fees than traditional banking channels.
A bitcoin ATM allows a person to purchase the cryptocurrency by using cash or debit card. Some machines facilitate the purchase of bitcoin and the sale of cryptocurrency for cash.
The U.S. added over 800 ATMs in October alone and is leading cryptocurrency adoption, followed by Canada and Germany,as noted byCoin ATM Radar.
With several public companies investing in bitcoin and online payments giant PayPaladding supportto the cryptocurrency, mainstream adoption could continue to grow.
• Number of Bitcoin ATMs Up 85% This Year as Coronavirus Drives Adoption
• Number of Bitcoin ATMs Up 85% This Year as Coronavirus Drives Adoption
• Number of Bitcoin ATMs Up 85% This Year as Coronavirus Drives Adoption || Diginex Stock Pops On Bitcoin Strength: Former SPAC Is First Publicly Traded Blockchain: The market is increasing the valuation of stocks associated withbitcoinand cryptocurrency. One former SPAC is seeing new highs Thursday on this strength.
About Diginex:Former SPACDiginex Ltd(NASDAQ:EQOS) is a digital asset financial services and advisory company. The company offers a cryptocurrency exchange and OTC trading operations with its Equos.io and Diginex platforms.
Diginexwent publicwith the SPAC 8i Enterprises, formerly "JFK" on the Nasdaq. The deal made Diginex the first full digital asset ecosystem comprising a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed on the Nasdaq.
The SPAC deal valued the company at $276 million.
At the time, Diginexhadthree main services with advisory, markets and asset management.
“Equos is differentiated from many other exchanges in that it focuses on solving many of the infrastructure and product issues that current traders are dealing with on incumbent platforms,” the company said.
Related Link:8 Stocks To Play Bitcoin’s Resurgence
Diginex's Growth Trajectory:Diginexsaidrecently it anticipates launching its first derivative product, a bitcoin perpetual futures contract, this month. The new offering is a futures contract with no expiry. An Ethereum perpetual future offering is also expected soon.
Diginex expects the new products to bring “meaningful volume growth” to the exchange.
“As we roll out a much-improved version of the perpetual futures product, this is just the beginning of our roadmap around the derivative product set,” the companysaid.
The company’s recent strategic roadmap includes making digital assets more accessible for institutions and individuals.
Growth could also come from expansion in the U.S.
“While we are currently targeting the sizable market opportunities in Asia and Europe, our long-term goal is to make our innovative products available to U.S. investors as well.”
Diginex said its unique level of transparency and government regulation as an SEC-approved public company could make it attractive going forward.
EQOS Price Action:Shares of Diginex hit a new 52-week high of $13.75 Thursday. The stock closed the session 9.57% higher at $10.65.
See more from Benzinga
• Click here for options trades from Benzinga
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• Exclusive: New SPAC ETF Creator On SPACs, Management Teams, Top Holdings
© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || BIGG Digital Assets Inc. Announces Closing of Oversubscribed $6,900,000 Offering: NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE U.S.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Nov. 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --BIGG Digital Assets Inc. (“BIGG” or the “Company”) (CSE: BIGG; OTCQB: BBKCF; WKN: A2PS9W)is pleased to announce that it has closed its previously announced short form prospectus offering (the “Offering”) of 28,750,000 units of the Company (each, a “Unit”) at a price of $0.24 per Unit for aggregate gross proceeds of $6,900,000. The number of Units includes an additional 3,750,000 Units pursuant to the exercise of the Underwriters’ over-allotment option.
Each Unit is comprised of one common share (each, a “Common Share”) and one one-half Common Share purchase warrant of the Company (each such full warrant, a “Warrant”). Each Warrant entitles the holder thereof to purchase one Common Share (each, a “Warrant Share”) at a price of $0.30 per Warrant Share for a period of 24 months following the closing of the Offering, subject to an accelerated expiry if the volume-weighted average price of the Common Shares on the Canadian Securities Exchange (the “CSE”) (or other applicable exchange) is equal to or greater than $0.60 per Common Share for ten consecutive trading days.
The Offering was made pursuant to an underwriting agreement dated November 11, 2020, as amended (the “Underwriting Agreement”) among the Company and a syndicate of underwriters led by PI Financial Corp., as sole-lead underwriter, and including Canaccord Genuity Corp., Echelon Wealth Partners, Haywood Securities Inc. and M Partners Inc. (collectively, the “Underwriters”). Certain purchasers on the president’s list purchased 2,083,333 Units for an aggregate gross proceeds of $500,000 (the “President’s List”). The Company has agreed to pay the Underwriters a cash fee equal to 6% of the gross proceeds from the Offering and 3% of the gross proceeds of the Offering from purchasers on the President’s List. In addition, upon closing of the Offering, the Company has agreed to issue the Underwriters non-transferable broker warrants (each, a “Broker Warrant”) equal to 6% of the total number of Units sold pursuant to the Offering and 3% of the total number of Units sold to the President’s List. Each Broker Warrant will be exercisable for one Common Share (the “Broker Warrant Share”) at a price of $0.24 per Broker Warrant, and is exercisable for a period of 24 months from today’s date. The Company has also agreed to pay the Underwriters a corporate finance fee of $50,000 payable in cash (plus applicable taxes).
The Company intends to use the majority of the net proceeds of the Offering for research and development, expansion of sales and marketing teams for BIG internationally and Netcoins domestically, additional liquidity for Netcoins trade settlement, increase of long-term Bitcoin investment holdings, and working capital.
The Common Shares, the Warrant Shares, if any, and the Broker Warrant Shares, if any, have been approved for listing with the CSE under symbol “BIGG”. The Common Shares begin trading on the CSE on November 30, 2020, and the Warrant Shares and Broker Warrant Shares will be listed with the CSE upon issuance.
The Units were issued pursuant to a short form prospectus dated November 25, filed with the securities regulatory authorities in each of the provinces of Canada, other than Québec (the “Prospectus”). A copy of the Prospectus is available under the Company’s profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
THE SECURITIES HAVE NOT BEEN AND WILL NOT BE REGISTERED UNDER THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES ACT OF 1933, AS AMENDED (THE “U.S. SECURITIES ACT”) OR ANY STATE SECURITIES LAWS AND MAY NOT BE OFFERED OR SOLD WITHIN THE UNITED STATES OR TO U.S. PERSONS UNLESS REGISTERED UNDER THE U.S. SECURITIES ACT AND APPLICABLE STATE SECURITIES LAWS OR AN EXEMPTION FROM SUCH REGISTRATION IS AVAILABLE.
On behalf of Board
Mark BinnsCEOmark@biggdigitalassets.comT: +1.844.515.2646
The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.
About BIGG Digital Assets Inc.
BIGG believes the future of crypto is a safe, compliant, and regulated environment. BIGG invests in products and companies to support this vision. BIGG owns two operating companies: Blockchain Intelligence Group (blockchaingroup.io) and Netcoins (netcoins.ca).
Blockchain Intelligence Group (BIG) has developed a Blockchain-agnostic search and analytics engine, QLUETM, enabling Law Enforcement, RegTech, Regulators and Government Agencies to visually track, trace and monitor cryptocurrency transactions at a forensic level. Our commercial product, BitRank Verified®, offers a “risk score” for cryptocurrencies, enabling RegTech, banks, ATMs, exchanges, and retailers to meet traditional regulatory/compliance requirements.
Netcoins develops brokerage and exchange software to make the purchase and sale of cryptocurrency easily accessible to the mass consumer and investor with a focus on compliance and safety. Netcoins utilizes BitRank Verified®software at the heart of its platform and facilitates crypto trading via a self-serve crypto brokerage portal at Netcoins.app.
For more information and to register to BIGG’s mailing list, please visit our website at https://www.biggdigitalassets.com. Or visit SEDAR at www.sedar.com.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information
This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements that are not historical facts, including without limitation, statements regarding future estimates, plans, programs, forecasts, projections, objectives, assumptions, expectations or beliefs of future performance, statements regarding the anticipated use of proceeds from the Offering and the Company’s beliefs about the future of crypto are "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as “will” or “believe” or variations of such words or statements that certain actions, events or results “will” be taken, occur or be achieved. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur. These assumptions, risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the state of the economy in general and capital markets in particular, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of BIGG. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because BIGG can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from BIGG’s expectations include, consumer sentiment towards BIGG’s products and Blockchain technology generally, technology failures, competition, and failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations.
The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, BIGG disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additionally, BIGG undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made by, third parties in respect of the matters discussed above.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 32782.02, 31971.91, 33992.43, 36824.36, 39371.04, 40797.61, 40254.55, 38356.44, 35566.66, 33922.96
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2020-08-12]
BTC Price: 11584.93, BTC RSI: 62.53
Gold Price: 1934.90, Gold RSI: 54.06
Oil Price: 42.67, Oil RSI: 61.05
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin Futures Interest Soars as Bond Yields Fall to Record Lows: Industry Exec: Bitcoin futures are drawing record interest as investment opportunities in traditional markets dry up, said the co-founder of an institutional fund provider. Open interest, or open positions, in futures listed on major exchanges reached a new lifetime high of $5.6 billion on Saturday, surpassing the previous record of $5.36 billion in February, according to data source Skew . As of Monday, aggregate open interest was $5 billion, up 66% from the July low of $3 billion. Open interest in futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), synonymous with institutional investors, jumped to a record high of $828 million on Monday. CMEs open interest has surged 127% over the past 2.5 weeks alongside bitcoins quick rise from $9,100 to $11,100. The rise in open interest represents an accumulation of long positions by institutional traders, said Matthew Dibb, the co-founder and COO of Stack, an institutional provider of cryptocurrency trackers and index funds. Dibb said the rise in open interest in crypto derivatives suggests investors are looking for alpha the best returns in alternative markets as equities look overbought and bond yields move into negative territory. The U.S. 10-year Treasury note is offering a yield of 0.54% at press time with the real or inflation-adjusted bill at a record low of -1%. Similar bonds in Germany, Japan and Switzerland are offering negative yields, according to TradingView data. As a potential macro hedge, Dibb expects bitcoin to break into multi-year highs as the global economy worsens and investors become steadily confident in moving value from traditional markets into the digital asset space. Bitcoins price is largely unchanged at $11,290; technical bias remains bullish with prices holding well above the support line at $10,500, the February high. See also: Bitcoin Futures Volume Surges 186% as Price Hits $11K Related Stories Bitcoin Futures Interest Soars as Bond Yields Fall to Record Lows: Industry Exec Bitcoin Futures Interest Soars as Bond Yields Fall to Record Lows: Industry Exec Bitcoin Futures Interest Soars as Bond Yields Fall to Record Lows: Industry Exec Bitcoin Futures Interest Soars as Bond Yields Fall to Record Lows: Industry Exec || Weed Out the Soviet-Era Ponzi Scheme Eating Ethereum: Lex Sokolin, a CoinDesk columnist, is Global Fintech co-head at ConsenSys, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based blockchain software company. The following is adapted from hisFintech Blueprintnewsletter.
We have a beautiful Ethereum garden. In it we grow cash equivalents called stablecoins powering applications that run on open-source, programmable blockchains. It promises to be the new economy – free, permissionless and global. It saw more than $50 billion in transaction volume in June 2020 alone.
But there is a hungry weed growing underneath. In our beautiful public garden, there spreads corruption. Can we root out this plant? Can we turn the soil?
Related:Money Reimagined: Bitcoin and Ethereum Are a DeFi Double Act
The weed is called a pyramid scheme, and italways takes advantage of those who feed it. Take a look at the diagram below (from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission). After four levels of targets, the scheme needs just 7,000 people to be profitable to the swindlers. After the 10th level, it needs 60 million people. By the 13th level, you must consume 13 billion participants. There is never enough for the weed.
The weed can work on any technology, as long as it touches a human mind. You can spread it with words, on paper, by fax or in code. Here is how the weed looks when it’s implemented in software: This academic paper, published in January 2020,traces 184 software implementations of pyramid schemesoperating on permissionless networks. There are more now.
Maybe you don’t understand how bad this is for the garden. Maybe you think letting this grow and overtake our mutual work is freedom. The strongest survive, the weakest die.
See also: JP Koning –The $10B Stablecoin Industry Has a Fraud Problem It’s Not Addressing
Related:How Bitcoin Is Like Ham Radio
With that mindset, we would have no delicate flowers or cultivated beauty. All we would have is a desert of dandelions and horseradish. In the world of money and cryptocurrency, there would be no real economic activity, no central bank digital currency, no crypto-native businesses, no new financial infrastructure and no technology platform shifts to blockchain. Just a loud grind oftheftguzzling gas fees, crowding out productive activity from Ethereum forever.
Let me introduce you to MMM, a pyramid scheme with roots in the former Soviet Union, which stole from nearly 10 million people during the 1990s. While decentralized finance and digital asset companies bend over backwards to be customer-centric and reform financial services (each in their own way), MMM is a pretender. It is a pretender that hasstolen the language of the crypto economyto create a cancer in its body. It hides in the Paxos project anduses Ethereum for its 21st century machinations.
A personal aside: Growing up in the crumbling Soviet Union of the late-1980s, a series of TV commercials are etched into my memory.
You have to sympathize a little bit, and imagine a country that had no functioning economic system and a massive black market. As the Berlin Wall collapsed, so did the economic hallucination that was the centrally planned economy. The Chicago School of Economics group advised then-President Mikhail Gorbachevon a “shock therapy” approach to transition, leading to an unprecedented distribution of state assets (e.g., factories, buildings, natural resources) to people who could not tell the difference between a stock certificate and a stamp. Let’s just say China did better with the gradual approach.
Into this context came the ads. They feature a Russian man, Lenya Golubkov, who “invests” his money with a “securities cooperative” called MMM. His fortunes soon improve. He is able to buy boots, then a coat for his wife, eventually touring America with his brother and starting a successful business. The securities he buys look like stock certificates, promising returns of 100% per month and more.
White hat hackers should come together to protect their users against naked pyramid schemes. If we don’t, there may never be real money in the system.
You must understand that everything on TV carried authority in those times. Like movies from the U.S. that hinted at Western opulence and the promise of new wealth associated with liberalization, MMM was sold as a dream to regular people in a language they understood. I imagine in many poorer, less-educated parts of the world, such storytelling still works. As does this image of a voucher for a share in a pyramid scheme.
The man behind the scheme,Sergei Mavrodi, is a cartoon villain, dead at the age of 62 from a heart attack (who knows what that means in Russia now). He spent his life openly gaslighting regulators and politicians, briefly even becoming one to get immunity from prosecution. The people he was defrauding voted him in, but he ended up jailed anyway. Seemingly a brilliant mathematician and deeply cynical, Mavrodi wrapped the popular sentiments on the ground into amisleading trapfor the unwary consumer.
It feels like a long time since the 1990s. But in terms of human nature it has been barely a blink. After Mavrodi got out of jail, MMM resurfaced in 2011, made its way to the internet and has now implanted itself into the body of cryptocurrency. Mavrodi is dead, but his scheme is the decentralized autonomous organization that nobody wanted, living on in the code forever. Like a tapeworm, it eats 10% of Ethereum’s transactions andis responsible for 50% of the transfers for stablecoin Paxos, according to Coin Metrics.
The weed is not alone, it inspires others.Another pyramid called Forsage is eating up 25% of Ethereum’s bandwidth, beating MMM at its parasitic game. Forsage is the decentralized app with the most users and volume, outperforming legitimate DeFi pioneers like Compound and Kyber Network. Other software versions of this same thing will proliferate and evolve as the smart contracts ecosystem of Ethereum matures. They prey on how easy it is to fool people and sell them a lie, and to undermine the infrastructure on which they grow.
Regulators in thePhilippines have attempted to go after the pyramid scheme, but of course to no avail. It has no reach over Lado Okhotnikov, the developer of the code. And we are in the Pirate Bay age of money: There is nothing to shut down, many will argue. This is permissionless.
There is hard work ahead. Instead of yield farming arbitrage, the crypto community must root out these weeds. If we ever want broad adoption, it is unrealistic to say “caveat emptor.” Most people are not able to probability-weigh payoffs and parse financial products for what is real and what is false.
Think for a moment of computer viruses. Just because computers can become infected and send your data and passwords to maleficent third parties doesn’t mean that is likely to happen. Various shields, defenders and open software protect users from those seeking to troll and harm us. In the early-1990s, there were just 5,000 viruses transferred between computers. In 2020, research shows, there are now nearly abillion infections per year, across millions of websitesdesigned to trap and mislead people.
We still use computers. We still use the internet. It is safe to do so because the tools to protect people have been created and are as widely available as their adversaries.
In 30 years, I hope to say we still use Ethereum. If black hat hackers can band together to exploit well-meaning decentralized finance projects for their own gain, white hat hackers should come together to protect their users against naked pyramid schemes. If we don’t, there may neverbe real money in the system. Or worse yet, there will be no real decentralized system at all.
• Weed Out the Soviet-Era Ponzi Scheme Eating Ethereum
• Weed Out the Soviet-Era Ponzi Scheme Eating Ethereum || Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Bitcoin Giveaway Scams: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is suing video-sharing giant YouTube and its parent company Google for allegedly allowing bitcoin giveaway scams that use his likeness to thrive on its platform.
Wozniak was one of 18 plaintiffs that filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, which seeks punitive damages, a trial by jury and demands YouTube remove all bitcoin giveaway scams and promotions using Wozniak’s name and likeness.
The suit praised Twitter for acting “swiftly and decisively” to shut down malicious accounts and “protect its users from the scam” referencing the platform’s response to last week’scoordinated cyberattackthat gained access to a host of verified Twitter accounts and posted a crypto giveaway message.
Related:Google, Twitter and Facebook Face $600M Lawsuit Over Crypto Ad Bans
“In stark contrast, for months now, Defendant YOUTUBE has been unapologetically hosting, promoting, and directly profiting from similar scams,” the suit said.
Wozniak is not the first to take action against YouTube over crypto scams. Earlier this year, Ripple Labs, along with CEO Brad Garlinghouse,sued the platformfor allegedly failing to effectively police fake XRP giveaway scams that were causing monetary and reputational harm to the company.
According to the new complaint filed with the Superior Court of the State of California in the county of San Mateo, YouTube has “featured a steady stream of scam videos and promotions that falsely use images and videos of Plaintiff Steve Wozniak, and other famous tech entrepreneurs, and that have defrauded YouTube users out of millions of dollars.”
The suit alleged that the image and likeness of other well-known entrepreneurs including Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Michael Dell were also being exploited in these scams.
Related:Twitter Hacker Is Mixing Bitcoin Loot Using a Wasabi Wallet, Elliptic Says
According to screenshots attached in the complaint, the scams involving Wozniak uses images and videos that tell users that the entrepreneur is hosting a live bitcoin or “BTC” giveaway event. The suit alleges that the posts “convince” users to transfer their cryptocurrency promising that, for a limited time, they “will receive twice as much back”.
“YOUTUBE and GOOGLE took the further step of promoting and profiting from these scams by providing paid advertising that targeted users who were most likely to be harmed,” the suit said.
Wozniak is accusing defendants YouTube and Google of violating his right of publicity, misappropriating his name and likeness, as well as aiding and abetting fraud, and negligent failure to warn users.
“Defendants’ failure to warn was willful, malicious, oppressive, fraudulent, and/or in reckless disregard of the Plaintiffs’ rights, thereby entitling Plaintiffs to punitive damages,” the suit said.
The suit demands a trial by jury on all issues triable, and damages that include legal expenses, and any “gains, profits, or advantages wrongfully obtained by Defendants.”
The lawsuit was filed by Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, LLP.
Read the full complaint here:
• Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Bitcoin Giveaway Scams
• Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Sues YouTube Over Bitcoin Giveaway Scams || The FBI is investigating the Twitter Bitcoin hack: The FBI has confirmed that it’s investigatingthe hackthat compromised the accounts of Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Kanye West and a number of other high-profile Twitter users.
“The FBI is investigating the incident involving several Twitter account belonging to high profile individuals that occurred July 15, 2020,” the San Francisco Division of the FBI said in a statement. “At this time, the accounts appear to have been compromised in order to perpetuate cryptocurrency fraud. We advise the public not to fall victim to this scam by sending cryptocurrency or money in relation to this incident. As this investigation is ongoing, we will not be making further comment at this time.”
Reuters had previouslyreportedthe FBI would launch an investigation into the hack. Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment on the investigation.
The FBI inquiry is now one of multiple investigations into the incident, which has drawn scrutiny from a number of officials. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo also announcedan investigationinto the attack. Cuomo said the hack was “deeply troubling and raises concerns about the cybersecurity of our communications systems.”
Several members of Congress have also signaled their concern. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley sent a pointed letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in the hours immediately after the attack, and a number of House Republicans have said Dorsey shouldbrief Congresson the company’s security practices and the events leading up to the hack.
Twitter has so far provided relatively few details about how the hacks occurred. The company has blamed it on a “social engineering attack” thattargeted employeeswith access to internal tools that could grant account access. The company hasn’t directly commented on speculation that an employee may havebeen paidto aid in the attack. Twitter also said itdoesn’t believeusers’ passwords were compromised.
Regardless of the hackers’ methods, that so many influential accounts, including a former president and current presidential candidate, were compromised raises serious question about Twitter’s security practices. The company has previously dealt with employees using their position to improperly access accounts, including arogue contractorwho temporarily deactivated Donald Trump’s account and former employees who werecharged with spyingfor Saudi Arabia.
As many havepointed out, the latest hacks could have been much worse than even those incidents. Hackers with access to some of the most influential accounts and their millions of followers, could have easily done more than try to scam unsuspecting users out of cryptocurrency. And the fact that the attackers had access to these accounts likely means users’ direct messages were also accessible. If that’s the case — Twitter hasn’t indicated whether direct messages were impacted — then it’s possible the hackers could wreak even more havoc than they already have. || PayPal, Venmo to Roll Out Crypto Buying and Selling: Sources: Fintech giant PayPal plans to roll out direct sales of cryptocurrency to its 325 million users, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Currently, PayPal can be used as an alternative means for withdrawing funds from exchanges such as Coinbase, but this would be a first in terms of offering direct sales of crypto.
“My understanding is that they are going to allow buys and sells of crypto directly from PayPal and Venmo,” a well-placed industry source told CoinDesk. “They are going to have some sort of a built-in wallet functionality so you can store it there.”
Related:Crypto Exchanges Must Stop Acting Like Casinos in Wake of Robinhood Suicide: bitFlyer Exec
It is unclear which or how many cryptocurrencies would be available. The industry source said they expected PayPal “would be working with multiple exchanges to source liquidity.”
A second source confirmed that PayPal is looking to offer buying and selling of crypto and said the service could be expected “in the next three months, maybe sooner.”
PayPal declined to comment on the plans.
San Francisco-based crypto exchange Coinbase and Luxembourg-based Bitstamp were mentioned as likely contenders by the sources. Both Coinbase and Bitstamp declined to comment.
Related:Market Wrap: Bitcoin Spot Volumes Are Weak While Options and DeFi Strengthen
It’s worth noting that PayPal has a longstanding relationship with Coinbase, going backas early as 2016. In 2018, Coinbase made instantfiat withdrawalsto PayPal available for U.S. customers. Last year,European Coinbase userscould withdraw to their PayPal accounts, followed by users in Canada.
Meanwhile, fintech apps that offer crypto are making money. Square, the payments unicorn launched by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, rolled outbitcoinpurchases in its Cash App in mid-2018. Cash App reported$306 million in bitcoin revenuein its most recent earnings report.
London-based Revolut, which began offering crypto to users following a 2017partnershipwith Bitstamp,raised $500 millionin February, valuing the platform at $5.5 billion. Robinhood, the fintech app thought to be fueling the recent retail boom in equities day trading, firstoffered cryptoin February 2018.
Crypto is increasingly seen as an obvious way to bolster user numbers on fintech apps and create new revenue streams. Indeed, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman hasmade it clearhis plan this year is to aggressively monetize Venmo, which has over 52 million accounts.
Around the start of 2020, PayPal posted job openings to ramp up its new Blockchain Research Group. PayPal posted eight engineering positions: four in San Jose and four in Singapore.
Following PayPal’s short-liveddalliancewith the Facebook-led Libra project last year, the focus now is expanding its own payments expertise, one of the sources added.
In an interview with CoinDesk earlier this year, PayPal Chief Technology Officer Sri Shivananda said the company wanted its own “perspective and view on [blockchain] technology itself to see how it can help us contribute to the concept of creating an open digital payments platform that can serve everyone.”
Shivananda said he was unable to comment on any of PayPal’s specific plans.
“We are a strong believer in the potential of blockchain. The digitization of currency is only a matter of when not if,” Shivananda said.
• PayPal, Venmo to Roll Out Crypto Buying and Selling: Sources
• PayPal, Venmo to Roll Out Crypto Buying and Selling: Sources || Coinbase says batching bitcoin transactions has saved clients 75% in fees: Crypto exchange Coinbase said it has saved its customers 75% in transaction fees by batching bitcoin transactions since early 2020, according to ablog postpublished Tuesday.
The announcement comes five months after the exchangerolled outBitcoin transaction batching on both Coinbase and Coinbase Pro, batching all bitcoin send requests on the platforms.
The feature reduces the load on the Bitcoin blockchain network by bundling multiple customer send requests into a single transaction, rather than creating a new transaction for each request. This leads to a reduction in transaction fees. According to Coinbase, 100% of these savings go directly to the customer.
The exchange also said it has reduced its number of daily transactions by 95%.
"This transaction count reduction is beneficial for the network as a whole, and should help lower fees for all Bitcoin users," the blog post stated.
© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. || Microsoft Criticizes Apple Over App Store Policies After Gaming App CloudX Denied Entry: Microsoft Inc(NASDAQ:MSFT) is criticizingApple Inc’s(NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store policies, which have resulted in cloud gaming platforms of multiple companies being denied entry, the VergereportedThursday.
What Happened
The Bill Gates-co-founded technology giant said Apple is denying consumers the benefit of accessing its game streaming service xCloud by unfairly enforcing its App Store policies — treating it differently than other media platforms.
Microsoft said its testing period for xCloud preview app for iOS has expired.
“Unfortunately, we do not have a path to bring our vision of cloud gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to gamers on iOS via the Apple App Store,” the Redmond-based company noted.
“Apple stands alone as the only general purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass.”
The iPhone maker is also denying permission forAlphabet Inc(NASDAQ:GOOGL) (NASDAQ:GOOG) subsidiary Google’s Stadia platform to list on its app store, the Verge noted.
Apple, in astatementto Business Insider, said it denies cloud platform game apps listing on the app store because the games available on streaming platforms cannot be reviewed individually through its Game pass service.
Why It Matters
The Tim Cook-led company allowsNetflix Inc.(NASDAQ:NFLX) andSpotify Technology SA(NYSE:SPOT) to run streaming services on its app store, but refuses to extend the same measures to gaming, citing its interactive nature, Insider noted.
Apple also deniedFacebook Inc’s(NASDAQ:FB) newgaming applicationlisting on its app store multiple times, claiming that the app acts as a storefront.
The iPhone maker is facing accusations of being anticompetitive and is under investigation by the European Union.
Last month, Cook defended Apple’s treatment of app developers at a House anti-trust hearing, alongside CEOs of Facebook, Alphabet, andAmazon.com Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN).
Price Action
Apple shares closed nearly 3.5% higher at $455.61 on Thursday and rose another almost 0.3% in the after-hours session. Microsofy shares closed 1.6% higher at $216.35 the same day.
See more from Benzinga
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• Microsoft Commits To Become 'Zero Waste' Company By 2030, After Carbon Negative Pledge
© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin Option Traders Bet on Bullish Move Following Volatility Squeeze: While bitcoin has gained 3% so far this week, the overall trading environment remains dull, with volatility hovering at multi-year lows. Ten-day realized volatility, a historical metric, is now at just 20%, the lowest level for two years. Thats a low thats only preceded in [September and October] 2018, the Singapore-based quantitative trading firm QCP Capital said on its Telegram channel. Back in the autumn of 2018, the low-volatility consolidation ended with a big drop to below $6,000. This time, though, options traders are anticipating a breakout on the higher side. Related: Market Wrap: Stocks Tick Downward and so Does Bitcoin, to $9,200 With the rise in one-month implied volatility this past week (on the back of more call buying) resulting in a notable divergence with realized volatility, a similar bang to end the lull is what option traders are betting on (this time with an upside break), said QCP Capital. Bitcoins one-month implied volatility has risen from 46% to 55% over the past six days, according to data provided by the crypto derivatives research firm Skew . Implied volatility is the markets expectation of how risky or volatile an asset will be in the future and is calculated by taking an option and the underlying assets price along with other inputs such as time to expiration. Meanwhile, the one-month realized volatility has declined from 78% to 35%. Realized volatility represents the price volatility that has actualized in the past. Related: The recent divergence between the two metrics is indicative of traders pricing in a transition from a low-volatility to a high-volatility trading environment over the next few four weeks. Implied volatilities are primarily driven by the net buying pressure for options (calls/puts). The latest pickup looks to have been fueled by increased demand for call options or bullish bets, as noted by QCP Capital. That is evident from the fact the one-month, three-month and six-month put-call skews are reporting negative values. Put-call skew measures the price of puts relative to that of calls. Story continues The one-month skew has dropped sharply from 11% to -5.4% this week. Negative values indicate that call options (or bullish bets) are drawing higher prices than put options (bearish bets). So, in effect, options traders are leaning bullish right now, with calls in greater demand. It remains to be seen if the multi-week-long trading range of $9,000 to $10,000 ends with a bullish breakout, as expected. Also read: London Stock Exchange Parent Assigns Financial Bar Codes to 169 Cryptos The technical charts are also backing that scenario. For instance, the cryptocurrency breached a month-long falling channel on the higher side on Wednesday, signaling an end of the pullback from highs above $10,400 seen July 1. Further, the MACD histogram, a momentum indicator, has crossed above zero in favor of the bulls. The cryptocurrency is trading near $9,400 at press time, representing a 0.57% decline on the day. Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency assets at the time of writing. Related Stories Bitcoin Option Traders Bet on Bullish Move Following Volatility Squeeze Bitcoin Option Traders Bet on Bullish Move Following Volatility Squeeze || The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers – July 25th, 2020: Bitcoin, BTC to USD, fell by 0.58% on Friday. Reversing a 0.60% gain from Thursday, Bitcoin ended the day at $9,559.1. It was a bearish start to the day. Bitcoin fell to a mid-morning intraday low $9,469.7 before making a move. The pullback saw Bitcoin fall through the first major support level at $9,498.20. Finding support through the afternoon, Bitcoin rallied to a late intraday high $9,644.0 before hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $9,708.6, Bitcoin fell back to sub-$9,600 levels to end the day in the red. The near-term bullish trend remained intact in spite of the early July pullback to sub-$9,000 levels. For the bears, Bitcoin would need to slide through the 62% FIB of $6,400 to form a near-term bearish trend. The Rest of the Pack Across the rest of the majors, it was a mixed day on Friday. Binance Coin (+2.24%), Ethereum (+1.46%), and Tron’s TRX (+0.16%) bucked the trend on the day. It was a bearish day for the rest of the majors, however. Tezos slid by 5.00% to lead the way down. Bitcoin Cash SV (-2.47%), EOS (-1.99%), Ripple’s XRP (-2.07%), and Stellar’s Lumen (-2.98%) also struggled. Bitcoin Cash ABC (-0.55%), Cardano’s ADA (-1.78%), Litecoin (-1.82%), and Monero’s XMR (-1.74%) saw relatively modest losses. In the current week, the crypto total market cap fell to a Monday low $262.70bn before hitting a Thursday high $286.03bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $280.82bn. Bitcoin’s dominance rose to a Tuesday high 64.08% before sliding to a Friday low 62.46%. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s dominance stood at 62.76%. This Morning At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up by 0.10% to $9,568.6. A bullish start to the day saw Bitcoin rise from an early morning low $9,559.0 to a high $9,572.5 Bitcoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. Elsewhere, it was a mixed start to the day. Bitcoin Cash ABC (-0.22%), Bitcoin Cash SV (-0.19%), and Monero’s XMR (-0.04%) saw red to buck the trend early on. Story continues It was a bullish start to the day for the rest of the majors, however. At the time of writing, Cardano’s ADA was up by 2.22% to lead the way. For the Bitcoin Day Ahead Bitcoin would need to avoid a fall through the $9,558 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $9,646. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break back through to $9,600 levels. Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Friday high $9,644 would likely cap any upside. In the event of a crypto breakout, Bitcoin could test the second major resistance level at $9,732 before any pullback. Failure to avoid a fall through the $9,558 pivot level would bring the first major support level at $9,471 into play. Barring an extended crypto sell-off, however, Bitcoin should steer clear of the second major resistance level at $9,383. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Natural Gas Weekly Price Forecast – Natural Gas Makets Continue to Show Strength S&P 500 Weekly Price Forecast – 3200 Continues to Be Point of Contention Gold Price Prediction – Prices Rise and are Poised to Test All-time Highs U.S. Dollar Index (DX) Futures Technical Analysis – Drilled Lower by Weaker-Than-Expected PMI Data Silver Price Forecast – Silver Markets Continue to Look Overbought Silver Weekly Price Forecast – Silver Markets Continue to Show Strength After Major Breakout || Blockchain Bites: Binance’s Bitcoin Mining, ConsenSys’ Legal Trouble and Why Politicians Blame Twitter, Not Bitcoin: In the aftermath of the Twitter hack, lawmakers are targeting lax cybersecurity, not Bitcoin. Binance is looking to consolidate bitcoin mining in Russia, ConsenSys is being accused of stealing intellectual property and a celebrated comic book artist will be hawking his wares on the Ethereum blockchain. You’re reading Blockchain Bites , the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here . Top shelf Related: Mining Consolidation Binance is looking to consolidate more bitcoin mining hashrate to its pool in Russia and the Central Asia region. The world’s largest crypto exchange is deploying a physical server node for its pool at BitRiver, the largest bitcoin mining hosting provider in Bratsk, Russia. The move would give miner owners at BitRiver who choose to switch to Binance a better connection and direct route to its mining pool, the two firms said in an announcement Friday. In return, Binance would gain exposure and access to customers who run their machines at BitRiver, which currently operates mining facilities at a capacity of 70 megawatt (MW) out of potential capacity of 100 MW. ConsenSys Accused In a new lawsuit, Ethereum incubator ConsenSys is accused of abusing its position of trust as an investor to access trade secrets and create a rival offering. BlockCrushr, a payments app, said it received a $100,000 investment from ConsenSys and had 20 in-depth discussions with the incubator. Now, the startup says its intellectual property was misappropriated to build ConsenSys’s own payments system Daisy Payments, since rebranded to CodeFi. Plaintiffs filed two counts of misappropriating trade secrets and one count of a breach of contract, and are suing for damages. CBDC in Action A senior figure at the Bank of Thailand has confirmed it is already using a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for transactions with some businesses. Vachira Arromdee, the central bank’s assistant governor, told reporters Wednesday the bank plans to expand the use of the digital currency among large businesses, The Nation reported. It’s unclear what businesses are already using the digital currency; transactions with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority will be conducted with the CBDC from September, Arromdee confirmed. Blockchain Blueprint Beijing released a blueprint for its plans to become a blockchain hub by 2022. The 145-page details 12 potential areas for blockchain implementation, including airports, customs and small businesses, Decrypt reports. The municipal government also aims to create a fund dedicated to supporting local blockchain startups. The Block reports, “140 government services already use blockchain applications, which include data sharing, collaborative business management, and electronic certifications.” Story continues Related: Twitter Hacker Is Mixing Bitcoin Loot Using a Wasabi Wallet, Elliptic Says We’re All Comics in Crypto Noted comic book illustrator Jose Delbo is releasing limited-edition art on MakersPlace, a blockchain-powered market for rare and collectible digital art, later this month. The listing includes 250 copies of a digital comic book and a one-of-a-kind digital Superman artwork by Delbo. MakersPlace uses Ethereum to verify the artworks and provide a digital signature from Delbo, who is also hosting a chat in Decentraland. Quick bites BlockFi hires former Deutsche Bank and Barclays alum as general counsel Crypto wallet provider Sylo targets growing India market through exchange partnership Binance is not authorized to operate in Malaysia, says the country’s financial regulator ( The Block ) It’s Twitter, not Bitcoin n the aftermath of the Twitter hack, lawmakers are blaming lax cybersecurity, not Bitcoin. Following the hack, which Twitter says affected 130 accounts, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), vocal critic of tech platforms, fired off an open letter to CEO Jack Dorsey. The event, Hawley said, “may represent not merely a coordinated set of separate hacking incidents but rather a successful attack on the security of Twitter itself.” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also took aim at Twitter’s architecture. In a statement, he sounded off on the fact that users’ direct messages (DMs) lack end-to-end encryption. “This is a vulnerability that has lasted for far too long, and one that is not present in other, competing platforms. If hackers gained access to users’ DMs, this breach could have a breathtaking impact for years to come,” Wyden said. Wyden revealed he had met with Dorsey privately in 2018 and discussed implementing this privacy feature. While the hack only made off with approximately $120,000, it will persist as a lasting blight on centralized internet platforms for years. In view of Twitter’s unofficial role within politics and media as the broadcaster of all broadcasts, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said the hack could have had “major consequences” on elections. It’s a view shared by others. “With more than 300 million users, Twitter is a primary source of news for many, making it a target for bad actors. This type of hack by con artists for financial gain can also be a tool of foreign actors and others to spread disinformation and – as we’ve witnessed – disrupt our elections,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. With a federal investigation underway, “the hack is likely to continue to ratchet up pressure on social media companies, which are already facing scrutiny over content moderation, disinformation and foreign interference,” CoinDesk reports. But that doesn’t mean we’re any closer to a decentralized alternative. As Start9 Lab’s Matt Hill put it, the hack “is yet another wake-up call. And like most wakeup calls, it will be greeted with a snooze button and a growing sense of anxiety. Market intel First Mover The notoriously volatile bitcoin slid just 0.8% to about $9,100 on Thursday, following the largest social media hack in recent memory, which involved an amateurish crypto scam. That’s in a market where it’s not uncommon for prices to swing 8% in a day. “It’s a non-event for price,” Matt Blom, head of sales and trading for the cryptocurrency firm Diginex, told First Mover in an email. The reasons for the non-event revolve around the contradictory and mostly-psychological readings of the event. Little in bitcoin was stolen, all publicity is good publicity and the hack shows how easy it is to track stolen crypto. Maybe most salient: Bitcoin is worth stealing. Opinion Your Prime Membership Should Be Tokenized Jeff Dorman, a CoinDesk columnist and chief investment officer at Arca, thinks Amazon Prime membership should be tokenized. Tokenization offers the clearest path to show digital ownership and maintain property rights, he said, but it also offers incentives for token owners to maintain, develop and propagate their platforms. In a sense, it’s the easiest way to link shareholders and users of a platform together. “This is the only path where capitalism and socialism can converge, and we’re seeing it happen in real time. Debt, equity and tokenized digital assets will all have a place in an investor’s portfolio and, more importantly, in customers’ portfolios. The lines are likely to blur as investors become active participants in the bootstrapped growth of the companies they love,” he writes. Meme police Related Stories Blockchain Bites: Binance’s Bitcoin Mining, ConsenSys’ Legal Trouble and Why Politicians Blame Twitter, Not Bitcoin Blockchain Bites: Binance’s Bitcoin Mining, ConsenSys’ Legal Trouble and Why Politicians Blame Twitter, Not Bitcoin View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: no change || Prices: 11784.14, 11768.87, 11865.70, 11892.80, 12254.40, 11991.23, 11758.28, 11878.37, 11592.49, 11681.83
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
10 things you need to know before the opening bell: Skating on a river (People skate on the frozen Doubs river at the Swiss - French border in Les Brenets, Switzerland.Reuters/Denis Balibouse) Here is what you need to know. Stock markets all over the world are opening 2017 with a bang . China's Shanghai Composite (+1%) paced the gains in Asia and Italy's MIB (+1.7%) leads the advance in Europe. Here in the US, the Dow is on track to open higher by 0.9% near 19,932. The dollar is flying. The US dollar index is higher by 0.6% at 103.39, and on track to close at its best level since the end of 2002. The greenback is higher against all of its major peers with its biggest gains coming against the euro (+0.8%). Bonds are getting crushed. Heavy selling has yields across the Treasury curve up about 6 basis points apiece with the 10-year reaching 2.51%. Selling isn't limited to just the US, as yields are also screaming higher across Europe, where the UK 10-year is up 9 bps at 1.33%. Crude oil soars to an 18-month high . West Texas Intermediate crude oil trades up 2.3% at $54.93 per barrel following confirmation both Kuwait and Oman have lived up to their promises to cut production, Bloomberg reports. Meanwhile, Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, is higher by 2.2% at $58.08 per barrel. Bitcoin is above $1,000 . The cryptocurrency trades up 0.8% at $1,020 per coin after crossing the $1,000 mark for the first time since 2013 on Monday. China is tightening control of capital . Beijing announced new rules aimed at slowing the flow of capital out of China. The measures include requiring citizens taking money out of the country to pledge it won't be used to buy property overseas and calling on banks to report any overseas transactions valued at $10,000 or more, Reuters says. State-run media organization Xinhua has denied the measures are capital controls. UK manufacturing is booming . Markit UK Manufacturing PMI hit 56.1 in December, making for the best print in 30 months. "The UK manufacturing sector starts 2017 on a strong footing. The headline PMI hit a two-and-ahalf year high in December, with rates of expansion in output and new orders among the fastest seen during the survey’s 25-year history," wrote Rob Dobson, senior economist at IHS Markit, which compiles the survey. The British pound is little changed near 1.2275 versus the dollar. Story continues 2017 could be a busy year for tech IPOs . Blue Apron, Dropbox, Snap, and Spotify are among the tech startups that are candidates to go public this year. Cantor Fitzgerald hires Anshu Jain . Cantor has named Jain president about one and a half years after he resigned as co-CEO of Deutsche Bank following a series of regulatory troubles. Twitter's China boss is out . Kathy Chen has quit after eight months on the job, Reuters reports. In a tweet announcing her departure, Chen wrote, " Now that the Twitter APAC team is working directly with Chinese advertisers, this is the right time for me to leave the company." US economic data flows. Markit manufacturing PMI will be released at 9:45 a.m. ET before both ISM Manufacturing and construction spending cross the wires at 10 a.m. ET. More From Business Insider A surprising factor in the extinction of the dinosaurs may have been how long their eggs took to hatch I've owned an Amazon Echo for over a year now — here are my 19 favorite features Finland just launched an experiment giving 2,000 people free money until 2019 || First Bitcoin Capital Adds Innovative Automated Check Cashing ATM Solution for Cannabis Dispensaries’ Clientele: VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 12, 2017 /FIRST BITCOIN CAPITAL CORP. (OTC PINK: BITCF), a leading bitcoin and cryptocurrency developer, specializing in both blockchain and online merchant payment solutions for medical marijuana dispensaries and other high-risk merchant accounts and services, today announced the signing of an Exclusive Master Distributor Agreement to distribute a new type of fully automated check cashing ATM designed for use in medical cannabis dispensaries for the State of California. BITCF will add this check cashing ATM service to complete a full suite of financial services for the medical marijuana industry: merchant processing and POS solutions through its alliance network, a fully compliant, user friendly solution to accept Credit and Debit Cards through traditional Merchant Card Processing networks. The check cashing ATMs marketing efforts will be focused toward larger established medical marijuana dispensaries.
Fees for the check cashing services will be competitive. Dispensary customers using the service will be able to cash all types of checks: government issued checks, payroll checks and other types. Cannabis dispensaries service all kinds of customers. Many of those are unbanked and may need to cash checks before purchasing. Offering check cashing services on premises to this group of customers will be a very attractive way to increase revenues, as dispensary owners are looking for new ways to draw more customers because of check cashing convenience.
According to FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) recent 2015 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, indicates that more than 7 percent of households in the United States were unbanked in 2015. This proportion represents approximately 9.0 million households. An additional 19.9 percent of U.S. households (24.5 million) were underbanked, meaning that the household had a checking or savings account but also obtained financial products and services outside of the banking system. By offering check cashing, our ATM Division expects that dispensaries will increase their customer base by 18%.
BITCF uses sophisticated fully automated risk analysis algorithms and underwriting procedures, resulting in 100% guarantee to the dispensary owners.
Summary of benefits of our services for the cannabis dispensaries and their customers:
Any types of checks can be cashed, including Payroll checks, Insurance checks, Personal checks, business checks, money orders, government issued checks and the funds can be credited to the Dispensaries bank account instead of their client pulling out and paying in cash.
Regulatory Compliance: The check cashing ATM will be installed pre-programmed to comply with all state, local federal regulations in California.
First Bitcoin is also developing a system that will enable dispensaries to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a form of legal payment. Stater of California has already enacted legislation that makes Bitcoin and similar digital currencies legal tender.
BITCF has developed specific programs to meet the unique needs of the medical cannabis industry. Offering merchant services at competitive rates for businesses operating legally under state law of California and Oregon, the company can now provide financial services not typically available from conventional banks.
While legalization of marijuana in many forms – and in many states – garnered over $5 billion dollars in 2016, the sums are expected to grow for 2017. More innovative and unique products are being created, and the stigma that once surrounded cannabis is slowly fading. These changes are helping the medical cannabis industry to prosper now that federal policies allow dispensaries to sell, grow, or possess cannabis while compliant with state laws. BITCF will only provide these services where federal policies allow our business model to proceed for dispensaries that are fully compliant with state and country laws, rules and regulations.
Should your dispensary be interested in these services please contact us by email:info@bitcoincapitalcorp.com
About the company:
First Bitcoin Capital is engaged in developing digital currencies, proprietary Blockchain technologies, financial processing services and the digital currency exchange-www.CoinQX.com.We see this step as a tremendous opportunity to create further shareholder value by leveraging management's experience in developing and managing complex Blockchain technologies, developing new types of digital assets. Being the first publicly-traded cryptocurrency and blockchain-centered company (with shares both traded in the US OTC Markets as [BITCF] and as [BIT] in crypto exchanges) we want to provide our shareholders with diversified exposure to digital and blockchain technologies. At this time the Company owns and operates the following digital assets.
www.CoinQX.comcryptocurrency exchange, registered with FINCEN.
www.iCoiNEWS.comreal time cryptocurrency and bitcoin news site.
www.BITminer.ccproviding mining pool management services.
www.2016coin.orgonline daily election coverage and home page for $PRES, $HILL, $GARY& $BURN -commemorative presidential election coins.
www.bitcannpay.comFinancial and merchant services for medical cannabis dispensaries.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors as may be disclosed in company's filings. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release. Such forward-looking statements are risks that are detailed in the Company's filings, which are on file atwww.OTCMarkets.com.
Contact us via:info@bitcoincapitalcorp.comor visithttp://www.bitcoincapitalcorp.com
SOURCE:First Bitcoin Capital Corp. || Endurance Specialty Unveils New Cyber Extortion Coverage: Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. ENH recently launched a new service that will help policyholders to better respond to cases of cyber ransom and extortion. The newly introduced service as it will be substantially value additive to the insurers innovative products and services portfolio. The property and casualty (P&C) insurer is optimistic about the service, which should boost its cyber response capabilities. Notably, Mullen Coughlin LLC, a leading incident response services provider and also the Endurance Specialtys Breach Assist Counsel, has been helping the insurers clients in dealing with cyber breach or other data security incident. This apart, computer forensic company Kivu Consulting, which has already been offering computer forensic investigation services, will now provide extortion response services. Both these companies have efficient and expert teams and specialize in providing guidance to ransomware victims to help them better respond to malicious attacks, including arranging for payment in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency. Moreover, the teams analyze and test decryption keys to ensure security of the clients network. Shares of Endurance Specialty gained 38.43% in the last six months, significantly outperforming the Property and Casualty industrys growth of 9.19%. The new service will help policyholders to avoid disruption in their business operations and cement shareholders' confidence on the stock, leading to further share price movement. We note that strategic initiatives like these have improved the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) P&C insurers organic portfolio as well as accelerated growth. Stocks to Consider Some better-ranked stocks from the same space include Aspen Insurance Holdings Limited AHL, Cincinnati Financial Corporation CINF and Mercury General Corporation MCY. Each of these stocks sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 (Strong Buy) Rank stocks here . Story continues Aspen Insurance Holdings deals in insurance and reinsurance businesses worldwide. The company delivered positive surprise in one of the last four quarters, but with an average miss of 15.48%. Cincinnati Financial engages in the P&C insurance business in the United States. The company delivered positive surprises in all of the last four quarters with an average beat of 11.82%. Mercury General deals in writing personal automobile insurance in the United States. The company delivered positive surprises in two of the last four quarters, but with an average miss of 21.04%. Zacks' Top 10 Stocks for 2017 In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-hold tickers for the entirety of 2017? Who wouldn't? As of early December, the 2016 Top 10 produced 5 double-digit winners including oil and natural gas giant Pioneer Natural Resources which racked up a stellar +50% gain. The new list is painstakingly hand-picked from 4,400 companies covered by the Zacks Rank. Be among the very first to see it>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Cincinnati Financial Corp. (CINF): Free Stock Analysis Report Endurance Specialty Holdings Ltd. (ENH): Free Stock Analysis Report Mercury General Corp. (MCY): Free Stock Analysis Report Aspen Insurance Holdings Ltd. (AHL): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. || Bitcoin jumps above $1,000 for first time in three years: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Digital currency bitcoin kicked off the new year by jumping above $1,000 for the first time in three years late on Sunday, having outperformed all central-bank-issued currencies with a 125 percent climb in 2016. Bitcoin - a web-based "cryptocurrency" that has no central authority, relying instead on thousands of computers across the world that validate transactions and add new bitcoins to the system - jumped 2.5 percent to $1,022 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, its highest since December 2013. Though the digital currency has historically been highly volatile - a tenfold increase in its value in two months in late 2013 took it to above $1,100, before a hack on the Tokyo-based Mt. Gox exchange saw it plunge to under $400 in the following weeks - it has in the past two years been more stable. Its biggest daily moves in 2016 were around 10 percent, still very volatile compared with fiat currencies, but markedly lower than the trading of 2013, which saw daily price swings of as much as 40 percent. Bitcoin may have been boosted in the past year by increased demand in China on the back of a 7 percent annual fall in the value of the yuan in 2016, the Chinese currency's weakest showing in over 20 years. Data shows most bitcoin trading is done in China. Bitcoin is used to move money across the globe quickly and anonymously and does not fall under the purview of any authority, making it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as China's. It is also may appeal to those worried about a lack of supply of cash, such as in India, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi removed high-denomination bank notes from circulation in November. "The growing war on cash, and capital controls, is making bitcoin look like a viable, if high risk, alternative," said Paul Gordon, a board member of the UK Digital Currency Association and co-founder of Quantave, a firm seeking to make it easier for institutional investors to access digital currency exchanges. Though bitcoin is still some way off the all-time high of $1,163 that it reached on the Bitstamp exchange in late 2013, there are now more bitcoins in circulation - 12.5 are added to the system every 10 minutes. Its total worth is at a record-high above $16 billion, putting its value at around the same as that of an average FTSE 100 company. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Peter Graff) || Here's Why Bitcoin Crashed More Than 20% Today: Bitcoin (BTC), a popular digital cryptocurrency, is on track to have one of its worst days in years after prices suddenly fell more than 20% in morning trading Thursday. While some investors think today’s action is just an adjustment after a months-long rally, others are blaming the expiration of loans from several Chinese BTC platforms for the sell-off.
Today’s "Crash"
Bitcoin opened the day at $1.129.87 and shortly hit an intraday high of $1,153.02 in morning trading. However, the cryptocurrency quickly dropped as low as $887.47, a plunge of more than 21%. BTC was able to rally again in the early afternoon, and prices returned above the $980 level by 1 P.M. EST.
According to some Bitcoin traders on a popular Reddit forum, today’s crash could be the result of a free loan period offered by several Chinese BTC platforms coming to an end. One user pointed out that many Chinese BTC holders would have to sell their bitcoins to pay back loans that end on January 7 Beijing time.
Of course, today’s sell-off could also be a value-based adjustment as BTC approached all-time highs. The currency has been on an insane run over the past several months, gaining more than 80% since October 2016. Indeed, Bitcoin traders are no strangers to volatility, and the nature of the currency lends itself to swings that we wouldn’t expect from traditional currencies.
What is Bitcoin?
As mentioned before, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency, meaning that it is an encrypted digital currency that only exists virtually and operates independently of a central bank. Launched in January 2009, Bitcoin has grown quickly and has become a widely-accepted form of payment online (Also read: Explaining Bitcoin and Crypto Currency).
Bitcoin is considered an anonymous currency because it is possible to send and receive payments without revealing any personal information. Transactions are tied to a bitcoin address, a series of numbers and letters. All transactions are stored in the so-called blockchain, which records and verifies transactions.
This blockchain is operated by a network of “miners” that monitor and validate transactions. In return, miners receive newly issued bitcoins.
Bottom Line
Trading bitcoins can be a test of one’s patience and determination. One of the most fascinating things about the currency is its legion of loyal long-term holders, and these folks are likely to overlook one-day crashes. Nevertheless, today’s sell-off underscores the volatility that keeps a lot of investors away from BTC.
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Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research || Bitcoin firm gets approval to operate in Switzerland: By Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi ZURICH (Reuters) - Bitcoin wallet provider Xapo said it has received conditional approval from Switzerland's financial market watchdog to operate in the country in a regulatory breakthrough for companies that provide safekeeping for the virtual currency. "After almost two years of substantial effort and investment, Xapo has received conditional approval from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) to operate in Switzerland," Xapo CEO Wences Casares said in a blog on the company's website. The approval depended on several factors, including membership of a "self-regulatory organization", Casares said, but added that the company was optimistic of meeting the conditions and being able to serve non-U.S. customers from Switzerland. FINMA declined to comment on an individual company's status. Olga Feldmeier, a former managing partner of Xapo who coordinated the Swiss licensing process for the company, told Reuters that Xapo had been designated a financial intermediary, meaning it will not require a costly banking license. Wallet providers like Xapo, which was founded in Silicon Valley, store the private keys that allow clients to access their digital currency funds. While other crypto-currency firms already operate in Switzerland, Xapo's operation as a bitcoin wallet provider had raised questions over whether it required a banking license. A burgeoning industry surrounding bitcoin - a web-based "crypto-currency" that has no central authority, relying instead on a global network of computers that validate transactions and add new bitcoins to the system - has posed questions for lawmakers and regulators. Xapo argued it did not accept deposits. Swiss authorities are eager to secure a leading role for Switzerland while playing catch-up in a rapidly changing financial technology (fintech) landscape. Bitcoin Suisse operates a network of bitcoin ATMs across the country, as well as an online and in-person brokerage for buying and selling bitcoins. But it does not itself store the private access keys that led to questions about whether Xapo was taking deposits. Story continues Switzerland's cabinet in November proposed new light-touch regulations for fintech companies aimed at bolstering business and competitiveness. The proposals include a fintech license, granted by FINMA, for institutions which are restricted to taking deposits of up to 100 million Swiss francs ($99.9 million) and do not lend. Xapo is now in the process of joining a self-regulatory organization required under Swiss anti-money laundering regulations to begin operations, Feldmeier said. (Editing by Adrian Croft) || CaribbeanTales Flow into Production: MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Feb 23, 2017) - Three of the Caribbean's leading film producers will now develop pilots for their original TV series projects, via funding fromFlowand CaribbeanTales Media Group.
With $40,000 funding for each project, production work will begin onBattledream Chronicle,a sci-fi/drama animated series created by Alain Bidard, which is based on his groundbreaking multi-award winning feature film;Heat,a sweltering crime/drama series filmed in Barbados from iconic filmmaker Menelik Shabazz (Burning an Illusion, The Story of Lover's Rockand more);andCaribbean Girl NYC,an ensemble female-driven sitcom from NY-based Guadeloupian filmmaker/producer Mariette Monpierre, whose award-winning filmElzawon, among others, the prestigious NYT award.
Support for these pilots is part of CaribbeanTales Incubator Program (CTI), a year-round development and production hub for Caribbean and Caribbean Diaspora Producers to assist in the creation of strong, compelling and sustainable regional content for the global market.
"We recognise the significant hurdles that Caribbean Producers face in financing and producing their content, and getting it out to audiences," said John Reid, CEO ofCable and Wireless, operator of Flow and lead sponsor of CTI. "We are honoured to help support this programme that is enabling the production and monetisation of this exciting emerging cultural industry."
Production on the pilots will begin in April 2017. They will premier later this year at the twelfth annualCaribbeanTales International Film Festival(CTFF). Flow is also the lead sponsor of CTFF, a mix of exciting and dynamic films that showcase diverse, shared stories and cultures, and celebrates the talents of established and emerging filmmakers of Caribbean heritage. The festival will be held in Toronto, Canada between September 6 and September 20, 2017.
As an added bonus, an eight-part documentary series has been filmed and is currently in post-production. The series follows the ten teams of filmmakers who competed for this prestigious award, and will be shown onFlow1later this year.
Frances-Anne Solomon, CEO of CaribbeanTales, states, "We are delighted that, together with Flow, we are able to provide the Caribbean's top filmmakers with funding and a platform to produce top quality, local, content with the capacity to reach audiences across the region and the world."
Visit the CTIwebsitefor more information and to apply for the 2017 CTI programme. And follow Flow and CaribbeanTales onTwitter,FacebookandInstagramto stay up to date.
CTI is now accepting applications for its 2017 programme:http://caribbeantales.ca/cti.
About C&W Communications
C&W is a full service communications and entertainment provider and delivers market-leading video, broadband, telephony and mobile services to consumers in 18 countries. Through its business division, C&W provides data center hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customized IT service solutions, utilizing cloud technology to serve business and government customers.
C&W also operates a state-of-the-art submarine fiber network -- the most extensive in the region.
Learn more atwww.cwc.com, or follow C&W onLinkedIn,FacebookorTwitter.
About Liberty Global
Liberty Global is the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with operations in more than 30 countries across Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. We invest in the infrastructure that empowers our customers to make the most of the digital revolution. Our scale and commitment to innovation enable us to develop market-leading products delivered through next generation networks that connect our 25 million customers who subscribe to over 50 million television, broadband internet and telephony services. We also serve over 10 million mobile subscribers and offer WiFi service across 5 million access points.
Liberty Global's businesses are comprised of two stocks: the Liberty Global Group (NASDAQ:LBTYA) (NASDAQ:LBTYB) (NASDAQ:LBTYK) for our European operations, and the LiLAC Group (NASDAQ:LILA) (NASDAQ:LILAK) (OTC PINK:LILAB), which consists of our operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Liberty Global Group operates in 11 European countries under the consumer brands Virgin Media, Unitymedia, Telenet and UPC. The Liberty Global Group also owns 50% of VodafoneZiggo, a Dutch joint venture, which has 4 million customers, 10 million fixed-line subscribers and 5 million mobile subscribers. The LiLAC Group operates in over 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean under the consumer brands VTR, Flow, Liberty, Más Móvil and BTC. In addition, the LiLAC Group operates a sub-sea fiber network throughout the region in over 30 markets For more information, please visitwww.libertyglobal.com. || Bitcoin Services Inc. Purchases Four Antminer S9 Bitcoin Miner: GRANDVILLE, MI / ACCESSWIRE / January 4, 2017 /Bitcoin Services Inc. (OTC PINK: BTSC) announced today that it purchased four Antminer S9 bitcoin miners. The S9 has more hashing power than any previous device crammed into its silicon; a massive 14 TH/s (TeraHash per second). A total of 189 chips, spread over 3 circuit boards, are combined to achieve this phenomenal hashrate. In addition, after several shareholder inquiries, the company has no plans for a reverse split. The current share structure as of today is 511,784,705 OS, 387,512,190 Restricted, and 124,272,515 Float.
About Bitcoin Services Inc.:
Our business operations are Internet based to the consumer and consist of three separate streams, as follows: (1) bitcoin escrow services, (2) bitcoin mining, and (3) blockchain software development. The principal products and services are the mining of bitcoins, providing escrow services for buyers and sellers of bitcoins, and the development and sale of blockchain software. The market for these services and products is worldwide, and sold and marketed on the Internet.
Safe Harbor Statement
This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27a of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and section 21e of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Those statements include the intent, belief, or current expectations of the company and its management team. Prospective investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Accomplishing the strategy described herein is significantly dependent upon numerous factors, many that are not in management's control. Some of these factors include the ability of the company to raise sufficient capital, attract qualified management, attract new customers, and effectively compete against similar companies.
CONTACT:
info@bitcoinservicesinc.com
SOURCE: Bitcoin Services Inc. || A bitcoin ETF would have 'very significant upside' but it probably won't happen: Analyst: Bitcoin (Exchange: BTC=-USS) followers are assigning far too high a likelihood that regulators will OK a fund that tracks the cryptocurrency, which is too bad because approval would provide a major boost to its price, according to one analyst. Regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission are weighing whether to approve an exchange-traded fund proposed by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss . The SEC has been considering a proposal that came into being more than three years ago. The Winklevoss brothers are looking to list the ETF on the Bats exchange. Should the fund gain approval, it would attract a flood of investor cash that could hit $300 million, according to investment bank Needham and Co. The total value of bitcoins in circulation was $13.8 billion as of Tuesday afternoon trading. That's the good news. The bad news is that Needham analysts believe there is very little chance the SEC actually will go ahead and approve the ETF. They say the chances are probably less than 25 percent. "In contrast to most of the people that we speak to in the industry, we think the probability that a bitcoin ETF will be approved in 2017 is very low," analyst Spencer Bogart said in a research note. "To be clear, we don't see any specific reason to disapprove the Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF, but, instead, think that the confluence of fear, uncertainty and doubt coupled with basic incentives at the SEC will make it very difficult to get approval." That could come as news to many of bitcoin's avid followers who believe the fund will be approved by March 11, which has been set as the deadline for a ruling. Bitcoin was created more than eight years ago as a digital currency and is accepted by more than 100,000 vendors for payment. It has generated controversy through its use in the underworld and because of several high-profile bitcoin thefts. "We think the positive effect that a bitcoin ETF would have on the price of bitcoin is vastly underappreciated, and that the probability of approval is drastically overestimated within the industry," Bogart wrote. Not to worry, however. Regardless of whether the ETF becomes reality, Bogart said bitcoin will be fine. Bitcoin recently hit a brief peak above $1,000 and is up 102 percent over the past 12 months. The Winklevoss brothers did not immediately respond to a request for comment "Overall, this is a low probability event with a very significant upside," Bogart said of the ETF. "Ultimately, while it appears there is significant pent-up demand from the investment public for such a vehicle, bitcoin itself certainly doesn't need an ETF and will continue on regardless of the SEC's decision." Story continues More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance View comments || Is Warren Buffett Wrong About Bitcoin?: - By Nicholas Kitonyi
The future of the cryptocurrency industry is still clouded with doubt sinceWarren Buffett(Trades,Portfolio) has been one of the biggest critics of the market. Bitcoin is, by far, the leading unit in the cryptocurrency market and based on Buffett's comments over time, it is fair to say the legendary investor does not value it at all, let alone imagine a bright future ahead.
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In 2014, just after bitcoin hit an all-time high, Buffett warned investors to stay away from it, saying it was nothing more than a mirage. In response to a question regarding cryptocurrency by Dan Gilbert, the Quicken Loans founder, he said:
"It's a method of transmitting money. It's a very effective way of transmitting money and you can do it anonymously and all that. A check is a way of transmitting money, too. Are checks worth a whole lot of money just because they can transmit money? Are money orders? You can transmit money by money orders. People do it. I hope bitcoin becomes a better way of doing it, but you can replicate it a bunch of different ways and it will be. The idea that it has some huge intrinsic value is just a joke in my view."
When asked about bitcoin's future on CNBC's Squawk Box, Buffett said, "Stay away from it. It's a mirage, basically."
True to his word, bitcoin lost more than 80% of its value within the following year (falling from more than $1,000 a coin in December 2013 to about $200 in January 2015). After a 12-month hiatus in 2015 however, bitcoin has since recovered to rally close to the $1,000 level.
As demonstrated in the chart above, bitcoin's price appears to have picked up momentum over the last 12 months in a trend that took it to above $1,000 at the start of the year. Unlike the previous rally that took the price to an all-time high, this time around the trend has been more stable, with significant trackbacks and rebounds.
In 2013, the price of bitcoin spiked from a trading price of under $250 per unit to more than $1,000 within a couple of months as traders bought bullishly in a frenzy.
Now, based on the current Bitcoin price and its fluctuations over the last three years, it is safe to say the cryptocurrency has stabilized. As such, it looks as though bitcoin can be billed to have succeeded thus far. This is backed by the fact that several other companies, including BitGold and OneCoin, have launched their own types of cryptocurrencies.
This also shows people are putting trust in the infrastructure used by cryptocurrency companies to generate and manage the exchange of such currencies.
Blockchain, the infrastructure that supports bitcoin and several other applications, looks set to continue growing given the success of bitcoin thus far. Therefore, major technology companies likeInternational Business Machines(IBM) andMicrosoft Corp.(MSFT)are looking to capitalizeon the current bullish outlook of this technology and, as per recent reports, some are making huge investments in the market.
Blockchain is a new software technology that allows businesses to work together with trust and transparency. The network allows all parties involved access to an encrypted digital record of transactions that cannot be changed.
The technology can be applied in a variety of industries, especially in the financial sector. As of 2016, the blockchain market was valued at $210 million, but is projected to grow to more than $2 billion within the next five years.
Some of the biggest concerns facing bitcoin are issues regarding the security of transactions and its ability to deal with cases of money laundering. If more industries like the banking sector continue to use the same technology used by bitcoin however, this might work out to be a vote of approval for using bitcoin as a currency.
Nonetheless, this still does not answer Buffett's question on bitcoin. His keynote view was the fact that bitcoin is nothing more than a means of transmitting money, which means it is hard for it to gain intrinsic value over time.
However, when you assess Bitcoin as a currency, then we do know that all currencies have a certain value allocated to them. Paper currencies rely on the economic performance of a given country to gain or lose value. On the other hand, bitcoin is not tied to any individual country, which again raises the question of where the value creation comes from.
It is simple. The U.S. dollar does not strengthen against other currencies because of the strength of the U.S. economy, but rather because of the stability investors believe it possesses. As such, bitcoin traders have been betting on the cryptocurrency market believing it can provide the most stable currency in the future. That is why bitcoin has been rallying over the last 12 months.
Conclusion
In summary, Buffett might be right in the end about bitcoin's valuation being unreal. Given the current advances in the payments market and the growing use of internet banking across the world however, it is clear the cryptocurrency market remains to be a potential disruptor with bitcoin at the center of it all.
Disclosure: I have no position in any stock mentioned in this article.
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• IBM 15-Year Financial Data
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
If you like our Digital Magazine, please consider supporting us, visit: http://ift.tt/1SnAX7V #support #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/90cwJUMB8B || 1 KOBO = 0.00000193 BTC
= 0.0016 USD
= 0.4864 NGN
= 0.0219 ZAR
= 0.1655 KES
#Kobocoin 2017-01-07 08:00 || TÈN TÉN TEN - KẾT QUẢ ĐÂY KẾT QUẢ ĐÂY CẢ NHÀ ƠI
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http://dld.bz/fySZY || Amid Bitcoin Price Recovery, http://Investing.com Suggests "Strong Buy" #bitcoin #decentralize #blockchain http://ow.ly/q4cE3094P8G || #BITCOIN ahora:
$826.16 USD
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@Volabit $19,280.30 MXNpic.twitter.com/Vi4wIIjz5N || ダイレクトメッセージありがとうございます #0217bit #0217ABC #AngelBitCoiner #エンジェルビットコイナー #ビットコイン #bitcoin #BITCOIN pic.twitter.com/wft6L0GSFg || いま超話題のライトライズ。毎日最大3%の収入。最大25%の紹介手数料。Right Rise. https://rightrise.com/?r=peacifist . #bitcoin #日本語 #投資 || Bitcoin trading at 1036.93.
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Trend: up || Prices: 1165.20, 1179.97, 1179.97, 1222.50, 1251.01, 1274.99, 1255.15, 1267.12, 1272.83, 1223.54
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2022-01-13]
BTC Price: 42591.57, BTC RSI: 37.17
Gold Price: 1821.20, Gold RSI: 55.18
Oil Price: 82.12, Oil RSI: 66.41
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Binance coin's massive 1,300% gain in 2021 beat both bitcoin and ether, cementing its spot as the world's 3rd-biggest crypto: • Bitcoin and ether may have raked in impressive gains for 2021, but one altcoin beat them handily.
• Binance coin gained 1,344% this year, far outperforming returns of 73% for bitcoin and 455% for ether.
• The rise of the coin can be attributed in part to the growth of the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem, said Arcane Research.
• Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell
Bitcoinandethermay have raked in impressive gains for 2021 but one altcoin beat them handily:binance coin.
The third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization gained 1,344% this year, far outperforming bitcoin's 73% and ether's 455%.
The rise of the coin, ticker BNB, can be attributed in part to the massive growth of theBinance Smart Chainecosystem, according to a recent report by Arcane Research.
The BSC, which took some market share from ethereum, enables users to build their decentralized apps and digital assets on one blockchain, among others.
BNB is issued byBinance Holdings, the world's largest crypto exchange, and is the native currency of Binance's own blockchain, the Binance chain. Initially, the coin was based on the ethereum network.
BNB trades at about $522 and commands nearly 4% of the entire crypto market with an $87 billion market cap, according to CoinMarketCap.
Elsewhere in the market, altcoins gained traction throughout the year as droves of retail investors piled in, looking to cash in on the hefty gains.
"Throughout the first five months of the year, bitcoin saw a continuous loss of dominance, as traders rotated into altcoins while bitcoin pushed above former highs," the research firm said.
This year saw the rise of many meme tokens as well, including shiba inu, a dogecoin spinoff whose price rocketed 44,540,000% this year.
"These months saw a mixture of 'stupid' pumps in meme coins and ethereum DeFi strength," the firm added.
Read the original article onBusiness Insider || Indian Prime Minister Modi’s Twitter Account Hacked: (Bloomberg) -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s personal Twitter account was hacked, his office said. Most Read from Bloomberg Can Indoor Farms Reach Skyscraper Height? Zero Taxes, Golf and Beach Houses Create a Crypto Island Paradise Saudi Arabia Wants Its Capital to Be Somewhere You’d Want to Live China Is Building the World’s Largest National Park System Boris Johnson’s Furious MPs Worry That His Next Misstep Could Be Fatal The account using the handle @narendramodi has since been restored after the brief incident, it added. “The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured,” the Prime Minister’s office said in a tweet early Sunday. “In the brief period that the account was compromised, any Tweet shared must be ignored.” During the time the account was compromised, a tweet was sent falsely saying that India had officially adopted Bitcoin as the legal tender, and that the country has bought the digital currency which it would distribute to citizens. In late November, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government had no proposal to recognize Bitcoin as a currency in the country. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek China Initiative Set Out to Catch Spies. It Didn’t Find Many A Sunny Place for a Shady Online Business How a Beloved Vegetarian Restaurant Is Doing Better Than Ever, Despite Everything A Wild, Emotional Year Has Changed Investing—Maybe Forever From the Great Resignation to Lying Flat, Workers Are Opting Out ©2021 Bloomberg L.P. || Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Rise Climbing 5% for the Week: Natural gas prices rose on Friday, climbing 3% and notching up a robust 5% gain for the week. Cool-weather covers most of the North East following a heavy snow event. Warmer than average weather is expected to cover most of the United States for the next 2-weeks. This scenario should weigh on natural gas demand. Technical Analysis On Friday, natural gas prices rose but could not advance above key resistance. Resistance is seen near the 200-day moving average at 4.00. Support is seen near the 10-day moving average at 3.84. Short-term momentum is positive as the fast stochastic generated a crossover buy signal. Medium-term momentum is positive as the MACD (moving average convergence divergence) histogram is printing in positive territory with an upward sloping trajectory which points to higher prices. Natural Gas Supply Declines U.S. total natural gas supply falls week-over-week with a decrease in dry natural gas production. According to data from the EIA, the average total supply of natural gas fell by 1.5% from a week ago. Dry natural gas production decreased by 2.7%, but the decline in total supply was partially offset by average net imports from Canada increasing by 28.5% across the same period. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: USD/CAD Exchange Rate Prediction – The Loonie Rose on Strong Employment Data Why Roku Stock Is Down By 7% Today E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis – Testing Major Support at 15567.25 – 15284.00 USD/CAD Daily Forecast – U.S. Dollar Retreats After Disappointing Non Farm Payrolls Report Oil Price Fundamental Daily Forecast – Erasing Early Gains after Payrolls Miss Fueled Renewed Demand Fears Bitcoin Miners Have no Plan to Leave Kazakhstan Despite Unrest || Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, Questions Web 3 Project Funding: A prominent advocate of Bitcoin and everything decentralization, Jack Dorsey, in a series of recent tweets, has criticized how Web3 projects are getting their funding majorly from venture capitals and liquidation pools. Dorsey, Musk Criticizes Web3 His criticism against investments being made by these classes of investors is tied to the fact that he believes that the projects would remain under the control of these firms. You don’t own “web3.” The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. Know what you’re getting into… — jack⚡️ (@jack) December 21, 2021 Later on, Tesla ’s CEO, Elon Musk, gave a cryptic response to his tweet, asking if anyone has seen Web3. Dorsey, in his response, alluded that the Web3 space could be found “between a and z,” a likely nod towards the increasing involvement of Venture Capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s investments in the industry. In recent times, the leading VC has made several investments in several projects, including Uniswap and Solana . While several people have welcomed its involvement, many criticize these investments’ significant influence on the space. For example, the firm, also known as a16z, owns a large cache of UNI tokens, which means it has significant voting power on Uniswap. Crypto Community Reacts to Dorsey’s Claim Dorsey’s comment on the involvement of VCs in Web3 projects has divided opinion on Twitter. Some responses on the social media platform have tied his statement to the fact that web3 projects could someday usurp tech giants like Twitter, Facebook , and others. Of course, I don't believe Twitter set out to bait & switch devs. Or to promise free speech, get people to invest years in their profiles, then censor them. But that is where the incentives landed up. Web3's smart contracts *may* prove more durable than web2's social contracts. — Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) December 21, 2021 According to some, VCs also own Twitter itself. Dorsey, however, discredited this, claiming that Twitter is developing a protocol not owned by VCs or itself. Story continues Web3 describes the future of the Internet, where decentralization and user freedom will be the hallmark of the internet space. According to some schools of thought, Web3 would allow users to control their data, resulting in an internet far from what we know presently. You will note that the space has been enjoying a surge in the level of attraction in recent times as many firms and investors now recognize it as a viable investment option. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Big Money Sheds PayPal, Should You? USD/CAD Daily Forecast – Canadian Dollar Rebounds After Two-Day Sell-Off Gold Price Futures (GC) Technical Analysis – Trader Reaction to $1784.40 – $1777.00 Sets Near-Term Tone S&P 500 Price Forecast – Stock Market Hanging Just Below 50 Day EMA JD.com is Latest Chinese Firm to Enter NFT Space iShares U.S. Infrastructure ETF Could Extend its Rally Towards $40 || The role of traditional finance in cryptocurrency for 2022: In a short period, cryptocurrency has developed more drastically than the traditional finance world. This niche is governed by its own set of rules and models, with no ties to the rest of the conventional financial models which makes it exceptional in the first place. Basically, cryptocurrency investors have had limited tools and knowledge in the area of traditional finance. However, these two worlds have begun to merge – a collision of individual concepts and strategies. Thus, more economic concepts found in traditional finance will become applicable in cryptocurrency as well. That said, cryptocurrency investors must understand these traditional concepts and how they can be applied to crypto. This article explores the role of traditional finance in cryptocurrency, the difference between the CeFi and DeFi, and what it may mean for the world of cryptocurrency. What is traditional finance? Traditional finance simply refers to the methods used over the years. It includes financial methods such as getting loans, overdrafts, and creating accounts in brick and mortar banking institutions. An example of traditional finance is walking into a bank to get a loan or using a cheque to withdraw cash from a bank. Traditional finance often has investors who take rational, deliberate decisions which operate under risk and uncertainty. Also, traditional finance can be defined as ‘normative’ because the established rules and regulations are followed by everyone universally. These rules, however, are not influenced by personal opinion or feeling, rather they are based solely on facts, which is why many people refer to this type of finance as objective Centralised finance versus decentralised finance The key difference between centralised finance and decentralised finance is the exchange model. With centralised finance , the system is governed by centralised authority which makes the rules and enforce them. On the other hand, decentralised finance is governed by technology – a computer algorithm, for example. DeFi users access financial services via decentralised applications ( dApps ), a platform that leverages smart contracts and DAOs for self-automation. Story continues Because of this difference, an intermediate body becomes the biggest differentiator, this intermediate body is responsible for exchanges in CeFi. This means CeFi transactions, users can transfer risk to these exchanges and this makes them responsible for keeping the users funds safe. However, in DeFi, these intermediaries do not exist. What replaces it are known as smart contract protocols which serve as the intermediary which self-executes transactions based on predetermined criteria. There are other differences between the two. For example, CeFi aids fiat to crypto conversions and cross-chain solutions. This means, where necessary, a CeFi body can transfer funds to aid its users in cases like requesting a loan or an overdraft, or block all transactions in an emergency such as a hack. While with DeFi, it is incredibly more transparent and private because the systems are set up not to ask for personal details of the user and unlike CeFi, are non-custodial. More so, with DeFi, transaction restrictions do not exist and block trading is not possible. What is the role of traditional finance in cryptocurrency? The biggest role traditional finance can perform in cryptocurrency is providing maturity and security. With cryptocurrency, it is important to consider the immaturity of the ecosystem and how it is still at a budding stage. Bitcoin, being the oldest cryptocurrency, has been around for at least 13 years. In comparison, the oldest surviving bank – Banca Monte Dei Paschi di Siena – was founded in 1472. This further implies that current traditional finance institutions have been around for several centuries and, as such, possess a few tricks up their sleeves compared to the cryptocurrency space, which is relatively new. Also, with new projects and trends like NFTs, DeFi , IDOs and others, plans are on the way to making them long-term and incorporating them into today’s economic world. However, the issue still remains that there’s a severe lack of insurance, protection or even the experience to create a new financial paradigm. This is where traditional finance specialists come in. With their understanding and experience of concepts that have been applied to decades-old institutions, cryptocurrency is bound to thrive. Think of cryptocurrency as the young student who needs to learn from the master, traditional finance. In fact, Jack Tao, the CEO of Phemex, a cryptocurrency derivatives trading platform, when acknowledging the need for better solutions stated that: “With over a decade of experience at Morgan Stanley, I’ve seen what centralised financial institutions are capable of doing to protect themselves and was disappointed to see the same tactics in an ecosystem that was supposed to embody principles of distributed control and equality.” “We started Phemex because investors deserve better. The cryptocurrency industry is small but burgeoning, and we want to drive the change towards a better monetary system.” Also, it is undeniable that traditional finance possesses the knowledge to address some of the biggest problems in the cryptocurrency industry. For instance, an average crypto investor may not see the holes in the armour of cryptocurrency, but experts in the traditional finance sector can catch on to such matters early enough. Finally, although cryptocurrency is all the rage in the financial world at the moment, it does not make traditional finance useless or obsolete. In fact, traditional finance may have yet another important role to play in grooming the cryptocurrency industry. || Bitcoins weekend carnage sends jitters through the crypto markets: Over a one-hour stretch on Saturday, when the stock markets were closed, the price of Bitcoin plunged by nearly $10,000 to $42,296. There are the typical headwinds of Omicron and Fed tightening, buffeting Bitcoin. But the weekend selloff is also rekindling fears that this 24/7 volatility has only just begun. As crypto bulls know, Bitcoins Saturday selloff adds to nearly a months worth of pain. On Nov. 10, the king of crypto nearly hit $69,000, only to fall 20%a true bear-market collapse. Other cryptos hit a wall this weekend, too, with Ether falling by 17.4% this weekend, but then bouncing back to around 4% by midday Saturday, and Binance Coin tumbling by 10%. Theres little relief on Monday morning: The crypto price board was awash in red ahead of the stock market open in the U.S . And, Coinbase Global, the big crypto exchange, was down nearly 5% in premarket. All told, investors wiped one-fifth of the market value off the entire crypto sector at one point this weekend. Other risk assets got hit, too. Newly public companies lost around $50 billion , and 14% of the market value of a number of meme stocks fell. But it was nothing like the crypto markets as Bitcoin fell below its closely watched 200-day moving average. The across-the-board drops cloud the outlook for institutional portfolios that remain on the fence about adopting Bitcoin to use as a hedge in this period of high inflation. According to asset manager Man Group , Bitcoin, in its history, has had six 50%+ drawdowns. And, Man Group adds, it has a few more 50% drawdowns left in it . Thats not to say its kryptonite, they add. Its just highly volatileand will continue to be. Weekend swings Wild weekend dips and spikes are probably the thing crypto investors most detest about the risk asset. These big weekend moves are caused by a number of factors including lower trading volumes and, in turn, isolated trading patterns leading to tightened liquidity. Over the weekend, fewer investors tend to be making trades. And in the U.S., investors can only trade with money already in their accounts, as wiring more money into an account requires participation of banks, custodians, and other financial institutions, which dont do business on weekends. The lack of liquidity is a big reason why youre seeing some of the drawdown, Chris King, CEO of Eaglebrook Advisors, tells Fortune. Story continues At a time when the market liquidity is restricted, crypto traders deploy leverage to make trades. The point is that we are seeing massive swings now because volatility is what makes the profit for these guys, says Carol Alexander, professor of finance at the University of Sussex Business School, who argues that a majority of users could be making vast profits through highly leveraged trades that move the price of Bitcoin when they are deployed. This weekends selloff may have been more painful than usual because the buy-the-dip crowd largely sat out the action. Buying the dip did not work well last week, so the retail traders could be pulling in their horns a bit, Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., told Bloomberg . This story was originally featured on Fortune.com || Bitcoin Holding Support at $60K; Could Face Resistance at $63K-$65K: Bitcoin (BTC) is stabilizing around the $60,000 support level after declining about 15% from an all-time high near $69,000.
The cryptocurrency is roughly flat over the past 24 hours and could see further upside toward the $63,000-$65,000 resistance zone.
Both the 50-day and 100-day moving averages are sloping upward, indicating a positive intermediate-term trend. This means buyers could remain active on pullbacks given strong price support above $53,000.
For now, the relative strength index (RSI) on the daily chart is below a neutral reading of 50, which means a period of consolidation could continue until a decisive breakout or breakdown is confirmed. || Shiba Inu Coin Daily Tech Analysis November 27th, 2021: Shiba Inu Coin Shiba Inu Coin slid by 9.41% on Friday. Partially reversing a 12.81% breakout from Thursday, Shiba Inu Coin ended the day at $0.0000387. A mixed start to the day saw Shiba Inu Coin rise to an early morning intraday high $0.0000429 hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $0.0000479, Shiba Inu Coin slid to a late morning intraday low $0.0000357. The sell-off saw Shiba Inu Coin slide through the first major support level at $0.0000376 and the 62% FIB of $0.000037. Finding late morning support, however, Shiba Inu Coin revisited $0.000041 levels before falling back to sub-$0.000040 levels. In spite of the late pullback, Shiba Inu Coin avoided a fall back through the first major support level and the 62% FIB. At the time of writing, Shiba Inu Coin was up by 0.98% to $0.00003908. A mixed start to the day saw Shiba Inu Coin fall to an early morning low $0.00003821 before rising to a high $0.00003916. Shiba Inu Coin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. For the day ahead Shiba Inu Coin would need to move back through the $0.0000391 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $0.0000425 into play. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Shiba Inu Coin to break back through to $0.000040 levels. Barring another extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Fridays high $0.0000429 would likely cap the upside In the event of an extended breakout, Shiba Inu Coin could test the second major resistance level at $0.0000463. Failure to move back through the $0.0000391 pivot would bring the 62% FIB of $0.000037 and the first major support level at $0.0000353 into play. Barring another extended sell-off, however, Shiba Inu Coin should avoid sub-$0.000035 levels. The second major support level sits at $0.0000319. For the bears, a sustained fall through the 62% FIB of $0.000037 would form a near-term bearish trend. Looking at the Technical Indicators First Major Support Level: $0.0000353 Story continues Pivot Level: $0.0000391 First Major Resistance Level: $0.0000425 23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.00006987 38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $0.00005680 62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.00003700 This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Rise of DAOs: Is It Just a Hype or a Profitable Industry in the Making? Natural Gas Weekly Price Forecast Natural Gas Markets Recover for The Week BTC and ETH Dip as Covid Variant Fears Affect Financial Markets ASX200: Weekly Wrap 26/11/2021 Shiba Inu Coin Daily Tech Analysis November 27th, 2021 S&P 500 Price Forecast Stock Market Continues Volatile Action || 2 reasons why bitcoin's rally stalled in November and why the weakness may continue, according to JPMorgan: • Bitcoin has stumbled in November, falling as much as 12% and reversing October's strong rally.
• Bitcoin's price decline can continue into year-end as crypto positioning remains overbought, JPMorgan said in a note last week.
• These are the two reasons why the crypto rally stalled in recent weeks, according to JPMorgan.
Bitcoin's27% rally in October reversed in November, with the cryptocurrency falling as much as 12% this month amid a risk-off period for stocks andconcerns of a new COVID-19 variant.
But according to a November 24 note fromJPMorgan, the weakness in bitcoin prices likely stems from a slowdown in fund flows into recently launched bitcoin futures ETFs. Those ETFs saw a surge in October, with the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy BITO ETF becoming thefastest ETF ever to reach $1 billion in assets under management.
After that record-setting pace, inflows came to a near standstill in November, with the BITO ETF seeing its AUM edge up from $1.2 billion at the start of the month to $1.3 billion as of Friday.
"What is more disappointing is that the stalling in bitcoin fund inflows in November took place as physical gold ETFs continued to bleed," JPMorgan's Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said. Bitcoin isviewed by many as a "digital gold" alternativeto physical gold, thanks to its fixed supply and the widely held investor belief that it is an inflation hedge.
Another reason for the recent weakness in bitcoin's price has to do with investor positioning in the cryptocurrency hitting overbought levels, according to the note. "Our bitcoin position proxy based on CME futures had spiked in September/October to overbought levels last seen in February 2021," Panigirtzoglou explained.
Those overbought levels will serve as a headwind for bitcoin going forward, JPMorgan said, which could limit upside pressure in a price rally until they moderate. When bitcoin last hit overbought levels in February, the price extended its gains through April but then experienced a multi-month drawdown of about 50%.
And after bitcoin hit its most oversold levels of the year in October, the price rallied nearly 30%, highlighting the potential for big returns when traders go against the crowd.
Read the original article onBusiness Insider || PhunCoin Crypto: 12 Things for PHUN Stock Investors to Know About Phunware’s New Token: Phunware(NASDAQ:PHUN) is getting into the crypto game with the launch ofPhunCoin(CCC:PHCN-USD).
Source: Yevhen Vitte/Shutterstock.com
Let’s take a look at what investors need to know about this below!
• Phunwaredescribes it asa “security token that is empowering consumers to take control of and be compensated for their data.”
• The company says users can monetize the tokens by sharing their data with brands.
• This allows users to earn Phuncoin by providing answers to questions in a survey.
• Phunware claims traders will want to hold the token as it pays out a crypto dividend.
• The company says that the PhunCoin crypto is available to “accredited investors via Reg D.”
• Another way to get the token includes “utilizing Phunware’s Data SDK to build audiences.”
• 6 Mega-Cap Stocks That Make Great Stocking Stuffers
• According to Phunware, the token will provide brands with direct, real-time data from consumers.
• That’s due to proximity marketing that lets brands know when and where users like to spend their time.
• Phunware notes this isn’t a new concept but is expected to see growth in the coming years.
• As such, it’s looking to get into the game with a crypto token that it believes can reach mainstream users.
• Apress releasefrom Phunware today notes that the token is valued at $0.008.
• It also mentions that the company will hold 72% of the maximum available supply.
PHUN stock is up 4.5% as of Friday morning.
InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
Investors on the lookout for more crypto news will want to stick around!
InvestorPlace has the latest crypto news traders need to know about for Friday. A few examples include the latest coverage onSolana(CCC:SOL-USD),Bitcoin(CCC:BTC-USD), andFloki Inu(CCC:FLOKI-USD). You can find all of that at the following links!
• Solana Bears Aren’t Finished Toying With It Yet
• Latest Crypto News: Why Is Bitcoin Down Today?
• The Floki Inu Marketing Blitz May Be Too Little, Too Late
On the date of publication, William Whitedid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
On Low-Capitalization and Low-Volume Cryptocurrencies:With only the rarest exceptions, InvestorPlace does not publish commentary about cryptocurrencies that have a market capitalization less than $100 million or trade with volume less than $100,000 each day. That’s because these “penny cryptos” are frequently the playground for scam artists and market manipulators. If we ever do publish commentary on a low-volume crypto that may be affected by our commentary, we demand that InvestorPlace.com’s writers disclose this fact and warn readers of the risks.
Read More:How to Avoid Popular Cryptocurrency Scams
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• Interested in Crypto? Read This First...
The postPhunCoin Crypto: 12 Things for PHUN Stock Investors to Know About Phunware’s New Tokenappeared first onInvestorPlace.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 43099.70, 43177.40, 43113.88, 42250.55, 42375.63, 41744.33, 40680.42, 36457.32, 35030.25, 36276.80
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2019-10-07]
BTC Price: 8245.62, BTC RSI: 33.47
Gold Price: 1497.70, Gold RSI: 48.95
Oil Price: 52.75, Oil RSI: 39.04
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Hackers seized Bitcoin up for auction: An auction house will this week be putting $625,000 worth of cryptocurrency seized by police under the hammer. The proceeds of a recently jailed hacker, the massive haul of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and other altcoins will be auctioned off by Belfast-based Wilsons Auctions on behalf of the UKs Eastern Region Special Operations Unit (ERSOU). The ERSOU seized the digital loot from a criminal who illegally supplied online personal data and hacking services in exchange for thousands of pounds worth of cryptocurrency. It is believed to be the first instruction by a UK police force for the sale of a criminals seized Bitcoin. It will be sold from tomorrow with no reserve to the highest bidder. The assets will be split across two auctions to a global audience with lots largely ranging from 0.25 to two Bitcoins. Other cryptocurrencies known as altcoins will be auctioned off in larger lots. The auction will run for 24 hours from 12 noon GMT on Wednesday September 25 until 12 noon GMT on Thursday September 26. Luxury watches A further 15 lots of Bitcoin will be included in the Unreserved Government Auction, which will take place at 6pm GMT on Thursday September 26. The sale will also include a number of high-value items from luxury watches and jewellery to designer goods and cars all seized by the police from online hackers. Wilsons Auctions staged a similar sale in March 2019 with a Belgian public auction of Bitcoin. The sale saw 315 Bitcoins (currently worth around £2.5m) seized by the Belgian government up for grabs. Speaking ahead of the auction, Wilsons Auctions Asset Recovery Director Aidan Larkin said: We are delighted to be marking another first at Wilsons Auctions by carrying out the first auction of Bitcoin under the instruction of a UK police force. Following the success of our world-first public auction of Bitcoin, which achieved global attention, we are excited to continue to roll out this secure service to both our public and private sector clients. Story continues Being able to offer this secure solution to clients and remove the risks that can be associated with trading with unregulated virtual currency exchanges has been a welcome addition to our award-winning auction service as well as giving new and experienced investors the opportunity to buy cryptocurrencies from an established auction house. Wilsons Auctions is a leading auction company with more than 80 years of experience managing the disposal of an extensive variety of assets. The Asset Recovery Department works with 17 countries worldwide realising assets from cryptocurrencies to supercars, luxury watches, and designer goods. In recent years, the firm has realised over £100 million worth of seized assets for government agencies, law enforcement agencies, and insolvency practitioners. The post Hackers seized Bitcoin up for auction appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Bitcoin drops to more than 3-month low vs dollar, briefly trades below $8,000: NEW YORK, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Bitcoin dropped roughly 15% against the U.S. dollar in late trading on Tuesday, hitting a 3-1/2-month low, with some analysts ascribing the weakness to investors' lukewarm reception to the launch of Bakkt's bitcoin futures on Monday.
Bakkt, a cryptocurrency platform affiliate of the New York Stock Exchange-owned Intercontinental Exchange Inc, listed the new Bakkt Bitcoin futures contracts on Monday. But volume was underwhelming, analysts said.
The largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was last down 13.5% at $8,377. Earlier, it hit $7,998, the lowest level since mid-June. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss Editing by Leslie Adler) || Bank ETFs Break Out on Rising Treasury Yields: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. Bank sector-related ETFs found strength Monday as government bonds pulled back and yields climbed on easing investor fears surrounding a U.S.-China trade war that has shown signs of de-escalation. On Monday, the Invesco KBW Bank ETF ( KBWB ) increased 1.54%, SPDR S&P Bank ETF ( KBE ) advanced 3.39%, iShares U.S. Regional Banks ETF ( IAT ) rose 3.36% and SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF ( KRE ) gained 3.53%. The bank sector-related ETFs also broke back above both their short- and long-term trend lines at the 50- and 200-day simple moving averages. Bank stocks rallied as yields on benchmark 10-year Treasury notes rose to 1.618% late-Monday, with bond prices pulling back in response to lessening demand for safety bets after China reportedly offered to increase U.S. agricultural product purchases in exchange for easing sanctions on the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawai and postponing the October 1 scheduled tariffs, according to Politico . The compromise was seen as a further step to de-escalate the protracted trade war that has gripped the two largest economies in the world. Related: A S&P 500 ETF Strategy That Avoids a Downtrodden Financial Sector Depending on how talks progress, President Donald Trump may even delay another round of tariffs that will was expected to be enacted on December 15 on almost all remaining $300 billion in imports from China, including laptops, smartphones and other consumer goods. “I don’t want to predict anything. I’m just saying it is a good thing that they’re coming here, and tempers are calmer now,” Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow told CNBC. “We’re engaged in very important discussions across the board, whether it’s agriculture or IP or tech transfer or cloud or cyber-hacking or trade barriers.” The financial sector rejoiced on the rising rates after government bond yields hit multi-year lows last week, with yields on 30-year Treasuries even dipping below the 2% level. Bankers typically make their money off the difference between long-term loans and deposits. With yields rising on later-dated debt, banks will be able to set more lucrative interest rates on loans and go back to generating greater profits on core businesses. Story continues For more information on the financial sector, visit our financial category . POPULAR ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM SPY ETF Quote VOO ETF Quote QQQ ETF Quote VTI ETF Quote JNUG ETF Quote Top 34 Gold ETFs Top 34 Oil ETFs Top 57 Financials ETFs Heated Tobacco May Replace Vaping Amidst Consumer Issues VanEck And SolidX Take First Steps For Bitcoin-Related ETF Approvals Could Inverse ETFs Thrive In September? Social Media Stock SNAP Gets An Upgrade Gold, Precious Metals ETFs Surge on Geopolitical Uncertainty READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || User experience is vital to blockchain adoption, according to new report: Blockchain is still desperately in need of a facelift, according toa new reportthat surveyed 102 blockchain founders and CEOs. Though the widespread commercialization of blockchain technology over the last year has introduced a number of projects with passable user experience, the report, by the Los Angeles-based cryptocurrency marketing firm Zage, said many people still find the technology too complicated.
“When asked what would be the tipping point for mass adoption of blockchain, 41% of respondents felt that a seamless user experience was key,” according toThe real-world applications of blockchain technologyreport.
This is hardly surprising. For anyone who has downloaded the Bitcoin blockchain from GitHub, installed it and managed to get the whole thing working, they won’t need to be told twice—let alone when it comes to the challenging, and experimental,Lightning Network.
“I personally believe that the day when blockchain technology is used in day-to-day life is the day when people stopped talking about blockchain. Because it is just a backend technology that consumers don’t need to know about,” Allen Lee, founder of QLC Chain, said in the report.
On the plus side, big companies are well aware of the usability problems and working to correct them—at Jack Dorsey’s direction, for instance, Square recentlyhireda designer to focus on exactly these issues.
The bitcoin community is trying to design the “Satoshi symbol”
One of the biggest bugbears flagged in the report was the challenge of using decentralized applications, including those focused on finance, known as DeFi. While these have great promise, they are simply far too tricky for consumers’ everyday use.
However, some of the CEOs polled say they believe the usability problem will be short lived.
“At the moment it’s far too technical, but within a few years, it will be as easy as using a mobile app,” said David Siegel, co-founder of 20|30 Group said. We can only hope. || Ethereum’s Istanbul Upgrade Arrives Early, Causes Testnet Split: Ethereum test network Ropsten has forked into two separate chains following the activation of system-wide upgrade Istanbul.
“It appears there are two different chains mining the Ropsten test network. There are miners mining on the old [Ropsten] chain and miners mining the new one,” explained Ethereum Foundation community manager Hudson Jameson, adding in atweet:
“This is what testnets are for! Be aware that Ropsten will be unstable until this all plays out.”
Related:Ethereum’s Istanbul Upgrade Will Break 680 Smart Contracts on Aragon
Originally expected to activate on Oct. 2 at block height 6,485,846, Istanbul was released two days earlier than planned – on Sept. 30 at roughly 3:40 a.m. UTC.
The reason for this according to Jameson was due to unusually fast block confirmation times.
Normally, miners on a proof-of-work blockchain like ethereum and test network Ropsten are required to manually upgrade their software in order to ensure the smooth continuation of a single chain.
According to Hudson, the majority of miners on the Ropsten blockchain did not upgrade to the latest software, since the time of the hard fork caught many developers off guard. This has resulted in a split of the test network between those mining on the upgraded chain and those mining on the outdated chain.
Related:New Interest in DAOs Prompts Old Question: Are They Legal?
Last October, a similar event occurred after the activation of ethereum’s previous system-wide upgrade,Constantinople, which resulted in a temporary chain split on the Ropsten network lasting a few hours.
“The complicated part about proof-of-work test network is getting coordination between miners,” Jameson said in a call Monday afternoon. “Right now, we’re trying to run some miners to get Ropsten on the correct Istanbul chain.”
Jameson added that issues with the Ropsten network so far appear to be the result of poor miner communication, not flaws in the Istanbul upgrade code.
As such, how this temporary chain split will ultimately affect the activation of Istanbul on the ethereum main network is still to be determined. Ethereum core developers will have a call onFriday, Oct. 4to discuss Istanbul’s testnet activation.
Hudson Jameson image via CoinDesk archives
• Why Ethereum Briefly Overtook Bitcoin in Daily Transaction Fees
• WATCH: How Blockchain Oracles Could Take Chainlink to New Highs || Ethereum & Stellars Lumen Tech Analysis 26/08/19: Ethereum Key Highlights Ethereum slid by 2.26% on Sunday. Following on from a 1.9% fall on Saturday, Ethereum ended the day at $186.59. A midday intraday high $192.76 saw Ethereum fall well short of the first major resistance level at $194.98. A late intraday low $182.04 saw Ethereum fall through the first major support level at $186.41. The extended bearish trend, formed at late April 2018s swing hi $828.97, remained firmly intact. The reversal from Junes current year high $364.49 back through the 23.6% FIB of $257 reaffirmed the extended bearish trend. Ethereum Price Support Ethereum slid by 2.26% on Sunday. Following on from a 1.9% fall on Saturday, Ethereum ended the day at $186.59. A bullish morning saw Ethereum rally to a midday intraday high $192.76 before hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $194.98, Ethereum slid to a late intraday low $182.04. The reversal saw Ethereum fall through the first major support level at $186.41. Coming within range of the second major support level at $181.93, Ethereum moved back through to $186 levels to limit the downside on the day. For the week, a 4 th day in the red left Ethereum down by 4.19%. The extended bearish trend, formed at late April 2018s swing hi $828.97, remained firmly intact. A reversal from Junes current year high $364.49 back through the 23.6% FIB of $257 reaffirmed the extended bearish trend. At the time of writing, Ethereum was up by 3.46% to $193.04. A bullish start to the day saw Ethereum rally from a morning low $186.6 to a high $194.28 before easing back. Steering clear of the major support levels, Ethereum broke through the first major resistance level at $192.22. For the day ahead Ethereum would need to hold above the first major resistance level to support a run at the second major resistance level at $197.85. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to hold onto $192 levels. In the event of a second rally, a move through the second major resistance level would bring $200 levels into play. Story continues Failure to hold above the first major resistance level could see Ethereum give up the early gains. A fall through $187 levels would bring the first major support level at $181.5 into play. Barring a crypto meltdown, Ethereum should continue to steer clear of sub-$180 levels. Looking at the Technical Indicators Major Support Level: $181.50 Major Resistance Level: $192.22 23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $257 38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $367 62% FIB Retracement Level: $543 Stellars Lumen Key Highlights Stellars Lumen slipped by 1.32% on Sunday. Reversing a trend-bucking 0.56% gain from Saturday, Stellars Lumen ended the day at $0.069319 A mid-morning intraday high $0.072398 saw Stellars Lumen break through the first major resistance level at $0.07150. A late intraday low $0.068254 saw Stellars Lumen fall through the first major support level at $0.06840. The extended bearish trend remained firmly intact, with Stellars Lumen continuing to fall short of the 23.6% FIB of $0.12220. How to Buy Stellars Lumen Stellars Lumen Price Support Stellars Lumen slipped by 1.32% on Sunday. Reversing a trend-bucking 0.56% gain from Saturday, Stellars Lumen ended the day at $0.069319. A bullish start to the day saw Stellars Lumen rally to a mid-morning intraday high $0.072398 before hitting reverse. The early rally saw Stellars Lumen break through the first major resistance level at $0.07150. Stellars Lumen came within range of the second major resistance level at $0.07270 before sliding to a late intraday low $0.068254. Finding support at the first major support level at $0.06840, Stellars Lumen moved back through to $0.069 levels to limit the downside. A 3 rd day in the red out of 7 left Stellars Lumen down by 1.8% for the week. The extended bearish trend remained firmly intact. Stellars Lumen continued to fall short of the 23.6% FIB of $0.12220 following a pullback from $0.13 levels back in late June. Stellars Lumen fell to a new swing low $0.065751 on 22 nd August. This Morning At the time of writing, Stellars Lumen was up by 1.58% to $0.07041. Tracking the broader market, Stellars Lumen rallied from a morning low $0.070133 to a high $0.071308. Steering well clear of the major support levels, Stellars Lumen came within range of the first major resistance level at $0.0717. For the day ahead Stellars Lumen would need to hold onto $0.070 levels to support another run at the first major resistance level at $0.0717. Continued support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Stellars Lumen to break out from the early high $0.071308. In the event of a second rally later in the day, Stellars Lumen could break out from Sundays high $0.072398. We would expect the second major resistance level at $0.0741 to limit any upside, however. Failure to hold onto $0.070 levels could see Stellars Lumen hit reverse. A fall through Sundays low $0.068254 would bring the first major support level at $0.0676 into play. Barring a crypto meltdown, we would expect Stellars Lumen to steer clear of sub-$0.067 levels on the day. Looking at the Technical Indicators Major Support Level: $0.06760 Major Resistance Level: $0.07170 23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.1222 38% FIB Retracement Level: $0.1571 62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.2136 Please let us know what you think in the comments below . Thanks, Bob This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast Expect Lower Demand Growth as US-China Trade War Escalates A funny thing happened on the way to the Jackson Hole forum. U.S. Dollar Index Futures (DX) Technical Analysis Strengthens Over 97.545, Weakens Under 97.510 Bitcoin Cash ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis 26/08/19 Natural Gas Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast Not Much Hope for Near-Term Rally Amid Lower Demand Concerns USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis Vulnerable to Steep Drop Under 104.600 || Black-market weed vape company linked to lung crisis is verified on Instagram: Dank Vapes, a brand of black-market THC vaporizer cartridges whose products have been linked to the outbreak of vaping-related lung diseases, has an official verified account on Instagram — despite the fact that it may not even be a real company. The brand claims "nothing is for sale" in its Instagram bio. However, users can buy products with flavor names like "cotton candy" and "banana split" through third-party distributors advertising their services in the comments of Dank Vape's verified Instagram posts. Black-market weed vape company linked to lung crisis is verified on Instagram Image: screenshot via instagram According to a report the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released Friday, a number of patients affected by the vape-related lung diseases reported they used cartridges from Dank Vapes. "Dank Vapes appears to be the most prominent in a class of largely counterfeit brands," the CDC says, "with common packaging that is easily available online and that is used by distributors to market THC-containing cartridges with no obvious centralized production or distribution. The report comes from health officials in Illinois and Wisconsin. SEE ALSO: Vape lung crisis is a wake-up call for the weed industry Dank Vapes may not even be a real company at all. An Inverse report in August concluded that the brand is "one of the biggest conspiracies in all of marijuana" — a packaging company "with no quality control or oversight." The Instagram account appears to be registered in Los Angeles. But there are no California state marijuana licenses in its name. The California Cannabis Industry Association does not recognize Dank Vapes as a registered brand. View this post on Instagram Cotton candy 🍭 #dankvapes A post shared by Official Dank Vapes (@dankvapes) on Sep 20, 2019 at 2:39pm PDT And that means Dank Vapes is slipping through the cracks of regulation. The state of California mandates rigorous testing from cannabis labs to legally sell products. But as Vox found when it looked into online vaping communities, just about anyone can make and distribute their own vape juice. Story continues The Dank Vapes account, which first posted in September, advertises various flavors and doesn't directly link to distributors. The account's comments are filled by people trying to buy flavored cartridges — and by Instagram users warning others. Black-market weed vape company linked to lung crisis is verified on Instagram Image: screenshot via instagram Black-market weed vape company linked to lung crisis is verified on Instagram Image: screenshot via instagram Black-market weed vape company linked to lung crisis is verified on Instagram Image: Screenshot via instagram Instagram did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But to obtain verification an account has to be "in the public interest," according to Instagram's verification page . The account must "represent a real person, registered business, or entity." The company also says that to qualify for verification, the account in question has to represent a "well-known, highly searched for person, brand, or entity." The verification process requires some form of identification, like a government-issued ID, which means Instagram may have the identify of an individual who claimed the Dank Vapes brand. Inverse points to one Jake Lindsey as the individual who filed trademarks for Dank Vapes with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The only account that Dank Vapes follows on Instagram is Dankwoods, another trademark belonging to Lindsey. It's a blunt pre-roll distributor that, contrary to its Instagram bio , does appear to sell and ship products online. The Dankwoods store accepts payments through Western Union, Moneygram, Zelle, Bitcoin, Amazon gift cards, and CashApp. Dankwoods' site also sells Dank Vapes' cartridges. The domain name Dankwoods.org is registered to an office and retail building in San Francisco's SOMA district, a block from the Giants' ballpark. In a section titled "Is Dank Vapes Safest for Health?" the Dankwoods site says "We are professionals: we have no mind to spoil your life." Here's its bizarre, barely-English disclaimer in full: The site does not make any mention of the ongoing vape-related lung disease crisis, which claimed seven lives. The Centers for Disease Control, Federal Drug Administration, and Health and Human Services recommend immediately throwing away black market vapes bought on the street, instead of in a regulated store, regardless of whether it contains CBD, THC, or nicotine. Leafly reported that a diluent referred to as Honey Cut, which dilutes THC oil without affecting the viscosity, contains Vitamin E oil. The cutting agent makes vape juice production cheaper, but also comes with a slew of unknown side effects. Health officials in New York suspect Vitamin E oil may cause severe lung damage seen in patients hospitalized for vape-related disease symptoms. The Dank Vapes Instagram account has not responded to request for comment, and calls to numbers listed on Dankwoods.org went unanswered. || JP Morgan analyst thinks Bakkt is responsible for Bitcoin’s price crash: A report by JP Morgan Chase & Co Friday said the underwhelming launch of ICE’s Bitcoin futures contracts exchange, Bakkt , is responsible for Bitcoin ’s latest price crash. The project's price fell off a cliff last week, falling more than 20 percent from $10,026 last Sunday to today’s price, $7,933. Bakkt is the brainchild of the Intercontinental Exchange, the organization that runs the New York Stock Exchange. On Bakkt, investors could bet on the future price of Bitcoin, and place and receive those bets in Bitcoin, too. Experts hoped Bakkt would bring Wall Street money to Bitcoin because it has the backing of Wall Street’s regulators, like the CTFC. While the JP Morgan report noted that the Bakkt contracts are a welcomed sign of the crypto market growing up, trading has been relatively underwhelming. Right now, just 54 Bitcoin is being traded ($430,000). Not much considering the hype. But the JP Morgan report suggested that “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, rather than the low initial volumes,” JPMorgan’s analyst wrote in the report, according to Bloomberg. The report said that Bitcoin’s price peaked a while ago, and the market only just started suffering as old deals, excitedly made from the ambitions of Bitcoin’s bull run, finish up. “This position liquidation has also likely contributed to the sharp falls in Bitcoin prices this week,” said the report. While Bitcoin’s price has got rid of the “overhang of long Bitcoin futures positions...in Bitmex futures, this is not yet true for CME contracts,” said the report. In other words, though the reasons for last week’s misery have cleared up, the completion of over-valued CME contracts in the coming weeks and months could further depress the Bitcoin market. Hold on to your hats. View comments || Bitcoin dominance rose significantly over the last three months: Bitcoin has outperformed the altcoin market over the last three months, as Bitcoin dominanceits share of the total crypto market caphas risen from 55 percent to its current level of 71 percent. One bitcoin is currently worth $10,570. Bitcoin's current market cap sits at $186 billion, more than double the rest of the marketvalued at just $75 billion. This despite the increasing number and promotional efforts of altcoinsa collective term used for any crypto project or token that was launched after the creation of Bitcoin in 2009. There are now nearly 1,200 altcoins on the market. Photo Credit: Coin Metrics According to data provided from Coin Metrics , while Bitcoin's price has been rising over the last three months, top altcoins have been falling. It notes that Bitcoin is up 37 percent, while altcoins are majorly down, including EOS (-47 percent), Stellar (-48 percent), and Tron (-53 percent). In the last week alone, Bitcoin rose by 4 percent, while other coins like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, XRP and Litecoin were all down at least 3 percent. || AUD/USD and NZD/USD Fundamental Daily Forecast Kiwi Firms After RBNZ Leaves Rates Unchanged: The Australian and New Zealand Dollars are trading mixed early Wednesday as traders continued to price in the increasing probability of another rate cut by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) at its next policy meeting on October 1 after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) decided to pass on another cut earlier today, while raising some doubts it will need to cut before the end of the year on November 12. At 06:41 GMT, the AUD/USD is trading .6781, down 0.0018 or -0.26% and the NZD/USD is at .6326, up 0.0002 or +0.02%. New Zealand Dollar Early Wednesday, the RBNZ held its Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 1 percent, as had been widely expected by analysts. This following a surprise 50-basis point cut to the OCR in August. The RBNZ also added in its statement that new information since August did not warrant a significant change to the monetary policy outlook. Reserve Bank policymakers said its monetary policy committee had discussed the impact of cutting the OCR to 1 percent in August and was pleased to see retail lending interest rates decline, along with a depreciation of the exchange rate. The members anticipated a positive impulse to economic activity over the coming year from monetary and fiscal stimulus. Additionally, in a forward-looking comment, the bank said there were several key uncertainties affecting the outlook for monetary policy and a range of possible outcomes. Some members noted that ongoing low inflation could cause inflation expectations to fall. Others noted that this risk was balanced by the potential for rising labor and import costs to pass through to inflation more substantially over the medium term. But the committee remained comfortable with the monetary policy stance it said. Other Highlights from the RBNZ Monetary Policy Statement Employment was around its maximum sustainable level and inflation remained within its target range but below the 2 percent midpoint, the RBNZ said. Global trade and other political tensions remain elevated and continue to subdue the global growth outlook, dampening demand for New Zealands goods and services. Business confidence remains low in New Zealand, partly reflecting policy uncertainty and low profitability in some sectors, and is impacting investment decisions. Interest rates could be expected to be low for longer, it said, amid historically low global long-term interest rates. Household spending and construction activity are supported by low interest rates, while the incentive for businesses to invest will grow in response to demand pressures. Story continues The RBNZ also hoped for more fiscal and monetary stimulus, if necessary. Daily Forecast The early strength in the NZD/USD is likely just a relief rally and short-covering by those who bet the RBNZ would cut rates at todays meeting. Now the debate begins over a November rate cut. Analysts agree that a November cut is still in the cards although the financial markets have reduced the chances of a rate cut from 92 percent to 76 percent after the meeting. After the announcements, ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley said, We continue to expect a 25 basis point cut in November, which todays statement and meeting summary leave the door open for. But by itself the statement suggests that a November cut isnt a dead certainty, even though we think it is the highly likely outcome. Beyond November we still see the risks as being for further easing next year, given the risks remain stacked towards the Reserve Bank deciding even more stimulus is needed to meet its inflation and employment mandates, he said. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: USD/JPY Fundamental Daily Forecast Firming as Investors Await Release of Trumps Phone Call Transcripts EUR/USD Daily Forecast Euro Continues to Linger Around 1.10 Handle Bitcoin Cash ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis 25/09/19 AUD/USD Forex Technical Analysis Triangle Pattern Suggests Impending Volatility; Strengthens Over .6805, Weakens Under .6767 Geopolitics to Drive the Majors Through the Day AUD/USD, NZD/USD, USD/CNY Asian Session Daily Forecast View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
One Bitcoin now worth $8254.16@bitstamp. High $8368.500. Low $7714.700. Market Cap $148.298 Billion #bitcoin || UPDATE 3-Oil edge up but still set for big weekly loss on de..
@Bitcoinincoins - @InvestCrypForex - investingcom - Twitter - News - Noticias - Bitcoin - CryptoCurrency - Forex https://t.co/Xj4hEc4vVL || Bitcoin Drops to $10k Amid Worst Single-Day Loss in a Month https://t.co/nlXtleYov1 by @Coindesk || Featured Video | Here are @AltcoinDailyio's latest comments on #Bitcoin + an #investing takeaway for YOU. Watch Now. https://t.co/vay6G2R6Yv #CoinChooseCom || 「米中貿易戦争で株が暴落する中仮想通貨ビットコインが安全資産として機能」米主要経済メディアが認める｜XRP（リップル）なども急騰
#米中貿易戦争#仮想通貨$BTC
https://t.co/b8XwwW67EP || https://t.co/ZfhSqWJ1mm || $BTC: 11380.003 (-0.03%)
$ETH: 210.02 (0.05%)
$XRP: 0.298 (-0.23%)
$BCH: 318.922 (-0.19%)
$LTC: 86.071 (-0.23%)
$BNB: 29.921 (-0.11%)
$USDT: 0.997 (0.04%)
$EOS: 4.117 (-0.04%)
$BSV: 143.01 (0.06%)
$XMR: 91.38 (-0.07%)
$XLM: 0.076 (0.67%) || Market Update: The price of #BitcoinCash is currently $303.66
#Crypto $BCH #BCH
View the coin here here: https://t.co/AJxMUyX6Bh || I just "earned" free shitcoins and sold them for Bitcoin. Join me and use my invite to join Coinbase and earn up to $50 of $XLM to convert to Bitcoin. https://t.co/ZlGih4JnZn || Prices in USD:
BLU 64,59/59,21
BCH 316,06/272,96
BTC 10.356,66/9.001,58
BTG 13,06/10,79
DGB 0,01/0,01
DSH 90,28/77,97
ETH 183,82/161,69
RBTC 10.068,24/9.109,36
REALT 0,25/0,25
SMART 0,00/0,00
TUSD 1,05/0,95
XEM 0,05/0,05
XRP 0,27/0,24
ZCR 0,11/0,07
ZEC 50,29/43,43
#stratum
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Trend: down || Prices: 8228.78, 8595.74, 8586.47, 8321.76, 8336.56, 8321.01, 8374.69, 8205.37, 8047.53, 8103.91
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2021-11-04]
BTC Price: 61452.23, BTC RSI: 55.52
Gold Price: 1793.00, Gold RSI: 53.62
Oil Price: 78.81, Oil RSI: 44.12
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
ProShares Bitcoin ETF Already Approaching Limit on Futures Contracts: BeInCrypto –
The Proshares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) is already approaching the limit on the number of futures contracts it is permitted to hold by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
This storywas seen first onBeInCryptoJoin our Telegram Groupand get trading signals, a free trading course and more stories likethisonBeInCrypto || The US network of bitcoin ATMs is vulnerable to hacks, according to crypto exchange Kraken: Bitcoin ATM Parilov Bitcoin ATMs can easily be attacked because of their poor security, according to a report by Kraken on Wednesday. ATMs' server addresses, applications and security can be tampered with. The US has the most bitcoin ATMs in the world, followed by Canada. Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell . Bitcoin ATMs may seem like a fairly safe proposition, but a report by crypto exchange Kraken on Wednesday showed the network in the United States in particular is vulnerable to hacks, partly because of its poor security systems. Bitcoin ATMs allow people to convert their dollars into cryptocurrency, but basic things such as their server address, applications and security can easily be tampered with, the report said. The machines are spread around the world, but there are over 22,235 in the US alone, far more than any other country, according to data by Statista. In second place is Canada, which only has 1,776. "Bitcoin ATMs offer a convenient and friendly way for consumers to purchase cryptocurrencies. That ease of use can sometimes come at the expense of security," the report said. One brand of ATM in particular - the GBBATM2 - requires users to be particularly alert, the report said. In addition to the problems that are common to a lot of ATMs, many of the owners of this brand were not changing the default QR code, which can be common across different ATMs, making them easy to take over, the report said. It means these ATMs can easily be unlocked, they have no alarm and their Android-based operating systems allow anyone to install applications, so an attacker can easily generate their own authentication requests because there are no cross-site forgery protections in place. "The device contains no local or server-side alarm to alert others that the internal components are exposed. At this point, a would-be attacker could compromise the cash box, embedded computer, webcam and fingerprint reader," the report said. Story continues The exchange advised users to only use ATMs that they trust and make sure they are well protected and have surveillance cameras. Kraken is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. Read the original article on Business Insider || Altcoin prices drop as investors await bitcoin ETF approval, but dogecoin and shiba inu buck the trend: • Altcoins ethereum, litecoin, and cardano fell ahead of the bitcoin futures ETF approval.
• Meanwhile, binance coin, dogecoin, and shiba inu rallied.
• The first-ever bitcoin futures ETF is set to begin trading Tuesday.
Altcoin prices were mixed Monday ahead of the US Securities and Exchange Commission'sapproval of a bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund.
Ethereum, Cardano, and litecoin each fell about 1% Monday, according to CoinMarketCap data. Meanwhile, meme-inspired dogecoin and shiba inu coin each jumped 7%, and binance coin rose more than 1%, the data showed.
The cryptocurrencies moved as investors awaited the debut of the first-ever bitcoin futures ETF. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, which will trade under the ticker "BITO," is set to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday.
The SEC didn't intervene on ProShares listing within the 75-day filing period that ends Monday, the company said. The fund will invest mainly in bitcoin futures contracts, not directly in bitcoin.
Bitcoin futures ETFs from Valkyrie, Invesco, and Van Eck may also be approved this month,CNBC said. Dozens of other companies are still awaiting approval for their funds too, Insider reported.
On Monday,Bitcoin continued to climbpast the $60,000 mark, trading at $62,087.80 at 10:33 a.m. in New York.
About a decade ago, alternatives to bitcoin emerged in the hopes of improving on the world's largest digital asset. Now, there are thousands of altcoins, and they'reeven more volatilethan their predecessor.
Though the crypto market was mixed ahead of the bitcoin futures ETF approval, digital assets have largely been rallying this year, thanks in part to retail-trader hype.
Ethereum, the world's second largest cryptocurrency, has rallied more than 400%, and Binance coin, the third largest by market value, has jumped more than 1,000%, CoinMarketCap data show.
Dogecoin and shiba inu have seen eye-watering gains themselves, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has stoked the enthusiasm around the meme coins.
Read the original article onBusiness Insider || The Week Ahead – Monetary Policy, Service Sector PMIs, and U.S Nonfarm Payrolls Key Drivers: On the Macro It’s a quieter but important week ahead on the economic calendar , with 44 stats in focus in the week ending 8 th October. In the week prior, 65 stats had also been in focus. For the Dollar: Factory orders and ISM Non-Manufacturing PMIs will be in focus early in the week. Expect the all-important Non-Manufacturing ISM PMI to be the key driver. On Wednesday, ADP nonfarm employment change figures will draw interest ahead of weekly jobless claims on Thursday. Nonfarm payrolls on Friday will be the key stats of the week, however. Another spike and the markets will consider it to be a green light for the FED to make its first move. In the week ending 1 st October, the Dollar Spot Index rose by 0.76% to 94.035. For the EUR : It’s a relatively busy week on the economic data front. Service sector PMIs for Italy and Spain and finalized PMIs for France, Germany and the Eurozone are due out on Tuesday. Barring marked revisions to prelim figures, expect the Eurozone’s services and composite to be key. Through the remainder of the week, the German economy will be in the spotlight. Factory orders, industrial production, and trade data are due out Wednesday through Friday. Retail sales figures for the Eurozone due out on Wednesday should have a muted impact on the majors, however. For the week, the EUR slid by 1.06% to $1.1596. For the Pound: It’s a relatively quiet week ahead on the economic calendar . Key stats include finalized September service sector PMI numbers due out on Tuesday. Labor productivity figures for Q2 are also due out but should have a muted impact on the Pound. The Pound ended the week down by 0.96% to $1.3546. For the Loonie: It’s a busier week ahead on the economic calendar . Trada data and Ivey PMI figures will be in focus on Tuesday and Thursday. Employment numbers due out on Friday will be the key stats of the week, however. On the oil front, expect updates from OPEC’s meeting in the early part of the week to also influence crude oil prices and the Loonie. Story continues The Loonie ended the week up 0.03% to C$1.2648 against the U.S Dollar. Out of Asia For the Aussie Dollar: It’s a relatively quiet week. Economic data is limited to trade data due out on Tuesday. The stats coincide with the RBA monetary policy decision, which will be the main event of the week, however. Away from the economic calendar, updates on government plans vis-à-vis lockdown measures will also be key. The Aussie Dollar ended the week down by 0.06% to $0.7258. For the Kiwi Dollar: It’s another quiet week ahead. Economic data is limited to business confidence figures due out on Tuesday. Following the RBNZ’s last minute decision to hold cash rates unchanged, however, Wednesday’s monetary policy decision will be key. With containment measures still in place and economic indicators reflecting the impact of lockdown measures, forward guidance will be key. The Kiwi Dollar ended the week down by 0.96% to $0.6948. For the Japanese Yen: Inflation figures are due out in the first half of the week along with finalized service sector PMI numbers. Expect any revision to prelim PMI numbers to have a greater impact. Late in the week, household spending will draw plenty of interest, however. The Japanese Yen fell by 0.29% to ¥111.05 against the U.S Dollar. Out of China It’s a particularly quiet week ahead on the economic calendar. Economic data is limited to Caixin Service PMI numbers. With little else for the markets to consider, expect the numbers to influence market risk sentiment. The Chinese Yuan ended the week up by 0.33% to CNY6.4448 against the U.S Dollar. Geo-Politics Nothing new to consider in the week ahead, with political wrangling on Capitol Hill grabbing the headlines for now. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Silver Price Prediction – Prices Rise as Yields Decline Crude Oil Price Forecast – Crude Oil Markets Retained Choppy Behavior Crude Oil Weekly Price Forecast – Crude Oil Markets Continue to March Higher Bitcoin Bulls Gear Up for Fourth Quarter Showdown The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers – October 3rd, 2021 Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Slide but Rise 9% for the Week || US Congressman stirs up debate over ‘gold standard’ crypto question: In the latest episode of members of Congress discussing cryptocurrency, US Representative Madison Cawthorne triggered an online debate with a query about cryptocurrency. Why do we not use cryptocurrency as the new gold standard? — Rep. Madison Cawthorn (@RepCawthorn) September 30, 2021 The North Carolina Republican fielded the question of why America does not use cryptocurrency as the new gold standard and almost immediately received the brunt of some disgruntled Twitter users. Can you tell us which class at Patrick Henry College you learned about the gold standard and your reasons for having it and replacing it? In particular, since we have not used the gold standard in 50 years, why do you bring it up? — Bret (@whyamidoingtwtr) September 30, 2021 The gold standard was abandoned by President Nixon in 1971. On Wednesday, Josh Mandel – one of the top republican candidates for the state of Ohio – said that America must “double down” on Bitcoin. Blake Masters, a fellow republican candidate in the state of Arizona, suggested adding Bitcoin to the strategic reserves of the country. It’s been a busy period for congress representatives on Twitter, with Rosie Rios getting dragged into debates this week for her alleged bias towards Ripple and saying crypto had found its value in speculation”. || Chinas Whack a Mole Approach to Regulation Unlikely to Stop Crypto Train: By Yasin Ebrahim Investing.com Bitcoin fell Friday as China vowed to crackdown on cryptocurrency once again, but Beijings whack-a-mole approach to crypto regulation is wearing thin and unlikely to severely dent broader demand just as Western adoption is on the up and up. BTC/USD fell 4% to 42,971, but recovered some losses after a dipping below $40,000. Chinas central bank deemed all digital currency activities illegal and vowed to crack down on the market. But that doesnt imply that there will be ban on holding positions in cryptocurrencies, Seamus Donoghue, VP of Strategic Alliances at METACO told Investing.com in an interview on Friday. While Chinas approach to cryptocurrency regulation can have a good deal of success, it's a little bit of a whack a mole, according to Donoghue. China's is going to be less relevant ... as the trend of Western adoption - given all the banks and other institutions building blockchain capabilities - is increasing dramatically and rapidly, Donoghue added, pointing to a similar change seen recently in the cryptocurrency mining. A potential exodus of crypto investors in China had sent shockwaves throughout the industry, as investors fretted about a potential hit to demand, but Beijings sway over cryptos markets in terms of adoption isnt as significant as it once was. Last year, China ranked fourth on our global adoption index while the U.S. ranked sixth. This year, the U.S. ranks eighth while China ranks 13, according to research published by Chainalysis. China has suggested a clamp down on illegal activity is at the heart of its decision to step up regulation on cryptos .But Beijings regulatory efforts on crypto could form part of a strategy to lessen the competition amid plans to launch its very own digital currency. China's has been trialing and is in the process of launching their own digital currency, Donoghue said. That could be one of the reasons for them to focus on minimizing the potential penetration of virtual currencies. Story continues It wouldnt be the first time that China has stepped up the regulatory heat on foreign tech - that threatens to gain a foothold in its markets - to buy time for the launch of its own rival domestic firms. Looking at Chinas historical reaction to overseas tech, they've banned Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), WhatsApp
all to launch their own their own domestic versions, Donoghue added. Now, they're banning crypto to launch their own domestic currency. Related Articles Chinas Whack a Mole Approach to Regulation Unlikely to Stop Crypto Train Huobi and OKEx's tokens the biggest losers in China's latest crackdown BUSD: A case study for stablecoin compliance and security || Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis September 6th, 2021: Ethereum Ethereum rose by 1.66% on Sunday. Reversing a 1.33% loss from Saturday, Ethereum ended the week up by 22.49% to $3,952.17. A mixed start to the day saw Ethereum fall to an early morning intraday low $3,835.70 before making a move. Steering clear of the first major support level at $3,825, Ethereum rallied to a late intraday high $3,982.64. Ethereum broke through the first major resistance level at $3,960 before easing back. At the time of writing, Ethereum was down by 0.29% to $3,940.60. A mixed start to the day saw Ethereum rise to an early morning high $3,964.21 before falling to a low $3,926.55. Ethereum left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. For the day ahead Ethereum would need to avoid the $3,924 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $4,011 into play. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break back through to $4,000 levels. Barring another extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely cap any upside. In the event of a broad-based crypto rally, Ethereum could test resistance at $4,150 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $4,070. A fall through the $3,924 pivot would bring the first major support level at $3,864 into play. Barring another extended sell-off, however, Ethereum should steer clear of sub-$3,800 levels. The second major support level sits at $3,777. Looking at the Technical Indicators First Major Support Level: $3,864 Pivot Level: $3,924 First Major Resistance Level: $4,011 23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $3,369 38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $2,740 62% FIB Retracement Level: $1,725 Litecoin Litecoin rallied by 9.49% on Sunday. Following a 0.55% decline on Saturday, Litecoin ended the week up by 33.14% to $232.30. A mixed start to the day saw Litecoin fall to an early morning intraday low $210.57 before making a move. Steering clear of the first major support level at $205, Litecoin rallied to a late intraday high $323.64. Story continues Litecoin broke through the first major resistance level at $222 and the second major resistance level at $232. More significantly, Litecoin also broke through the 38.2% FIB of $223 to end the day at $232 levels. At the time of writing, Litecoin was down by 1.49% to $228.84. A bearish start to the day saw Litecoin fall from an early morning high $232.41 to a low $227.04. Litecoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on For the day ahead Litecoin would need to avoid the $225 pivot and the 38.2% FIB of $223 to bring the first major resistance level at $240 into play. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Litecoin to break out from $235 levels. Barring an extended crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely cap any upside. In the event of another extended breakout, Litecoin could test the second major resistance level at $247. A fall through the $225 pivot and the 38.2% FIB of $223 would bring the first major support level at $218 into play. Barring another extended sell-off, however, Litecoin should steer clear of sub-$210 levels. The second major support level sits at $203. Looking at the Technical Indicators First Major Support Level: $218 Pivot Level: $225 First Major Resistance Level: $240 23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $178 38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $223 62% FIB Retracement Level: $296 Ripples XRP Ripples XRP rose by 4.11% on Sunday. Reversing a 2.65% decline from Saturday, Ripples XRP ended the week up by X% to $1.30683. Tracking the broader market, Ripples XRP fell to an early morning intraday low $1.23801 before making a move. Steering clear of the first major support level at $1.2306, Ripples XRP rallied to a late intraday high $1.31269 before easing back. Ripples XRP broke through the first major resistance level at $1.2895 to end the day at $1.30 levels. At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was up by 1.35% to $1.32441. A bullish start to the day saw Ripples XRP rally from an early morning low $1.31018 to a high $1.34039. Ripples XRP briefly broke through the first major resistance level at $1.3337 before easing back. For the day ahead Ripples XRP would need to avoid the $1.2858 pivot to bring first major resistance level at $1.3337 back into play. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ripples XRP to break back through to $1.33 levels. Barring an extended crypto rally, the morning high $1.34039 would likely cap any upside. In the event of another breakout, Ripples XRP could test resistance at $1.40 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $1.3605. A fall through the $1.2858 pivot would bring the first major support level at $1.2590 into play. Barring another extended sell-off, however, Ripples XRP should steer clear of the second major support level at $1.2112. Looking at the Technical Indicators First Major Support Level: $1.2590 Pivot Level: $1.2858 First Major resistance Level: $1.3337 23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.8533 38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $1.0659 62% FIB Retracement Level: $1.4096 Please let us know what you think in the comments below . Thanks, Bob This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: U.S Mortgage Rates Held Steady ahead of Nonfarm Payrolls Dogecoin Daily Tech Analysis September 6th, 2021 The Crypto Daily Movers and Shakers September 6th, 2021 Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripples XRP Daily Tech Analysis September 6th, 2021 The Crypto Daily Movers and Shakers September 4th, 2021 Bitcoin and Ethereum Weekly Technical Analysis September 6th, 2021 || Bitcoin Price Flash Crash on Binance.US Attributed to Trader Algorithm Bug: Bitcoin’s price briefly crashed 87% and then recovered within the span of a single minute early Thursday onBinance.US, in a fleeting but very real flash crash that the cryptocurrency exchange attributed to a “bug” in an institutional customer’s trading algorithm.
At 11:34 UTC (7:34 a.m. ET), the price fell from around $65,760 to as low as $8,200, then quickly bounced back up to almost exactly where it was before.
“One of our institutional traders indicated to us that they had a bug in their trading algorithm, which appears to have caused the sell-off that was reported this morning,” aBinance.USspokesperson told CoinDesk.
“We are continuing to look into the event but understand from the trader that they have now fixed their bug and that the issue appears to have been resolved,” the spokesperson said, declined to comment on further details about the crash.
On other cryptocurrency exchanges, bitcoin’s price dropped around the same time, but by nowhere near as much. On Bitstamp, for example, the price fell about 2.3% at 11:34 UTC but never got below $63,600.
Omkar Godbole contributed reporting. || Burger King’s Loyalty Program Lets You Trade Crowns for Crypto Thanks to Robinhood Partnership: If you’d like a little cryptocurrency with yourWhopper and fries, you’re in luck. Thanks to a new partnership between Burger King and Robinhood, members of the fast-food chain’s Royal Perks loyalty program can win Bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin when they spend $5 on the Burger King app or website.
See:Burger King Unveils New Reusable PackagingFind:Best Vegan Stocks: 9 Picks To Watch or Buy Now
The way the reward distribution system works, most customers will get Dogecoin as a reward. According to the Burger King website, the prize pool will include 2 million Doge, 200 Ether and 20 Bitcoin. That puts your odds at winning a Bitcoin at about one in 100,000, Fortune reported.
The promotion runs through Nov. 21, or until the crypto runs out. Users are limited to one prize per day but can win up to 21 throughout the promotion. Prizes must be claimed by Dec. 17.
You must be a member of the loyalty program to qualify for the crypto promotion. Loyalty members earn crowns for every dollar they spend while placing orders, and these crowns can be exchanged for more menu items or promotional prizes.
To claim a crypto prize, loyalty customers must first make a qualifying $5 purchase (pre-tax). After that, they will get an email that includes a link telling them how to claim their crypto. To claim it, they must either have a Robinhood account or create one.
“As a brand, we are always looking for ways to reward our most loyal guests with exclusive offers that are exciting, unique, and culturally relevant,” Burger King said in a statement. “Cryptocurrency has been a hot topic of conversation recently, but we know it can be difficult to understand. That’s why we wanted to bring crypto to our guests in a way that was accessible and digestible (literally and figuratively) — through our food.”
See:Beyond Meat Burger vs. Beyond Meat IPO: How Much Would You Have If You Put Your Dinner Money Into the IPO?Find:Amazing Perks These 10 Companies Offer Employees
Burger King is no newbie when it comes to cryptocurrency. Some of its restaurants in Germany and Venezuela have accepted crypto as payment, according to Gadget360, and the chain even launched its own crypto in Russia called “WhopperCoin.”
However, Burger King has not stated whether it will accept crypto as payment in the future.
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This article originally appeared onGOBankingRates.com:Burger King’s Loyalty Program Lets You Trade Crowns for Crypto Thanks to Robinhood Partnership || Meta universe + DeFi Project GIBXSWAP Unveils An Initial Liquidity Offering (ILO) Ahead On The 15th Of September: KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA / ACCESSWIRE / September 14, 2021 /An Initial Liquidity Offering (ILO) means to exchange for airdropped coins via lock-up. In this sense, ILO is a conditional airdrop approach, not a funding mechanism.
For projects and investors, GIBXSWAP ILO creates an AMM liquidity pool. It delivers low barriers, automation, fairness, and justice crowdfunding. For the project party, ILO eliminates burdensome issuance procedures and increases project liquidity.
Any decentralized initiative can instantly develop an ILO. The transaction pool formation from primary to secondary market crowdfunding is automated. The project party is flexible. The project's situation determines the ILO mode and lock-up period.
Users will be given the right to issue the ILO project if GIBXSWAP ILO shows adequate respect and fairness. Users with "X" will vote on whether the project is issued. The users will receive the same crowdfunding channels and liquidity pool LP tokens as the project. The co-construction of the liquidity pool maximizes fund use and benefits both the project party and the user. The AMM liquidity pool is instantly activated if the ILO project token is successfully created. In other words, LP can mine and pool fees. LP also cannot interfere with the fund pool's stability, and liquidity is appropriately used. It can directly trade to enhance prices, and it protects the rights of primary market crowd investors.
The "X" currency is the platform currency of GIBXSWAP. "X" has a total output of one billion pieces. In the initial allocation, 80 percent of the location mining is obtained through trade mining or yield, and the remaining 20 percent is obtained through the snack pool. Ecological construction accounts for 10%. The remaining 9% is for team research and development. ILO accounts for 1% of the total. Furthermore, the transaction fees collected are used to repurchase and burn platform tokens, assisting in realizing the closed-loop of autonomous driving for value acquisition.
CertiK is also professionally reviewing the "X" coin of GIBXSWAP at the same time. They also issued a comprehensive audit report. The review method is a thorough inspection that employs static analysis and manual review techniques.
The value of "X" is equal to the trading volume of the decentralized exchange GIBXSWAP DEX. As a result, the greater the volume of GIBXSWAP transactions, the greater the value of "X"! At the same time, token holders have the option to sell "X" at any time to protect the long-term interests of early participants and GUSDTTM holders.
The new currency X will be the GIBXSWAP platform's core token, and it will be used for voting, repurchase, fundraising, trading, and earning coins. The appearance of "X" is primarily due to a gradual increase in the original GUSDT TM market circulation. To achieve breakthrough growth, the market value urgently requires a larger carrier and new currency.
The maximum supply of "X" is one billion, and the block reward is 20 "X" per block. Professional organizations such as Ernst & Young and Deloitte audit the "X" open source code to ensure safety. Simultaneously, "X" will support the decentralized cross-chain transaction protocol of BSC, HECO, and ETH, employing "dual mining incentives through liquidity mining and transaction mining," allowing participants to maximize returns while seamlessly integrating with Binance and Huobi's massive global traffic and head resources.
The GIBXSWAP platform is straightforward to use. Users purchase GUSDTTM in CEX and DEX (pools have been established in many DEXs); then withdraw GUSDTTM and mainstream tokens (USDT, BTC, ETH, FIL, and so on) to the wallet and provide liquidity for GUSDTTM-USDT, GUSDTTM-BTC, and so on, in the GIBXSWAP DEX "funding pool" to obtain the corresponding LP. Furthermore, transaction mining allows you to trade specific currency pairs and mine "X" based on the proportion of transaction volume; on the Liquidity Mining page, you can stake specific LPs and single coins and mine "X" based on the ratio of locked positions.
Among the initial allocations, 80 percent are earmarked for mining, with 40 percent / 60 percent earmarked for transaction mining output and liquidity mining output, respectively. 10% is for ecological construction, and 9% is for collaborative research and development. ILO accounts for 1% of the total. Furthermore, the transaction fees collected are used to repurchase and burn platform tokens, assisting in realizing the closed-loop of autonomous driving for value acquisition.
The GIBXSWAP platform generates revenue from transaction fees of 0.3 percent of transaction volume; 0.3 percent of the transaction fee of 0.3 percent of transaction volume is used to feedback the "X" ecology, of which 0.1 percent is used to promote the development of ecological projects, 0.15 percent is used to reward mining Users, and 0.05 percent is used to repurchase and desist.
When a transaction occurs, the X token operating mechanism allows for a 0.3 percent transaction fee to be charged, with 0.15 percent of the handling fee distributed proportionally to all token holders. Holders of X's assets increase "automatically" with no upper limit.
The remainder of the transaction fee will be placed in the liquidity pool to provide currency liquidity. This means that token holders can sell their tokens at any time and exchange them for other currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDT. At the same time, the more transactions there are, the deeper the liquidity in the pool becomes, and the currency price rises steadily. Most importantly, X can Stake in the aggregate revenue pool in the future to obtain NFT and other passive income.
GIBXSWAP will launch using a multi-chain DEX model. Combining the advantages of low transaction fees of Huobi Ecological Chain HECO and Binance Smart Chain BSC with the prosperity of Ethereum's ecosystem supports the "dual mining mechanism" of liquid mining & transaction mining.
Staking pools, liquidity mining pools, DEXs, cross-chain asset bridges, and other ecosystem services. GIBXSWAP is devoted to establishing a new community-driven DEX and ecosystem. Combined with low slippage, fast speed, high security, and fair prices, it will swiftly become the industry blockchain leader.
Stick around for our upcoming events and receive a free GIBXSWAP E-Book; click on the link below and fill out the form:
https://devs.win/gibx/register/
For more information:
Name: GALAR PR LTDWebsite:https://galarpragency.weebly.comAddress: 05-09 Tower G, Arkadia Green Park Jl. TB Simatupang Kav. 88, Jakarta Selatan 12520.Email address:Jeffery@galaragency.com
SOURCE:GALAR PR LTD
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/663998/Meta-universe-DeFi-Project-GIBXSWAP-Unveils-An-Initial-Liquidity-Offering-ILO-Ahead-On-The-15th-Of-September
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 61125.68, 61527.48, 63326.99, 67566.83, 66971.83, 64995.23, 64949.96, 64155.94, 64469.53, 65466.84
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2022-07-11]
BTC Price: 19970.56, BTC RSI: 37.98
Gold Price: 1730.00, Gold RSI: 24.66
Oil Price: 104.09, Oil RSI: 43.64
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
City boss slams Hollywood stars for pushing crypto currencies: (REUTERS) A TOP City boss today criticised the celebrities that have been promoting crypto currencies to ordinary folk and admitted the lockdown inspired share trading boom is over. Andy Bell, founder and chief executive of leading investment platform AJ Bell , said Hollywood actors should not be giving investment advice. Gwyneth Paltrow , Resse Witherspoon and footballers John Terry and Paul Pogba have all lately been endorsing crypto investment. Matt Damon told viewers that fortune favours the brave in an ad for crypto.com . Analysis shows that those who followed the advice of the celebrities have lost half their money. The crypto market has soared in popularity with 2.3 million Britons taking punts. Lately, the coins have crashed with $200 billion wiped off their value in a single day last week. Bitcoin , the best known, has halved in six months. The celebrities have been pilloried for failing to say anything following the crash in the value of what they were promoting. Bell told the Standard: It is not helpful, you will never find me advocating crypto, it is fresh air and promises. People invested in good faith. They have lost their shirt, their trousers and their underpants. Calls for a regulatory crackdown are growing. AJ Bell today reported steady half year revenue of £75 million and a slight fall in profits to £26 million. The lockdown boom that saw hundreds of thousands spend WFH savings on shares has ended. Bell said: No one ever thought it would carry on indefinitely. We are seeing dealing activity align with pre-covid levels, dealing frequency has normalised. That also suggests the day-trading boom led by apps such as Robinhood may also have had its day. AJ Bell meanwhile saw customers numbers up 35,000 to 418,000, with most who join its platform there for the long-term. Recent stock market turmoil should not worry his customers, said Bell. Investing is a long-term business. Overtime things will come good. What is the alternative, sell and sit in cash? Sell and try to time the market? That is a fools game. Story continues AJ Bell is paying a dividend of 2.78p a share, worth £2.6 million to the CEO who is the biggest shareholder. Shares in AJ Bell are down 40% this year as the City bet that the retail investor boom would wane. They rose 6p to 261p, which leaves the business valued at more than £1 billion. Bell thinks the recent stock market correction might be helpful to those who think they can get rich quick. I hope it is a gentle reminder which doesnt frighten people off. They shouldnt run to the hills. It is a clear justification for having a diversified portfolio. A lot of people should be buying funds, perhaps tracker funds, rather than individual shares, he said. || Former SEC Lawyer Sees More Crypto Regulations After Celsius Network's Debacle: Don't miss CoinDesk's Consensus 2022 , the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12. Former Securities and Exchange senior counsel Howard Fischer said the move by several U.S. states to open an investigation into crypto lender Celsius Network's recent freeze on withdrawals will ultimately lead to further regulation and oversight at the federal level. “What you're going to see is what I like to consider a return to normalcy,” Fischer said on CoinDesk TV’s “All About Bitcoin” on June 16. “Institutions that deal in crypto are going to be regulated as if they were more standard financial institutions.” Fischer, a partner at the New York-based law firm Moses & Singer, said with the Celsius debacle, the SEC will be looking at market integrity, investor protection and transparency. Read more: Celsius Network Pauses AMAs, With Customers Left in the Dark Over Withdrawals He added that the problem at Celsius is “an issue that goes well beyond one company” as it points to the entire crypto industry, “especially to crypto lending.” Further regulations would require crypto platforms to report their assets and liabilities, and run and report their risk scenarios, Fischer said. “Basically, [they’ll] provide a level of disclosure not only to participants in markets, but to regulators that they haven’t been producing, and perhaps, are not expected to produce now,” he said. “Whether or not there are investors, shareholders or account holders who didn't fully understand what the risks were, what the potential liabilities were and what the potential loss scenarios could possibly be," he said. || Bitcoin Begins a New Week by Hitting Above $31K: Don't miss CoinDesk'sConsensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.
Cryptocurrency bulls were relieved Monday by a bounce in digital assets, especially as the sector failed to rally last week alongside publicly traded technology stocks.
Bitcoin (BTC) rose almost 7%, breaking the $31,000 mark driven by global investors as Asian and European equity markets climbed. American markets were closed for the Memorial Day holiday.
“Bitcoin broke above $30,000, but it needs to hold the $29,300 level on a retest to suggest continuation to the upside,” Marcus Sotiriou, analyst at digital asset broker GlobalBlock said in a note Monday. “Relief has been long overdue in the crypto market, as the U.S. stock market already rallied last week, after [Federal Reserve head] Jerome Powell’s speech that gave the market clarity on [the Fed's] plans to carry out a soft economic landing.”
Elsewhere in the latest crypto rally, ether (ETH) jumped just over 8% to about $1,940. Cardano'sADAwas a standout among Ethereum alternatives, surging about 14% to about 54 cents.
The rally in cryptocurrencies Monday comes on the back of a bump in Asian equities amid reports major Chinese cities have started to ease coronavirus restrictions after months of strict lockdowns. Traders laid bets that reopening the economy could spark an increase in consumer spending – which could increase company revenue in the coming weeks and could indicate a bottom for stocks in the region.
Read more:Bitcoin Shows Signs of Bottoming Out After 9 Weeks of Losses || Gores Guggenheim Stock Is an Electric Vehicle Play Worth Considering: A close up of a Polestar vehicle in front of a company sign. Source: Jeppe Gustafsson / Shutterstock.com Since 2020, many electric vehicle (EV) companies have gone public via the special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) route. An upcoming EV SPAC deal is the tie-up between Gores Guggenheim (NASDAQ: GGPI ) and EV company Polestar . Compared to other EV SPAC stocks, like Lucid Group (NASDAQ: LCID ), for example, excitement over GGPI stock has been relatively muted. Yet I wouldnt take this lack of high excitement to mean Polestar is some sort of also-ran contender. It may not be another Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA ) in the making, but in terms of moving out of the pre-revenue stage, it has made far more progress than Lucid. Already generating billions in revenue, it now has its sights set on the U.S. market. Success stateside could go a long way in growing its valuation. With this in mind, you may want to consider buying, ahead of the deal closing, set for next month. InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Ticker Company Current Price GGPI Gores Guggenheim $10.31 GGPI Stock at a Glance Debuting in May 2021, and announcing its selected merger partner in September 2021 , Gores Guggenheim didnt wait long to make a deal. It did, however, get into the game a bit late. It became an EV stock at the tail end of the 2020/2021 EV boom. As a result, unlike LCID stock, or even some other EV SPAC plays like Fisker (NYSE: FSR ), GGPI stock never made a true to the moon type move. After the announcement, it briefly spiked to over $16 per share. For the most part, though, it has traded sideways in the low-teens per share. Now, with the latest pullback in speculative growth stocks, Gores Guggenheim has moved even lower. It trades for just over its original $10 per share SPAC price. Yet despite its mixed performance so far, the stock could really take off in the years ahead. Why? Two reasons. The 7 Best Stocks to Buy for June 2022 First, based on its success so far, it appears to have a much stronger chance of living up to expectations. Second, based on its current price, investors can buy it at a favorable valuation. These two factors could enable shares to lift off in price if its scaling efforts succeed. Story continues High Payoff Potential If Polestar Delivers You can say Polestar is a newcomer, yet calling it an early stage company may be a misnomer. Already established in its home base of Europe, it generated an estimated $1.4 billion in sales last year. As InvestorPlaces Shrey Dua reported May 19, during the first quarter of 2022, it sold 13,600 vehicles, more than double the amount sold during the prior years quarter. Despite supply chain headwinds, it still expects to sell a total of 50,000 vehicles worldwide. Based on its strong growth to date, Polestar has a good chance of continuing to level up on this success. Through both the ramp up of its presence in the U.S. auto market, plus the rollout of new SUV and luxury sport models to accompany its current fleet (the luxury Polestar 1, and the mass affluent Polestar 2), the company intends to hit 290,000 annual vehicle sales and $17.6 billion in annual revenue by 2025. Best of all, you get this potential at a reasonable valuation, based on the current price of GGPI stock. Per the SPAC deal terms (2.125 billion shares outstanding post-merger), the company has an implied valuation of around $21.8 billion. The Verdict Earning a B rating in my Portfolio Grader , Gores Guggenheim offers high upside potential. If it can continue to meet/beat expectations, the company, which post-merger takes on the Polestar name, and the PSNY stock ticker, will likely be worth many times what it trades for today. Relative to other EV plays, the risk/return proposition is highly favorable. For some investors, this may make it worthy of a speculative position. Its unclear whether the stock pops or drops when it has its deSPACing (completes its SPAC merger). Many SPAC stocks surged post-merger during 2020 and 2021, but it has been less common in 2022 due to changing market conditions. Even so, as its best to approach it as a long-term position, if youre confident it will deliver, now may be the time to buy GGPI stock. On the date of publication, neither Louis Navellier nor the InvestorPlace Research Staff member primarily responsible for this article held (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. More From InvestorPlace Stock Prodigy Who Found NIO at $2
Says Buy THIS It doesnt matter if you have $500 in savings or $5 million. Do this now. Get in Now on Tiny $3 Forever Battery Stock Early Bitcoin Millionaire Reveals His Next Big Crypto Trade On Air The post Gores Guggenheim Stock Is an Electric Vehicle Play Worth Considering appeared first on InvestorPlace . || Daily Crypto Brew: Buoyant Global Equities, Buck Weakness Boosts Crypto Sentiment: Key Points The macro backdrop of stronger global equities and a weakening US dollar is boosting crypto sentiment on Friday. Bitcoin recovered $30,000 on Thursday and is now consolidating just above this key level. The events to note next week are Fed minutes, US Q1 GDP (2 nd estimate) and US Core PCE. State Of The Market Global macro risk appetite is on a better footing on Friday, with global equities rising across the board in wake of a surprise cut by China’s PBoC to one of its key lending rates. The bank cut its 5-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) to 4.45% from 4.6%, and move analysts said should support the country’s struggling property sector. Upside in global equity markets combined with a sharp, potentially positioning-related drop in the US dollar against most of its G10 peers on Thursday and continued subdued moves in US bond yields is helping to support cryptocurrency prices as the weekend approaches. Nasdaq 100 index futures were last trading with pre-market gains of around 1.5%. Crypto has developed a strong positive correlation to US equities (tech stocks in particular) in recent months. Meanwhile, the DXY fell back below the 103.00 level on Thursday, taking its losses since printed multi-decade highs above 105.00 last Friday to more than 2.0%. A weaker US dollar makes USD-denominated cryptocurrencies and other commodities cheaper for international buyers, thus boosting demand. Elsewhere, longer-term US yields are down on the week, with the 10-year last down about 6 bps in the mid-2.80s% area. Lower yields reduce the “opportunity cost” of holding non-yielding assets like crypto (or precious metals and other commodities). The total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies was last around $1.277 trillion according to TradingView, a bounce of around 6.0% from Thursday’s lows near $1.20 trillion. On the week, total crypto market cap is still down by about 4.3% or just under $60 billion, reflecting the fact that, on the week, US equities are also headed for losses. Story continues But crypto bulls will take heart from the fact that the recent $1.20 trillion to $1.35 trillion (ish) range established over the last eight days continues to be respected. But broader macro conditions look set to remain difficult next week. The release of the minutes of the Fed’s last policy meeting (where it hiked rates by 50 bps and signaled more 50 bps moves ahead) will be out on Wednesday ahead of the release of the second estimate of US GDP growth in Q1 on Thursday and then the release of US Core PCE inflation data on Friday (the Fed’s favored gauge of underlying inflation). This will keep focus on the themes bearish themes of central bank tightening amid scorching hot inflation, despite a slowing economy. Traders will recall the first estimate of US Q1 GDP growth showed a surprise contraction, hence why the second estimate will be closely scrutinized. If global equities can end this week on a strong footing and the moderation back from recent highs in the US dollar and US yields continue, total crypto market cap stands a good chance of recovering back into the $1.30s trillion area. Price Action Bitcoin is fairly stable in the $30,300 area on Friday, having bounced nearly 6.0% from Thursday’s lows in the mid-$28,000s. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap still trades about 3.0% lower on the week, however, though also trades nearly 20% above last week’s lows in the $25,000s. At current levels, bitcoin’s market cap is around $577 billion and its cryptocurrency market dominance is just above 45%, near its highest levels since last October. Analysts say that rising bitcoin market dominance is a sign of risk aversion in the crypto space, with investors allocating money out of riskier currencies/projects into the tried and tested bitcoin. Ethereum , meanwhile, was last trading about 1.3% higher near the $2,050 per token mark on Friday, taking its gains since Thursday’s lows around $1,900 to about 7.5%. That means ethereum’s market cap is back to close to $250 billion once again. In terms of notable ethereum news, one of the ethereum blockchain’s core developers on Thursday said that the merge to proof of stake (i.e. transitions to ethereum 2.0) could happen as early as August this year. Out of the top 20 non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies, the top performers over the past two days include Avalanche’s AVAX (up 14% from Thursday’s lows), Solana’s SOL (up 10% from Thursday’s lows) and Ripple’s XRP (also up around 10% from Thursday’s lows). Ripple on Friday announced a $100 million investment in climate-focused financial and carbon-reduction technology. DeFi Update The market cap of Decentralised Finance ( DeFi ) tokens remains broadly stable within recent $50-55 billion ranges, data on CoinGecko showed on Friday. Meanwhile, the trade value locked in DeFi smart contracts remains close to the $100 billion mark, around half of what it was at the start of April. The collapse of the Terra , which had become one of the leading DeFi ecosystems in the space, has delt a severe blow to confidence across DeFi markets. Popular DeFi app Stablegains is reportedly being sued by its investors after it allegedly lost $42 million by investing in Terra’s UST without their knowledge. Crypto Flows Exchange wallets saw an inflow of bitcoin worth $470.7 million on Thursday, according to data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode. Net flows between private and exchange wallets in ethereum, meanwhile, were near 0, whilst Tether’s stablecoin USDT continued to see flows into exchanges, this time of just above $200 million on Thursday. When private wallets are moving a cryptocurrency to exchanges, this is often a bearish signal as it suggests intent to sell. USDT currently has a market cap of about $74 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data, down around $9 billion in the last two weeks, amid fears that it could be the next major stablecoin to collapse. But according to the latest assurance report provided by accounting firm MHA Cayman, Tether’s USDT is fully backed. Nonetheless, many of the flows leaving USDT are going into Circle’s US dollar stablecoin USDC . According to CoinMarketCap, USDC now has a market cap of $52.78 billion, up from just under $48.50 billion just over two weeks ago. Where there have been concerns in the past about whether or not Tether’s USDT is fully backed, USDC has never faced such worries. Regulatory Landscape G7 finance ministers and central bankers on Thursday called for the swift and comprehensive regulation of cryptocurrencies in wake of last week’s collapse of Terra’s UST stablecoin, according to a draft communique. “In light of the recent turmoil in the crypto-asset market, the G7 urges the FSB (Financial Stability Board)…to advance the swift development and implementation of consistent and comprehensive regulation,” the draft document read. US President Joe Biden’s pick for the role of Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve Michael Barr on Thursday called for US lawmakers to regulate stablecoins amid rising risks to financial stability. In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Barr said that crypto poses “potential for upside in terms of economic benefit”, but also “significant risks”. Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke was critical of bitcoin in a recent interview on CNBC. He highlighted the risk that bitcoin might be subject to a lot more regulation in the future, and lambasted the cryptocurrency for its volatility, which makes it difficult to use as a medium of exchange. In that regard, Bernanke said he thinks bitcoin is unlikely to replace fiat currencies as a form of money, though he did add that “it will be around as long as people are believers and they want to speculate in it”. Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) announced on Friday that it had put on pause its plans to offer cryptocurrency services to clients, with the bank citing uncertainty regarding market conditions and uncertainty regarding regulation. The bank’s CEO Matt Comyn said plans to offer crypto-related services would be picked back up at a later date. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: China pledges to give virus-hit companies easier access to capital markets Mexican inflation seen slowing in first half of May- Reuters Poll Silver Weekly Price Forecast – Silver Markets Find Resistance Silver Price Forecast – Silver Markets Pull Back From the Crucial $22 Level Gold Price Forecast – Gold Gives Up Some Momentum Gold Weekly Price Forecast – Gold Markets Trying to Find a Floor || Bitcoin and ETH Price Prediction: Strengthening Bearish Case, Why SOL Might Dive: • Bitcoin is showing signs of more downsides below $20,000.
• Ether (ETH) could dive further below the $1,100 support.
• SOL is testing a major bullish trend line on the daily chart.
Recently,bitcoinprice attempted a fresh move above the $21,250 resistance zone. However, the bulls failed to gain strength and there was a bearish reaction below $21,000.
The price declined below the $20,550 support and the 21 simple moving average (H1). It even spiked below the $20,000 level and is currently consolidating losses. On the downside, there is a crucial support near $19,850.
A clear move below the $19,850 zone could spark a major decline in the coming sessions. On the upside, bitcoin is now facing resistance near the $20,550 level and a bearish trend line.
ETHalso followed a similar pattern after it failed to clear the $1,250 resistance zone. There was a fresh decline below the $1,200 level and the 21 simple moving average (H1).
There was a move below the $1,155 support level. Ether spiked below $1,100 and is currently stuck in range. On the upside, there is a hurdle forming near $1,125 and a bearish trend line on the hourly chart.
If there is no recovery above $1,125, the price could accelerate lower below the $1,100 level. The next major support sits near the $1,020 level.
SOLformed a base near the $25 zone and started a recovery wave. There was a slow increase above the $28 and $30 resistance levels.
The price even moved above $35 and the 21-day simple moving average. The bulls pushed the price towards the 50% Fib retracement level of the downward move from the $59 swing high to $25 swing low, where the bears emerged.
Recently, there was a bearish reaction towards the $35 level and the 21-day simple moving average. SOL price is now trading near a key bullish trend line with support near $34.50 on the daily chart.
A downside break below the trend line support could spark a drop towards the $25 level. Conversely, the price might recover and rise towards the $45 level.
Cardano (ADA)settled below the $0.50 level. The price is showing bearish signs and might continue to move down towards the $0.45 support.
Binance Coin (BNB)is down 5% and trading below the $220 and $225 levels. The next major support is near the $210 level.
Polkadot (DOT)is moving lower towards the $7.00 support. A downside break and close below $7.00 could set the pace for a move towards $6.62.
A few trending coins areLEO,ZRX, andSNX. Out of these, ZRX is gaining pace above the $0.35 resistance zone.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis – Struggling to Find Direction into Close || Shiba Inu's SHIB Jumps Amid Speculative Frenzy, BONE Proposal: Don't miss CoinDesk'sConsensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.
Shiba Inu’s native SHIB token rose by nearly half its value in the past week as crypto market investors showed irrational exuberance amid a brief relief rally among majors.
SHIB rose to the $0.000011 mark on Wednesday morning from the $0.0000074 level last weekend, posting a maximum gain of nearly 48% for investors, as per CoinGecko data. A large part of the jump came Tuesday amid a relief rally in bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies.
The tokens fell to the $0.0000094 level at the time of writing as traders took profits amid a slowdown among majors.
Price charts suggest support at $0.0000082 and resistance at $0.000011 in case of a further bounce. However, SHIB is down 89% from its lifetime high, which was reached in October last year. The token had a market capitalization of over $5.5 billion at press time.
Analysts said speculative frenzy drove SHIB prices instead of it being a strong, fundamental-driven move.
“Recency bias suggests to investors that a bottom has been formed with Bitcoin and Ethereum this past weekend and that the market may be poised for a short-term recovery,” Edson Ayllon, product manager at dHEDGE, told CoinDesk in a Telegram message. “This kind of sentiment brings back confidence in speculators, which, because of the absence of utility, SHIB attracts speculation,” Ayllon added.
Kate Kurbanova, the co-founder of risk management platform Apostro, seconded the sentiment. “The reasons for Shiba Inu’s latest growth are somewhat hard to explain and come with no observable link,” she said.
“While retail investors might have been accumulating the token on optimism that Musk’s erratic tweet in the not-too-distant future will stir the growth of the digital asset, thus translating to gains in the long run,” Kurbanova stated.
Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk is an infamous dogecoin (DOGE) proponent and reiterated his liking for the meme coin earlier this week. “I keep supporting [d]ogecoin,” he said,as reported, adding the was continuing to buy the token.
Some of this week’s gains on SHIB came as developers behind the prominentmeme coinecosystemreleased a proposal last Sundaythat suggested changes to how ecosystem token BONE was used on the ShibaSwap platform.
BONE, a governance token and the main token emitted as yield rewards, would be used as fees to perform an action on the upcoming Shibarium protocol, a layer 2 protocol atop Shiba Inu that would support native app deployment and development.
Meanwhile, Ripple founder Brad Garlinghouse put the speculative nature of meme coins like DOGE and SHIB in focus during an appearance at the Point Zero Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday.
"I have publicly said I think the vast majority of tokens will go away over a period of time because I can't figure out the utility," Garlinghouse said. "There's some that were created a little bit as a circus rhetorical sarcastic. Dogecoin is a clear example of it was never designed with utility. The founders have left the project. It moves based on the tweets of Elon Musk."
"This is purely speculative. I don't think that's healthy for the crypto market," Garlinghouse added. || MicroStrategy scotches 'margin call' fears, says can withstand volatility: By Tom Westbrook (Reuters) -U.S. software developer MicroStrategy Inc said it has not received a margin call against a bitcoin-backed loan and can withstand further volatility, soothing market jitters after the token's slide raised fears of asset liquidation. MicroStrategy, an aggressive investor in the highly volatile cryptocurrency bitcoin, borrowed $205 million from crypto bank Silvergate Capital Corp in March, with the three-year loan mostly secured against some 19,466 bitcoins. Should the price of bitcoins drop below about $21,000, that would trigger a "margin call" or demand for extra capital, MicroStrategy President Phong Le said in a webcast in May. Bitcoin fell below that level to $20,816.36 on Tuesday before steadying near $22,000. The company said via email that it had not received a margin call. Silvergate declined to comment. MicroStrategy shares rose 6% and Silvergate gained 3% in U.S. trade on Tuesday, following heavy selling on Monday. Typically a margin call would be met by providing more capital or liquidating the loan's collateral. "We can always contribute additional bitcoins to maintain the required loan-to-value ratio," MicroStrategy said in a statement emailed late on Tuesday in the United States. "Even at current prices, we continue to maintain more than sufficient additional unpledged bitcoins to meet our requirements under the loan agreement." MicroStrategy had also "anticipated volatility and structured its balance sheet so that it could continue to #HODL through adversity," Chief Executive Officer Michael Saylor said in a tweet https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1536695409648836609 on Tuesday, using a deliberate garble of the word "hold" that is a popular mantra among crypto enthusiasts. The comments provided little relief for cryptocurrency markets roiled by the prospect of rising U.S. interest rates making risky assets less attractive, but analysts downplayed worries the price moves could trigger liquidation. "We see no circumstance in which MicroStrategy is going to need to sell any of its bitcoin holdings," said Mark Palmer, head of digital asset research at BTIG. (Reporting by Tom Westbrook in Singapore and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Christopher Cushing) || Travel to Thailand Gets Easier With Scrapping of Entry Pass: (Bloomberg) -- Thailand will end a mandatory pre-travel registration for foreigners and extend the service hours of bars and pubs, as the tourism-reliant nation woos global visitors to fuel its economic recovery. Most Read from Bloomberg Putin Gets Unexpected Pushback From Ally Over War in Ukraine Bitcoin, Ether Bounce Off Lows After Record-Breaking Rout Sergey Brin Seeks Divorce, Joining Gates and Bezos in Split Builders Are Slashing Prices to Sell Homes in Fast-Cooling US Markets Gas Rationing Is Getting Closer for Europe The countrys main Covid-19 task force approved the proposal to scrap the so-called Thailand Pass requirement for overseas tourists, Tourism Minister Phiphat Ratchakitprakarn told reporters Friday. It also backed the easing of outdoor mask mandate from next month because of the decline in virus cases, he said. Its a key step to unlock restrictions for major restoration of our tourism, Phiphat said. The government expects about 1.5 million international tourists a month for the remainder of this year, up from the previous target of 1 million, he said. Foreign nationals are currently required to upload details of vaccinations and proof of medical insurance covering at least $10,000 before departure to secure the Thailand Pass for their flight boarding and entry. Thai travel and leisure industry players have been calling for cancellation of the registration program, saying it deterred prospective holidaymakers. Its a much-needed good news for Thai tourism, which has been on life-support for so long, said Wuthichai Luangamornlert, the managing director of Siam Park City Co., operator of an amusement park in Bangkok. Still, the tourism recovery may take much longer with the absence of visitors from China and Russia, two of Thailands main tourist sources. An index of tourism and leisure companies jumped as much as 2.2% before trimming gains to 0.4% as of 3:24 p.m. in Bangkok. Royal Orchid Hotel Pcl and Asia Hotel Pcl jumped as much as 18% each. Story continues Before the pandemic, the overall tourism-related sector accounted for about a fifth of Thailands economy and jobs, with nearly 40 million overseas visitors in 2019, according to the central bank. The government will also allow bars, pubs and karaoke clubs to extend their service hours beyond the current midnight-closure mandate, with maximum service times dependent on rules in various municipalities, according to Phiphat. The government will classified all 77 provinces as low risk for Covid-19 outbreaks, or so-called green zones, allowing local authorities to relax some business and travel restrictions. The Health Ministry also downgraded the Covid-19 alert level a notch to 2 to reflect a decline in cluster infections, it said in a statement. The easing of measures come as local Covid cases have dropped to about 2,000 a day from almost 30,000 in early April. Although the mask requirement for outdoor areas will be lifted as of July, they are still recommended when other people are around or in crowded places such as markets, sport arena and concerts, Phipat said. (Adds comment from tourism executive in fifth paragraph, shares in sixth.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek Ethereum Mining Is Going Away, and Miners Are Not Happy Hell Is a Cruise Ship at the Beginning of the Pandemic Sheryl Sandbergs Wedding Expenses Are the Least of Facebooks Sheryl Sandberg Problems The Last Bear Market Was Short-Lived. This One Feels Different Adults Who Love Toys? The Toy Industry Loves Them, Too ©2022 Bloomberg L.P. || First Mover Asia: Bitcoin as Digital Gold and Inflation Hedge. Really? BTC Is Under Water, While the Metal You Can Hold Is Breathing Air; Cryptos Rebound Sunday: Don't miss CoinDesk's Consensus 2022 , the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12. Good morning. Here’s what’s happening: Prices: Bitcoin Reclaims $20,000; other cryptos rally. Insights: Old-fashioned gold is outperforming its digital version. Catch the latest episodes of CoinDesk TV for insightful interviews with crypto industry leaders and analysis. And sign up for First Mover , our daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Prices Bitcoin ( BTC ): $20,510 +8% Ether ( ETH ): $1,125 +13.2% Biggest Gainers Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Dogecoin DOGE +12.3% Currency Ethereum ETH +12.2% Smart Contract Platform Cosmos ATOM +10.1% Smart Contract Platform Biggest Losers Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector USD Coin USDC 0.0% Currency Tether USDT 0.0% Currency Markets S&P 500: 3,674 +0.2% DJIA: 29,888 -0.1% Nasdaq: 10,798 +1.4% Gold: $1,840 -0.5% Bitcoin Reclaims $20K; Other Cryptos Rebound A Sunday rally sent bitcoin back above the $20,000 threshold it has occupied for much of the past month, but analysts remained unconvinced that the surge will have staying power. Bitcoin was recently trading at about $20,500, up more than 8% over the previous 24 hours. At one point the previous day, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization had fallen below $17,800, its lowest level since mid-December 2017 when Bitcoin was near the peak of a bull run. That dip also fell below the high of that up cycle, disproving a theory that bitcoin would not breach a previous cycle's high watermark. Ether, the second-largest crypto by market cap, followed a similar price pattern, tumbling to an almost five-year low below $1,000 before rising late in the weekend. It was recently changing hands at about $1,120, up more than 13% from the previous day. Other major altcoins were well into the green with LTC and AXS up more than 17% at one point. "We had marked $19K-$20K and $16K-$17K as areas of interest, and bitcoin bounced from the latter," Joe DiPasquale, CEO of crypto fund manager BitBull, wrote to CoinDesk. "However, unless it successfully maintains $20K with high volumes and bidding, we would not expect the rally to continue." Story continues The tech-heavy Nasdaq closed an otherwise dreadful week for stocks with a modest 1.4% gain on Friday, while the S&P 500 ticked up a fraction of a percentage point. The S&P, which includes a sizable tech component, tumbled 5.8% for the week and entered bear market territory, meaning that it is down at least 20% from its previous high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell slightly. Investors remain anxious about high inflation, which reached a 40-year high for May, continued economic fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the increasing likelihood of a global recession. Last Wednesday, the U.S. central bank boosted interest rates by the highest increment in more than a quarter-century – three-quarters of a percentage point – its latest step to stem rising prices. Other central banks have also recently raised rates amid ongoing increases in energy prices. Meanwhile, crypto markets have also had to digest a series of debacles stretching to early May when the terraUSD stablecoin (UST) collapsed . Last week, cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius announced it was halting withdrawals and crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital is facing possible insolvency after incurring at least $400 million in liquidations, according to a report. Coinbase (COIN) and a number of other major digital asset exchanges have also announced steep job cuts. The Fear & Greed Index has been lingering in extreme fear territory for weeks and is now at 6, near its all-time low on a scale of zero to 100. BitBull's DiPasquale expects volatility in crypto pricing the next few days because of options expiries but he added that "the macro trend is likely to remain bearish until we see the Federal Reserve changing or at least relaxing its stance in July's FOMC meeting." Insights Analogue Gold Beats Its Digital Version Bitcoin is called the ultimate store of value by its fans; a digital version of gold that maintains all the best characteristics of it as an inflation hedge while being more efficient and liquid thanks to blockchain technology, which the bitcoin protocol pioneered. But as crypto faces a harsh winter, perhaps one of the worst on record with major crypto institutions on the verge of failure , faith in this paradigm is being tested. Indeed, when compared to gold, bitcoin is down more than 55% year to date. Gold, in contrast, is up 2.45%. (TradingView) And as bitcoin and ether ended the week in Asia attempting a break below $20,000 and $1,000, respectively, data shows the worst might be yet to come. On-chain data, spotted by CryptoQuant , shows lots of bitcoin is on the move. CryptoQuant’s Ki Young Ju believes it's either crypto hedge funds that are filling up collaterals for long positions or market makers filling up liquidity to execute sell orders for their clients. “For what it's worth, they're bearish in the short term either way,” he tweeted. Keep in mind that just over a week ago, bitcoin was at $30,000. Important events U.S. Juneteenth holiday The 4th annual NFT Industry Event ( NFT.NYC ) 9:30 a.m. HKT/SGT(1:30 a.m. UTC): People's Bank of China interest rate decision CoinDesk TV In case you missed it, here is the most recent episode of The Hash on CoinDesk TV : Tron’s TRX Jumps as DAO Deploys $220M for Token Purchase, Investors Pull Out $1.6B From Tether’s Stablecoin "The Hash" hosts discussed Tether's new wave of redemptions as fear of market contagion spread, Tron DAO deploying $220 million for token purchases and more. Headlines Luna Only Makes Bermuda Love Stablecoins More: Digital assets are the future, Bermuda Premier David Burt said during the Consensus 2022 conference. He’s not worried about his country being shut out by jurisdictions like the European Union. Terraform Labs, Founder, VC Firms Sued on Claims That Investors Were Misled: The plaintiff alleges the so-called "Terra Tokens" resembled securities, regardless of investor perception. Bitcoin Plunges Below $20K for First Time Since December 2020; Ether Drops Below $1K: The continuing plunge in traditional financial markets and panic about crypto lending platforms sent bitcoin into the teens for the first time in more than 18 months. Longer reads Hard Times in Crypto Lead to Price and Macro Risk: Just the first in a series of risks we’re thinking about during these crypto down days. Today's crypto explainer: How to Buy Ether Other voices: Crypto billionaire says Fed is driving current downturn Said and heard "Now, with the failings of two key systemically risky enterprises – Celsius and the Terra Luna project – roiling the crypto markets, it’s my hope that people in this industry can finally appreciate the value of asking questions and finding failings. Kicking the tires on projects and holding people accountable for flaws within them is how the industry will improve and grow." ( CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey ) ... "Despite our efforts, we've been unable to get the whale to reduce their risk, or even get in contact with them. With the way things are trending with the whale's unresponsiveness, it's clear action must be taken to mitigate risk." ( Solana DeFi platform in a blog post ) UPDATE (June 19, 2022, 0:35 UTC): Adds information on Fear & Greed Index.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 19323.91, 20212.07, 20569.92, 20836.33, 21190.32, 20779.34, 22485.69, 23389.43, 23231.73, 23164.63
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2021-04-29]
BTC Price: 53555.11, BTC RSI: 44.57
Gold Price: 1768.10, Gold RSI: 53.37
Oil Price: 65.01, Oil RSI: 62.36
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
PayPal to Buy Crypto Custody Firm Curv: Sources: PayPal is said to be in the process of buying Curv, a technology firm that powers the secure storage of cryptocurrency, according to three sources familiar with the situation.
Israeli news outletCalcalistreported Tuesday that Curv was being sold for between $200 million and $300 million, without naming the buyer.
“PayPal is buying Curv for $500 million,” a source from within the digital asset custody space told CoinDesk on Monday. “From where I’m hearing it, I’m pretty sure it’s true.”
Related:BC Group, VSAL Join Forces to Serve Institutional Bitcoin Market in Asia
Several people in the cryptocurrency space have said PayPal, which made an entrance there last year, turned its attention to Curv after talks to buy crypto custody and trading firm BitGo fell through last year. PayPal offered $750 million in cash for BitGo, two sources familiar with the deal told CoinDesk.
PayPal did not return requests for comment by press time. Curv declined to comment.
“PayPal has made some great acquisitions in the past such as Vemno, and now they want to own something in crypto,” one of the sources told CoinDesk.
Curv has raised over $30 million to date, includinga $23 million funding roundin July.
Related:Gensler Straddles Innovation and Enforcement in Senate Hearing
PayPal partnered with New York-regulated Paxos to offer direct purchases of cryptocurrency for its millions of U.S. users. The payments giant saidlast monthit would be bringing the crypto service to the U.K. soon.
• PayPal to Buy Crypto Custody Firm Curv: Sources
• PayPal to Buy Crypto Custody Firm Curv: Sources || Here's Why Investors Should Retain MGIC Investment (MTG) Stock: MGIC Investment CorporationMTG has been gaining momentum on the back of higher average insurance in force and average investment portfolio balance as well as solid capital position.The stock has seen its estimates for 2022 move up 0.6% in the past 30 days, reflecting analyst optimism.Backed by rise in net premium yield, higher premium rates on insurance in force (IIF), increase in profit commission, higher average insurance in force and a jump in accelerated premiums from single premium policy cancellations, the insurer’s premium income is likely to grow. The company expects new insurance written, the primary driver of IIF, of 2021 to be robust and of high credit quality.Considering higher average investment portfolio balance, investment income is expected to improve amid the current low interest rate environment. The metric witnessed a five-year CAGR (2015-2020) of 8.3%.At present, the strong housing market contributes to high levels of new insurance writings and the level of delinquencies. The insurer remains focused on providing critical support to the current housing market, especially low and moderate-income and first-time homebuyers.The multi-line insurer boasts a solid balance sheet with cash and investments of $847 million and has low debt-to-capital ratio. Its debt to capital of 20.9% is better than the industry average of 28.7%. Its next debt maturity is $242 million, due in 2023. Riding on lower level of losses and taxes paid and higher net premium written, it continues to generate solid operating cash flows.Furthermore, its times interest earned, a measure to identify the company ability to service debt, is 10.4 compared with the industry’s average of 3.4, implying that its earnings are sufficient to cover interest obligations.Declining loss and claims also boost MGIC Investment’s balance sheet. The company expects claim payments to remain modest for several quarters due to the effects of both the moratoriums and the forbearance plans that are in place.At present, it has $291 million remaining in share repurchase authorization. However, due to the global pandemic, it had temporarily suspended stock repurchase, but may resume it in the future.Moreover, return on equity (ROE), reflecting the company’s efficient utilization of its shareholders’ funds to generate earnings, has been increasing over the past several years. Its trailing 12 months ROE of 10.2% is higher than the industry average of 7.5%.Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) mortgage insurer have gained 95.1% in the past year compared with the industry’s rise of 101.9%.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2021 and 2022 earnings per share is pegged at $1.61 and $1.75, indicating year-over-year increase of 21.9% and 8.7%, respectively.
Some better-ranked players in the multi-line insurance industry areOld Republic International CorporationORI,James River Group Holdings Ltd.JRVR andSelectQuote, Inc.SLQT. While Old Republic International sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), James River Group and SelectQuote carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can seethe complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.Old Republic International delivered a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 65.77%, on average.James River Group surpassed estimates in three of the last four quarters (while missing in one), with the average being 11.63%.SelectQuote surpassed estimates in three of the last four quarters (while missing in one), with the average being 121.53%.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency has sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the “Internet of Money” and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree we’re still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities.Zacks’ has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly.See 3 crypto-related stocks now >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportMGIC Investment Corporation (MTG) : Free Stock Analysis ReportOld Republic International Corporation (ORI) : Free Stock Analysis ReportJames River Group Holdings, Ltd. (JRVR) : Free Stock Analysis ReportSelectQuote, Inc. (SLQT) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research || 3iQ Receives Receipt for 3iQ Ether ETF Preliminary Prospectus: Not for distribution to U.S. newswire services or for dissemination in the United States . This announcement and the information contained herein is restricted and is not for release, publication or distribution, in whole or in part, directly or indirectly in, or into or from the United States or any other jurisdiction in which the same would be unlawful. Further, this announcement is for information purposes only and shall not constitute an offer to sell or issue or the solicitation to buy, subscribe for or otherwise acquire any securities of 3iQ Ether ETF in any jurisdiction in which any such offer or solicitation would be unlawful. TORONTO, March 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 3iQ Corp. (3iQ) is pleased to announce that it has filed and obtained a receipt for a preliminary prospectus for the 3iQ Ether ETF (the Fund) with the securities regulatory authorities in each of the provinces and territories of Canada (except for Québec). Ethereum is a network of decentralized financial applications (DeFi) transforming the financial world as we know it today. With the success of our Ether closed end fund, it is a natural progression for us to file for a physical Ether ETF to enhance our product suite in the growing digital asset space. Fred Pye, Chairman and CEO of 3iQ. The Funds investment objectives are to provide holders of units of the Fund with: (a) exposure to the digital currency Ether (ETH) and the daily price movements of the U.S. dollar price of ETH, and (b) the opportunity for long-term capital appreciation. 3iQ will act as the investment manager and portfolio manager of the Fund. Ether is the native digital asset to the Ethereum blockchain, a decentralized platform for money and new kinds of financial applications. The concept of Ethereum was developed in Canada in 2013 and subsequently launched by a group of technologists from all over the world. With a market capitalization of over $175 billion as of March 1, 2021, Ether is the second largest digital asset behind bitcoin. Story continues About 3iQ Corp. Founded in 2012, 3iQ is Canadas largest digital asset investment fund manager with more than C$1.85 billion in assets under management. 3iQ was the first Canadian investment fund manager to offer a public listed bitcoin investment fund, The Bitcoin Fund priced in Canadian dollars (TSX: QBTC ) and US dollars (TSX:QBTC.U). In December of 2020, we launched The Ether Fund, priced in Canadian dollars (TSX:QETH.UN) and US dollars (TSX:QETH.U). As a digital asset manager, 3iQ has the technical knowledge and operational expertise to handle complex assets like bitcoin and ETH. 3iQ offers investors convenient and familiar investment products to gain exposure to leading digital assets such as bitcoin and Ether. For more information about 3iQ, The Bitcoin Fund, The Ether Fund, the 3iQ Bitcoin ETF or the 3iQ Ether ETF, visit www.3iQ.ca or follow us on Twitter @3iQ_corp. Contact Information Fred Pye Chairman and CEO E: fred.pye@3iQ.ca P: +1 (416) 639-2130 A preliminary prospectus relating to the Fund has been with the securities commissions or similar authorities in all of the provinces and territories of Canada (except for Quebec) . The preliminary prospectus is subject to completion or amendment. Copies of the preliminary prospectus may be obtained from 3iQ Corp. or at www.sedar.com . There will not be any sale or any acceptance of an offer to buy the units of the Fund until a receipt for the final prospectus of the Fund has been issued by the relevant securities commissions or similar authorities. You will usually pay brokerage fees to your dealer if you purchase or sell units of the Fund on a stock exchange or other alternative Canadian trading system (an exchange). If the units of the Fund are purchased or sold on an exchange, investors may pay more than the current net asset value when buying units of the Fund and may receive less than the current net asset value when selling them. There are ongoing fees and expenses associated with owning units of an investment fund. An investment fund must prepare disclosure documents that contain key information about the fund. You can find more detailed information about the Fund in its public filings available at www.sedar.com . Investment funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. IMPORTANT NOTICES THIS ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN, IS RESTRICTED AND IS NOT FOR PUBLICATION, RELEASE OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO OR FROM THE UNITED STATES OR ANY JURISDICTION IN WHICH THE SAME WOULD BE UNLAWFUL. This announcement should not be distributed, forwarded, transmitted or otherwise disseminated in or into the United States. This announcement does not constitute an offer to sell or issue or the solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe for securities in the United States or any other jurisdiction. The Funds securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act), or under the applicable securities laws of any state or other jurisdiction of the United States, and may not be offered, sold, resold, transferred or delivered, directly or indirectly within, into or in the United States, absent registration or an applicable exemption from, or except in a transaction not subject to, the registration requirements of the Securities Act and in compliance with the securities laws of any relevant state or other jurisdiction of the United States. Neither this announcement, nor the fact that it has been disseminated, shall form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any future information that we distribute. || US STOCKS-Banks lead Wall Street lower on hedge fund default concerns: (For a Reuters live blog on U.S., UK and European stock markets, click LIVE/ or type LIVE/ in a news window.) * Boeing rises on Southwest order for 737 MAX jets * Archegos-linked stocks extend losses from last week * Financials weigh on S&P 500, Dow * Indexes down: Dow 0.24%, S&P 0.45%, Nasdaq 0.93% (Adds comment, details; updates prices) By Devik Jain and Medha Singh March 29 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes fell on Monday after a surge in the previous session, as global banks said they faced potential losses of billion of dollars from a hedge fund's default on margin calls. Nomura and Credit Suisse warned of significant hit after the U.S. hedge fund, named by sources as Archegos Capital, defaulted, hitting shares in some big media and Chinese technology companies. Shares in Morgan Stanley fell about 4% after the Financial Times reported it had also sold billions of shares, while the banks index shed about 3%. The news has raised concerns about whether the full extent of Archegos' apparent wipeout has been realized or whether there was more selling to come from other lenders. Nomura still has positions to unwind, Bloomberg reported, citing a Japan government official. Discovery Inc, ViacomCBS, U.S.-listed shares of Baidu and VIPShop, all linked to Archegos, dropped between 2% and 9%. Theses stocks lost between 30% and 50% of their value last week. Wall Street's fear gauge rose 2.57 points to 21.50 points. "It's a black eye for the financial industry because it suggests that there still may not be a full handle on risk control when it comes to leveraged trading," said Rick Meckler, a partner at Cherry Lane Investments in New Vernon, New Jersey. "This seems like a pretty specific case. It could lead to increased regulation ... but the impact on broader markets is going to be small." The Dow and the S&P 500 hit record closing highs on Friday on optimism about speedy vaccinations and record stimulus, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is still 7.1% from its February all-time closing high. Story continues Financials, energy and technology fell the most among S&P sectors. Utilities, the best performing sector this month, firmed 1%. "It's true that the market in the short-term may be slightly overbought. We are probably starting to get used to the good news (but) the trend is clearly positive," said Marco Pirondini, U.S. head of equities at Amundi Pioneer in Boston. The Nasdaq is set to post its first monthly decline in five while the S&P 500 and Dow are headed for their second consecutive monthly gains. At 10:04 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.24%, at 32,992.56, the S&P 500 was down 0.45%, at 3,956.57, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 0.93%, at 13,016.32. Planemaker Boeing Co rose 2.2% after reaching a deal with U.S. budget carrier Southwest Airlines Co for a variant of the 737 MAX aircraft. Southwest's shares gained 0.5%. Bitcoin prices added 3.8% after Visa Inc said it would allow the use of the cryptocurrency USD Coin to settle transactions on its payment network. Declining issues outnumbered advancers 2.6-to-1 on the NYSE and 3.5-to-1 on the Nasdaq. The S&P index recorded 62 new 52-week highs and no new low, while the Nasdaq recorded 96 new highs and 56 new lows. (Reporting by Devik Jain and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Maju Samuel) || Bitcoin Mining Adds to Existing Shortage in Semiconductor Market, Chip Prices Surge: Bitcoin is now a trillion-dollar market thanks to an impressive rally that propelled the oldest cryptocurrency to a fresh all-time high at over $61,000. While market participants enjoy the bullish run, some industries are suffering because of the inflated price of chips. Everyone is talking about how Bitcoin mining affects the environment due to the huge demand for electricity and the giant carbon footprint. What few people know is that crypto mining impacts the costs of chips, which have been recently booming in price. Chip Shortages Affecting Entire Industries Chips are indispensable in so many devices and industries think about laptops, smartphones, TVs, or cars. The semiconductor industry has already been struggling with supply chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the winter storm in Texas, and fires at factory sites. But Bitcoin mining is putting even more pressure on the chip market, creating an additional shortage and boosting the price of chips. The profitability of mining depends on the cryptocurrencys price, which has rallied for the last few months, surging well above the 2017 peak. The huge competition among miners is prompting an increasing demand for advanced chips. This results in a price boom for chips and thus affects the other industries relying on semiconductors. CW Chung, head of research at Nomura in Seoul, told Financial Times: Added demand from cryptocurrency miners is coming when the chip industry is dealing with simultaneous crises from supply constraints to a structural shortage of high-end chips. The squeeze should last through the end of the year. The problem is so severe that Toyota and Volkswagen the worlds two biggest carmakers by the number of vehicles manufactured were forced to cut production due to the shortage of chips. Elsewhere, smartphone makers have no choice but to delay the launches of new devices. Chung explained that crypto demand might have a great impact on the chip market. For example, during the last Bitcoin rally, demand from miners represented a tenth of the entire sales of TSMC the third-largest chipmaker in the world. Story continues Nvidia Makes Sure New Chip Is Not Miner-Friendly The situation is affecting the gaming industry as well, forcing Nvidia to program one of its new chips GeForce RTX 3060 to reduce mining efficiency by 50% when it spots mining activity. Elsewhere, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) told PC Gamer that it had no plans to restrict its graphic cards from being implemented for crypto mining. The truth is that AMD might have no choice at all, as all its drivers are open source. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Has Netflix Topped Out? Price of Gold Fundamental Daily Forecast Underpinned by Falling Yields, Capped by Stronger Dollar Trulieve Cannabis Tops Earnings Estimates; Stock Has Over 30% Upside Potential GBP/JPY Price Forecast British Pound Cracks Below ¥150 Natural Gas Price Forecast Natural Gas Continues to Build Base USD/CAD Daily Forecast Canadian Dollar Moves Lower As WTI Oil Dives Below $60 || Revolutionizing the Blockchain Tech and Bitcoin World, This Is the Story of Bohdan Prilepa: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 3, 2021 /Entering the world of technology is a make or break kind of moment. This is the same forBohdan Prilepawho began his first steps into the technology world just a few years ago. He decided to take that leap of faith and not turn back!
"When you enter the blockchain technology market, you either run away or stay. I stayed. For me, it's a huge new world, where everything is changing at a cosmic speed. Look at the way cryptocurrencies have gone in a relatively short time period, for bitcoin was first launched only in 2009. How much has happened in this area in these 12 years, it seems like in cryptocurrencies, each year of development is equal to a decade. And I am glad I am not just a witness to this progress, but an active participant in it," Bohdan remarks.
Now the CEO of multiple companies, the leap into the world of technology clearly has paid off for Bohdan. He is spearheading numerous projects in an attempt to revolutionize the market and do more than the average tech company.
"Now I present an ambitious new blockchain project. This fork of Bitcoin is calledBitcoin Ultimatum, BTCU. This is a somewhat revolutionary name, and we gave it to the project for a reason. We really want to revolutionize the crypto market. The product we are presenting has been lacking in this market for a long time. Because there is bitcoin, in which many want to invest money, but the coin itself in terms of technology has long been outdated. Mining on machines, the transactions confirming from half an hour to a whole day. And there is also the second coin by capitalization - ether. For its time, it was a super-innovative platform, but today, as we can see, Ethereum cannot cope with the glory that has fallen on it. Yes, they are great, they are taking some steps, implementing PoS. But staking and sharding implementation will take about two years, and it is still unknown how all this will take root and how it will work. We are initially building a hybrid of these two networks, and also with the most advanced features that neither BTC nor ETH have," Bohdan states.
Bitcoin Ultimatum and Bohdan's method of operating is incredibly different from other companies and this has helped skyrocket him to the top of this environment. He is making big waves by trying to create this universal coin.
"If we talk about Bitcoin Ultimatum, then our difference from all other cryptocurrencies is that they have one or two useful properties with which they enter the market. We are making a universal coin, which has the properties of the two most powerful cryptocurrencies and, in addition, its own advantages, which BTC and ETH do not have. BTCU will immediately work on staking, plus we decided to confirm transactions through the Proof of Authority mechanism, thanks to which we were able to completely abandon mining on devices. Smart contracts can be launched on the BTCU blockchain, while we are a fork of Bitcoin," Bohdan explains.
"While I'm working on current projects, in particular, we still have a lot of work to do on the Bitcoin Ultimatum project. I want to invite all to join our great BTCU community and become a part of the crypto revolution" Bohdan exclaims.
To find out more about Bohdan, you can follow him on Instagramhereand check out his websitehere.
CONTACT:
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View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/633109/Revolutionizing-the-Blockchain-Tech-and-Bitcoin-World-This-Is-the-Story-of-Bohdan-Prilepa || CLASS ACTION UPDATE for FUBO, REGI and ROOT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Reminds Investors of Class Actions on Behalf of Shareholders: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / March 24, 2021 / Levi & Korsinsky, LLP announces that class action lawsuits have commenced on behalf of shareholders of the following publicly-traded companies. Shareholders interested in serving as lead plaintiff have until the deadlines listed to petition the court. Further details about the cases can be found at the links provided. There is no cost or obligation to you. FUBO Shareholders Click Here: https://www.zlk.com/pslra-1/fubotv-inc-loss-submission-form?prid=14067&wire=1 REGI Shareholders Click Here: https://www.zlk.com/pslra-1/renewable-energy-group-inc-loss-submission-form?prid=14067&wire=1 ROOT Shareholders Click Here: https://www.zlk.com/pslra-1/root-inc-information-request-form?prid=14067&wire=1 * ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BELOW * fuboTV Inc. (NYSE:FUBO) FUBO Lawsuit on behalf of: investors who purchased March 23, 2020 - January 4, 2021 Lead Plaintiff Deadline : April 19, 2021 TO LEARN MORE, VISIT: https://www.zlk.com/pslra-1/fubotv-inc-loss-submission-form?prid=14067&wire=1 According to the filed complaint, during the class period, fuboTV Inc. made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (ii) Fubo offering of products was subject to undisclosed cost escalations; (iii) Fubo could not successfully compete and perform as sports book operator and could not capitalize on its only sports wagering opportunity; (iv) Fubo's data and inventory was not differentiated to allow Fubo to achieve long-term advertising growth goals and forecasts; (v) Fubo's valuation was overstated in light of its total revenue and subscription levels; (vi) the acquisition of Balto Sport did not provide the stated synergies, internal expertise, and did not expand the Company's addressable market into online sports wagering; and as a result, Defendants' public statements were materially false and/or misleading at all relevant times. Renewable Energy Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:REGI) REGI Lawsuit on behalf of: investors who purchased May 3, 2018 - February 25, 2021 Lead Plaintiff Deadline : May 3, 2021 TO LEARN MORE, VISIT: https://www.zlk.com/pslra-1/renewable-energy-group-inc-loss-submission-form?prid=14067&wire=1 Story continues According to the filed complaint, during the class period, Renewable Energy Group, Inc. made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) due to failures in the diesel additive system, petroleum diesel was not periodically added to certain loads by the Company and was instead added by the Company's customers; (2) as a result, Renewable Energy was not the proper claimant for certain BTC payments on biodiesel it sold between January 1, 2017 and September 30, 2020; (3) as a result, Renewable Energy's revenue and net income were overstated for certain periods; (4) there was a material weakness in the Company's internal control over financial reporting related to the purchase and use of the petroleum diesel gallons when blending with biodiesel; and (5) as a result of the foregoing, Defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. Root, Inc (NASDAQ:ROOT) This lawsuit is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons and entities other than Defendants that purchased or otherwise acquired Root Class A common stock pursuant and/or traceable to the Offering Documents issued in connection with the Company's initial public offering conducted on or about October 28, 2020. Lead Plaintiff Deadline : May 18, 2021 TO LEARN MORE, VISIT: https://www.zlk.com/pslra-1/root-inc-information-request-form?prid=14067&wire=1 According to the filed complaint, (i) Root would foreseeably fail to generate positive cash flow for at least several years following the IPO; (ii) accordingly, the Company would foreseeably require significant cash infusions to meet its cash flow needs; (iii) notwithstanding the Defendants' touting of Root's purportedly unique, data-driven advantages, several of the Company's established industry peers in fact possessed significant competitive advantages over Root with respect to, inter alia, telematics data and data engagement; and (iv) as a result, the Offering Documents and Defendants' public statements throughout the Class Period were materially false and/or misleading and failed to state information required to be stated therein. You have until the lead plaintiff deadlines to request that the court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff. Levi & Korsinsky is a nationally recognized firm with offices in New York, California, Connecticut, and Washington D.C. The firm's attorneys have extensive expertise and experience representing investors in securities litigation and have recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for aggrieved shareholders. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. CONTACT: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP Joseph E. Levi, Esq. 55 Broadway, 10th Floor New York, NY 10006 jlevi@levikorsinsky.com Tel: (212) 363-7500 Fax: (212) 363-7171 https://www.zlk.com SOURCE: Levi & Korsinsky, LLP View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/637265/CLASS-ACTION-UPDATE-for-FUBO-REGI-and-ROOT-Levi-Korsinsky-LLP-Reminds-Investors-of-Class-Actions-on-Behalf-of-Shareholders || Here Are 70 Million More Reasons to Buy Bitcoin Now: The performance ofBitcoin(CCC:BTC-USD) over the past month has been mixed, leading investors to wonder if the rally that began back in October 2020 is finally slowing down. And indeed the rally may be tapering off, with the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization shedding about 16% of its value in just four days (April 14 to April 18).
Source: Shutterstock
But amidst it all, there’s another reason to be optimistic about the long-term potential for BTC-USD.
PayPal(NASDAQ:PYPL) subsidiary Venmo announced on April 20 that its70 million-plus users will now be able to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies on its mobile app. Venmo’s move to offer its users crypto access extends PayPal’s foray into the crypto world, as PayPal users can already pay online merchants globally in crypto.
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For the record, the original purpose of bitcoin is to become a widely adopted peer-to-peer money that people actually spend.
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In order for that to happen, people need to have easy access to the cryptocurrency. Andwidespread institutionalization is the fastest way to get crypto into people’s handsbecause large institutions already have the users, according to a report from Big Four accounting firm KPMG.
According to the report:
“Cryptoassets have potential. But for them to realize this potential, institutionalization is needed. Institutionalization is the at-scale participation in the crypto market of banks, broker-dealers, exchanges, payment providers, fintechs, and other entities in the global financial services ecosystem. We believe this is a necessary next step for crypto to create trust and scale.”
Venmo’s move is another step towards at-scale institutionalization of crypto. Cash App, a competing payment application from Jack Dorsey’sSquare(NYSE: SQ),already offerscrypto access to its 30 million-plus users. The image below, provided by BofA Securities, shows notable institutional bitcoin adoption moves since Q3 2020.
On April 20, the day Venmo announced its new crypto offering, bitcoin recovered some of its losses from the recent crash, rising roughly 1.5% on the day. However, the announcement hasn’t been enough to push bitcoin into another rally. On the contrary, BTC-USD has dipped further than the price level when Venmo made its announcement.
At present, fears about a reported crackdown by the U.S. Treasury on the use of digital assets for money laundry, coupled with a reported blackout in the Xinjiang region of China,appear to be more significant factors for bitcoin. To clarify, Xinjiang is home to several bitcoin mining farms, and a blackout there significantly reduces the global hash rate for the bitcoin network.
While it’s difficult to tell when bitcoin price will recover from its recent losses, the Venmo announcement provides another assurance that bitcoin is here to stay. As more institutions begin to offer their customers access to bitcoin, the cryptocurrency’s demand will continue to surge, as more people would have easier access to it. Also, as more people start owning bitcoin, its use case as a medium of exchange will continue to evolve.
Given that the crypto market is still in its nascent stage, I believe the crypto market will continue to experience periods of high volatility. However, I believe that any institutional adoption announcement is a signal to buy and “hodl“for the long-haul.
On the date of publication, Craig Adeyanju did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
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The postHere Are 70 Million More Reasons to Buy Bitcoin Nowappeared first onInvestorPlace. || Market Wrap: Bitcoin Choppy Around $56K, Early Pullback Appears Cooling: • Bitcoin(BTC) trading around $56,671.15 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Sliding 5.30% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $54,790.33-$60,695.91 (CoinDesk 20)
• BTC trades between its 10-hour and 50-hour averages on the hourly chart, a sideways signal for market technicians.
Bitcoin on Monday suffered its biggest single-day price decline in more than two weeks, after the fizzing of a retail trader-driven rally over the weekend that analysts said was notable for its lack of participation by institutional investors.
At press time, bitcoin’s price was changing hands around $56,671.15 after it tumbled to $54,790.33 during Asian trading hours earlier Monday, down 11% from Saturday’s record high at $61,556.59.
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“This sell-off happened right around the start of trading hours in Asian capital markets,” John Willock, chief executive at digital asset exchange Blocktane, said. “So it is likely that traders there repositioned themselves for the start of the week, post run-up.”
According to data from crypto derivatives analytics site Skew, bitcoin futures open interest on major retail platforms reached new all-time highs over the weekend. On the institution-driven CME’s bitcoin futures contract, however, open interest was lower compared with levels at the end of February, when bitcoin’s price pierced $58,000 for the first time.
“The fresh all-time high on Saturday above $60,000, coupled with the closure of traditional markets that has recently kept bitcoin yoked, meant a hopeful chase by retail participants,” Singapore-based quant firm QCP Capital wrote in its weekly market update on March 15. Funding rates on bitcoin perpetual futures – the fees traders pay for the leverage embedded within the trading instruments – rose to 200% on an annualized basis, considered an “unsustainable” level, according to QCP.
The lack of support from institutional investors in the recent rally was also apparent from the so-called Coinbase premium. The indicator, as tracked by the South Korean blockchain data-analysis firm CryptoQuant, measures the spread between Coinbase’s BTC/USD pair and Binance’s BTC/USDTpair. Over the weekend, it wentnegative, implying weak institutional demand.
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That dynamic contrasted with the apparent surge in institutional participation during a rally last month.
After bitcoin broke above key psychological levels at $30,000 in January and $50,000 in February, the Coinbase premium saw huge jumps, showing a strong follow-up demand from institutions, according to Du Jun, co-founder of crypto exchange Huobi.
Trading volume during the rally over the past few days was muted, based on data from eight major spot crypto exchanges tracked by CoinDesk. It was nothing like the surge in volume that came with last month’s price swings.
Ether(ETH) was down on Monday, trading around $1,789.53 and sliding 4.13% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).
The No. 2 cryptocurrency by market capitalization is still largely driven by bitcoin’s price action.
The ether-to-bitcoin ratio dropped to near 0.030 since the weekend, after it rose to 0.046 in the beginning of February, the highest since August 2018.
Read more:‘Analysis Ongoing’: Nifty Gateway Addresses NFT Security Concerns
“Ether, taking cue from bitcoin, failed just under the huge $2,000 spot level,” QCP wrote in the market updates. “We expect it to largely underperform bitcoin from here.”
Similar to bitcoin, ether’s spot trading volume remained flat after it spiked in late February – a low-volume price riseis usually short-lived.
On the derivatives market, ether futures contracts open interest on major exchanges – although higher to around $6.3 billion – was not nearly as high as the $7.1 billion level during ether’s last big rally to about $2,000.
Digital assets on theCoinDesk 20are mostly in red Monday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):
• algorand(ALGO) + 10.13%
• cosmos(ATOM) + 4.1%
• orchid(OXT) + 3.4%
Notable losers:
• litecoin(LTC) – 7.2%
• bitcoin cash(BCH) – 6.46%
• ethereum classic(ETC) – 5.72%
• chainlink(LINK) – 5.64%
• kyber network(KNC) – 4.96%
• eos(EOS) – 4.73%
Equities:
• Asia’s Nikkei 225 closed up 0.17%.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe closed in the red 0.17%.
• The S&P 500 in the United States rose by 0.65%.
Commodities:
• Oil was down 0.37%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $65.37.
• Gold was in the green 0.23% and at $1730.99 as of press time.
Treasurys:
• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield fell Monday, dipping to 1.609%.
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Choppy Around $56K, Early Pullback Appears Cooling
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Choppy Around $56K, Early Pullback Appears Cooling || BofA (BAC) Buys Axia Technologies, Boosts Healthcare Payments: Bank of AmericaBAC has acquired Santa Barbara, CA-based Axia Technologies, Inc., a health care payment and technology firm that provides secure patient payments. The terms of the transaction are not yet disclosed.Following the termination of its joint venture withFiserv Inc.’s FISV First Data in mid-2020, BofA has been making efforts to integrate merchant banking services with its proprietary platform. The platform delivers innovative services like real-time payments and digital capabilities to support functions including “merchant acquiring, payments processing and settlement, along with value-added services such as analytics and security solutions.”The acquisition, which is expected to boost BofA’s payment offerings for healthcare clients and further accelerate its capability to serve this key vertical, is part of this initiative.Founded in 2015, Axia Technologies’ “integrated offerings aid the financial performance of healthcare providers by expanding the payment options available to patients and streamlining administrative workflows.”Mark Monaco, head of enterprise payments at BofA, said, “Working together, we can leverage our joint expertise and capabilities to deliver a comprehensive range of payment and settlement solutions to our healthcare clients and their patients.”He further added, “Payments are core to what we do at Bank of America. We continue to invest to enable clients with expanded capabilities, and flexible solutions to meet a variety of business needs in an integrated and transparent way that puts the client first.”Healthcare payment solutions is a lucrative business for banks. With this acquisition, BofA will likely be able to expand its reach to new opportunities.Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have gained 30.3% so far this year, outperforming the industry’s 23.5% rally. You can seethe complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Similar to BofA, several other financial firms includingJPMorganJPM andSynchrony FinancialSYF have been undertaking initiatives to strengthen their healthcare payment offerings. Late last month, Synchrony Financial’s solution CareCredit announced that its Patient Financing application is now accessible in the Epic App Orchard. Thus, health systems and care providers can use the Epic’s MyChart to offer patients feasible and easy transaction options.
Blockchain and cryptocurrency has sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the “Internet of Money” and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree we’re still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities.Zacks’ has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly.See 3 crypto-related stocks now >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportFiserv, Inc. (FISV) : Free Stock Analysis ReportSynchrony Financial (SYF) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research
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Trend: no change || Prices: 57750.18, 57828.05, 56631.08, 57200.29, 53333.54, 57424.01, 56396.52, 57356.40, 58803.78, 58232.32
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2018-09-13]
BTC Price: 6517.31, BTC RSI: 45.47
Gold Price: 1202.00, Gold RSI: 49.69
Oil Price: 68.59, Oil RSI: 50.15
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Qatar ETF Is Strengthening on Improving Sentiment: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
A Qatar country-specific ETF was leading the charge Wednesday as the Qatari markets more-or-less recouped its losses suffered since enduring an embargo that began last year.
The iShares MSCI Qatar Capped ETF (QAT) , the lone Qatar equity-related ETF, gained 2.4 Wednesday and was up 5.4% over the past year.
Qatar's main stock benchmark, the QE Index, was trading at levels not seen since May 2017 before countries in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates severed economic and diplomatic ties with the country over links to Iran and the alleged funding of terrorism,Bloombergreports.
The emerging market has increase more than 18% so far this year, paring loses experienced last year, after raising foreign ownership limits for their stocks, which helped allow for a larger weighting in widely observed benchmarks from firms such as the MSCI.
Foreign investors can now own 100% of the shares to some Qatari companies and invest in banks and insurance companies.
Qatar Law Changes
Qatar's Ministry of Economy and Commerce stated that the revision to the existing laws was meant to bring in foreign capital to all sectors of the economy. The changes would facilitate investor entry into the market and raise confidence in investment security.
Related:Emerging Markets ETFs Face Dollar Dilemmas
Second-quarter results in recent weeks sustained the rally in Qatar's market after the companies in the developing economy raised limits on foreign ownership,Reutersreports.
The Qatar National Bank stated earlier this year that the total profits of Qatar-listed companies are expected to expand by 4.4% in 2018 and 14.6% in 2019.
For more information on the developing economies, visit ouremerging markets category.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || Another Top-5 Cryptocurrency Exchange Plots Move to Malta’s ‘Blockchain Island’: Another day passes by and although August is a traditionally slow month in the business and finance circles,Malta does not seem to be resting on its laurels at all. After several announcements regarding cryptocurrency exchanges and crypto banks, we now have the announcement coming that ZB.com, the world’s fith-largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, is setting up shop on the sunny Blockchain Island.
ZB.com will set up its operations in Europe with the launch of a new exchange in Malta. The company, which is the world’s fifth-largest cryptocurrency exchange by traded value, will open an office in St Julian’s, a bustling business centre in the heart of Malta. This latest announcement follows those by Binance, OKEx and DQR, who have alsoopened officeson the island.
Parliamentary Secretary for Digital Economy and Innovation Silvio Schembri also tweeted about the announcement and told CCN that this was another link in the chain for Malta to cement its leading position in the cryptocurrency space.
The company will initially start out as a crypto-to-crypto exchange and will eventually look to offer fiat-to-crypto trading pairs through its new platform based out of the European island nation. This is the third exchange that is coming up with this proposition, after Binance and Bitbay.
“Malta is perhaps the world’s most progressive and forward-thinking nation in DLT, crypto and fintech, and we are very excited to be part of the Blockchain Island. We are confident we will be able to announce our live operations soon,” co-founder Jimmy Zhao said.
Other countries appear to be hesitant in the crypto space with several stalling on their regulation and implementation of crypto and blockchain companies. However, this does not seem to be the case in Malta,where the Virtual Financial Assets Act and two other crypto bills have sailed through the parliament. The bills are currently undergoing a consultation process, so there is still no tangible exchange which has started up yet since the blockchain laws will not come into effect until Oct. 1.
Zhao said he had recently been invited to Malta by his local partners and met with the Maltese government to discuss their crypto exchange operations. “You quickly realize Malta’s commitment to building and supporting the crypto ecosystem,” he added.
ZB.com regularly ranks among the five largest cryptocurrency exchanges in terms of daily trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap, trading an average of about $400m daily. The proprietary technology behind ZB.com also supports several other top-tier exchanges such as EXX.com.
ZB.com is strictly a cryptocurrency exchange and does not offer any other type of tradeable assets. That being said, there are various markets in which these cryptocurrencies can be traded. For instance, traders can exchange cryptocurrencies against QCash (QC), tether (USDT), and bitcoin (BTC).
Featured Image from Shutterstock
The postAnother Top-5 Cryptocurrency Exchange Plots Move to Malta’s ‘Blockchain Island’appeared first onCCN. || Cryptocurrency Weekend News Roundup: A significant e-payment platform is introducing cryptocurrency trading services while Google bans some cryptocurrency apps. The SEC rejects a cryptocurrency ETF while another e-payment platform reveals that a rogue employee enriched himself using company hardware. Congressional Representative seeks enhanced regulations on the cryptocurrency Industry while Japanese body is pushing for self-regulation. Crypto traders look for inroads into trading platforms like the Nasdaq while Kaspersky reports the discovery of a cryptocurrency mining malware. SEE: KT Corporation Reveals Its Own Network Blockchain Skrill Introduces Cryptocurrency Trading Services Skrill, an internet payment company that facilitates money transfers, now has more than 25 million customers including over 120,000 merchant accounts. The company is now diversifying into the cryptocurrency market. It announced that it would offer a platform for its clients to buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Starting this week, Skrill customers can select ‘Exchange’ on their account interface and then buy, sell, or hold cryptocurrencies. These cryptocurrencies include Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ), Ether ( ETH-USD ), Bitcoin Cash ( BCH-USD ), and Litecoin ( LTC-USD ). They can buy using any of the forty fiat currencies available on Skrill, and they can access this service in over thirty countries. Skrill facilitates these transactions through a recognized exchange for cryptocurrencies. It will now compete with established platforms such as Robinhood, Circle, and Square. Cryptocurrency Mining Apps Banned From Google Play Store Alphabet ( NASDAQ:GOOGL ) introduced a ban on cryptocurrency miners on its Play Store platform affecting a vast number of mining apps. Some of the affected apps include MinerGate, NeoNeonMiner, and Crypto Miner. This ban follows the removal of cryptocurrency extensions from the Chrome Web Store in April this year. Google said that 90% of these extensions failed to comply with Web Store policies. Story continues Apple implemented a similar policy in June this year by banning cryptocurrency apps on its App Store. It clarified that apps could facilitate the storage of virtual currencies, but they cannot mine them. Apple also stated that mining activities in the cloud are acceptable, but not as a separate background process within the device. Opera Mini banned cryptocurrency mining apps as well in January this year. Opera mini announced that this ban was to prevent websites from using scripts that turn people’s devices into a processor for mining cryptocurrencies. Rogue Qiwi Employee Mined 500,000 Bitcoins Qiwi is an electronic payment firm that originates from Russia. The CEO of this firm is Sergey Solonin. Sergey recently revealed that an employee mined 500,000 Bitcoins using terminals that the company owned. Sergey made these revelations while he was speaking to a room full of students at Moscow’s Advanced Communications School. This unapproved mining took place in 2011 according to the CEO. The employee would use the terminals when they were not in use making over $5 million in a couple of months. That means he made more money off these assets than Qiwi did. The developer called it quits after the managers at Qiwi asked him to surrender his earnings to the company. Sergey also told reporters that the rogue employee lost all of these mined coins in a failed cryptocurrency exchange. In related news, Karma is a bitch. SEC Rejects Cryptocurrency ETF Proposal The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected a proposal by Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, AKA the Winklevae, on the formation of a cryptocurrency ETF. The SEC rejected the proposal for a crypto ETF by the Winklevoss twins citing lack of sufficient protection for investors. Three commissioners voted against it while one of them supported it. The majority of commissioners believed that Bitcoin is subject to a high level of fraud. They also felt that the cryptocurrency is susceptible to significant manipulation by offshore markets. This ruling may lead to an adverse impact of similar proposals that are before the SEC. Many analysts are now eager to hear the SEC’s decision on another ETF proposal that is before it. It is likely that the SEC will make this decision in March 2019. Congressional Representative Asks For Cryptocurrency Oversight Bill Huizenga, a representative for the second congressional district of Michigan, wants Congress to enact laws to regulate the cryptocurrency industry. He claims that Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and digital token trading are opaque processes. He decried the fact that this opacity increases the risk that investors might lose their hard-earned cash to fraudsters and market manipulators, but he probably just wants his cut from the crypto market. Huizenga’s solution is the creation of laws to empower the Securities & Exchange Commission so that it can oversee this market successfully. He also suggests that these powers could go to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He proposes that one of these bodies should govern the cryptocurrency industry with similar rules to those governing stocks and currencies. Huizenga made these remarks during a Bloomberg TV interview in his Capitol Hill office. Bloomberg interviewed him on Thursday this week. Nasdaq Holds Closed Door Meeting On Cryptocurrencies A high-level meeting took place this week between traditional exchanges, cryptocurrency traders, and Nasdaq officials. The Winklevoss twins attended this meeting. The details of this meeting are sketchy, but some analysts claim that these are systematic steps to encourage ETF listings for Bitcoin. Interestingly, the Bitcoin ETF proposal by the twins was the second one rejected by the SEC. This recent meeting with Nasdaq representatives could have been a step towards seeing what cryptocurrency regulations are acceptable to stock markets. Such discussions are likely to continue given the budding relationship between Nasdaq Inc. and the Winklevoss twins. Earlier this year, the twins had hired Nasdaq Inc. to spot cheaters for them in their cryptocurrency exchange platform known as Gemini. The JVCEA Sets Rules for Cryptocurrency Trading JVCEA is an acronym for the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association. This cryptocurrency group aims to establish itself as a self-regulatory body within the digital currency market in Japan. It can build this case for self-regulation by proposing rules to govern the industry. One regulation that it recently introduced was setting limits on customer trading . This limit will protect crypto traders from suffering huge losses at any given time. It will provide room for flexibility as well because exchange operators can opt for a blanket ceiling or a conditional one. The cap on the conditional one is dynamic because it changes depending on the customer’s age, experience, income, and assets. Other rules it proposed include prohibiting margin trading in principle and restricting orders for large lots. Another one is preventing minors from engaging in cryptocurrency trading if they do not have permission from their parents. New Type of Cryptocurrency Malware Identified Kaspersky Labs identified a malware that embeds itself into a mining system and spreads itself across the network. This malware is already causing problems in Turkey, Columbia, India, and Brazil. Some cryptocurrency traders in Europe and North America have reported it as well. Kaspersky published these findings in a report that it released on July 26, 2018. PowerGhost is the name Kaspersky gave to this malware. The anti-malware identified it as a crypto jacker as well. A crypto jacker is a cryptocurrency mining malware that has no file. It will hide in a machine successfully because antivirus software cannot find it on your hard drive. It will get into a system through remote administration tools or exploits. Kaspersky also reports that PowerGhost could cause downtime by disrupting the host’s system to mine. It can cause this disruption through a DDoS functionality that is visible on the hard drive. Therefore, antivirus software can detect this part of PowerGhost. The post Cryptocurrency Weekend News Roundup appeared first on Market Exclusive . || Bitcoin king Mike Novogratz leads $52 million investment in crypto-lending startup: Michael Novogratz, President of Fortress Investment Group, speaks at the annual Skybridge Alternatives Conference (SALT) in Las Vegas May 6, 2015. REUTERS/Rick Wilking Thomson Reuters Mike Novogratz has led a $52.5 million fundraise for crypto-lending startup BlockFi, the company announced Tuesday. The firm will use the funds to expand its lending platform outside the US and to support more digital assets. BlockFi allows crypto investors to borrow against their holdings. Mike Novogratz's merchant bank Galaxy Digital has led a $52.5 million fundraising round for crypto-lending startup BlockFi, the firm announced on Tuesday. The New York-based firm offers corporate and retail clients loans on their crypto holdings, with a loan book in the millions. Founded by former Cognical senior vice president Zac Prince, the firm has raised money in two rounds this year. In February, it raised $1.55 million from ConsenSys Ventures, SoFi, and Kenetic Capital, as CoinDesk previously reported . The most recent round comes as BlockFi eyes expansion in new states and international markets, and the addition of new products. It is also looking to support more cryptocurrencies. Potential new business opportunities are in fixed-income and debt investments, as well as lines of credit and a credit card, Prince told Business Insider. To that end, the firm has brought on former Bank of America managing director Rene van Kesteren, who ran a seven-person equity-structured financing business before joining BlockFi in May. Currently, BlockFi allows investors to take out a loan as high as $10 million using either bitcoin or ethereum as collateral. That lets investors retain ownership of their crypto and not miss out on the next potential price surge, but also have cash on hand to pay employees or go on a vacation, for instance. This marks the most recent investment for Novogratz's Galaxy, which has been pouring money into crypto firms at a fast clip. In June, Galaxy invested $35 million into virtual-reality firm High Fidelity, and $15 million in AlphaPoint, a New York firm building out a platform for tokenized assets . Story continues As Business Insider previously reported , Galaxy, which has businesses in asset-management, trading, and investing, has made a significant number of investments in the market for digital coins which have not yet been disclosed publicly. People familiar with the firm's operation said the principal-investment team has purchased stakes in high-volume initial coin offering projects and has a significant portfolio of early stage ventures. Novogratz notably made $250 million from cryptocurrency ether and now holds 10% of his entire net worth in digital assets. As for BlockFi, Novogratz said: "A robust lending market is the keystone for financial systems and BlockFis institutional approach and deep lending expertise were key drivers in our decision to partner with them." NOW WATCH: A Nobel Prize-winning economist says 'non-competes' are keeping wages down for all workers See Also: 'Institutions are going to look for something like this': Crypto companies are working with the Big Four to get Wall Street to trust them Some of bitcoin's biggest traders are teaming up to lure Wall Street money to crypto Bitcoin may be down 45% this year, but money is pouring into one crypto fund manager at the fastest clip in its history || Bull Case for Tesla's Private Plan, & News from Square, Bitcoin, and More | Free Lunch: On today’s episode of Free Lunch, Associate Stock Strategist Ryan McQueeney recaps the market’s top morning headlines, including Square’s latest bullish analyst note, today’s cryptocurrency crash, Home Depot’s earnings, and more. Later, he is joined by Brian Bolan, Zacks’ growth guru and noted Tesla bull, to debate the electric car company’s go-private plan. Want more video content from Zacks? Subscribe to Zacks Investment News now! Free Lunch is the newest show from Zacks Investment Research. It is streamed live, four times per week, and features breaking news and analysis from Zacks strategists. Free Lunch is available on YouTube, Facebook Live, Twitter, Ustream, and more. Home Depot HD reported top and bottom line beats this morning, extending its five-year positive earnings surprise streak and notching comparable-sales growth of 8%. The home improvement retailer also raised its full-year guidance, which provides even more evidence on the strength of the housing market and consumer economy. Meanwhile, shares of Square SQ surged again in morning trading Tuesday on the back of another bullish analyst note. This time it was Instinet getting on the action, with analysts there raising their price target for the payments stock to $86 from $82, citing growing adoption of the company’s Cash app as a key reason to be optimistic. Also making headlines this morning was Nvidia NVDA, which officially unveiled its eighth-generation Turing graphics architecture. Analysts and investors alike praised the new GPU line—a likely growth catalyst for the company’s gaming unit—just days before Nvidia is set to report its latest quarterly earnings report. Tuesday morning also saw a massive selloff in the cryptocurrency market, led by giants bitcoin and Ether. The total capitalization of the crypto market has lost about $20 billion in a day, sending many virtual currencies to multi-month lows. On the first half of today’s show, Ryan discusses all of these news stories, providing investors with the key facts they need to know and giving his unique perspective on the headlines. On the second half of the episode, he is joined by Zacks Strategist Brian Bolan to debate Tesla TSLA. Bolan has been an outspoken Tesla bull this year, and he came on the show to give his thoughts on Elon Musk’s stunning go-private deal. Is it finally time to doubt Musk? Should Tesla investors hold on to their shares as the proposal shakes out? Is Bolan worried about an SEC probe related to Musk’s tweets? Hear the answer to all of these questions, and more, only on today’s episode of Free Lunch! Story continues Today's Stocks from Zacks' Hottest Strategies It's hard to believe, even for us at Zacks. But while the market gained +21.9% in 2017, our top stock-picking screens have returned +115.0%, +109.3%, +104.9%, +98.6%, and +67.1%. And this outperformance has not just been a recent phenomenon. Over the years it has been remarkably consistent. From 2000 - 2017, the composite yearly average gain for these strategies has beaten the market more than 19X over. Maybe even more remarkable is the fact that we're willing to share their latest stocks with you without cost or obligation. See Them Free>> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Square, Inc. (SQ) : Free Stock Analysis Report Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Home Depot, Inc. (HD) : Free Stock Analysis Report NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research View comments || EUR/USD Daily Price Forecast – EUR/USD Rebounds Post Hitting 13-Month Lows on US-China Trade Talks: Riskier assets and the EUR scored gains in Asian market hours due to the news that Chinese officials will be traveling to the United States for trade talks in late August. As of writing this article, the EURUSD pair is trading at 1.1384 up 0.33% on the day, after hitting 13 month Low at 1.13009 during yesterday’s trading session. A Reuters report released earlier today quoted China’s Ministry of Commerce as saying that a Chinese delegation led by Vice Minister of Commerce Wang Shouwen will hold talks with US representatives led by Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs David Malpass later this month. The announcement seems to have boosted risk assets. For instance, the AUD/USD is up 0.40 percent and the USD/JPY is reporting marginal gains despite the BOJ rate hike talk. As a result, the EUR turned higher in Asia and could extend gains further in the European and US session if the equities react positively to the news of US/China trade talks.
News of Sino-US Talks Has Curbed Selling Activity Surrounding Chinese Yuan
Trade war fears had morphed into an opportunity for speculators, who had been selling the Yuan and other currencies against the dollar. The news that pointed to a possible easing of U.S.-China trade tensions appears to have curbed such activity. But there is no guarantee that the trade discussions will end successfully. As such, the trade news may have stopped the speculators’ selling but perhaps only for the time being. The greenback had drawn strength after a tough week for emerging market currencies, initially led by the rout in the Turkish lira. The currency plunged to an all-time low at the start of the week as tensions between Ankara and Washington flared and worries over President Tayyip Erdogan’s economic policies increased. The lira has since recovered to 5.9725 per dollar after slumping to a record low of 7.24 on Monday.
With multiple factors in play, market is expected to see more volatility surrounding major global currencies as risk appetite in currently high in market. Thus US Greenback is expected to see sideways movement as investors flock to major global currencies. Technically speaking, a close today above 1.1355 would validate the previous day’s dragonfly doji candle and confirm a bearish-to-bullish trend change. The relative strength index (RSI) is also rising from the overbought territory. So, while there is a reason to be optimistic here, the bulls are still cautioned against being too ambitious as the US Treasury has not responded to the announcement from Beijing. Expected support and resistance for the pair are at 1.1357, 1.1336, 1.1301 and 1.1400, 1.1433, 1.1460 respectively.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Risk Aversion Eases on Reports of Renewed Trade Talks Between US, China || Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis 29/07/18: Bitcoin Cash Holds on to $800 Bitcoin Cash gained 0.44% on Saturday, following on from Fridays 2.15% rise, to end the day at $824. A relatively choppy start to the day saw Bitcoin Cash recover from a start of a day dip to a morning low $813.1 to an intraday high $828.2 before going into reverse through to an early afternoon intraday low $801.5. The days moves left the major support and resistance levels untested on the day, with Bitcoin Cash continuing to fall well short of $900 levels and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $930, leaving the extended bearish trend intact. At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash was up 0.25% to $825.9, with upward momentum from late Saturday continuing into the start of the day, Bitcoin Cash breaking through the first major resistance level at $834.3 to a start of a day morning high $842.5 before easing back to $820 levels. For the day ahead, a move back through to $830 levels will bring the second major support level at $844.6 into play, while we would expect Bitcoin Cash to continue to fall short of $900 levels and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $930. Failure to move back through to $840 levels could see Bitcoin Cash pullback through a start of a day morning low $822.9 to bring the first major support level at $807.6 into play before any recovery, Bitcoin Cash expected to continue to hold on to $800 levels by the days end. {alt} Get Into Bitcoin Cash Trading Today Litecoin Slips Litecoin slipped by 0.6% on Saturday, partially reversing Fridays 1.27% gain, to end the day at $84.01. A bearish first half of the day saw Litecoin slide from a start of a day intraday high $84.7 to an early afternoon intraday low $82.51, holding just above the first major support level at $82.36 before recovering through the afternoon to $84 levels, the first major resistance level at $85.91 left untested on the day. While Litecoin managed to avoid continuing a sequence of new intraday lows, the downward trend of intraday highs continued as Litecoin slipped further back from $90 levels and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $98. Story continues At the time of writing, Litecoin was up 0.23% to $84.18, with Litecoin breaking through the first major resistance level at $84.97 to a start of a day morning high $85.25 before pulling back to $84 levels and a morning low $84. For the day ahead, holding above $83.74 through the morning would support a run back through the first major resistance level at $84.97 to $85 levels to bring the second major resistance level at $85.93 into play, though sentiment will need to materially improve for Litecoin to eye $86 levels on the day. Failure to hold above $83.74 through the morning could see Litecoin pullback through the morning low $84 to bring the first major support level at $82.78 into play, with the lack of a weekend rally likely to see Litecoin bring sub-$82 support levels into play before any recovery. {alt} Buy & Sell Cryptocurrency Instantly Ripple Finds Support Ripples XRP rose by 0.76% on Saturday, following on from Fridays 1.48% gain, to end the day at $0.45821. A positive start to the day saw Ripples XRP move through to a morning high $0.45872, before pulling back to an early afternoon intraday low $0.44568, tracking the broader market following through the middle part of the day. An afternoon recovery saw Ripples XRP bounce back to $0.45 levels with a late in the day intraday high $0.4592, the moves through the day leaving major support and resistance levels untested, with Ripples XRP continuing to fall well short of $0.50 levels and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level at $0.5528. At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was down 0.72% to $0.45295, with a start of a day broad based move seeing Ripples XRP break through to $0.46 levels and a morning high $0.4623 before pulling back to $0.45 levels, major support and resistance levels left untested in the early part of the day. For the day ahead, a move back through to $0.4544 would support a move back through to $0.46 levels to bring the first major resistance level at $0.4630 back into play, while $0.47 levels will likely remain out of reach. Failure to move back through to $0.4544 later in the morning could see Ripples XRP pullback through to sub-$0.45 levels to test support at the first major support level at $0.4495, with any broad based market sell-off likely to see the second major support level at $0.4408 into play before any recovery. {alt} Buy & Sell Cryptocurrency Instantly This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Dollar Firms Against Basket, Loses Ground to Yen on Policy Change Concerns Bitcoin Will it be a Weekend Rally or Back to Sub-$8,000 NZD/USD Forex Technical Analysis Rangebound Trade Suggests Impending Volatility Treasury Yields Drop Amid Concerns Trade Disputes Will Slow Economic Growth RoboForex to Add EOS to Its Portfolio Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast Could Be Forming Trading Range || Ripple Price (XRP) Records 16% Rally as Cryptocurrency Market Booms: ripple price gun bang A bullish correction has “rippled” across the cryptocurrency market today, with the ripple price (XRP) leading a widespread altcoin comeback. Ripple Price Marches Back The XRP/USD trading pair on Friday jumped more than 16 percent, rising from 0.29065-fiat to 0.32853-fiat. The upside adds up to a 37 percent increase since the pair established its bottom at 0.24711-fiat. At the same time, the XRP market cap is now just shy of $13 billion. ripple price The rally coincides with one of the Ripple Labs’ latest announcement concerning their plans to strengthen xRapid, a cross-border banking solution. The company named three “preferred” exchanges as their partners – Bittrex (USA), Bitso (Mexico), and Coin.Ph (Philippines), based on their high XRP holdings. Therefore, banks that are associated with Ripple Labs can now open an account at the exchanges mentioned above and trade their local fiat for XRP, which later can be used to facilitate cross-border transactions on the top of Ripple ledger. Once the XRP funds move, say, from the U.S. to Mexico, the recipient will be able to convert the crypto to Mexican pesos using the Bitso exchange. The announcement could have triggered a positive buying sentiment among speculators — if not the serious investors — that resulted in a 16 percent rally. Nevertheless, the pair was on a recovery mode since Aug. 13, and the latest price action might have just intensified it. In a broader timeframe, the ripple price continues to be in a long-term bearish trend, which could be reversed upon the formation of an extended inverse Head & Shoulder pattern towards 0.46936-fiat. For now, the XRP/USD is currently targetting 0.35428-fiat as its potential upside target, the base of the current inverse H&S pattern, with its shoulder level aligning with 0.31282-fiat. Day traders should be observing the ascending channel formation for entry and exit positions, which further resonates with the near-term inverse H&S theory. However, it is essential to look out for a support break and set your stop losses in the opposite direction of your positions – like risk management against potential reversals. Story continues Technically, the XRP/USD is oversold and should expect bearish corrections in near-term. The bias, meanwhile, remains to be towards the bulls. Bitcoin, Ethereum Price Rallies Weaker than Ripple In comparison to ripple, other top coins, including bitcoin and ethereum , found their uptrends capped by strong resistance levels. The BTC/USD rose about three percent on Friday, while the ETH/USD a slight better with five percent gains. Only EOS could match up to XRP’s interim to-the-moon ride by displaying a 12 percent surge, respectively. Bitcoin is stuck inside a narrow range below the $6,500 level, failing to extend its upside momentum like ripple. The BTC/USD continues to form a short-term ascending line, which could be broken towards either side as the medium-term bias conflict intensifies. A move beyond $6,550 could still influence a short run towards $6,650, but a strong bull trend can only be confirmed should the $7,000-upside is achieved. The ethereum uptrend is weak considering the coin has been the most-discussed asset during the latest crypto selloff. Like bitcoin, the ETH/USD is also trying to strike through a stubborn resistance level, at $300. The pair is now targeting $335 as the medium-term upside target while interim support can be found near $277. The EOS/USD has extended its bounce further and is now testing $5.3 as its interim resistance level while still holding its leg near $4.18, the interim support. The pair is giving an oversold reading already which could trigger a short-term bear correction phase. Other coins, including bitcoin cash, cardono, litecoin, and stellar have displayed single-digit surges in the past 24 hours. With that in mind, a potential correction phase has high odds. Featured Image from Shutterstock The post Ripple Price (XRP) Records 16% Rally as Cryptocurrency Market Booms appeared first on CCN . || Bitcoin Edges Higher as Demand Remains Steady: Investing.com – Bitcoin was modestly higher Thursday as traders continued to bet further upside beckoned for the crypto as inflows into the market held steady.
Bitcoin rose 1.04% to $7,432.9 on the Bitfinex exchange, after trading as highs as $7,515.0.
Bitcoin has held above $7,000 since its rally above this price level earlier in the week, which some crypto observers cited as a sign the popular crypto is eyeing a move higher.
The total market cap of cryptocurrencies fell to about $287 billion, at the time of writing, from about $288 billion Wednesday.
Bitcoin's foray higher comes a day after Fed chairman Jay Powell said "bitcoin is not really a currency," and warned it poses "significant" investor risks as it doesn’t have any intrinsic value.
Other large-cap cryptos failed to replicate bitcoin's modest move higher.
Ripple XRP fell 1.41% to $0.47730 on the Poloniex exchange, while Ethereum fell 1.58% to $467.56.
Bitcoin Cash fell 0.77% to $816.12, while Litecoin fell 2.00% to $86.24.
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Expert Before Congress: Fed Crypto a Bad Idea, Remove Capital Gains Tax || ‘Game Over’ for Bitcoin, Claims Bearish Technical Analyst: bitcoin price video game over If the bitcoin price falls below the important year-to-date support level, the dominant cryptocurrency will suffer irreparable damage in the marketplace. This is the opinion of Renaissance Macro Research, quoted by CNBC on Thursday Aug. 9. Bitcoin May Be ‘Permanently Impaired’ According to the financial analysis firm, what bitcoin is facing right now could be much more significant than just a brief bear run or a retracement. The cryptocurrency could in fact be facing an existential crisis, with its key year-to-date support level being the buffer between it and more substantial damage. Break that level, says Renaissance Macro Research, and bitcoin will be “permanently impaired.” bitcoin price After a bull run took it well above $8,000 , bitcoin has sunk back below $7,000, and its current price is roughly 14 percent down on the same time a week ago. On Wednesday August 7, it lost about 6 percent of its value on news that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed a long-awaited decision on a proposed bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). This, however, could just be the tip of the pain iceberg for investors according to Renaissance head of technical tesearch Jeff deGraaf. Speaking to CNBC, he stated that if the psychologically important year-to-date support level is breached, he would recommend taking short positions on BTC. Speaking to clients on Thursday, deGraaf said : “Parabolic moves are notoriously dangerous for short‐sellers … Usually a top develops that often appears as a descending triangle over months, with reduced volatility and little [fanfare]. Once the top is complete on the support violation, the security in question can often be considered permanently impaired or even ‘game‐over’. We are of course referencing Bitcoin as exhibit ‘A’ in today’s market.” Bad News deGraaf’s words will come as bad news for cryptocurrency investors because he is a personality that markets generally tend to take note of when he speaks. As one of Wall Street’s best regarded forecasters since the turn of the millennium, deGraaf has been recognised severally for accurate predictions and peerless analysis. For a total of 10 years, he has been ranked as top technical analyst by Investor Magazine , and in 2014 he was inducted into the Institutional Investor’s Research Hall of Fame. What all of this potentially means to an investor is that one of Wall Street’s finest analysts has painted a scenario where bitcoin — down about 50 percent in 2018 — is not going on a bear run it will recover from, but is rather drifting toward a position of permanent asset damage. Story continues Earlier this week, however, CCN reported that Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead urged investors to “stop overreacting” to the SEC’s delayed response to the proposed bitcoin ETF, as bitcoin continues to take a pounding. Featured Image from Shutterstock The post ‘Game Over’ for Bitcoin, Claims Bearish Technical Analyst appeared first on CCN . View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
@BTC_INFOCHAIN || @whats_a_bitcoin || @eztechwin || #design #education #educ #humanity #patientsafety #PatientExperience #ai #CloudComputing #cloudsecurity #bitcoin #crypto #innovation #industrie40 #code #java #javascript #blockchain #codes #ais #java #techno https://lnkd.in/emPXvGt || @bitcoin_reddit || @btc_reddit || @BTC_INFOCHAIN || Doge is better || @btc_fan || @btc_reddit
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Trend: up || Prices: 6512.71, 6543.20, 6517.18, 6281.20, 6371.30, 6398.54, 6519.67, 6734.95, 6721.98, 6710.63
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2022-05-24]
BTC Price: 29655.59, BTC RSI: 39.32
Gold Price: 1865.10, Gold RSI: 49.47
Oil Price: 109.77, Oil RSI: 53.57
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
What You Need to Know About Fidelity's New Bitcoin Offering for Your 401(k): Roughly 80 million U.S. investors own or have invested in digital currencies, and with a growing appetite for such alternative investments, retirement savers can now benefit from yet another way to invest. Financial firm Fidelity Investments has announced an expansion of its cryptocurrency platform, unveiling a first-of-its-kind Bitcoin offering for the company's 401(k) investment lineup. Here's how it works.
A financial advisor could help you plan for retirement and determine if investing in cryptocurrencies aligns with your financial goals.Find a qualified advisor today.
Fidelity Launches Digital Asset Accounts For 401(k) Plans
According to the Fidelity 2021 Institutional Investor Digital Assets Survey, seven out of 10 institutional investors expect to buy or invest in digital assets in the future. Of those, more than 90% expect their institutions' and clients' portfolios to allocate funds to those investments.
"Increasingly, we are seeing interest from leading employers to add digital assets to their 401(k) plan," said Executive Vice President Chris Call of Newfront Retirement Services, in a statement. "As companies consider alternative investment options in their plan design, we believe digital assets are worthy of consideration."
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Earlier this year, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued astrict compliance warningabout including cryptocurrencies indefined contribution planslike your401(k), as multiple sources reported heightened interest in the subject. Indeed, more than half of institutions surveyed by Fidelity reported current investments in digital assets, with participation rates jumping more than 10% in Europe and the U.S. compared to 2020.
As a result of increasing demand, Fidelity has announced a first-of-its-kind ability to invest in Bitcoin through your retirement account, allowing retirement savers to benefit from tax-leveraged accounts while further diversifying long-term holdings.
"We are thrilled to be the first to offer employers exposure to bitcoin for the core lineup of 401(k)s," said Dave Gray, Head of Workplace Retirement Offerings and Platforms at Fidelity Investments. "[The new Digital Asset Accounts reflect] our belief in the promise of blockchain technology for the financial industry's future."
How Retirement Savers Can Take Advantage
Fidelity has partnered with business intelligence giant MicroStrategy to offer its first Digital Asset Accounts (DAAs) through the company's401(k)program. Broad availability will roll out to employers mid-year.
The new offering will allow retirement savers comfortable with cryptocurrency volatility to invest in Bitcoin through a Digital Asset Account within a 401(k). The DAA is a custom plan that will hold Bitcoin in an institutional-grade, offline vault, as well as short-termmoney market investmentsfor liquidity. Employers will be able to establish contribution and exchange limits for the account.
Enrolled employees will receive Bitcoin units in their account, bought at the market rate at the time of contribution. This allows savers to benefit fromdollar-cost averagingand smooth out some of the price fluctuations for which cryptocurrencies are infamous. Fidelity will also offer a trove of educational materials so that interested investors can learn more, even as it expands use cases beyond Bitcoin in the coming months.
However, it pays to remain cautious when investing retirement funds in such a volatile asset. In the small print, Fidelity notes that digital assets are speculative and highly volatile, can become illiquid and are slated for investors with high-risk tolerance. Investors could lose the entire value of their investment at any time.
Bottom Line
Investment firm Fidelity has announced a new way to invest in Bitcoin with tax-leveraged dollars. Starting with MicroStrategy and rolling out to all employers soon, retirement savers will be able to buy and hold digital assets through their 401(k) plans, allowing them to benefit from the increasing demand for alternative investments. Bitcoin is a highly volatile asset and may not be an appropriate choice for all investors, but with this new offering, Fidelity has made it easier for you to add crypto to your retirement mix.
Retirement Planning Tips
• Not sure what investments and strategies will set you up for a smooth retirement? For a solid, long-term financial plan, consider speaking with a qualified financial advisor.SmartAsset's free toolmatches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you're ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals,get started now.
• Use SmartAsset's freeretirement calculatorto get a good first estimate ofhow much money you'll need to retire.
Photo credit: ©iStock.com/KanawatTH, ©iStock.com/DaLiu, ©iStock.com/Alessandro Biascioli
The postWhat You Need to Know About Fidelity's New Bitcoin Offering for Your 401(k)appeared first onSmartAsset Blog. || Crypto Market Daily Highlights – May 3: Key Insights: Crypto.com native token Cronos (CRO) finds floor after dramatic two-day sell-off. From the crypto top 100, Algorand (ALGO) is up 18% over 24-hours to lead the pack, with Sandbox (SAND) and Helium (HNT) also on the move. Regulatory risk lingers with SEC expanding its Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit while industry leaders respond to lawmaker ire over Bitcoin mining. CoinMarketCap top 100, Algorand ( ALGO ), jumps 18% to lead the crypto majors. It has been an eventful 24 hours for the crypto market, with a number of the top 100 cryptos making early moves while others falter. Regulatory risk has continued to hit the crypto news wires early in the week. Bitcoin ( BTC ) mining and the Securities and Exchange Commission have been areas of market focus to test investor sentiment. Investors will also be mindful of the Fed as the FOMC kick-off the two-day monetary policy meeting later today. Algorand Surges by 18% to Lead the Top 100 Over the past 24-hours, CoinMarketCap top 100, Algorand, is up 18% to lead the broader crypto market. On Monday, FIFA announced Algorand as an official partner ahead of this year’s FIFA World Cup in Qatar. At the time of writing, ALGO was up 11.52% to $0.6872 for the current session, while up 18% over the last 24-hours. A bullish morning saw ALGO strike a high of $0.7408 in response to the news before easing back. Algorand follows in the footsteps of Crypto.com , which became an official FIFA World Cup 2022 sponsor in March. Other big movers over the last 24-hours include Helium ( HNT ) and The Sandbox ( SAND ), which were up 16% and 10%, respectively. Crypto.com native token Cronos ( CRO ) is on a breakout this morning. Crypto market reaction to staking reward updates caused a sell-off before finding support this morning. Over 24-hours, CRO is up 0.21%, while down 26.14% over 7-days. The Securities and Exchange Commission Expands Crypto Team This week, FX Empire reported news of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) planning to expand its Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit with 20 new positions. Story continues According to the report, “The Cyber Unit has managed to take enforcement action against 80 fraudulent and unregistered crypto-asset offerings and platforms, which resulted in monetary relief worth more than $2 billion.” While the SEC takes aim at the crypto market, industry leaders have responded to a letter from US lawmakers to the Environmental Protection Agency on Bitcoin and crypto mining and the impact on the environment. According to the FX Empire report, “Industry leaders and executives have refuted claims by politicians that crypto mining is an environmental disaster.” In April, US lawmakers called on the EPA to look into crypto mining, a hot topic since the January subcommittee hearing . While the crypto news wires have influenced investor sentiment, the crypto market will also be mindful of the Fed monetary policy decision. Bitcoin (BTC) Slips Ahead of Wednesday’s Policy Decision At the time of writing, BTC was down 0.01% to $38,508. A mixed morning saw BTC rise to a morning high of $38,645 before easing back. Investor angst over the Fed’s monetary policy decision has pegged BTC back. Negative sentiment towards Fed monetary policy has resulted in a stronger correlation between BTC and the NASDAQ 100. At the time of writing, the NASDAQ 100 mini was up 46.5 points. Earlier today, the NASDAQ was up 120 points before easing back. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Record high U.S. job openings, resignations likely to fuel wage inflation U.S. lawmakers in 16 states to introduce laws to protect transgender youth Jupiter closes emerging Europe fund -spokesperson Oil falls 2% as China lockdowns outweigh proposed EU Russia oil ban Google faces internal battle over research on AI to speed chip design Universal Music first-quarter subscription and streaming revenue up 20% || Traverse City Police: Woman transfers $3,980 to Bitcoin: Apr. 5—TRAVERSE CITY — A woman transferred $3,980 to Bitcoin after she received text messages from someone identifying themselves as the general manager of the medical marijuana business where she works.
Traverse City Police Department's Sgt. Matt Richmond said the person requested the 29-year-old employee take pictures of the building, get money from the business' safe at the 700 Block of Parsons and that the cash withdrawn be put into Bitcoin.
As a result, he said, the woman physically removed cash from the safe and made two separate deposits into Bitcoin, one for $2,990 and one for $990, a total of $3,980.
Sgt. Richmond said that, after making the deposit, the callers got a little more agitated and wanted more money, at which point the woman became suspicious and didn't deposit any more money at the Bitcoin Depot ATM where she had made the previous two deposits. The woman then contacted the business' owner, who then contacted police.
When the real store manager found out, Richmond said, he wanted the situation looked into as a possible scam.
Richmond said scams are frequent, and Bitcoin is a new, or different, method of taking money from people.
Follow Jessica McLean for more stories at @journalistjam on Twitter. || Stocks rally after Fed hikes rates, crude jumps: By Herbert Lash NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rallied and Treasury yields fell on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 50 basis points as expected and said it would begin to reduce its balance sheet in June in a decision seen as less hawkish than some feared. The U.S. central bank set its federal funds rate to a range between 0.75% and 1% in a unanimous decision that gave the benchmark overnight rate its biggest bump in 22 years. There was little initial reaction to a policy statement that mostly met expectations. But when Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the Fed was not "actively considering" a 75 basis-point rate hike, stocks rallied and bond yields reversed earlier gains. "The key turning point was when he said they were not actively considering 75 bps," said Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist at Allspring Global Investments. "At worst, the Fed wants to meet market expectations. At best, they want to go slower or lower than what the market was pricing," he said. The dollar index fell 0.86% and the euro rose 0.89% to $1.0614, while the yield on 10-year Treasury notes fell 3.1 basis points to 2.927%. Risk assets rallied, causing the U.S. dollar to "soften a touch, a classic 'buy the rumor, sell the fact' trade, while also sparking demand for Treasuries," said Michael Brown, head of market intelligence at Caxton in London. "Although hawkish in its own right, the decision is somewhat dovish compared to the market's lofty expectations," he said. MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe closed up 1.67%. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 2.81%, the S&P 500 gained 2.99% and the Nasdaq Composite added 3.19%. [.N] Stocks closed lower in Europe on disappointing earnings and investor uncertainty before the Fed's decision. The pan-European STOXX 600 index dropped 1.1%, with retailers leading sector losses, and major regional indexes also fell. Story continues Germany's 10-year government bond traded near multi-year highs, hitting its highest yield since June 2015 at 1.036%, after European Central Bank board member Isabel Schnabel said a rate hike in July was possible. Overnight in Asia, many Chinese and Japanese stock markets were closed. Oil prices rose about 5% as the European Union, the world's largest trading bloc, spelled out plans to phase out imports of Russian oil, offsetting demand worries in top importer China. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed a phased oil embargo on Russia over its war in Ukraine, as well as sanctioning Russia's top bank, in a bid to deepen Moscow's isolation. U.S. crude futures gained $5.40 to settle at $107.81 a barrel and Brent settled up $5.17 at $110.14. Gold bounced higher after Powell flagged risks to the economy from soaring inflation. Earlier, U.S. gold futures settled down 0.1% at $1,868.8 an ounce. The global monetary tightening cycle has reached a symbolic milestone, with yields on German, British and U.S. 10-year government debt topping 1%, 2% and 3% respectively, levels not seen in years. That in turn has raised borrowing costs for businesses and households. The Bank of England is expected to lift British rates on Thursday by a quarter of a percentage point, which would be its fourth hike in a row to quell surging prices. Graphic: US dollar and treasury - https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/lbpgnymkgvq/US%20dollar%20and%20treasury.JPG The Aussie dollar gained as much as 1.3%, and local shares fell, after the Australian central bank's bigger-than-expected 25 basis-point rate increase on Tuesday. Bitcoin rose 5.68% to $39,871.90 after earlier trading lower. Graphic: Europe's natural gas imports from Russia - https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/zdvxogjmepx/Pasted%20image%201651650909918.png (Reporting by Herbert Lash in New York; Additional reporting by Saqib Ahmed and Chuck Mikolajczak in New York and Huw Jones in London; Editing by Alex Richardson and Matthew Lewis) || The Dow has dropped more than 4,000 points since the beginning of 2022: Wall Street ozgurdonmaz/iStock The stock market continued to plunge on Monday as inflation concerns and the prospect of more interest rate hikes drove up the value of U.S. Treasury notes, Reuters reports . The Wall Street Journal described a "broad selloff" that left "investors with few places to shelter from the market's tumult." Tech, industry, energy, and even cryptocurrency were all caught in the downward spiral. Bitcoin is down more than 50 percent from its peak of around $69,000 in November. Fortune reports that as professional investors have entered the cryptocurrency market, "prices of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have increasingly begun to move in tandem with the market ." As of Monday afternoon, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 400 points since the opening bell and more than 4,000 points since the beginning of 2022. "Markets are continuing to re-price inflation risks as it becomes more evident that inflation is likely to be with us for longer than some people had hoped," Chris Zaccarelli, the chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance in Charlotte, North Carolina, told Reuters . You may also like Trump's increasingly costly lawsuits: 'Witch hunt' or a modicum of justice? 5 cartoons about the leaked Roe draft Nepali mountaineer breaks his own world record on Mount Everest || Jumia Still Isn’t a Buy on Its UPS Partnership News. Here’s Why.: Jumia Technologies(NYSE:JMIA) rocketed yesterday on thenews of a partnershipwith shipping giantUnited Parcel Services(NYSE:UPS). The African e-commerce company will now use UPS to improve delivery efficiency, especially in the critical “Last Mile.” JMIA stock leapt almost 25% on the news to close at the highest levels of the year.
The question is whether to jump in now or wait for lower prices. The price action says to wait for a cheaper level. Selling puts allows you to get paid now for waiting to be a buyer at lower levels.
JMIA stock did have a big day yesterday, closing up $2.34 to $11.82. Shares, however, closed well off their intra-day high of $12.53. Jumia opened up higher this morning only to immediately succumb to selling pressure. This type of two-day price action is usually a sign of fatigue. The buyers have become exhausted and the sellers have taken control. Lower buy points may be in the offing.
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Options trading exploded on the news yesterday as well. This was especially true in the short-term April 8 expiration calls. For example, the April 8 $11 calls saw more than 7,000 contracts trade versus just 524 open interest. The April 8 $13 calls traded 4,500 contracts versus just 19 open interest. It’s unusual volume, to say the least.
• 7 No-Brainer Stocks to Buy for April
This spike in options trading is a telltale sign of speculative excess. It is a reliable contrarian bearish indicator, at least in the short-term. The massive call buying drove implied volatility (IV) up sharply from under 80 to over 100, making option prices much more expensive.
This makes selling puts to buy at lower levels even more appealing. As of this morning, the May 6 $10 puts are priced around 90 cents. You can collect $90 per contract by selling these puts. It also means you are a willing buyer at $9.10. ($10 strike less 90-cent premium received.) For reference, JMIA stock closed at $9.48 before the UPS deal was announced.
Investors looking to add Jumia stock to their portfolio should wait for a further pullback before buying. Using a put selling strategy is a viable way to take advantage of rich option premiums and get paid for your patience.
On the date of publication, Tim Biggamdid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
Tim spent 13 years as Chief Options Strategist at Man Securities in Chicago, four years as Lead Options Strategist at ThinkorSwim and three years as a Market Maker for First Options in Chicago. Tim makes weekly appearances on Bloomberg TV “Options Insight”, Business First AM “Trader Talk”, TD Ameritade Network “Morning Trade Live” and CBOE-TV “Vol 411” to discuss everything from volatility and option related.
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The postJumia Still Isn’t a Buy on Its UPS Partnership News. Here’s Why.appeared first onInvestorPlace. || Top Research Reports for PepsiCo, T-Mobile & BlackRock: Monday, April 4, 2022 The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP), T-Mobile US, Inc. (TMUS), and BlackRock, Inc. (BLK). These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today. You can see all of today’s research reports here >>> Shares of PepsiCo have outperformed the Zacks Beverages - Soft drinks industry over the past one year period (+21.9% vs. +16.7%) on the back of strong operating performance, as reflected in the recent quarterly report when volume growth and robust price/mix drove outperformance. Earnings were in line with estimates and improved year over year. The company also benefits from investments in brands, go-to-market systems, supply chains, manufacturing capacity, and digital capabilities to build competitive advantages. It also gains from the resilience and strength of global beverage and convenient food businesses. In 2022, it expects to retain the strength and momentum witnessed in 2021. However, PepsiCo witnessed margin pressures in fourth quarter 2021 driven by impacts of supply-chain disruptions and the negative effects of the inflationary labor, transportation and commodity costs. (You can read the full research report on PepsiCo here >>> ) Shares of T-Mobile have outperformed the Zacks Wireless National industry over the year to date basis (+12.7% vs. +3.7%). The company continues to expand its 5G network to bring fast and affordable service across the country. It announced a series of steps to accelerate 5G developer innovation. Initiatives include a new developer platform, innovation center, venture investments, T-Mobile Accelerator participants and 5G partnerships with Disney and Red Bull. The Zacks analyst believes that dubbed 5G Forward, these moves will strengthen the 5G innovation ecosystem and help creators build the 5G future. T-Mobile’s commitment to building the world’s best nationwide 5G network is likely to bring superfast speeds to urban and rural locations. Story continues However, it operates in a fiercely competitive and almost saturated U.S. telecom market. Low-priced plans for consumers and small enterprises have not improved the bottom line. Promotional activities to lure customers from rivals hurt its profitability. (You can read the full research report on T-Mobile here >>> ) Shares of BlackRock have outperformed the Zacks Financial - Investment Management industry over the past one year period (+0.2% vs. -9.7%). The Zacks analyst believes that the company has an impressive earnings surprise history. Its earnings surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing four quarters. Supported by a strong liquidity position, BlackRock continues with efforts to restructure the equity business. This, along with strategic acquisitions, will likely keep aiding revenue growth and help in expanding its market share and footprints globally. Steadily improving assets under management (AUM) balance will likely further support the top line. Its capital deployment activities look sustainable, through which it will keep enhancing shareholder value. However, elevated expenses (owing to higher administration costs) might hurt profits to some extent. The company’s high dependence on overseas revenues is another concern. (You can read the full research report on BlackRock here >>> ) Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP), Charter Communications, Inc. (CHTR) and Block, Inc. (SQ). Sheraz Mian Director of Research Note: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>> Today's Must Read Momentum in PepsiCo's (PEP) Snacking Business to Aid Growth 5G Leadership & Customer Growth to Drive T-Mobile (TMUS) Buyouts, AUM Balance Aid BlackRock (BLK), High Costs Ails Featured Reports ADP Rides on Strategic Buyouts Amid Technological Challenges The Zacks analyst likes ADP's buyout strategy to boost its position in the human capital management market. Pressure to remain technologically updated to meet varying client demands remains a concern. Mobile & Internet Subscriber Gain Benefits Charter (CHTR) Per the Zacks analyst, higher subscriber strength in residential and commercial internet services along with broadening Spectrum Mobile user base is driving Charter's top line. Block (SQ) Banks on Solid Cash App Adoption, Bitcoin Growth Per the Zacks analyst, Block is benefiting from strong Cash App engagement and its growing active customer base. Further, growing bitcoin revenues owing to robust Cash App are contributing well. Illumina (ILMN) Banks on Strategic Pacts amid Stiff Rivalry The Zacks analyst is optimistic about lllumina's recent partnerships including Agendia pact intended to advance the use of NGS for decentralized oncology testing. Stiff Competition remains a concern. Investments Aid Ameren (AEE), High Emission Expenses Woe Per the Zacks analyst, systematic investment in infrastructure project boosts Ameren's growth. Yet the stock bears high expenditure to comply with air emission regulations that may hurt its results. RH Banks on Strategic Initiatives Amid Supply-Chain Woes RH's focus on strategic initiatives for improving profit margins as well as solid performance of new galleries is encouraging, per the Zacks analyst. Yet, supply-chain disruptions are risks. Acquisitions Drive Humana (HUM), High Costs Hurt Per the Zacks Analyst, buyouts have helped the company to expand business and achieve long-term growth. However, escalating expenses continue to weigh down on the margins. New Upgrades Cactus (WHD) to Gain From Higher Wellhead Equipment Sales The Zacks analyst is upbeat about Cactus' higher sales of wellhead and production-related equipment due to the rising customer drilling activity. This will get translated into increased cash flows. Dow (DOW) Gains on Cost Actions, Project Investment According to the Zacks analyst, Dow is well placed to benefit from cost synergy savings and productivity initiatives and its investment in high-return growth projects. Acquisitions and Expansion Moves Aid Steel Dynamics (STLD) Per the Zacks analyst, acquisitions will expand the company's product portfolio and shipping capabilities. Expansion actions should also add to its capacity and boost profitability. New Downgrades Biogen (BIIB) Hurt by Slow Aduhelm Launch, Competition The Zacks analyst believes Aduhelm's launch has been slow due to reimbursement-led uncertainty. Increased competition is hurting Spinraza sales. Multiple generic launches are hurting Tecfidera sales. Burlington Stores (BURL) Grapples With Higher SG&A Expenses Per the Zacks analyst, Burlington Stores has been witnessing higher SG&A expenses on increased product-sourcing costs as well as elevated freight costs. This has been hurting margins for a while now. Higher Costs From Rasmussen Buyout Ail American Public (APEI) Per the Zacks analyst, American Public has been facing higher costs and expenses, mainly attributed to the inclusion of the Rasmussen University, increase in professional fees, and advertising costs. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) : Free Stock Analysis Report BlackRock, Inc. (BLK) : Free Stock Analysis Report PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP) : Free Stock Analysis Report Charter Communications, Inc. (CHTR) : Free Stock Analysis Report TMobile US, Inc. (TMUS) : Free Stock Analysis Report Block, Inc. (SQ) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research || SolidProof Expands its Services to Provide Top-Tier Crypto Marketing Solutions: SolidProof, one of the leading auditors in the crypto industry, has recently added crypto marketing services to its offer. The German-based company is known for providing reliable KYC and smart contract audits. From here on, it also allows users to pick from a versatile suite of crypto marketing and promotional tools for their projects.
Handewitt, Germany, May 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Solidproof aims to provide all the services that any established crypto marketing agency offers and more. For instance, clients can choose to build awareness for their crypto projects through press releases, AMAs, and social media posts. Also, they can pay for high-quality content on popular websites in the crypto community, such as Cointelegraph, Bitcoin.com, BeInCrypto, CryptoPotato, CryptoNews, CoinGape, iHodl, DailyHodl, CryptoBriefing, CryptoAdventure, and more.
More lucrativeSolidProof crypto marketing packagesdeliver cryptocurrency press releases on global platforms with advanced reach, such as Bloomberg, Nasdaq, Yahoo, Business Insider or Cointelegraph, Bitcoin.com and all the popular crypto news websites. Furthermore, the company allows clients to reach Asian markets, including China and Korea, with bespoke packages for those specific sectors.
Clients can have their pick from a full-service suite of crypto marketing services while benefitting from Solidproof’s expert support.
About Solidproof
Solidproofis a German company specializing in auditing smart contracts and identifying vulnerabilities and risks through manual and automatic methods. Since its inception, Solidproof has brought numerous innovations to the crypto auditing table, such as a “live tracker” feature, showing 500 projects currently within its ecosystem. Another will be an auto auditing tool enabling developers to auto-review their projects faster and more efficiently than manual testing.
The recent addition of crypto marketing services to its offer gives developing projects another reason to use Solidproof before launching.
For more information about Solidproof, please follow the links below:
Website|Crypto Marketing Services|Twitter|Telegram|Facebook.
CONTACT: Mails Nielsen MAKE Solutions UG Hello (at) solidproof.io || Physical Gold And Gold Equities Have Helped Offset Market Losses: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
The U.S. economy contracted 1.4% in the first quarter, leading some investors and analysts to raise the specter of the dreaded “R” word: recession. This, combined with historically high inflation and expectations that the Federal Reserve will raise rates faster than anticipated, could point to trouble ahead for a market already trying to grapple with war in Eastern Europe, ongoing Covid lockdowns and more.
Investors, in fact, may be pricing in an economic downturn.
Below is the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index divided by U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Named for legendary investor Warren Buffett, who once called the ratio the best gauge of stock valuations, the “Buffett indicator” has also served as an interesting leading indicator. As you can see, valuations have historically peaked and then started to roll over between three and five quarters before a recession took place, the one exception being the pandemic-triggered recession in 2020. We’re currently seeing the indicator reverse course, but the difference this time is that stocks have never been so overvalued compared to the U.S. economy, making the risk even greater.
There are a number of things investors can do in advance of a possible recession, and that includes having exposure to physical gold as well as gold mining stocks. Both asset classes have historically helped investors offset potential market losses, and I believe there’s good reason to believe they may do so again.
Take a look below. Going back 40 years, in every instance when the S&P 500 has fallen into a bear market—that is, when it fell more than 20% off its recent peak—physical gold and gold mining stocks have outperformed, by as much as 41 basis points in the case of gold stocks during the dotcom bubble in 2000. The price of the yellow metal, meanwhile, delivered positive returns in all but one occasion, and that’s when the whole world shut down in response to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results, of course, but I still like gold and gold stocks as a potential hedge against recessionary risk.
In more recent years, gold has had to compete with Bitcoin as a store of value. I also like Bitcoin, but unlike its digital cousin, gold has a centuries-long track record and enjoys near-universal trust and acceptance. Gold also has lower volatility than Bitcoin, is held by dozens of central banks and remains one of the most liquid assets on earth. In 2021, the precious metal did more than $130 billion in trading volume every day on average. Only euros, pound sterlings, U.S. Treasuries and S&P 500 stocks traded more.
Here at U.S. Global Investors, we have a history as pioneers in gold mining investment, and our team brings valuable background in geology and industry finance.
That said, we’re proud to offer mutual fund investors two ways to invest in gold mining stocks: theGold and Precious Metals Fund (USERX)andWorld Precious Minerals Fund (UNWPX).While USERX focuses chiefly on the largest gold and precious metal miners, often called the “seniors,” UNWPX provides increased exposure to junior and intermediate explorers and producers for added growth potential.
In the first quarter of the year, both funds performed exactly as they were designed to perform. While the market fell 4.6% in the first three months, our gold funds delivered positive returns, with UNWPX increasing 1.9% and USERX up 10.3%.
ExploreUSERXandUNWPXtoday!
Originallypublishedby U.S. Global Investors on May 5, 2022.
For more news, information, and strategy, visitETF Trends.
Please consider carefully a fund’s investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. For this and other important information, obtain a fund prospectusby visitingwww.usfunds.comor by calling 1-800-US-FUNDS (1-800-873-8637). Read it carefully before investing. Foreside Fund Services, LLC, Distributor. U.S. Global Investors is the investment adviser.
Total Annualized Returns as of 03/31/2022:
[{"Fund": "Gold and Precious Metals Fund", "One-Year": "12.63%", "Five-Year": "12.83%", "Ten-Year": "1.35%", "Gross Expense Ratio": "1.60%"}, {"Fund": "World Precious Minerals Fund", "One-Year": "-5.14%", "Five-Year": "2.57%", "Ten-Year": "-4.46%", "Gross Expense Ratio": "1.83%"}, {"Fund": "S&P 500 Index", "One-Year": "10.42%", "Five-Year": "10.71%", "Ten-Year": "14.70%", "Gross Expense Ratio": "n/a"}]
Expense ratios as stated in the most recent prospectus.Performance data quoted above is historical. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Results reflect the reinvestment of dividends and other earnings. For a portion of periods, the fund had expense limitations, without which returns would have been lower. Current performance may be higher or lower than the performance data quoted. The principal value and investment return of an investment will fluctuate so that your shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than their original cost. Performance does not include the effect of any direct fees described in the fund’s prospectus which, if applicable, would lower your total returns. Performance quoted for periods of one year or less is cumulative and not annualized. Obtain performance data current to the most recent month-end atwww.usfunds.comor 1-800-US-FUNDS.Gold, precious metals, and precious minerals funds may be susceptible to adverse economic, political or regulatory developments due to concentrating in a single theme. The prices of gold, precious metals, and precious minerals are subject to substantial price fluctuations over short periods of time and may be affected by unpredicted international monetary and political policies. We suggest investing no more than 5% to 10% of your portfolio in these sectors.TheS&P 500is a stock market index that tracks the stocks of 500 large-cap U.S. companies. The Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index is an index of thirty precious metal mining companies that is traded on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, or more simply the Wilshire 5000, is a market-capitalization-weighted index of the market value of all American-stocks actively traded in the United States.Gross domestic product is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period by countries.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || US Labor Department Has ‘Grave Concerns’ About Fidelity’s Plan for Bitcoin in 401(k) Retirement Plans, Wall Street Journal Reports: Don't miss CoinDesk'sConsensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.
Fidelity Investment’s plan to allow for the inclusion of bitcoin in its operated 401(k) accounts is facing headwinds from the U.S. Labor Department, which regulates company-sponsored retirement plans, according to a report fromThe Wall Street Journal.
• “We have grave concerns with what Fidelity has done,” Ali Khawar, acting assistant secretary of the Employee Benefits Security Administration, told the Wall Street Journal.
• Khawar highlighted the speculative nature of cryptocurrency and the hype around the fear of missing out as reasons his department is concerned about the move.
• Fidelityannounced earlier in the weekthat it plans to offer bitcoin as an investment option for its 401(k) managed accounts.
• The financial giant manages retirement accounts for 23,000 companies in the U.S.
• Fidelity caps bitcoin holdings at 20% of the account’s value.
• Khawar has said that crypto has “intriguing use cases” but needs “maturing” before it's suitable to be placed into a retirement savings account.
• “For the average American, the need for retirement savings in their old age is significant,” he is quoted as saying. “We are not talking about millionaires and billionaires that have a ton of other assets to draw down.”
• Fidelity said that its bitcoin (BTC) offering represents a “continued commitment to evolving and broadening its digital assets offerings amidst steadily growing demand for digital assets across investor segments.”
Fidelity CEO Abby Johnson is scheduled to speak atConsensus 2022in June.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
|
Trend: no change || Prices: 29562.36, 29267.22, 28627.57, 28814.90, 29445.96, 31726.39, 31792.31, 29799.08, 30467.49, 29704.39
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2020-05-07]
BTC Price: 9951.52, BTC RSI: 81.99
Gold Price: 1721.80, Gold RSI: 57.02
Oil Price: 23.55, Oil RSI: 53.12
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Binance Donated $2.4M in Coronavirus Medical Supplies; CZ Pledges More: Binance says its pouring millions into the global fight against the coronavirus. In an ask-me-anything (AMA) Friday, CEO Changpeng Zhao said his exchange has committed at least $2.4 million in crypto to buy sorely needed COVID-19 medical supplies and plans to donate up to $2 million more through its philanthropic arm, the Binance Charity Foundation (BCF). We are donating physical supplies, masks, other medical supplies, hopefully, eventually, ventilators. Zhao said. He estimated Binances total contributions will add up to somewhere around $5 million. Related: Major Crypto Firms Including Binance, Civic, Tron Targeted in Flood of Lawsuits While Zhao said Binance had already donated the $2.4 million, BCFs website only noted $1 million donated so far. Zhao said these supplies are shipping directly to hospitals in need. BCFs early efforts focused on China: it has delivered hundreds of thousands of personal protective equipment (PPE) items to 300 Chinese hospitals as of March 20, according to BCFs website . PPE will now flow to other sickened countries. I think theres a shipment going to Italy this week, Zhao said, and then hopefully we will be able to cover the U.S., Germany and some of the other countries that are really severely impacted. Related: Coronavirus Second Order Effects and Improving on Bitcoin With BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen BCF has also raised about $200,000 in crypto from the public, according to Zhao. AMA Much of the AMA focused on Binances recent acquisition of CoinMarketCap (CMC). Zhao repeatedly said he has no plans to interfere with CMCs independent operations or turn it into a traffic feed for Binance, already the worlds largest exchange by volume . Many observers questioned whether CMC would remain independent after first hearing about the acquisition. He ran through a number of recent Binance announcements. The exchange opened a South African Rand fiat on-ramp, launched its first mining pool , partnered with the Brave browser and cut leveraged tokens in the past two weeks. Binance also opened its Korean exchange for account registration on April 2 . That exchange shares liquidity with Binance though the Binance Cloud platform. Related Stories How Blockchain Tech Can Make Coronavirus Relief More Effective Ether-Bitcoin Price Volatility Spread Hits 4-Month Low View comments || Disney+ streaming amid coronavirus is boosting Hasbro’s Baby Yoda toy sales: While Americans are staying home and social distancing amid thespread of coronavirus, they’re watching more television, and subscription streaming services are benefiting—particularly Netflix and Disney+.
Disney (DIS) shared in February that Disney+ hadamassed 28.6 million subscriberssince its launch in November, and it hasn’t updated that number since. ButForbes reported this week, using data from Antenna, that during just the March 14 to March 16 weekend—when drastic social distancing truly began in many U.S. cities—Disney+ sign-ups tripled compared to the weekend before. (On Tuesday, Disney+ launched in Europe.)
The Disney+ boost is also boosting Hasbro’s licensed toy sales, thanks in particular to the rabid popularity of the “Baby Yoda” character from the Disney+ original Star Wars show “The Mandalorian.” (On the show, the character is only called “The Child.”)
That was already the case before coronavirus, but the current increase in stay-at-home streaming has continued to stoke the trend.
“We clearly have seen that streaming has become more of a force in making connections with consumers and driving merchandising,” Hasbro (HAS) CEOBrian Goldner told Yahoo Finance on Tuesday. “That’s always been a question: Could streamed content drive merchandising? And clearly Baby Yoda has done that. We saw that in the fourth quarter with some of our product directly related to ‘The Mandalorian.’ Our pre-sales around Baby Yoda have been incredibly robust and we’re very excited to ship Baby Yoda late spring.”
Indeed, Hasbro’s Baby Yoda products won’t come out until spring (Disney didn’t want the toys anywhere online before “The Mandalorian” had premiered, so as not to ruin the surprise of the character), but they have been available for pre-order for months. And one extremely popular animatronic Baby Yoda toy won’t come until the 2020 holiday season, but sold out in pre-order on the Disney website after a single preview in February on “Good Morning America.”
Hasbro CEO Goldner says that amid coronavirus,the biggest boost Hasbro is seeing is to sales of its games, including Monopoly, Life, Operation and Play-Doh products, since kids are home from school.
But the Disney magic continues to benefit Hasbro, not just from “Star Wars” merchandise but also from “Frozen,” other Disney Princess items, and Marvel toys. Back in 2016, CNNMoney wrote that Hasbro “should rename itself Disney Toys.” This year, Hasbroextended its licensing contract with Disneyfor an undisclosed length of time.
Because nearly all themovie theaters in America are shut down due to coronavirus, movie studios are releasing films on streaming services earlier than planned (Disney did it with “Frozen 2,” Universal is doing it with “Trolls”), and that’s benefiting Hasbro as well.
“We’re seeing that overall Star Wars sales are performing well year-to-date, because the movie [‘Rise of Skywalker’] was incredibly popular, and then the home entertainment window has come more quickly, as has ‘Frozen 2.’ Disney has advanced those windows and made those home entertainment windows available to consumers more quickly on Disney+. We clearly see Disney+ as a major advantage to Disney and also to licensees of Disney like Hasbro.”
Hasbro stock closed Tuesday up 22%, but is still down 25% in the past month as coronavirus causes job losses and stokes fears of a weak holiday shopping season.
—
Daniel Roberts is an editor-at-large at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
Read more on how coronavirus is hitting a wide range of industries:
Coronavirus puts 'extreme pressure' on all three pillars of Disney's business
Chef Tom Colicchio on coronavirus: Restaurants should stay closed, even for takeout
Movie theaters seek bailout as coronavirus devastates business
Adidas CEO emailed store employees about coronavirus: ‘Closing is easy, staying open requires courage’
Bitcoin is crashing even more than stocks amid coronavirus || Natural Gas Price Forecast – Natural Gas Markets Run Into Resistance: Natural gas markets initially tried to rally during the trading session during the day on Monday but found the $2.00 level to be far too resistive to continue going higher. That being the case, the market looks likely to continue to struggle to get above there for a significant move, but it certainly looks as if it is finding buyers underneath, so it is possible that we could see this market turn around and try to break out to the upside but there are a whole plethora of reasons to worry about trouble above. NATGAS Video 05.05.20 The first one is the obvious $2.00 level, an area that should continue to cause a lot of psychological resistance. Furthermore, if the market were to break above the $2.00 level it has a significant amount of resistance extending to the $2.10 level, based upon the previous trading action. If we can clear that level, then it is likely that we go looking towards the 200 day EMA above. The 200 day EMA is a massive technical indicator that will attract a lot of attention, so clearing that could kick off the longer-term uptrend. While there is still significant oversupply out there, the reality is that there are going to be a ton of bankruptcies in the natural gas sector, and that will bring down supply eventually. At this point, traders will probably try to “front run” that wave of insolvencies. The trick of course is to time that move correctly, something that is not easy to do. In the short term, it looks like we may pull back towards the $1.85 level where the 50 day EMA sits. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Crude Oil Price Update -Trying to Cross to Strong Side of Short-Term 50% Level GBP/USD Price Forecast – British Pound Pulls Back to Kickoff Week GBP/JPY Price Forecast – British Pound Reaches Bottom of Range Silver Price Daily Forecast – Support At $14.60 Stays Strong USD/JPY Price Forecast – US Dollar Dips Slightly Bitcoin Trades Like the S&P 500, and is Testing Resistance || Blockchain Bites: What the Bitcoin Halving Means for Miners and Prices: Predictions and price models proliferate ahead ofBitcoin’s programmatic halving, expected in less than two weeks.
While some are turning to esoteric economic models to make the claim that the occasion will be bullish for thelargest cryptocurrency by market cap, others believe it’ll be a non-event. Still, the halving is already showing real-world effects, with major mining manufacturers slashing prices and small-time investors… investing. (To be fair, these trends could also be attributed to COVID-19-led market distortions.) Here’s the story:
You’re readingBlockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’snewsletters here.
Related:First Mover: Bitcoin Now Crushing Gold After Biggest Price Jump in Six Weeks
Halving Predictions: Mining & Price
• Hut 8, one of the largestpublicly listed mining companies,is likely to be affected by the incomingbitcoinhalving event. The firm’s profitability has declined over several quarters, its mining rigs are struggling to compete and it carries a heavy load of fixed interest debt. CoinDesk Research takes an in-depth look into Hut 8’s financials and risks in a free report, available fordownload here.
• Meanwhile, mining manufacturer Bitmain is said to have booked over $300 million in revenue for the year to date. (The Block) Still, the firm has already begunmarking down the pricesof its machines ahead of the halving event.
• Bitcoin’s third halving, less than two weeks away, is often touted as a catalyst for a price surge. It’s certainly led to asurge in interestand speculation around the cryptocurrency. Yet, some traders thinkthe halving will be negligible compared with other macro-level eventslike unprecedented central bank monetary policies as well as the everyday trading levels on exchanges.
• However, believers in Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow model are predicting a bullish run after the halving. This esoteric economic model tracks a commodity’s existing supply against how quickly new stock enters the market. “This hypothesis … is that scarcity, as measured by S2F, directly drives value,” PlanB reportedly said. Decrypt’s Colin Harpertakes a lookat the theory.
• Forbes also weighs in on the debate, with contributor Luke Fitzpatrick predicting “a new class of crypto millionaires may emerge.” (Forbes)
Messagin’ MnuchinIn a letter addressed to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin,11 members of Congress,suggest blockchain and other distributed technologies could boost liquidity and help distribute federal stimuli during the COVID-19 crisis. “Such steps will ensure both that America retains its technological advantage and that relief is delivered quickly to the small businesses and individuals who need it most,” the letter reads.
See also:Bitcoin Halving, Explained
Silver Linings?Silvergate Bankadded 46 crypto customersin the first quarter and saw fee income and deposits increase from its existing client base. COVID-19-led market volatility is cited by the bank as cause for an increase in deposits, according to the company’s earnings report.
Related:First Mover: For Bitcoin Prices, Inflation Headlines May Matter More Than the Reality
Nasdaq Taps CordaTheNasdaq stock exchange has partnered with R3to offer a platform for digital asset marketplaces on the Corda blockchain. As of today, capital markets participants can use Corda to support the issuance, trading, settlement and custody of digital assets.
Skew & KyteSkew, a crypto derivatives data aggregator, haslaunched a trade execution platform and raised $5 millionto help build out its new brokerage services. Partnering with UK-based Kyte Broking, skewTrading is focused on attracting institutional investors.
Stop, Stop. Stuttgart To Be Kidding MeThe bitcoin exchange arm of Boerse Stuttgart has added a“stop order” trading functionto help customers deal with volatile market conditions. Stop orders help people automate aspects of their trading strategy and, rather than having to watch the market 24/7, let them establish points at which they want to buy or sell.
Lnurl Something New EverydayA new standard known asLnurlis attempting to improve the user experience of Lightning, Bitcoin’s scaling layer. Lnurl aims to simplify Lightning transactions to just a click or a QR scan. Zap, Phoenix, Breez, Blue Wallet and Wallet of Satoshi, as well as dozens of other apps, have quietly integrated the standard.
Surveilling DronesThe U.S. Department of Transportation has issued a report advocating for blockchain totrack the use of commercial drones.The distributed technology can be “used by stakeholders in the commercial drone industry, as it can ensure security and provide for identity management as well as providing a supporting role in aircraft traffic management, [drones] conflict management and flight authorization,” according to the report.
Regulatory Shifts
• The New York Department of Financial Services hasappointed Richard Weber,former chief of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service, as its new general counsel. Weber led the IRS division during the agency’s investigation into the Silk Road darkweb marketplace.
• Brian Quintenz, commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, willnot seek renominationand plans to stay on until his successor is appointed, following a five-year term. A long-time crypto advocate, Quintenz is noted for sponsoring the Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) and advocating for self regulation in the crypto industry.
Taking FlightAlexander Pack, managing partner of Dragonfly Capital Partners, hasstepped downfrom the crypto investment firm, citing “a difference in vision on the direction of the firm.” Dragonfly launched in 2018 with $100 million under management and the mission to bridge investments between the U.S. and Asia.
Riding on BisonDecentralized finance protocolKeep Network has tapped Bison Trails,a Libra Association member, to provide non-custodial staking services for tBTC, an ERC-20 representation of bitcoin deposits. “Infrastructure is important because if your node is being asked to sign a message or it’s holding onto BTC as one of the shards, you ideally don’t ever want to be offline,” Bison Trails protocol specialist Viktor Bunin told CoinDesk in an interview.
Staking AheadThere are now at least61,980 addresseswith a balance in Kyber Network Crystal, an Ethereum token that fuels operations on the currency’s native exchange. This all-time-high comes ahead of a planned upgrade that would allow token holders to earn staking income on the decentralized Kyber Network.
Series ATaurus Group secured over€10 million in a Series Afunding round led by Arab Bank. The firm now looks to expand its digital asset business and open offices in London, Paris and Frankfurt.
Ripple Exec DeplatformedYouTube has suspended Ripple CTO David Schwartz’s channel.This follows quickly on Ripple’s lawsuit, which claims the streaming giant failed to redress XRP scams and Ripple impersonators in videos. “Weirdly, YouTube just decided to suspend my channel (SJoelKatz) for impersonation. I wonder who they think I was impersonating,” Schwartz tweeted.
Little Guys Go BigThe number of networkaddresses holding at least 0.1 BTC(~$770) has continued to hit all-time highs, climbing to 3,010,784 on Monday, according to data from Glassnode. Beginning in February, exchanges have seen an increase in small purchases of bitcoin.
Coinbase of DAOsTheOpenLaw LAO,or “Limited Liability Autonomous Organization,” opened Tuesday for investors looking to compliantly earn returns on the next wave of Ethereum-based projects. Initially capped at 100 accredited investors, the LAO will pursue venture capital deals via a smart contract that automatically pays out returns. If Coinbase legitimized the model first put forth by Mt. Gox, Wright said, the LAO could do the same for DAOs, said OpenLaw CEO Aaron Wright.
Crunchbase for CryptoEverest, an Ethereum-based social registry for tracking crypto projects, launched yesterday with an index of 100 decentralized projects. The service is predicted to become a “crypto Crunchbase,” according to Coinfund founder Jake Brukhman. (Decrypt)
CoinDesk Live: Lockdown Editioncontinues its popular twice-weekly virtual chats with Consensus speakers via Zoom and Twitter, giving you a preview of what’s to come atConsensus: Distributed, our first fully virtual – and fully free – big-tent conference May 11-15.
Register to join our fifth sessionThursday, April 30, with speakerHudson Jameson from the Ethereum Foundationto discuss private transactions, client improvements and dealing with FUD, hosted by Consensus organizer Nolan Bauerle. Zoom participants can ask questions directly to our guests.
Bitcoin’s price jumped above $8,100 on Wednesday,making an April gain for the fifth consecutive year all but certain,predicts CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole. The cryptocurrency is now up 26% on a month-to-date basis. “While a price pullback in the next 24 hours cannot be ruled out, a drop all the way back to levels under $6,428 looks unlikely, as technical studies are biased bullish and the speculative buzz surrounding the upcoming mining reward halving is likely to limit any losses,” he said.
Cambridge SurveyCoinDesk is working with theCambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF), an independent academic research institute at the University of Cambridge, on its 3rd Global Crypto Asset Benchmarking Study. To gather up-to-date information, the CCAF invites crypto companies to participate by completing one of the following surveysby May 1:
• As an actor in thecrypto asset mining industry
• As acrypto asset service providerworking in payments, exchange or custody
The resulting report will help us all get a better idea of where growth is happening, what it looks like, what barriers are in the way and what the short-term outlook holds. If you have any questions or feedback, you can contact the CCAF directly ata.blandin@jbs.cam.ac.uk.
Geopolitical CrisisBlockchain consultantMaya Zehavi joins The Breakdownto discuss how the COVID-19 health crisis is also a geopolitical event. On the docket is a review of how contact tracing apps are a battleground for mass surveillance, the mechanics of government intervention and the rise of localism.
• Blockchain Bites: WEF, IBM and a Chinese City Show Support for Blockchain
• Blockchain Bites: Capital-Constraining Compliance and Tether’s ‘Interoperability Bridge’ || Bitcoin development funding is led by Blockstream and Lightning Labs, says BitMEX: Blockstream and Lightning Labs are the two firms currently leading the funding for open-source bitcoin and lightning development, according to data compiled by BitMEX. Announcing the news on Saturday, BitMEX said the two firms employ the largest number of bitcoin developers. Pieter Wuille, Andrew Chow and Gregory Sanders are some of the bitcoin developers, which are currently being funded by Blockstream. Lightning Labs, on the other hand, employs at least 8 developers working on the open-source Lightning software, including Alex Bosworth, Johan Halseth, and Oliver Gugger, among others. Source: BitMEX Square Crypto is ranked third, per BitMEX, which currently employs notable bitcoin developer Matt Corallo, as well as provides grants to other bitcoin and lightning developers. Square Crypto is followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Labs Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) and Chaincode Labs. The latter, in fact, is the largest contributor to bitcoin core development, per the data. BitMEX said the current situation of bitcoin development is more healthy than it has been in the past, because of the availability of finance, transparency, and the degree of distribution among financial backers. || Bitcoin Hits Highest Level Since Black Thursday Amid Halving Buzz: Bitcoin’s rally is gathering pace with the mining reward halving now just 14 days away.
The top cryptocurrency by market value rose to $7,800 early on Monday to hit its highest level since March 12 – dubbed “Black Thursday” – when prices fell from $7,950 to $4,700 as the coronavirus pandemic crashed most markets.
At press time,bitcoinis changing hands near $7,700, representing a 100 percent gain on the low of $3,867 registered on March 13.
Related:Bitcoin Rally Pauses Near $7.8K After Longest Winning Run in 8 Months
While the major part of the recovery rally could be associated with the uptick in the S&P 500 and the global stock markets, the recent move from the April 21 low of $6,800 to $7,800 looks to have been fueled by factors other than moves in equities.
That’s evident from the fact that bitcoin rose 8 percent last week, while the S&P 500 suffered a 1.3 percent loss and oil markets cratered on oversupply concerns.
Bitcoin looks to have partly decoupled from the equity markets due to the bullish narrative surrounding the upcoming halving. “The rally is being sustained by the rapidly approaching halving,” Jehan Chu, co-founder and managing partner at Hong Kong-based blockchain investment and trading firm Keneti Capital, told CoinDesk.
See also:Bitcoin Halving, Explained
Related:Why a Startup You’ve Never Heard of Is Now Sponsoring a Bitcoin Core Developer
Bitcoin will undergo the halving process on May 12, after which the reward per block mined will drop to 6.25 BTC from the current 12.50 BTC.
A popular narrative is that halving creates a supply deficit and, thus, bodes well for bitcoin’s price. Some observers are of the opinion that the bull markets seen in 2017 and 2013 were the result of the halvings in 2016 and 2012, respectively.
“Look for prices to attempt the $10,000 level on speculative buzz leading into the halving,” Chu added. Meanwhile, Marcus Swanepoel, CEO of cryptocurrency platform Luno, said, “History tells us that we should expect an uplift in bitcoin’s price as we get closer to the halving in just a few weeks’ time. We’ve seen an increase in the price of bitcoin in previous halvings.”
Past datashows the cryptocurrency tends to hit a new market cycle top (the highest point from the preceding bear market low) in the calendar year of a halving – but before the event,according toanalyst Rekt Capital.
If the historical pattern repeats, we could see a rise to levels above $13,880 (2019 high) before the third halving, due in two weeks.
While that target looks far-fetched, a convincing break above $8,000 cannot be ruled out, as on-chain data shows a significant improvement in network activity.
For example, the seven-day average of the number of active bitcoin entities recently rose above 260,000 for the first time since June 2019, signaling an influx of new investors into the market,according toblockchain intelligence firm Glassnode.
The active entities metric counts clusters of bitcoin addresses controlled by the same network entity. It shows the number of individuals or businesses using the network, in effect.
Further, bitcoin balances on exchangescontinueto drop ahead of reward halving – a sign users are withdrawing their assets for longer-term holding. The metric appears to reflect bullish expectations tied to the halving.
What’s more, institutions and macro traders are returning to the crypto markets after last month’s crash, as suggested by the rise in open interest, or open positions, in bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) – widely considered to besynonymouswith institutional activity.
Open interest rose to 233 million last Thursdayto hit the highest level since Feb. 26, according to crypto derivativesresearch firm Skew.
However, while on-chain activity and derivatives data suggest scope for further gains, the equity markets are calling for caution.
As of Friday, the S&P 500 was up nearly 30 percent from the low of 2,192 reached on March 24 and down 17 percent from record highs. While the recovery rally looks impressive on the surface, the breadth of the move has been quite narrow, meaning the rally has been fueled by an uptick in few heavyweight stocks.
See also:Crypto Long & Short: How Oil Going Negative Could Open the Door for Bitcoin ETFs
“The S&P 500 now trades just 17 percent below its all-time high, however, the median S&P 500 constituent trades 28 percent below its record high,”saidGoldman Sachs’ chief equity strategist David Kostin.
Such rallies are often short-lived. If equities begin falling again, cash mayagainbecome a safe haven. In that case, bitcoin may come under pressure, too.
Disclosure:The author holds no cryptocurrency at the time of writing.
• Market Wrap: Ether Up 50% in 2020, Hits $200 on Sunday
• First Mover: Ether Trounces Bitcoin as Network Sees Surge in Stablecoins || Breakeven Crude Oil Production Costs Around The World: If the market price of a raw material is higher than its cost of extracting it from the crust of the earth or any other form of production, it leads to increased output. A profitable production process provides an incentive for output. When the cost of production is higher than the market price, output declines as it becomes a losing proposition. The price cycle in commodities causes prices to rise to levels where production increases. Higher output leads to growing inventories. As a market becomes more expensive, the elasticity of demand causes consumers to look for substitutes and buying declines, leading to price tops and reversals to the downside. When the price of a commodity falls below the cost of production, output slows. The demand tends to increase as consumers take advantage of lower prices, and inventories begin to decline, leading to price bottoms. The price cycle in a commodities market can change because of exogenous events, but it tends to be efficient. High prices lead to glut conditions, and low prices often create shortages, over time. Production cost is one of the critical variables that fundamental analysts use to project the path of least resistance for market prices. In the crude oil market , output costs vary according to the production location. Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States are the three leading oil-producing nations in the world, and each has different sensitivities to output costs. Saudi Arabia- Think turning on a garden hose Over half the worlds crude oil reserves are in the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia is the leading producer in the region. The Saudis have long been the most potent force within OPEC, the international oil cartel. Saudi Arabias vast reserves make production as easy as turning on a garden hose in our backyards for the country. Meanwhile, the Saudi economy depends on oil revenues. The rising costs of running the country have pushed the break-even level of the price of the energy commodity to over $80 per barrel on the Brent benchmark . While the nominal production cost of oil is the lowest in the world in Saudi Arabia at $2.80 per barrel , the requirements for revenues creates a wide gap between production economics and balancing the Saudi budget. Story continues Russia- Output costs may not matter as much in the west Russia is an enigma when it comes to the cost of production for the energy commodity. The Russians, under President Vladimir Putin, is structured as an oligarchy. A small group runs the nations economy. Therefore, the production cost of crude oil is an enigma and a state secret. In 2020, the Russian leader had said that he is comfortable with a Brent price around the $40 per barrel level. The statement could shed at least some light on the price level for the energy commodity that provides enough revenue to keep the system running smoothly. The US- The marginal producer in the world In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States was dependent on oil imports from the Middle East. Rising prices during this century, combined with reserve discoveries in shale regions, caused production to increase. Moreover, technological advances in extracting crude oil from the crust of the earth and regulatory reforms under the Trump Administration caused daily output to rise to over 13 million barrels per day, making the US the worlds leading producer and achieving the goal of independence. The US is a marginal producer. While production costs have declined, they are still around the $30 to $40 per barrel level . The US is in a position where it is a dominant marginal producer. When the price of oil rises above production costs, the output can increase. When it falls below, the US can turn off production and import inexpensive crude oil from other nations. In any commodity, the production cost is a critical factor when it comes to the fundamental supply and demand equation. Pricing cycles take prices above and below break-even output costs at times. Each leading producer has different requirements when it comes to prices, which makes a global analysis complicated and the worldwide break-even equation for crude oil an economic and geopolitical enigma. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Bitcoin and Ether see Signs of Bullish Movement? EUR/USD Daily Forecast Euro Advances on a Weaker Dollar Unlimited Support From Central Banks Keeps Markets Energised Oil Is Suffering from Market Risks Again Negative Commodity Prices Causes and Effects Breakeven Crude Oil Production Costs Around The World || Bitcoin Drops as Traders See Bearish Signals in Futures Markets: Bitcoin slid Monday to its lowest point in the past seven days, with traders saying bearish signals are appearing after the cryptocurrency’s 30 percent rebound from a market bottom in mid-March.
After recovering from the depths of the coronavirus-induced sell-off, bitcoin repeatedly failed to break above a price of $7,400.
Bitcoin(BTC) prices fell Monday by 1.6 percent to 20:45 UTC (4:45 p.m. EDT) whileetherfell 1.8 percent.
Related:Options Market Signals Doubt Bitcoin Price Will Rise After Halving
Most major digital assets were down on the day.Bitcoin cash(BCH) was down 4.8 percent,EOS(EOS) dipped 2.6 percent andbitcoin sv(BSV) lost 1.9 percent. All price changes are from 0:00 UTC.
Bitcoin futures contracts for June on exchanges such as Kraken are trading around $6,750, which suggests traders are pricing in further downside. Such “backwardation” — where futures trade at a discount to the spot price — represents a shift from last week, when futures were trading at a premium.
“Futures and our own activity indicate that speculators expect to see lower prices in the short term,” said Maxine Boonen, CEO of over-the-counter (OTC) bitcoin liquidity provider B2C2. “One particular hedge fund sold us $20 million of bitcoin today and they have usually been right.”
Early losses on Monday triggered $29 million in position liquidations for futures traders on the BitMEX exchange, exacerbating the sell-off. Hourly liquidations on BitMEX had averaged just $200,000 over the past few days.
Related:First Mover: Bitcoin Market Goes Into ‘Backwardation’ Despite Fed’s Trillions
In traditional markets, the S&P 500 of large U.S. stocks fell 1 percent as the death toll from the coronavirus continued to cast a pall. New York state, now the epicenter of the pandemic,surpassed 10,000 deaths, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday.
Constantine Kogan, a partner at crypto fund BitBull Capital, said the “macroeconomic trend isn’t positive so it will continue to put pressure on crypto,” Kogan said.
Elsewhere, gold, a classic haven asset and hedge against inflation, is currently trading up at 1.2 percent.
Although some cryptocurrency analysts and investors think bitcoin could prove to be a hedge against inflation, the yellow metal is outperforming it.
“A break below $6,500 will likely lead to another round of liquidations and send the price towards the $6,100 to $6,200 area,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at crypto investment brokerage Bequant, said of bitcoin.
“For the bulls, a break below will be particularly painful,” he said. “There really isn’t much support until the $5,000 zone. This cautious tone is supported by a shift in the futures curve.”
• Bitcoin Stuck Below $7K Even as Gold Surges to Over 7-Year High
• Crypto Long & Short: DeFi and Traditional Finance Are Forming an Unlikely Friendship || How Disruption Makes Humanity Stronger, Feat. Emerson Spartz: Emerson Spartz joins The Breakdown to discuss how creativity and digital work can flourish as people are forced to improve how they use the internet and technology. For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocketcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Stitcher , RadioPublica , IHeartRadio or RSS . Second order effects are things that happen as unexpected outcomes of something else happening. These effects can create surprising causal chains. Related: Bitcoin News Roundup for April 6, 2020 Take this for example: A pandemic makes everyone need to work from home leads to an increase in video calling leads to Walmart reporting that people are buying more shirts , but not pants. Emerson Spartz is one of the worlds foremost thinkers on virality and the internet. He founded Mugglenet the worlds biggest Harry Potter fan site as a middle school drop out, and would later found and raise tens of millions for Dose. In the past weeks, Emerson started an open crowdsourced document on the Coronavirus second order effects that has, itself, gone viral, especially among venture capitals and other investor circles trying to understand what the world looks like on the other side of this. Emerson brings a surprisingly optimistic perspective on where this could lead a generation of people who are now more fully plugged in to the internet than ever before. Related: Coronavirus Second Order Effects and Improving on Bitcoin With BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen See also: Disruption, Money and a World of Change, Feat. Niall Ferguson For more episodes and free early access before our regular 3 p.m. Eastern time releases, subscribe with Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocketcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Stitcher , RadioPublica , IHeartRadio or RSS . Related Stories Miner Perspectives on Bitcoin Halving 2020, Part 1 of a New Podcast Series Will DeFi Matter in a Post-Coronavirus World? Feat. Matt Luongo || Bitcoin Halving: What This Rare Event Could Mean for Futures Prices: The supply of bitcoin entering the market is about to be cut in half. This bitcoin halving isn’t some apocalyptic prediction; it’s just part of the DNA of the cryptocurrency.
“It’s an event that’s baked in to the ethos of bitcoin and happens about every four years,” said Sunayna Tuteja, managing director of digital assets at TD Ameritrade.
To understand why bitcoin has value at all and what the halving could mean for bitcoin tokens andbitcoin futures prices, it can be helpful to think about gold.
Scarce and Costly to Mine
Gold is produced by miners who dig it out of the ground, a process that takes lots of money to fuel equipment, pay workers, and secure permits. Part of the price of gold per ounce includes the reimbursement and profit demanded by miners for their time and expenses. And of course, gold is scarce. It’s a rare metal that’sin demand in the financial marketsand from jewelry makers to boot. It all adds to the price.
So how does bitcoin relate? Even though bitcoin is a digital currency created with computers, the code that governs the cryptocurrency ensures that it remains scarce even as there is a real-world cost to creating it. As with gold, the supply of new crypto coins is controlled by “mining”—a computationally intensive process where computers compete against each other to secure the network by solving mathematical equations. It takes powerful computers and a good bit of energy to mine bitcoin.
Miners collect bitcoins as a reward if they’re the first to create a new valid block, which is then broadcast to the rest of the network and added to the blockchain. The blockchain technology is designed to ensure the integrity of the payment system by sharing a ledger across its users.
What Is Bitcoin Halving?
To ensure that the supply of bitcoin stays limited, the code governing the cryptocurrency mandates that the rewards for mining one block are cut in half every 210,000 blocks, which (so far) happens about every four years. Right now, miners are rewarded with 12.5 bitcoin tokens for every block they mine.
Based on current mining power and network difficulty, the next halving is expected to take place in May 2020, at which time the rewards for miners will decrease to 6.25 coins. This is only the third bitcoin halving (the last two were in 2012 and 2016).
From an investing perspective, one aspect to watch for is the influence on price given the shift in supply and demand. Currently, 18 million of the 21 million bitcoin have been mined and are in circulation. With the halving, the supply of new bitcoin being mined will slow down, while the demand may stay the same or go up.
How can I tradebitcoin futuresat TD Ameritrade?
Learn more about quotes and trading capabilities.
How Might Prices React?
Tuteja believes the halving will affect bitcoin’s price, but a number of question marks remain. As the bitcoin halving countdown winds down, the knee-jerk expectation would be for price to go up, per the typical supply/demand dynamic.
But as Tuteja pointed out, the coming halving is no big secret; it’s baked into the code. Many investors believe the adjustment is already factored into the current price. In fact, if the adjustment is indeed factored in, but enough investors expect a surge that doesn’t materialize, it could even lead to a fall in the price of bitcoin.
The big price spikes associated with bitcoin—which took it to a record near $20,000 in 2017 and, after a slump, saw it surge again to more than $13,000 in 2019—haven’t occurred at the same time as the previous two halvings. But there aren’t many data points to compare.
There’s a price argument to be made both ways, but Tuteja explained that the exact price after the halving will also depend on macroeconomic events. Bitcoin has been particularly volatile as the COVID-19 pandemic essentially ground commercial activity to a halt throughout much of the world.
“From a retail investor point of view, we’re excited about the impact of the halving in generating increased awareness and interest for education,” Tuteja commented. “Based on search results, social volumes, sentiment, and so on, we’re seeing that the upcoming halving could serve as another catalyst in expanding the adoption of digital assets by mainstream investors.”
As of early April 2020, CME Bitcoin Futures (/BTC) were trading around $7,300 after taking a dive along with other asset classes amid the coronavirus-sparked selloff (see figure 1).
FIGURE 1: VOLATILE DAYS FOR BITCOIN.Like many other assets, CME Bitcoin Futures (/BTC) have seen outsize price fluctuations in early 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic swept through the world. But the largest cryptocurrency has been volatile for quite some time. Data source: CME Group. Chart source: thethinkorswim® platform from TD Ameritrade.For illustrative purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
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© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
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Trend: down || Prices: 9842.67, 9593.90, 8756.43, 8601.80, 8804.48, 9269.99, 9733.72, 9328.20, 9377.01, 9670.74
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
When Might Bitcoin Be Ready To Resume Its Bull Trend?: Two weeks ago, Bitcoin completed a 61.8% Fibonacci retracement ($7,231.40) off the June high as it fell to a low of $6,526. That low put it 52.9% below the 2019 peak. Bull Flag pattern The price correction since the June high has been normal and well-constructed, forming a potential bull flag trend continuation pattern. This can be seen as the falling parallel trend channel in the enclosed charts. BTC/USD Weekly Chart Given the significant advance in the first half of the year, and the related signs of a trend change from bearish to bullish, Bitcoin has a good chance of eventually triggering a continuation of the new bull trend. The 2019 rally exceeded several prior swing highs and the 10-week exponential moving average (ema) crossed back above the 34-week ema. Have we seen the bottom? The question now is, has the bottom of the retracement been reached or might Bitcoin pullback further than it has so far? There’s no way to know this ahead of time but we can identify some important price levels to watch going forward. As long as price stays above the $6,526 swing low, there is a chance for an upside breakout of the bull flag. If the falling trend channel is to further evolve and retain its general shape, a move up to at least the top trend line seems possible in the near-term. BTC/USD Daily Chart A decisive daily close above the downtrend line is the first sign that a bullish breakout of the flag could be in the works. At that point, additional signs of strength will be needed. Watch for a daily close above the most recent swing high of $10,540.49 for confirmation of a bullish breakout. There is also a monthly high at $9,600 from November. Bitcoin has not had a move above a prior month high since the June peak. A move above a prior month high would be an additional sign of a change in the downtrend pattern, to an uptrend. If we see further weakness Alternatively, notice that the 10-week ema has just crossed below the 34-week ema, after being above it since early-May. By itself this is bearish, and supports a bearish scenario if Bitcoin falls below the most recent swing low, thereby triggering a continuation of the downtrend off the 2019 high. If that occurs, next watch for signs of support around the $5,900 to $5,427 (78.6% Fibonacci retracement) price zone, and then for indications of a bottom and subsequent bullish reversal. Story continues Bruce Powers, CMT This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: E-mini S&P 500 Index (ES) Futures Technical Analysis – Strengthens Over 3144.00, Weakens Under 3130.00 USD/JPY Price Forecast – US Dollar Continues Building Case Against Japanese Yen AUD/USD Price Forecast – Australian Dollar Rallies Again Trouble at WTO Could Have Negative Impact on the U.K. Crude Oil Price Forecast – Crude Oil Markets Soften Up A Bit GBP/JPY Price Forecast – British Pound Continues To Power Against Japanese Yen || XRP Falls 11% In Rout: Investing.com - XRP was trading at $0.19261 by 22:41 (03:41 GMT) on the Investing.com Index on Tuesday, down 10.66% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since September 24. The move downwards pushed XRP's market cap down to $8.78017B, or 5.08% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, XRP's market cap was $20.48129B. XRP had traded in a range of $0.19171 to $0.20570 in the previous twenty-four hours. Over the past seven days, XRP has seen a rise in value, as it gained 3.22%. The volume of XRP traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $1.13639B or 1.62% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $0.1917 to $0.2236 in the past 7 days. At its current price, XRP is still down 94.15% from its all-time high of $3.29 set on January 4, 2018. Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading Bitcoin was last at $6,879.2 on the Investing.com Index, down 2.91% on the day. Ethereum was trading at $131.60 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 7.61%. Bitcoin's market cap was last at $125.24976B or 65.49% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while Ethereum's market cap totaled $14.47394B or 7.57% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Related Articles XRP Dips Below 0.19930 Level, Down 7% ETC Labs Core Rebrands to ETC Core to Clarify Difference With ETC Labs Int'l Regulator Basel Committee Calls for Prudent Rules for Crypto || Everything You Need to Know About Blockchain: Blockchain, a digital technology behind such phenomena as Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies , is finding profitable applications in more and more industries. Here’s a brief explanation of blockchain for investors interested in getting financial exposure to this increasingly important and commercially viable technology. What It Is and How It Works Blockchain is a data storage coding format. Essentially, it is a relatively new and secure way of building a database. Blockchain is entirely software based, meaning that this isn’t a piece of hardware. It’s a way of writing code. Traditional databases store information in a central server. They might back that server up to other locations, but the database is defined by one, single location. This makes the data both private and vulnerable at the same time. It’s private because the owner of that server can tightly define who can access it and who can’t. It’s vulnerable because anyone who wants to access, steal or manipulate that data knows right where to go. The system is as secure as the security on that individual server. Blockchain databases store information differently. Here is a basic summary of how it works. The Data Say you want to keep a record of transactions. You create a ledger that tracks each transaction as it comes in: Eric owes $5 to Steven Eric owes $20 to Liz Roger owes $10 to Eric The Hash To help secure this data, you create what is called a “hash function.” This is a piece of software which takes any block of text and turns it into a long series of letters and numbers based on a mathematical formula. You make it very complex, so this formula takes time and processing power to complete. For each transaction that you record in your database you generate a hash string. You then add the previous record’s hash string to each new entry. So now your database looks like this: Record 1: Eric owes $5 to Steven Hash 1: “Eric owes $5 to Steven.” generates the hash ABC123 Record 2: Eric owes $20 to Liz. ABC123 Hash 2: “Eric owes $20 to Liz. ABC123” generates the hash XYZ456 Record 3: Roger owes $10 to Eric. XYZ456 Hash 3: “Roger owes $10 to Eric. XYZ456” generates the hash TUV789 Story continues In an actual blockchain database the hash is typically 64 characters long, but this gives you the idea. This is a form of linked list because each record in the database now depends on every record that came before it. Now let’s say Steven wanted to change his entry to say, “Eric owes $20 to Steven.” This would change the hash key that his record generated. Our database would read: Record 1: Eric owes $50 to Steven Hash 1: YKW937 Record 2: Eric owes $20 to Liz. ABC123 Hash 2: XYZ456 Record 3: Roger owes $10 to Eric. XYZ456 Hash 3: TUV789 It’s immediately obvious that someone has changed the data. To make this change Steven would need to change every single record that follows the one he altered and calculate a new hash output for each one. This is why we based our hash function on a messy and complicated mathematical formula. It takes time to produce even one hash output, making it a reasonable deterrent to someone who needs to perform that calculation for every single record in the database. The Public Ledger But if we’re storing valuable information in our database it’s entirely possible that someone would be willing to spend a long time processing all those numbers. To prevent that from happening you take your database and duplicate it across 1,000 computers, all of which are linked. Each computer is called a “node” and together they comprise the public ledger. The “ledger” can also refer to the copy of the database that each computer has on it. Whenever the data on this public ledger changes, every computer on the network checks its data against the other. If one node’s data doesn’t match the network at large, that node is changed back to the consensus. So, let’s say Steven really wanted to soak me for more money. He created a new mathematically generated hash for every entry in my record, then hacked in and changed my database. That computer would check its records against the other 999, realize that something was wrong, and update its records to reflect the accurate data. To make this change, Steven would have to hack 501 computers on the network at the exact same moment in order to convince the minority of machines that they were in the wrong. Not exactly easy. Think of it like the difference between keeping a single book of transactions vs. having a room full of accountants with copies of that book, all sitting in a circle watching each other. The Key Of course, you’d like to make changes as well. It won’t do you any good if every time you update your records the network at large changes things back. So you create what is known as a cryptographic key. This key lets me log on and add information to the records, updating my database as necessary. The nodes on my network check any changes and, if they were made with the proper key, all update as needed. Here’s the thing though: you can only add data. The nature of your hash structure means you can’t ever go back and change or erase previous entries. Now, suppose you’ve gotten wind of Steven’s attempts to hack your records. You decide this means you now owe him nothing. You can’t go back and erase Record 1. Instead you add a new record saying, “Eric owes $0 to Steven because he’s a jerk.” Blocks and Chains Finally, let’s say your database is getting unwieldy. It has become difficult to run checks and mathematical processes for every single transaction in my records. Instead, what you do is begin grouping yourtransactions together. You collect every 10 transactions onto their own document which is called a “block.” Instead of assigning a hash function to every transaction, now yoiu assign a hash function to each block. This speeds up the time it takes me to record data because now you’re only running and checking mathematical formulae every 10 transactions instead of every one transaction. Your new database looks like this: Block 1: Record 1; Record 2… Record 10 Hash 1: ABC123 Block 2: Record 11; Record 12… Record 20. ABC123 Hash 2: XYZ456 Block 3: Record 21; Record 22… Record 30. XYZ456 Hash 3: TUV789 Every time your database records a tenth transaction, it “closes the block.” This means it generates a hash for that block, opens a new one and assigns the previous block’s hash as part of the new one’s data. Now that old data cannot be changed without changing the entire database after it and doing so on 501 computers at the same time. Together your blocks of data create a chain of records going back to the first entry. It is a blockchain. Why Is Blockchain Valuable? Blockchain has figured out a way, at least for now, to solve what economists call the “double spending problem” in the digital space. If you can take one object and spend or use it in multiple places at once, then that object has no actual monetary value. The context comes from currency . A dollar bill only has value if it is unique or singular. If you can spend the same bill over and over again, say by simply putting it in a photocopier and running off duplicates, then it becomes worthless. Why would anyone trade valuable products for a dollar they could just photocopy at home? Or for bills that flood the market in infinite supply? In the real world this is a problem for property like paper currency that’s easy to duplicate but is also mostly an economics issue. You can’t, for example, duplicate a loaf of bread. If you try, you will have simply baked a new one. It has also always been a concern for intellectual property industries like movies, music and publishing. Still, that was less of a problem when media was tied to physical storage and distribution, like a DVD or the pages of a book. The internet changed all that. Property online is infinitely easy to duplicate because it is made of computer code, and computer code is literally intended for duplication. Your computer operates by taking code from one source and copying it to the machine’s memory. Any movie or music file on a computer can be duplicated with nothing more than a CTRL-C and distributed infinitely over the internet. As a result, the double spending problem flourished online. Blockchain could solve that problem. The architecture of blockchain has created the first actual opportunity for maintaining unique digital ownership of property. By its nature, blockchain can only record forward, never back. This means that anything, from an album to a novel to a token of digital currency, can keep current records of who owns it. A blockchain database is intended to be copied. Let’s say you create a blockchain to track the ownership of a spy novel. You pick “The Prisoner” by Alex Berenson, copy #123456789. It is a single copy of a single book. Your record might look like this: Block 1: Liz owns “The Prisoner”; Liz gives “The Prisoner to Richard” … Alan gives “The Prisoner” to Melissa. Hash 1: ABC123 Block 2: Melissa gives “The Prisoner” to Ellen; Ellen gives “The Prisoner” to Bob. Hash 2: Block still open, no hash. We can copy this record as many times as we like and we can copy the book’s digital file over and over, but that won’t change the fact that every copy of the record says that this copy of the book belongs to Bob. If Ellen tries to open it on her tablet, the device will check the record and discover that this book doesn’t belong to her. The Bottom Line For the first time, someone seems to have figured out how to create unique property in the digital space, property that you cannot copy and paste until it has no more value. The idea of unalterable digital records and unique digital property has created an explosion of ideas, from new forms of currency to a new way to store and process data. Tips Consider talking to a financial advisor about how to get financial exposure to blockchain technology. Finding the right financial advisor who fits your needs doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with financial advisors in your area in five minutes. If you’re ready to be matched with local advisors who will help you achieve your financial goals, get started now . At this point, securities linked to companies incorporating blockchain-based technologies qualify as an alternative investment, not a core component of a basic investor portfolio. Investing in cryptocurrencies is one way to get financial exposure to blockchain technology. There are several different exchanges to choose from, with the most popular being Coinbase, GDAx and Bitfinex. These exchanges allow you purchase currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum with a debit card . With most popular currencies, including Bitcoin, you can buy fractions of a coin, so you don’t need to invest thousands of dollars to get in the game. Photo credit: ©iStock.com/ismagilov, ©iStock.com/NicoElNino, ©iStock.com/peshkov The post Everything You Need to Know About Blockchain appeared first on SmartAsset Blog . || European Equities: Trade Optimism Supports ahead of October PMI Numbers: Economic Calendar : Monday, 4 th November Spanish Manufacturing PMI (Oct) Italian Manufacturing PMI (Oct) French Manufacturing PMI (Oct) Final German Manufacturing PMI (Oct) Final Eurozone Manufacturing PMI (Oct) Final Wednesday, 6 th November German Factory Orders (MoM) (Sep) Spanish Services PMI (Oct) Italian Services PMI (Oct) French Services PMI (Oct) Final German Services PMI (Oct) Final Eurozone Markit Composite PMI (Oct) Final Eurozone Services PMI (Oct) Final Eurozone Retail Sales (MoM) (Sep) Thursday, 7 th November German Industrial Production (MoM) (Sep) ECB Economic Bulletin Friday, 8 th November German Trade Balance (Sep) French Non-Farm Payrolls (QoQ) (Q3) The Majors It was a bullish end to the week for the European majors, with the DAX30 rising by 0.73% to lead the way on the day. The EuroStoxx600 and CAC30 weren’t far behind, with gains of 0.68% and 0.56% respectively. Gains on the day came in spite of negative chatter on trade, with economic data out of China and the U.S providing support. On the geopolitical front, news late in the week of China and the U.S having doubts over a longer-term trade agreement had tested risk sentiment going into Friday’s session. The Stats It was a quiet day on the Eurozone economic calendar on Friday. There were no material stats out of the Eurozone to provide the majors with direction. The lack of stats left the majors in the hands of economic data from China and the U.S. Ahead of the European open, China’s Caixin Manufacturing PMI rose from 51.4 to 51.7 in October, supporting risk appetite. Economists had forecast a fall to 51.0. Later in the day, economic data out of the U.S also delivered support to the European majors. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 129k in October, coming in well above a forecast of 89k. While average earnings rose by just 0.2%, month-on-month, short of a forecasted 0.3% rise, year-on-year average earnings rose by 3%. The numbers were good enough to support risk, offsetting the negative stats on the day, which included disappointing manufacturing PMIs and a rise in the U.S unemployment rate. Story continues While the Manufacturing PMI rose from 47.8 to 48.3, economists had forecasted rise to 48.9. On the unemployment front, a rise from 3.5% to 3.6% was expected, which limited any negative reaction to the rise. The Market Movers For the DAX: It was a bullish day for the auto sector, as the markets brushed off the negative sentiment towards trade. Continental led the way, rallying by 2.24%. BMW and Volkswagen also made solid gains, rising by 1.02% and by 0.85% respectively. Daimler trailed the pack with a more modest 0.5% gain on the day. Banks found strong support at the end of the week. Commerzbank rose by 1.49%, with Deutsche Bank rising by 1.93%. From the CAC , bank stocks also found support. Soc Gen and BNP Paribas led the way, rising by 1.61 % and by 0.77% respectively, with Credit Agricole up by 0.73%. It was also bullish for the autos. Peugeot rallied by 2.91%, with Renault rising by 2,11% on the day. On the VIX Index The VIX Index hit red at the end of the week, falling by 6.96%. Reversing a 7.22% rise from Thursday, the VIX ended the day at 12.3 Economic data out of China and the U.S left the VIX in the red on the day, as the markets looked beyond the U.S – China trade war. Negative sentiment towards trade had provided the VIX with the prospect of a weekly rise on Thursday. The Day Ahead It’s a busy day ahead on the Eurozone economic calendar . October Manufacturing PMIs are due out of Spain and Italy, ahead of finalized numbers for France, Germany, and the Eurozone. Barring any deviation from prelims, Italy and the Eurozone’s finalized PMIs will likely have the greatest influence on the majors. Expect the DAX30 to be more sensitive to any revised figures out of Germany, however. From the U.S, September factory orders will also provide direction later in the day. On the geopolitical front, chatter on trade and political news from the UK will also have influence. Positive comments from the U.S administration over the weekend supported risk appetite early in the day. In the futures market, at the time of writing, the DAX30 was up by 33.5 points, with the Dow up by 34 points. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: NZD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – Weekly Chart Strengthens Over .6471, Weakens Under .6404 The Economy Week Ahead – Earnings, Geopolitics, Monetary Policy and Stats in Focus Economic Data and the UK Parliament Put the GBP, EUR and USD in Focus Oil Price Fundamental Daily Forecast – Buoyed by Possible Partial Trade Deal, but OPEC Still Needs to Cut Further U.S. Dollar Index Futures (DX) Technical Analysis – Weekly Chart Strengthens Over 97.140, Weakens Under 96.630 Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 02/11/19 || Bitcoin, Ripple & TRON - American Wrap: 11/26/19: Bitcoin Technical Analysis: BTC/USD Bulls Must Break $7,500 Or Be Hit By Harsh Rejection
• Bitcoin price is trading in negative territory, down some 0.90% in the second half of the session.
• BTC/USD has aggressively been within the control of the bears since 27 October.
• A rejection at $7500, strong daily resistance, could prove to be punishing.
Ripple's XRP Technical Analysis: XRP/USD Persisting Vulnerabilities Of A Potential $0.2000 Breach
• Ripple's XRP price is trading in the red by some 0.30 % in the session on Tuesday.
• XRP/USD bears are pressing for a big test of the $0.2000 price mark.
• The price is running towards a third potential consecutive session in the red.
TRX/USD Technical Analysis: TRON Is One Of The Outperformers today
• TRX/USD held up well whilst some of the other cryptocurrencies were making news lows recently.
• Now the worst seems to be over TRX has shown why it didn't break lows as it shot over 6% higher today.
• Now the price has risen, there is an internal trendline that could provide some resistance ahead.
Image Sourced from Pixabay
0
See more from Benzinga
• Bitcoin, Ripple & Litecoin - American Wrap: 11/25/2019
• Bitcoin, Ripple & TRON - American Wrap: 11/19/19
• Bitcoin, Litecoin & Ripple - American Wrap: 11/18/19
© 2019 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Ethereum and Stellar’s Lumen Daily Tech Analysis – 04/11/19: Ethereum fell by 0.83% on Sunday. Following a 0.01% loss on Saturday, Ethereum ended the week down 1.41% at $181.73.
A bullish start to the day saw Ethereum rally to an early morning intraday high $185.00 before hitting reverse.
Falling short of the first major resistance level at $185.66, Ethereum slid to a late afternoon intraday low $179.11.
Ethereum fell below the first major support level at $181.38 and the second major support level at $179.50.
Finding support late in the day, Ethereum recovered to $182 levels before a final hour pullback to $181 levels.
In spite of the pullback, Ethereum avoided another fall through the major support levels.
The extended bearish trend, formed at late April 2018’s swing hi $828.97, remained firmly intact. A reversal from June’s current year high $364.49 back through the 23.6% FIB of $257 reaffirmed the extended bearish trend.
At the time of writing, Ethereum was down by 0.18% to $181.41. A relatively bearish start to the day saw Ethereum fall from an early morning high $181.95 to a low $180.75.
Ethereum left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.
Ethereum would need to move through to $182 levels to support a run at the first major resistance level at $184.78.
Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break out from the morning high $181.95.
Barring a broad-based crypto rebound, Sunday’s high $185.0 and first major resistance level would likely limit any upside.
Failure to move through to $182 levels could see Ethereum slide deeper into the red.
A fall back to sub-$181 levels would bring the first major support level at $178.89 into play before any recovery.
Barring an extended sell-off through the day, Ethereum should steer clear of sub-$178 levels.
Major Support Level: $178.89
Major Resistance Level: $184.78
23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $257
38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $367
62% FIB Retracement Level: $543
Stellar’s Lumen slid by 4.77% on Sunday. Reversing a 1.19% rise from Saturday, Stellar’s Lumen ended the week up 4.66% at $0.068373.
A relatively bullish start to the day saw Stellar’s Lumen rise to an early morning intraday high $0.072499.
Stellar’s Lumen broke through the first major resistance level at $0.0719 before hitting reverse.
Falling short of the second major resistance level at $0.0728, Stellar’s Lumen slid to a late morning intraday low $0.068313.
Stellar’s Lumen fell through the first major support level at $0.0697 and the second major support level at $0.0685.
Through the 2ndhalf of the day, Stellar’s Lumen recovered to $0.06940 levels before sliding back to $0.06830 levels.
The extended bearish trend remained firmly intact, reaffirmed by 24thSeptember’s new swing lo $0.051614. Stellar’s Lumen continued to fall short of the 23.6% FIB of $0.1310 following a pullback from $0.13 levels in late June.
At the time of writing, Stellar’s Lumen was up 0.19% at $0.068505. A mixed start to the day saw Stellar’s Lumen rise to an early morning high $0.069083 before falling to a low $0.068377.
Stellar’s Lumen left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.
Stellar’s Lumen would need to move through to $0.06970 to support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.07110.
Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Stellar’s Lumen to break out from the morning high $0.069083.
Barring a broad-based crypto rebound through the day, the first major resistance level would likely cap any upside.
In the event of a crypto rebound, Stellar’s Lumen would likely revisit Sunday’s high $0.072499 before any pullback.
Failure to move through to $0.06970 levels could see Stellar’s Lumen hit reverse.
A fall through the morning low to sub-$0.068 levels would bring the first major support level at $0.0670 into play.
Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Stellar’s Lumen should steer clear of sub-$0.0670 levels on the day.
Major Support Level: $0.0670
Major Resistance Level: $0.0711
23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.1114
38% FIB Retracement Level: $0.1484
62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.2082
Please let us know what you think in the comments below.
Thanks, Bob
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 04/11/19 || The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers -01/12/19: Bitcoin fell by 2.52% on Saturday. Partially reversing a 4.50% rally from Friday, Bitcoin ended the day at $7,599.9. A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin rise to a late morning intraday high $7,861.6 before hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $8,003.33, Bitcoin slid to a late afternoon intraday low $7,492.00. Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $7,519.93 before finding support. A move back through the first major support level to $7,600 levels was short-lived, however. Bitcoin closed out the day at $7,500 levels to end the month of November down by 17.3%. The near-term bearish trend, formed at late June’s swing hi $13,764.0, remained firmly intact, in spite of 4 days in the green from 6. For the bulls, Bitcoin would need to break out from $11,000 levels to form a near-term bullish trend. The Rest of the Pack Across the rest of the top 10 cryptos, it was a bearish day for the majors on Saturday. Binance Coin and Bitcoin Cash ABC led the way down, with losses of 3.32% and 3.23% respectively. Litecoin (-2.86%), Ripple’s XRP (-2.19%), and Stellar’s Lumen (-2.82%) also saw relatively heavy losses. EOS (1.65%), Ethereum (-1.92%), and Bitcoin Cash SV (-1.94%) fared better than the rest. The last day of the month was a reflection of the bearish November that left the majors deep in the red. Binance Coin (-21.1%), Bitcoin Cash ABC (-23.2%), and Ripple’s XRP (-23.3%) saw the heaviest losses. Things were not much better elsewhere, however. Bitcoin Cash SV (-16.7%), EOS (-15.4%), Ethereum (-16.8%), Litecoin (-19.1%), and Stellar’s Lumen (-11.4%) also saw double digit losses. Through the current week, the crypto total market cap slid to a Monday low $180.76bn before rebounding to a Saturday current week high $211.90bn. While recovering in the week, the total market cap sat well below a November high $254.2bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $202.40bn. Story continues Bitcoin’s dominance held on to 66% levels in spite of Saturday’s fall. 24-hour trading volumes did fall back to sub-$60bn levels on Saturday, having peaked at $133bn levels earlier in the week. This Morning At the time of writing, Bitcoin was down by 2.19% to $7,433.4. A particularly bearish start to the day saw Bitcoin slide from an early morning high $7,600.1 to a low $7,420.0. Falling short of the major resistance levels, Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $7,440.73. Elsewhere, it was a sea of red across the crypto board. Binance Coin and Bitcoin Cash SV led the way down, with losses of 3.0% and 3.6% respectively. Ethereum (-2.4%), Litecoin (2.8%), and Stellar’s Lumen (2.1%) also saw heavy losses early on. Bitcoin Cash ABC (-1.5%), EOS (1.7%), and Ripple’s XRP (-1.7%) saw relatively modest losses, however. For the Bitcoin Day Ahead Bitcoin would need to move back through the first major support level to $7,650 levels to support a run at the first major resistance level at $7,810.33. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break out from $7,600 levels. Barring a broad-based crypto rebound, resistance at $7,600 levels would likely cap any upside. Failure to move through $7,650 levels could see Bitcoin spend a 2 nd consecutive day in the red. A fall through to sub-$7,400 levels would bring the second major support level at $7,281.57 into play before any recovery. Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$7,000 for a 4 th consecutive day. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: E-mini S&P 500 Index (ES) Futures Technical Analysis – Sellers Targeting 3122.75 to 3109.00 Retracement Levels Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 30/11/19 Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Bearish Factors Adding Up; Expect Volatility into OPEC+ Meeting Brent Crude Price Futures (BZ) Technical Analysis – Testing Critical Support Cluster at $60.47 to $60.35 NZD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – Strengthens Over .6411, Weakens Under .6394 The UK General Election – Odds, Polls, and Predictions End of Week Update || Bitcoin mining giant Bitfury is now in the enterprise blockchain business: Bitcoin mining company Bitfury just released blockchain software Exonum Enterprise to help corporations more efficiently build their own private blockchain projects.
Founded in 2011, the Amsterdam-headquartered company established its brand name by selling bitcoin miners, which allow enterprise clients to run on either cloud-computing servers or traditional on-premise servers. In 2017, the company launched an open-source piece of software called Exonum, which lets anyone design and run permissioned blockchains similar to Bitcoin at zero cost. Bitfury’s hardware and software solutions attracted wide interest from investors. In November 2018, Itsecureda private placement investment of $80 million led by Paris-based venture capital firm Korelya Capital, bringing its total raised to $170 million.
Bitfury’s new product is the enterprise version of Exonum and targets big corporations and governmental agencies. According to Bitfury’spress release, Exonum Enterprise can process up to 5,000 transactions per second. Clients can use the framework to launch blockchain projects in as little as five minutes and use its full-service dashboard to track blockchain deployments.
“Blockchain is unparalleled in its ability to streamline operations, but its premier benefit to our world is its transparency and security,” said Bitfury CEO Valery Vavilov. “The Exonum Enterprise platform will further the adoption of blockchain, helping make our institutions more trusted and in turn improving the lives of people all around the world.” || Does an Ethereum ASIC unlock greater value for miners?: The launch of ASIC rigs for Ethereum’s blockchain hasn’t gone down well among the Ethereum community, with many arguing the network will be harmed and the price of ETH will suffer. For miners, however, an ASIC rig offers greater efficiency and speed than a traditional GPU, which manufacturers argue will enable miners to unlock more value. Who is correct in the long term remains to be seen, but for anyone with an interest in mining ETH, it’s a debate worth exploring. ASICs versus GPUs A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a chip or electronic circuit which can render graphics for display on an electronic device. Although their primary purpose is to manage and boost the performance of video and game graphics, GPUs are also very good at solving complex maths problems to verify cryptocurrency transactions. Most GPUs can be bought fairly cheaply from standard technology stores. An ASIC, on the other hand, which stands for “application-specific integrated circuit”, is a highly specialised device that is designed for a specific purpose. For instance, a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficiency Bitcoin miner is an ASIC. Because ASICs focus on one specific purpose, they tend to be better at that task than more general devices, but this comes at a cost. ASIC rigs for cryptocurrency mining can cost several thousand pounds. Ethereum mining Traditionally, Ethereum has been mined using GPUs, but this could be about to change. Bitmain introduced the first Ethereum ASIC in 2018, and it is now being joined by Linzhi and Canaan. Although ASIC mining rigs are more efficient at processing hash functions – which, in turn, means potentially higher profit margins for miners – their introduction into the Ethereum blockchain has been widely criticised. Many people even want Ethereum to undergo another fork to shield it from ASIC mining rigs. The main issue, critics argue, is that ASIC rigs result in the creation of huge mining farms which can control the future development of cryptocurrencies – in essence, they could undermine decentralisation. Story continues Sam Doctor, a managing director at Fundstrat Global Advisors, has said ASICs could have a negative impact on the Ethereum community and therefore on the Ethereum price. Pros and cons for miners The main advantage of using an ASIC to mine Ethereum is it is far more efficient than a GPU. Canaan’s new Ethereum ASIC, for instance, is around five times more efficient than commercially available GPUs. Bitmain’s E3 Ethereum mining device can mine at 190 megahashes per second (MH/s), and the target for Linzhi’s Ethash ASIC miner is 1,400 MH/s. The higher the mining efficiency, the higher the potential profits. Although ASICs have a higher initial price tag, miners only require a web browser to operate an ASIC, whereas setting up mining with a GPU requires miners to buy a lot of extra parts. Getting started with an ASIC is simpler, and ASICs use less power than GPUs, so electricity costs are lower. The biggest drawback to using an ASIC is it is specific to one algorithm, whereas a GPU can be used to mine any coin. The risk of mining only one coin is very high – if the value of the coin plummets or developers decide to change the hash algorithm, the ASIC will effectively become useless. Another disadvantage stems from the fact that the difficulty of mining a coin depends on the computing power of the network. Once an ASIC for a particular coin is released, the difficulty for that coin increases and the profitability of the ASIC eventually starts to fall. ASICs in the future Even if lots more Ethereum miners choose ASICs over GPUs, which seems unlikely given their high initial costs and coin-specific attributes, some people believe ASIC mining rigs will actually have a limited impact on Ethereum’s network. Ethash, the algorithm used to mine Ethereum, is designed to be ASIC-resistant, and Ethereum is due to move towards a Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm at some point in the future. Under a PoS model, new coins are assigned based on stakes held by each node instead of computation-intensive mathematical problems. This model would eventually put an end to mining on the Ethereum blockchain. The post Does an Ethereum ASIC unlock greater value for miners? appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Ethereum Falls 10% In Selloff: Ethereum Falls 10% In Selloff Investing.com - Ethereum was trading at $137.26 by 20:42 (01:42 GMT) on the Investing.com Index on Monday, down 10.29% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since September 24. The move downwards pushed Ethereum's market cap down to $15.48B, or 7.99% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Ethereum's market cap was $135.58B. Ethereum had traded in a range of $136.95 to $142.58 in the previous twenty-four hours. Over the past seven days, Ethereum has seen a drop in value, as it lost 23.22%. The volume of Ethereum traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $8.14B or 8.56% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $136.9476 to $178.7014 in the past 7 days. At its current price, Ethereum is still down 90.36% from its all-time high of $1,423.20 set on January 13, 2018. Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading Bitcoin was last at $6,692.8 on the Investing.com Index, down 8.57% on the day. XRP was trading at $0.20544 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 12.11%. Bitcoin's market cap was last at $125.95B or 64.99% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while XRP's market cap totaled $9.63B or 4.97% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Related Articles Cardano Falls 10% In Selloff XRP Falls 11% In Rout Bitcoin Dips Below 6,797.0 Level, Down 7%
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
@ArticFoxMTG This news came out earlier today, price dipped in #bitcoin earlier today. May be related. || ETH BTC建で上げてた分酷い下げ来そう || Bitcoin:$9226.10516236
Ethereum:$184.219082706
Bitcoin Cash:$289.826001331
Litecoin:$58.5782941495
XRP:$0.2973755245
IOTA:$0.2810067161 || @nii_crypto China accounted for 80% of all mined Bitcoins in recent months.
I think we know our audience.
$BTC $ETH $DDOS $EIDOS $EOS $LTC $LINK $MCO https://t.co/ggwxUSh6rf || #仮想通貨 #GEO
Bittrex高騰/暴落 速報(5分前価格と比較)
[BTC-GEO]13.73%0.000040930
[BTC-PINK]7.14%0.000000150
[BTC-AEON]5.98%0.000027130
【10%以上】の変動!アービトラージチャンス!
#拡散希望 || ┌ $BTC/USDT 🔴 Selling Activity
├ 4.4M ₮ (1.0%) in 9s⚡
├(8901.22→8837.5)(-63.7 ₮)(-0.7%)
├24h Vol: 884.92M ₮(+57%)
┊├Buy[50%]: 436.45M ₮(+57%)
┊├Sell[-50%]: -444.65M ₮(+58%)
┊└Flow[0%]: -8.2M ₮ ← -3.62M
└₮ Flow: 15m[-6.4M] 1h[-5.1M] 4h[-17M] || @adam3us @JoelKatz @mikekelly85 @olivierjanss @giacomozucco Besides, this is all academic and distracting (literally, by threading this conversation away ↑) from the much more pronounced threat of state actors who have nothing to lose and much to gain.
https://t.co/Oo6SmHHJmz || @OxygenSupremacy Distributions by bitcoin? This is going to be a tax nightmare || Shift Manager, County Durham - Focus Management Consultants Ltd - [ 📋 More Info https://t.co/7Na6xWNVyQ ] #Go #jobs #Hiring #Careers #Durham #United Kingdom #Cryptocurrency #Blockchain #BTC #BitCoin #ETH #crypto https://t.co/U98aJ2rief || Kenan Evren lisesi Dilan Dere Aslı Enver #لبنان_ينتفص #vestelalmayın #changementdheure #fenerinmacivar
#bitcoin
#김우석의_생일을_짤랑해
#BlockBusterBigilDiwali
#fenerinmacivar
#ankarakitapfuari
#salı
#29Ekim
https://t.co/vjZ88qJ4Nj
|
Trend: up || Prices: 7238.97, 7290.09, 7317.99, 7422.65, 7293.00, 7193.60, 7200.17, 6985.47, 7344.88, 7410.66
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2020-03-09]
BTC Price: 7923.64, BTC RSI: 30.91
Gold Price: 1674.50, Gold RSI: 64.82
Oil Price: 31.13, Oil RSI: 14.18
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin Dips Below 8,727.8 Level, Down 0.11%: Investing.com - Bitcoin fell bellow the $8,727.8 level on Wednesday. Bitcoin was trading at 8,727.8 by 10:22 (15:22 GMT) on the Investing.com Index, down 0.11% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since March 4.
The move downwards pushed Bitcoin's market cap down to $159.4B, or 62.37% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Bitcoin's market cap was $241.2B.
Bitcoin had traded in a range of $8,681.3 to $8,840.3 in the previous twenty-four hours.
Over the past seven days, Bitcoin has seen a drop in value, as it lost 3%. The volume of Bitcoin traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $37.3B or 25.33% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $8,437.2441 to $8,968.3281 in the past 7 days.
At its current price, Bitcoin is still down 56.08% from its all-time high of $19,870.62 set on December 17, 2017.
Ethereum was last at $222.97 on the Investing.com Index, down 0.84% on the day.
XRP was trading at $0.23198 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 0.54%.
Ethereum's market cap was last at $24.6B or 9.62% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while XRP's market cap totaled $10.2B or 3.98% of the total cryptocurrency market value.
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EOS Dips Below 3.6036 Level, Down 1%
Canaan Used ‘Bogus’ Deal to Attract Investment, Argues Analyst || XRP Falls 10% In Bearish Trade: XRP Falls 10% In Bearish Trade Investing.com - XRP was trading at $0.24258 by 21:00 (02:00 GMT) on the Investing.com Index on Wednesday, down 10.42% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since December 17, 2019. The move downwards pushed XRP's market cap down to $10.83629B, or 4.01% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, XRP's market cap was $20.48129B. XRP had traded in a range of $0.24258 to $0.25495 in the previous twenty-four hours. Over the past seven days, XRP has seen a drop in value, as it lost 16.48%. The volume of XRP traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $2.67580B or 1.68% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $0.2426 to $0.2843 in the past 7 days. At its current price, XRP is still down 92.63% from its all-time high of $3.29 set on January 4, 2018. Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading Bitcoin was last at $9,218.4 on the Investing.com Index, down 4.17% on the day. Ethereum was trading at $240.29 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 9.10%. Bitcoin's market cap was last at $168.94213B or 62.53% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while Ethereum's market cap totaled $26.69029B or 9.88% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Related Articles Cardano Falls 10% In Rout Litecoin Falls 11% In Rout Ethereum Falls 10% In Bearish Trade || Coinbase poaches Google Shopping VP as CPO for cryptocommerce: "We're trying to shift cryptocurrency from this speculative asset class to driving real-world utility,"CoinbaseCEO Brian Armstrong tells me. How? Through commerce and micropayments. But now Coinbase has thewhoto build it. Today the startupannouncedit has hired away former head of Product for Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart and Google Shopping VP of Product Surojit Chatterjee to become Coinbase's chief product officer.
"I’ve always enjoyed being associated with technology that is on the brink of changing how we live"writesChatterjee. "Google ads has helped democratize commerce, Flipkart and ecommerce has revolutionized life in India, and I believe Coinbase is going to turn conventional finance on its head."
Chatterjee spent more than 11 years atGoogleover two stints, the first as a founding member of Google's mobile search Ads product that's grown to tens of billions in revenue per year. When he starts at Coinbase next week, Armstrong tells me he'll help Coinbase organize its complex array of products, including its cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, stablecoin, incentivized crypto education platform Earn and Coinbase Commerce that lets businesses take payments in Bitcoin, Ethereum and more. Chatterjee replaces Jeremy Henrickson, the former Coinbase CPO who departed in December 2018.
"Surojit is a huge asset here because we're a product-led company," Armstrong says. "We have different leaders and they increasingly have responsibilities around P&L. Having one really experienced chief product officer that can mentor them and teach them to own revenues and budgets -- really in the model of Google -- that will professionalize Coinbase."
One opportunity Armstrong hopes Chatterjee can help Coinbase seize on is building products for emerging markets where financial infrastructure is weak. "E-commerce is not equally distributed around the world. Micropayments don't work that well ... Him spending time living in India, a developing market, he deeply understands mobile money." Given the explosion of phone-based payments, the demonetization and the prevalence of cash on delivery methods in India thatFlipkartdealt with, "his background is kind of ideal from that worldly perspective," Armstrong explains.
Chatterjee cites his upbringing as inspiration to deliver "economic freedom for everyone,” as Armstrong says is Coinbase's mission. "Growing up in India in a poor middle-class household, I saw very closely what a lack of liquid cash does to a family’s lifestyle," Chatterjee recalls.
"As a kid I would go with my mom to a local bank to withdraw money. And believe me when I tell you that the process was epic!" It included withdrawal slips, tokens and anxiously trying to match current signatures to versions decades old. When India demonetized and made everyone exchange their cash, "My dad, who was almost 80 at that time, stood in a queue for five hours to get 2000 Rs, which was the per-day limit for the first week. That’s less than $30!" Digital money could ensure people always have access to everything they own.
Surojit Chatterjee (far right) rides along for a Flipkart delivery to understand the consumer commerce experience
In developed countries, Armstrong sees a chance for Chatterjee to enable digital content creators to turn their passion into their profession. "There's lots of people who lurk on Reddit or Stack Overflow and answer questions ... If there was real money on these things, these could be their full time jobs -- contributing content on user-generated social sites," Armstrong predicts. "I think you'd see a lot more contributions, as well."
Now might be the perfect time to hire Chatterjee since we’re in a lull period for cryptocurrency in the wake of the rush at the end of 2018. “Crypto is always challenging to navigate. In these periods when it’s relatively quiet, we tend to do really well,” Armstrong says. The company grew market share, volume and app installs versus competitors between 50% and 100%, according to the CEO. Referencing ancient war strategy, Armstrong concludes that, "There's years where you just want to train the soldiers and stockpile resources and you're basically just preparing. We're building the company, not just responding to crazy hype." || Bitcoin price crashes by $800 in minutes: Theprice of Bitcoin (BTC)has suddenly dropped by $800, falling from $10,200 to $9,400. Since the drop, the price has recovered somewhat, back up to $9,600.
This has reverberated across the crypto markets. All bar one of the top ten coins by market cap are in the red, withBitcoin Cash (BCH)down 8% andEOSdown 12%.
As a result, the entire crypto market cap—which was just under $300 billion earlier today—has sunk to $280 billion. Bitcoin's market dominance has dropped too, falling to 63% of the entire crypto market.
The US closes big sale of $40 million Bitcoin
The crypto markets have been rallying since the start of the year, with the entire crypto market up 50%. Altcoins have been leading the way, makinggains against Bitcoin. In particular, proof-of-stake coins havebeen performing well.
The price of Bitcoin managed to break through the $10,000 mark several times during this rally but fell back through each time. However, the price still remains in an upwards channel, so the rally is not yet over—for now. || How the Bitcoin Market Changed Since 2017’s Bull Run: Although the bitcoin market’s recent volatility may feel familiar to industry veterans, the circumstances are very different in 2020 than they were whenbitcoin(BTC) surged to nearly $20,000 in late 2017.
Namely, there’s now Wall Street infrastructure for sophisticated bitcoin trading and holding, fromFidelity InvestmentstoBakkt. For another example, the brokerage startupTagomi, co-founded in 2018 by Union Square Ventures alum Jennifer Campbell and backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, also offers institutional investors the options for trading between platforms without moving the price. Until recently, limitedprice spreadsrestricted market activity.
“During the last bull run there were a lot of trading desks with a pretty website, but behind the scenes there was a lot of sausage making,” Campbell said, describing how some funds literally just operated with one person’s personal exchange account.
Related:Bitcoin News Roundup for March 6, 2020
These days, over in San Francisco, deliberately conservative exchanges like the bitcoin-focused startupRiver Financialhave attracted talent such as Union Bank of Switzerland alum Zev Mintz. Mintz said the combination of a robust lending market with margin trading will be a “huge driver” of liquidity in 2020, as well as the growing “payments system” use case.
Indeed, merchant adoption remains modest yet consistent, according toCoinbase. Meanwhile, OKEx Financial Markets Director Lennix Lai said derivatives now make up nearly 66 percent of the platform’s daily global volume, more than $2 billion in options alone.
Yet, it’s not the sheer number of trading platforms that differentiates this prospective bull run. Incumbents like BitMEX and Binance continue to churn volumes that dwarf those of OKEx.
“We were getting questions all the time about what can we do, can we buy bitcoin?” Mintz said of his former clients at UBS. “A lot of what I’m going to be doing in the next year [at River Financial] is building on some of these [dollar-cost-averaging] tools, giving users more insights and analytics into how their holdings are working and being as transparent as possible.”
Related:Crypto Exchange OKCoin Appoints New CEO to Drive US Expansion
These days, Campbell says, it’s easier to give more accurate price information from a variety of exchange platforms, in addition to “better ways for people to margin for shorts and lends.”
“The over-the-counter market has changed a lot. … It was really a couple of guys pressing ‘buy’ behind the scenes,” she said, comparing 2017 to 2020. “It’s moved from a dealer-driven market to one where people know how to execute trades through a prime broker, using algorithms or other strategies.”
It’s the presence of both Wild West options and regulator-friendly alternatives that differentiates 2020.
It’s cheaper now than it’s ever been to move large bitcoin trades in and out of a market.
By spreading trades across exchanges, institutional buyers avoid tipping the scales against their trades on platforms with limited spreads.
“A lot of the trading strategies that were too expensive before are now possible,” said Tagomi’s Campbell. “A lot of the strategies before were just arbitraging between exchanges, but that very quickly got subpoenaed away.”
She declined to comment on the startup’s work with more than 40 hedge funds, family offices and other institutional clients. Yet, Tagomi’s warm relations with companies like Facebook and Bakkt suggest the long-prophesied arrival of institutional investors, which bitcoin advocates claimed in previous years would boost bitcoin prices “to the moon,” may have already started as a whisper, not a bang.
For example, Lai estimated that 1 percent of OKEx’s clients in 2020 are the institutional traders that drive nearly 70 percent of the platform’s volumes.
The 2017 bitcoin market was retail driven. The cryptocurrency market, in general, may still be predominantly retail but bitcoin is much less so than before. OKEx’s Lai explained the appeal of bitcoin derivatives, trusting a company for traditional guarantees, attracts buyers who aren’t yet comfortable with independent custody of bitcoin itself. This can be especially true in emerging markets like India, where theSupreme Courtrecently ruled banks can work with crypto businesses and thedemand for derivatives is surging.
“Because the volatility of bitcoin is particularly higher than a regular asset class,” Lai said. “Traders feel more safe that way, they deposit a lot more money.”
If bitcoin doesn’t become amass-marketproduct, then investor interest may eventually simmer down. (For his part, River Financial’s Mintz envisions bitcoin for “everyday payments” thanks to the Lightning Network.)
Still, it looks as though institutions around the world now routinely trade millions of dollars worth of bitcoin every day. That’s no longer a rare “whale call,” it’s the status quo.
“Those are the two components that are really important,” Mintz said, regarding how institutional interest and retail usage must coincide to drive demand beyond speculative trading. Institutions can now choose whether to trade bitcoin itself or representative options, both at scale.
“When you’re shorting on our platform, you’re actually borrowing bitcoin from someone else,” Tagomi’s Campbell added. “There’s physical bitcoin being exchanged. The same thing with margins … it’s all backed by physical assets, which is very different than trading futures [in 2017].”
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• Exchange Technology Developer AlphaPoint Raises $5.6M in Latest Funding Round || 3 Momentum Stocks to Consider for 2020: A new calendar year doesn’t always mean a fresh start. But when it comes to three of 2019’s more painful investments, well-built technical bottoms and out-the-gate momentum in January are favoring turnarounds that become full-fledged, bullish momentum stocks in 2020. Let me explain.
I’ve said it before and it bears repeating, every dog has its day. In the markets this is akin to down and out stocks, which unexpectedly surprise investors with a jump in share price. But not every doggish stock is bound to be sent back into the proverbial dog house. Some will go on to become momentum stocks.
As discussed earlier this month atInvestorPlace.com, rotations into underappreciated or even vilified stocks can turn into massive opportunities as overly bearish sentiment and price action turn aggressively around. Often these disruptive shifts in investment behavior occur early in the calendar year. If for no other reason this phenomenon can be tied to institutional investors who can move more freely into last year’s dogs without having to defend a stock with fleas to stakeholders at year-end.
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Having said that,Beyond Meat(NASDAQ:BYND),Pinterest(NYSE:PINS) andGrayscale Bitcoin Trust(OTCMKTS:GBTC) are three investment vehicles that demonstrate potential as momentum stocks in 2020.
Source:Charts by TradingView
After getting scorched in 2019 faux-meat producer Beyond Meat has quickly become a sizzling investment with Wall Street. Shares are up roughly 50% in just over a handful of trading days in 2020’s early going. The catalyst? The initial headline driver was privately held rival Impossible Foods wasthrowing in the towelon its bid to land a spot on theMcDonald’s(NYSE:MCD) menu. And that leaves the door wide open for BYND stock.
Technically speaking and aside from the huge gain in share value, BYND stock has firmly broken price resistance formed during the construction of a key lateral congestion pattern.
BYND Stock Strategy:Our recent recommended strategy nailed a huge win in this momentum stock. But while resistance has been overcome, BYND stock is also incredibly volatile and overbought near term. My advice, put shares on the radar for purchase in-between $95 – $105 as part of a married put or collar options-based position.
Source:Charts by TradingView
Pinterest is the next of our momentum stocks to buy. When all was said in done in 2019, the popular web-based visual discovery platform saw shares cut in half from their highs and modestly below their IPO stock price of $19. But now investors might be smart to recognize what a difference a day can make.
In truth, shares were already on the move out-the-gate in 2020. But Tuesday’s near-10% gain has shares looking like a bonafide momentum stock. Theheadline driverwas a report PINS stock has overtakenSnap(NYSE:SNAP) in users and only trailing social media giantFacebook(NASDAQ:FB) and the company’s Instagram app.
Technically, PINS stock has confirmed December’s bottoming hammer candlestick formed around the 1.27% extension level and begun a move into a large gap area. This could produce a vacuum-like sweeping of shares higher before an eventual pullback.
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PINS Stock Strategy:This momentum stock can be bought today in anticipation of the price gap being filled. On a challenge of the $25 area, I’d recommend buying a protective put on the cheap and leave the upside open-ended until after earnings in February.
Source:Charts by TradingView
The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is the last of our momentum stocks to buy. GBTC stock is a listed trust tied to the cryptocurrency market’s largest play. Investors pay a premium versus owning the actual contract. However, due to the transparency of listed OTC securities, as well as the product’s strong liquidity, I believe this is a more suitable way for most investors to gain exposure.
Any investor with even a passing interest in the markets has heard of bitcoin’s dazzling run and equally impressive crash over the past couple years. But if there’s one game-changing technology in the market right now, the cryptocurrency space would definitely deserve to be in that conversation. And right now there’s reason to see another bullish cycle emerging and GBTC’s status as a momentum stock back in action.
Technically, shares of GBTC have formed and confirmed a bullish higher low pattern between the 62% and 76% Fibonacci levels on the monthly chart. With GBTC up roughly 22.50% in January, it’s fair to say this is a momentum stock opportunity. Yet another glance at the big picture also strongly suggests bitcoin is just now turning the corner for bullish investors.
GBTC Stock Strategy:Buy this momentum stock today. But don’t go all in. I’d recommend adding if confirmation of the rally is backed by a bullish crossover from GBTC stock’s monthly stochastics. Use the recent low for exiting if needed and stand ready to take partial profits at the 2019 high near $17.50.
Disclosure: Investment accounts under Christopher Tyler’s management currently own positions in Beyond Meat (BYND) and Bitcoin (GBTC) securities, but no other investments mentioned in this article. The information offered is based upon Christopher Tyler’s observations and strictly intended for educational purposes only; the use of which is the responsibility of the individual. For additional market insights and related musings, follow Chris on Twitter@Options_CATandStockTwits.
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The post3 Momentum Stocks to Consider for 2020appeared first onInvestorPlace. || Bitcoin’s use in darknet markets continues to grow: Chainalysis: The use of bitcoin in darknet markets, such as for buying illegal drugs, has continued to grow, according to data from Chainalysis. However, its share on such markets accounts for less than 1% of all bitcoin transactions, according to Elliptic.
In its new Crypto Crime Report,publishedTuesday, Chainalysis said over $600 million worth of bitcoin was spent on darknet markets during Q4 of 2019. Bitcoin’s use in legal activities, such as for trading at crypto exchanges and merchant services, however, surpassed its use on darknet markets.
Source: Chainalysis
Chainalysis further found that bitcoin’s use on darknet markets is “less influenced” by the highs and lows of the cryptocurrency.
“While all categories see spikes in July around the same time as a Bitcoin price surge, darknet markets exhibit a much less dramatic spike than the others,” said Chainalysis. “Looking across the entire year, darknet markets’ transaction activity remains within a much narrower volume range, suggesting that customer behavior is less influenced by changes to Bitcoin’s price.”
Last October, The Block’s Steven Zheng alsoresearchedcryptocurrencies’ use in darknet markets and found that bitcoin remains the most widely accepted cryptocurrency on these platforms, followed by monero and litecoin. Nearly 93% of the darknet markets Zheng examined accepted bitcoin for payment.
While bitcoin remains the most popular crypto for darknet activities, its share accounts for less than 1% of all bitcoin transactions, according to recently availabledatafrom blockchain analysis firm Elliptic. || NXP Semiconductors Reports Mixed Q4 Earnings: NXP Semiconductors(NASDAQ:NXPI) reported fourth-quarter earnings of 40 cents per share on Monday, which does not compare to the analyst consensus estimate of $2.02. This is an 81.22% decrease over earnings of $2.13 per share from the same period last year.
The company reported quarterly sales of $2.3 billion, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $2.28 billion by 0.88%. This is a 4.29% decrease over sales of $2.403 billion the same period last year.
View more earnings on NXPI
"NXP delivered full-year revenue of $8.88 billion, a decline of 6% year-on-year, against a very challenging semiconductor industry backdrop,” said Richard Clemmer, NXP CEO. “During 2019, we returned $1.76 billion to our shareholders. Over the course of the year, we significantly enhanced our product portfolio. We successfully acquired the Marvell wireless connectivity assets, and introduced new, innovative products and solutions."
NXP Semiconductors shares were trading down 1.8% in Monday's after-hours session. The stock has a 52-week high of $137.92 and a 52-week low of $85.38.
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© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin Dips Below 8,994.6 Level, Down 0.67%: Investing.com - Bitcoin fell bellow the $8,994.6 level on Saturday. Bitcoin was trading at 8,994.6 by 12:01 (17:01 GMT) on the Investing.com Index, down 0.67% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since March 7.
The move downwards pushed Bitcoin's market cap down to $166.0B, or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Bitcoin's market cap was $241.2B.
Bitcoin had traded in a range of $8,994.6 to $9,180.8 in the previous twenty-four hours.
Over the past seven days, Bitcoin has seen a rise in value, as it gained 5%. The volume of Bitcoin traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $34.9B or 0.00% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $8,437.2441 to $9,180.7529 in the past 7 days.
At its current price, Bitcoin is still down 54.73% from its all-time high of $19,870.62 set on December 17, 2017.
Ethereum was last at $244.01 on the Investing.com Index, up 3.03% on the day.
XRP was trading at $0.23862 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 1.49%.
Ethereum's market cap was last at $27.0B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while XRP's market cap totaled $10.6B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market value.
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Marc Taverner Speaks on His New Role as European Blockchain Director || Phishing scams leveled up, and we didn’t: More than a bit of "I'm smarter than you" politics creates the divide between hacking headlines and what we actually need to worry about. On one side, researchers present findings at conferences hoping someone will raise the alarm and practical things will get done before things get worse. On the other, we have Jeff Bezos and his iPhone.
In case you missed it, on January 22ndTheGuardianreported, "Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone 'hacked' in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia."
According to thenow-contested reportby FTI Consulting cited byThe Guardian, that was in April. I was curious enough to notice that the "hey boi r u up" texts between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Jeff Bezos were exchanged before Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in October of that same year.
Questions,we have them. But Khashoggi's name is hard to find in the wider reporting about Bezos' iPhone -- which has beena mess from the start. Instead, aformer Facebook security punditand at least one actualresearchersnatched the spotlight to say FTI's report was lacking in facts.
The self-appointed infosec "adults in the room" weren't wrong. But it was a pedantic and selfish distraction from anything that mattered about the whole affair.
Normal people read about the maybe hacking of Bezos' phone and shrugged. He can afford the best security on the planet. Saudi Arabia's Prince Claus von Bonesaw is a monster. Everyone's getting hacked, especially us peasants. These are all things we know.
What we also know is that the supposed phone hack came via an attachment. And if the hack happened, an attachment was clicked. It's the same way theCity of Baltimore's computersand emergency systemsat Hollywood Presbyterian Hospitalwere infected and locked with ransomware. And it's how consumers are losing identities and accountsfrom malware, learning how to send Bitcoin to grubby teenage boys in latitudes and longitudes unknown because ofransomware. Click a link. Look at an attachment. Download a file. That's it. An attacker went phishing, and now you're on the hook.
All that is from phishing, though what we hear about most are the breaches: attackers grabbing usernames and passwords from breach dumps, then using tools with cutesy names like SNIPR or STORM to automatically try it out on all of your accounts to see what works. Which they do, becauseEquifax used default passwordson sensitive information, Facebook was so busylyingto everyone itleft the barn doors openand the City of New Orleansrefused to believe cybersecurity is critical infrastructure.
So much for "the adults in the room."
I attended a recent hacking conference in San Francisco calledDisclosureexpecting a lot of the same fresh hells -- the "I'm smarter than you" guys competing for attention while alarmed researchers in the background are trying to tell us something's on fire.
I was not disappointed.
Apropos to what was happening (or not) to Jeff Bezos at that moment, I saw the talk "Initial Public Ownage: Trends in Phishing Techniques Across Sophisticated Threat Actors." Sounds boring, right? Nope.
According to jaw-droppingdatapresented byProofpoint'sRyan Kalember, phishing is now the No. 1 attack of choice for cybercriminals. "Phishing is attractive for different reasons for the attackers that do have technical skills, because it scales really well," Kalember told Engadget via email. "The bigger groups, like the threat actor behind Emotet, have built the automation to do social engineering at the scale of millions of messages a day, and are very good are getting their relatively simple attacks (often documents with macros sent via already phished cloud email accounts) through security controls."
So what, you say? All the adults (who were in the room a minute ago) know not to click strange links to win a free iPad or log in at notgoogle.com or download the attachment from Lisa@FreePills. Who does that? Florida grandmas falling for Nigerian princes, surely.
This thinking is fine and good only under the conceit that getting pwned is for people who aren't as smart as you or that the cliques running security for your email clients have perfected their specious and occult magics of marking suspicious emails with big, fat, red DANGER warnings. The adults have it under control, you think. Gosh, there must be a lot of dumb people, you muse.
Turns out, you're pretty wrong on both counts.
If you got an email from a law firm saying "divorce papers" and it was a real law firm and the email contained a link to a document on that website, you'd probably have a very emotional reaction and click it. Kalember saw numerous examples and brought receipts.
"In general," Kalember explained to Engadget, "the sneakiest phishes are highly socially engineered and customized for a specific intended recipient. The best example is a complaint about a specific person, sent to that person, which threatens to email (or even directly cc's) their manager. That said, we've seen threat actors use everything from fake food poisoning complaints, Greta Thunberg pledges, and Christmas party invites in just the last couple of months, so there's no shortage of innovation."
Right now around 1.3 million phishing operations reside illicitly on around 300,000 URLs. Ultimately it means many of us will be hacked/attacked becausesomeone else'swebsite security sucks.
So are all thoseWordPress hacks and vulnsadding up or what? Kalember told us, "Compromising WordPress and other sites is unfortunately quite common, and it can be challenging for even the most experienced administrators to thoroughly clean as attackers often create layers of access." Explaining further, he added, "A tremendous amount of malicious content is also hosted on cloud file storage that most networks (and users) have to trust: SharePoint and OneDrive are the biggest offenders at the moment."
Every website that can be compromised -- hacked into -- is being used to send legitimate-looking phishing emails, using mail addresses from websites ranging from alpaca farms to law firms to universities.
Yes, actual alpaca farms. "While it's possible that the North Korean threat actor in question has a sense of humor," Kalember said, "it was a WordPress site that was vulnerable to an old exploit, so it was probably just opportunistic. From a network perspective, no one is likely to block their users going to alpaca farm websites, so it suits their purposes for command and control of their malware."
Criminal organizations are compromising legit sites and using those to send legit (and despicably personal) phishing attacks to install malware or ransomware. Often they want to compromise your employer or steal your accounts, because those are extremely valuable for doing more crimes. More to the point, thinking that you'renota target for any reason ("I'm not that interesting" or "I don't have followers/money" or "my job is boring") is going to make you the perfect target.
And looking at infosec trends (which tend toward sensationalism and know-it-alls), there's a serious lack of adults in the room to watch our backs. Kalember told Engadget, "Simply stated, attackers focus on people, and most defenders don't. Boosting awareness and email security controls are two practical ways to significantly reduce risk."
A wise and prophetic TV show calledThe X-Filesonce said, "Trust no one." This has never been truer than now. Rather than panic about every scary email or text message, treat all of your inboxes like your front door: If you're not expecting a delivery, don't open the door.
Images: AP Photo/Ted S. Warren (Jeff Bezos); Proofpoint (Malware email)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
|
Trend: down || Prices: 7909.73, 7911.43, 4970.79, 5563.71, 5200.37, 5392.31, 5014.48, 5225.63, 5238.44, 6191.19
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Grayscale Added $300M in Digital Assets to Its Portfolio During the Last Day: Digital asset manager Grayscale Investments has acquired an additional $300 million in cryptocurrencies over the last 24 hours. Grayscale CEO Barry Silbert made the announcement via tweet late Thursday evening, shortly after his company posted an update to its digital asset portfolio. Added a cool $300 million in assets under management in one day, Silbert said. The additional sum brings the total held under management to $7.3 billion. The move comes at a time when the hype surrounding PayPal's foray into the crypto markets has drawn additional attention from big-name investors including Paul Tudor Jones II . Last week the digital asset manager announced its best quarterly results to date , having brought in just over $1 billion in investment across all of its cryptocurrency products. Grayscale is owned by CoinDesks parent firm, Digital Currency Group, of which Silbert is a founder. See also: Grayscale Tells SEC Its Bitcoin Trust Rose $1.6B Over Six Months Related Stories Grayscale Added $300M in Digital Assets to Its Portfolio During the Last Day Grayscale Added $300M in Digital Assets to Its Portfolio During the Last Day Grayscale Added $300M in Digital Assets to Its Portfolio During the Last Day Grayscale Added $300M in Digital Assets to Its Portfolio During the Last Day || ALT 5 Sigma Digital Instrument Market Summary for BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 1, 2020 /ALT 5 Sigma Inc. an emerging leader in blockchain powered financial platforms provides its daily digital instruments market summary for Bitcoin (BTC/USD), Ether (ETH/USD), Litecoin (LTC/USD).
Real-Time Market Data is available atwww.alt5pro.comand Real-Time Market Data feed is also available atwww.alt5sigma.comALT 5 Sigma Digital Instrument Market Summary for BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH
About ALT 5 Sigma Inc.
ALT 5 is a fintech company specializing in the development and deployment of digital assets trading and exchange platforms. Alt 5 was founded by financial industry specialists out of the necessity to provide the digital asset economy with security, accessibility, transparency and compliance.
ALT 5 provides its clients the ability to buy, sell and hold digital assets in a safe and secure environment deployed with the best practices of the financial industry. ALT 5's products and services are available to Banks, Broker Dealers, Funds, Family Offices, Professional Traders, Retail Traders, Digital Asset Exchanges, Digital Asset Brokers, Blockchain Developers, and Financial Information Providers.
ALT 5's digital asset custodian services are secured by GardaWorld. GardaWorld is the world's largest privately-owned business solutions and security services company, offering cash management services.
For more information, visitwww.alt5sigma.com.
Contact:
Andre BeauchesneTel. 1-800-204-6203info@alt5sigma.com
For more information on ALT 5 Pay, visitwww.alt5pay.comFor more information on ALT 5 Pro, visitwww.alt5pro.com
SOURCE:ALT 5 Sigma Inc.
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/608811/ALT-5-Sigma-Digital-Instrument-Market-Summary-for-BTC-ETH-LTC-BCH || GBP/USD Daily Forecast – Resistance At 1.3180 In Sight: GBP/USDis trying to continue its upside move while the U.S. dollar is gaining ground against a broad basket of currencies.
Yesterday, GBP/USD rallied on hopes for a Brexit deal. Traders believe that EU and UK will intensify their negotiations and reach a compromise deal in the upcoming weeks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Dollar Index remained volatile as traders evaluated the chances of a new U.S. stimulus deal. The U.S. Dollar Index tested the support level at 92.50 but rebounded closer to the nearest resistance at 92.80 after U.S. President Donald Trump accused Democrats of not willing to compromise.
In addition to U.S. stimulus talks and Brexit chatter, traders will focus on U.S. employment reports. U.S.Initial Jobless Claimsare expected to decline from 898,000 to 860,000 whileContinuing Jobless Claimsare projected to decrease from 10.02 million to 9.5 million.
Recent reports indicated that U.S. job market recovery has stalled, and it remains to be seen whether Initial Jobless Claims will stay below 900,000.
GBP/USD managed to settle above the resistance at 1.3110 and is trying to continue its upside move. The next resistance level for GBP/USD has emerged near 1.3180.
If GBP/USD settles above this level, it will head towards the next resistance at 1.3270. RSI is in the moderate territory despite the strength of the recent upside move so there is plenty of room to gain additional momentum in case the right catalysts emerge.
I’d note that there are no significant levels between 1.3180 and 1.3270 so GBP/USD may quickly get to the test of the resistance at 1.3270 if it manages to settle above 1.3180. In case GBP/USD moves above 1.3270, it will head towards the resistance level at 1.3320.
On the support side, the previous resistance level at 1.3110 will likely serve as the first support level for GBP/USD. A move below this level will open the way to the test of the next support at 1.3070. If GBP/USD declines below 1.3070, it will head towards the support at 1.3030.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Economic Data, COVID-19, and Stimulus Talks on Capitol Hill in Focus || World Economic Forum Selects Elastos Foundation for Global Innovators Community: SINGAPORE / ACCESSWIRE / November 19, 2020 / The Elastos Foundation, a non-profit organization building a blockchain-powered, decentralized internet for the modern era, has been selected to become part of the World Economic Forum 's (WEF) Global Innovators Community. The Global Innovators Community is a highly selective group of the world's most promising ventures who stand at the forefront of technological and business model innovation. The community is carefully curated to gather a range of cutting-edge technologies and pioneering business models that lend themselves to one or more of the critical 18 Platforms laid out by the World Economic Forum. Elastos joins other elite projects like ConsenSys and Hedera as Global Innovators representing the blockchain industry. The Elastos Foundation will initially join 2 WEF Platforms: "Shaping the Future of Technology Governance: Blockchain and Digital Assets," and "Shaping the Future of Technology Governance: Data Policy." The WEF's platform for " Shaping the Future of Technology Governance: Blockchain and Digital Assets " aims to realize equity, interoperability, transparency, and trust in the governance of distributed ledger technologies, and to establish the proper conditions to accelerate technological development. On this Platform, the Elastos Foundation joins elite commercial partners Accenture, Deloitte, Microsoft, Visa, as well as IBM. The Elastos Foundation also has plans to join a working group on Digital Identity that begins in Q1 of 2021, where Global Technical Lead Donald Bullers will manage a team on behalf of Elastos. The second Platform, " Shaping the Future of Technology Governance: Data Policy ," aims to co-design, pilot, and scale forward-looking, interoperable, and trustworthy data policies to fuel innovation and ensure responsible data aggregation and usage for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Elastos Founder Rong Chen will represent the project on the Data Policy Platform, bringing with him deep expertise from over 35 years of experience in data policy and operating systems, including a notable decade-long stint at Microsoft Research in the 1990s. Mr. Chen will also join at least one of the working groups on the Data Policy Platform, taking a seat at the table with high-profile partners including Facebook, Salesforce, and Mastercard. Rong Chen, Elastos Founder Rong Chen commended the partnership, announcing, "I am thrilled for the Elastos Foundation and for our global community to join the World Economic Forum's Global Innovators Community. Elastos and the WEF share the common purpose of creating an equitable and ethical future for data. As data ethics have been at the heart of my life's work, it is a pleasure to bring my perspective to an elite group of organizations and governments, which I hope will benefit from the innovative approach to internet architecture that we have at Elastos." Story continues "Our world is on the cusp of a monumental shift in data policy and the administration of digital identities. This mutual collaboration between Elastos and the World Economic Forum comes at an opportune moment where we will be at the forefront of empowering users, and I am proud to lead our team on this joint mission," added Donnie Bullers, Elastos Global Technical Lead. "We are delighted to welcome Elastos to our Global Innovators Community," says Sheila Warren, Head of Blockchain, Digital Assets and Data Policy at the World Economic Forum. "The team's focus on allowing developers to create applications that protect user privacy and ownership rights by making data secure, identifiable and scarce will provide valuable insight across our Data Policy and Blockchain platforms." Education, regulation, and application make up the high-priority areas of the WEF's blockchain platform, which has Affiliate Centers in South Africa, Colombia, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. By testing cutting-edge projects and developing future-oriented frameworks, the Forum plans to enable stakeholders in government, the private sector, civil society, and academia to arrive at a collective understanding of the digital asset landscape. The Forum's blockchain platform has achieved several milestones to date, including the creation of an open-source blockchain deployment toolkit co-designed by over 100 influential supply chain players. The Platform also launched a Digital Currency Governance Consortium to co-design governance frameworks for digital currencies. Data is the fuel for the Fourth Industrial Revolution; as governments, corporations, and society at large struggle for control of the world's data, the Data Policy Platform's mission aligns perfectly with the principled ethos of Elastos. About Elastos Foundation Founded in 2017, the Elastos Foundation is building the blockchain industry's most comprehensive and interoperable open source platform. Using a hybrid consensus that combines the secure hashpower of Bitcoin and the democratic ideals of Delegated-Proof-of-Stake, the SmartWeb ecosystem of Elastos comprises a suite of software for an entirely decentralized internet. Elastos employs not only blockchain technology, but a peer-to-peer network for communication, decentralized data storage services, and a decentralized ID (DID) system for all digital assets. With sidechains like the Ethereum Sidechain, Elastos is not merely the foundation for securing truly decentralized applications that can scale; it is the foundation for true data ownership. For more information, please visit: Elastos.info About World Economic Forum Established in 1971, the World Economic Forum (WEF) is an International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. Responsible for shaping global, regional, and industry agendas, the Forum is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. About The Global Innovators Community The Global Innovators Community is a group of the world's most promising start-ups and scale-ups that are at the forefront of technological and business model innovation. The World Economic Forum provides the Global Innovators Community with a platform to engage with public- and private-sector leaders and to contribute new solutions to overcome current crises and build future resiliency. Companies that are invited to become Global Innovators will engage with one or more of the Forum's Platforms to contribute to defining the global agenda on key issues. If you are interested in becoming a Global Innovator, introduce yourself and your company or organization at the link below: CONTACT: Global Innovators Community Elastos Foundation Contact: Zach Warsavage Public Relations Director zachw@elastos.org SOURCE: Elastos Foundation View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/617558/World-Economic-Forum-Selects-Elastos-Foundation-for-Global-Innovators-Community View comments || Pound falls as EU prepares to ignore Johnson’s Brexit ultimatum: • EU reportedly plans to shrug off Johnson’s ultimatum for compromises
• Construction PMI beats expectations as business rises
• Markets mixed as questions remain over Trump’s health
• Premier Oil and Chrysaor to merge
• German industrial orders jump
• Fifth Co-op Bank boss in seven years quits
• Cinema industry braced for further closures as Cineworld warns over 45,000 job losses
• Russell Lynch:Only a planning revolution can help turn renters into ‘Generation Buy’
• Sign up here for our daily business briefing newsletter
Despite a moderate rise across Europe, the FTSE 100 has closed flat, following a pretty uninspiring performance. It was another quiet day overall, with an increasing sense that that markets are waiting for next month’s US election. Here are some of the day’s top stories:
• Premier Oil and Chrysaor to create North Sea giant:Two of the largest North Sea oil explorers are set to merge in a deal that will create one of the largest independent oil and gas companies on the London Stock Exchange.
• Construction sector surges after growth spurt:Britain’s builders enjoyed their best month since Covid-19 struck during September after a surge in projects delayed by the pandemic.
• Out-of-town sites boom for Wagamama owner:Wagamama owner The Restaurant Group (TRG) hailed a sales revival at its suburban pubs and restaurants after the cornavirus pandemic caused its half-year losses to almost triple.
• More pain for cinemas as Warner delays The Batman:Warner Bros blockbuster The Batman has been postponed as the pandemic continues to play havoc with the blockbuster release schedule.
• Don’t turn off funding taps yet, warns Lagarde:Christine Lagarde warned that measures to contain coronavirus threatened Europe’s economic recovery and urged governments not to turn off the fiscal taps too soon.
Thank you for following along today – we’ll be back at the same time tomorrow!
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has warned the US’s economic recovery may be weak if America’s government can’t provide sufficient fiscal aid.
Mr Powell’s comment during a speech for a virtual conference, comes as Congress remains in a stalemate over relief spending.
The Fed chair said:
Boohoo has said it will give evidence to MPs following up on an inquiry into the fast fashion industry and textile waste.
My colleagueLaura Onitareports:
• Read more:Boohoo to give evidence in new fast fashion probe
The number of US job openings dropped in August, declining for the first time in four months.
There were 6.5m openings compared to July’s 6.7m, according the Department of Labor’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The fall is in line with economists’ estimates.
The US’s trade deficit continued to widen in August, reaching $67.1bn.
That’s the biggest deficit since 2006, and reflects a further increase in imports as companies responded to higher domestic demand. The surplus in services fell to the smallest since 2012.
Surprising precisely nobody, Wall Street has opened flat as a pancake.
European shares are now edging slightly higher – which means it’s America’s turn to be flat. The S&P 500 is set to open up 0.2pc, while Nasdaq futures are down 0.1pc.
McLaren has begun final testing of its first production electric hybrid supercar before it goes on sale early next year.
My colleagueAlan Toveywrites:
• Read more:McLaren unveils first 'mass market' hybrid supercar
GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology will expand their trial of an experimental Covid antibody after initial use by a group of volunteers did not raise any safety concerns.
The companies started testing the antibody on early-stage patients in August, hoping to keep symptoms from progressing.
Several firms are running tests in this promising class of antiviral drugs to combat the pandemic.
After testing the drug on 20 US participants for safety, the trial will now expand to 1,300 patients globally. Half will be randomly assigned to a control group receiving a placebo.
Interim trial results may be available as early as the end of this year, with complete efficacy results expected by the first quarter of 2021.
The global downturn sparked by the coronavirus pandemic will not be as bad as originally feared, but the crisis is far from over, according to IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva.
“The picture today is less dire... allowing for a small upward revision to our global forecast for 2020,” she said ahead of its updated forecasts next week.
Ms Georgieva credited the “extraordinary policy measures that put a floor under the world economy”, which amounted to $12 trillion in fiscal support to households and companies.
But the economic shocks, especially to low-income countries, have been “profound”, adding: “All countries are now facing what I would call ‘the Long Ascent’ – a difficult climb that will be long, uneven, and uncertain.”
Warner Bros blockbuster The Batman has been postponed as the pandemic continues to play havoc with the blockbuster release schedule.
My colleagueBen Woodsreports:
• Read more:More pain for cinemas as Warner delays The Batman
My colleagueRussell Lynchhas a full report on this morning’s construction PMI. He writes:
• Read more:Construction ‘takes off’ after growth spurt
Birmingham-based Tonik Energy has ceased trading with 250 employees expected to lose their jobs.
My colleagueEd Clowesreports:
• Read more:Tonik Energy is latest supplier to collapse
The European Union is preparing to call Boris Johnson’s bluff over next week’s Brexit deadline, betting that the PM won’t walk away if he fails to draw concessions, Bloomberg reports.
The news service says:
The pound has dropped to a session low following that report:
Reuters’ Andy Bruce tweets:
UK PM JOHNSON SAYS BUT UK ECONOMY HAD CHRONIC UNDERLYING PROBLEMS
Boris Johnson is currently giving his keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference.
You can follow live via the link below, or the video embedded above:
• Politics latest news:Boris Johnson seeks to shake off Tory gloom with conference speech – watch live
The Financial Conduct Authority has banned the sale of derivatives and exchange-traded notes related to some cryptoassets to retail customers, calling them “ill-suited” for such buyers.
The City watchdog said such products cannot be reliably valued for a number of reasons:
• inherent nature of the underlying assets, which means they have no reliable basis for valuation
• prevalence of market abuse and financial crime in the secondary market (eg cyber theft)
• extreme volatility in cryptoasset price movements
• inadequate understanding of cryptoassets by retail consumers
• lack of legitimate investment need for retail consumers to invest in these products
It warned such feature mean “retail consumers might suffer harm from sudden and unexpected losses if they invest in these products”.
The regulator estimated customers would save around £53m due to the ban.
The ban covers a range of tokens that are not defined as “specified investments”, and includes tokens for well-known cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether and Ripple.
The FCA’s Sheldon Mills said:
The ban will come into effect from January 6th.
Trading groups IG and Plus500 have both dipped in response to the decision.
Apple has pulled rival speakers and headphones from its physical and online stores as the iPhone-maker readies a shake-up of its audio line up.
My colleagueMichael Cogleyreports:
• Read more:Apple stops selling rival headphones ahead of audio product launch
Here are some of the day’s top stories from the Telegraph Money team:
• Let the old retire early, former minister urges as state pension age rises to 66:Those nearing retirement should be given early access to their state pension during the pandemic, a former minister has said, as the retirement age increases to 66 for the first time.
• NatWest cuts investment Isa fees – but could you get a better deal elsewhere?:Around 80,000 NatWest customers are set to benefit as the bank has reduced the fees it charges on its stocks and shares Isas. However they could still be getting a better deal by shopping elsewhere.
• Isabelle Fraser:Boris Johnson's madcap first-time buyer plan won’t get off the ground
European equities are stuck in the red, although they’ve edged upwards in recent minutes.
Retailer Watches of Switzerland’s shares have popped higher this morning after it raised its guidance following booming sales since the start of the quarter.
The FTSE 250 group said revenues for the first ten weeks of its second quarter (from the start of August) were 20.2pc higher than 2019 on a constant-currency basis.
Its performance in the UK “continues to be driven by strong domestic sales offsetting lower tourist and airport business”, the company said.
It now expects revenues of £880m to £910m for the full year, versus previous estimates of £840m to £860m.
Net debt is expected to be slightly lower than anticipated, at £80m to £100m versus an earlier estimate of £90m to £110m.
Chief executive Brian Duffy said:
The BBC’s political editor tweets:
EU negotiating team coming to London tmrw, Barnier likely late Thursday for talks on Friday (deleted prev tweet to avoid confusion!)
Commenting on those PMI figures, Duncan Brock of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply, which helped gather the data, said:
Here are some salient points from today’s construction PMI report:
• Sentiment towards future activity was the strongest for seven months
• The strongest performing category was home building, where firms registered a sharp expansion in activity for the fourth month running. Work undertaken on commercial projects also rose strongly, increasing at quickest pace for over two years. Meanwhile, civil engineering activity fell for the second month running and at the sharpest rate since May.
• Anecdotal evidence suggested that the expansion in overall activity was predominantly driven by an improvement in demand conditions
• New orders rose for the fourth time in as many months
• UK construction firms recorded another marked increase in purchasing activity
• Staff numbers continued to fall in September. However, the rate of workforce contraction eased to the slowest for seven months
• Cost burdens faced by building companies continued to rise
A recovery in UK construction gained pace in September, with activity rising at a faster pace than during August, according to the latest purchasing managers’ index data from IHS Markit.
The gauge rose to 56.8 (where a score above 50 indicates growth) – beating expectations for a reading 54, and indicating a faster pace of expansion than the previous month’s 54.6.
IHS Markit said:
Wagamama-owner The Restaurant Group said it has seen improved sales since July, after ditching its financial guidance and revealing the pandemic cut its first-half revenues by around 56pc.
The company – which recently lost its spot in the FTSE 250 – posted a £234.7m pretax loss for the six months to the end of June, compared with a £87.7m loss for the same period last year.
It has closed around 180 restaurants as part of a rapid downsizing operation in response to the pandemic, with its Frankie & Benny’s locations particularly hard-hit.
Trading between early July and late September had been “very encouraging”, the group added, saying like-for-like sales had improvement into all its divisions expect concessions, which have “been heavily impacted by the well-reported travel disruptions”.
It noted that lower pressure from rivals meant there had been a “greater availability of skilled and experienced labour for the remaining operators”.
It warned the outlook for the sector “remains extremely challenging”, and withdrew all previous guidance.
Shore Capital’s Greg Johnson said The Restaurant Group’s post-lockdown performance had been “highly encuraging”, adding:
British employers planned to make 58,000 workers redundant in August according to statutory filings, the BBC reports.
The broadcaster says966 separate employers informed the Government of plans to cut 20 or more jobs – more than four times as many as during August last year.
The figures are lower than during June and July, with 150,000 job cuts indicated during each.
Here’s how many planned redundancies have been indicated by filings over recent months:
In an interview with LBC radio this morning, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has confirmed that the Government will press ahead with a Budget before the end of this fiscal year – having cancelled a planned fiscal statement in November.
Mr Sunak said:
Baroness Rona Fairhead will join FTSE 250 group Electrocomponents as its new chair, the company has announced.
She will succeed Peter Johnson at the start of February, after joining as a non-executive at the start of November.
Formerly chair of the BBC Trust – and having held other roles across a 35 year career, including as chief executive of the Financial Times and chief financial officer of Pearson – Baroness Fairhead joined the House of Lords in 2017.
Mr Johnson said:
After edging higher at the open, European stock gains have faded – the pan-continental Stoxx 600 is flat, and the FTSE is narrowly in the red.
Premier Oil is to merge with larger rival Chrysaor in a deal that will reorganise its massive debt pile and leave shareholders with just 5.45pc of the enlarged company.
My colleagueJon Yeomansreports:
• Read more:Premier Oil and Chrysaor to merge
Premier’s shares have popped about 19pc higher at the open.
European stock markets have opened narrowly higher, with the FTSE up 0.1pc.
It’s worth watching UK pubs stocks at the open today, following a report in today’s Telegraph that dozens of Tory MPs may vote against Boris Johnson’s 10pm curfew for pubs, restaurants and bars.
As my colleagueChristopher Hopereports:
• Read more:End of 10pm curfew in sight as dozens of Tories prepare to rebel
Industrial orders in Germany beat expectations during Auguast, rising 4.4pc versus the 2.8pc climb expected by economists.
However, orders (seen here as an index) remained below pre-pandemic levels.
Manufacturing PMI figures released last week suggested the country’s factory activity comeback continued in September, so we should expected this recovery to continue when we get the next round of figures.
Andrew Bester, chief executive of the Cop-Operative Bank, has announced plans to step down after just two years in charge.
Mr Bester, who joined the lender in 2018, has committed to remaining in place while chair Bob Dench leads the search for a successor. He departure date will be confirmed soon, the bank said.
The Bank said in August that it would cut 350 jobs and close 18 branches in response to the pandemic.
• Read more:Co-op Bank closes branches and cuts 350 jobs
Good morning. The FTSE is tipped open slightly higher as Asian markets rose after Donald Trump was discharged from hospital.
Boris Johnson is expected to unveil his plans to stave off surging unemployment rates later today, calling for a “green industrial revolution” in a move which he hopes will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
1)Treasury eyes tax raid as support grows for assault on the rich:Fears are growing that the Treasury has political cover for a tax raid on the rich after a new poll found that Britons overwhelmingly back an assault on wealth to plug the budget shortfall.
The public supports raising taxes instead of a return to austerity by a 15-point margin as ministers eye ways to bring the country's finances under control after debt rocketed above 100pc of GDP, according to the survey by pollster Ipsos Mori.
2)Cinema industry braced for further closures as Cineworld warns over 45,000 job losses:Experts warned that further cinema chains are likely to follow Cineworld’s lead as a second wave of Covid hits release schedules.
Britain’s largest cinema chain Cineworld said it would shut theatres in the UK from this Thursday after the latest James Bond film was delayed.
3)Italians eye up bread maker Hovis with takeover bid:The baker's current owners, London-listed Premier Foods and US investment company Gores Group, have been approached by Newlat bosses with an offer which would make the Reggio Emilia-based companyone of the largest playersin the European food industry.
Hovis employs 2,800 people and has eight bakeries, one flour mill and three distribution centres.
4)Peter Thiel enjoys $278m payday after Palantir floats:The Silicon Valley tycoon has landed a $278m (£214m) payday by selling shares in his data mining company Palantir in the first two days after its stock market float.
Mr Thiel – a former PayPal boss, early Facebook investor and an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump – sold around 27.4m shares last Wednesday and Thursday, filings have revealed.
5)Bank of England official says evidence on negative rates is 'positive':Jonathan Haskel has become the latest Bank of England ratesetter to leave the door open to negative interest rates.
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) member echoed his colleague Silvana Tenreyro’s open-mindedness about the controversial policy, expressed in anexclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph last month.
No FTSE 350 companies are reporting.
Economics:Construction PMI (UK), balance of trade (US), factory orders (Germany) || Ray Dalio Has a Point About Bitcoin At $18,000: (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Mike Novogratz, famous for making the jump from Wall Street to cryptocurrencies, has regularly drawn a link between the global pandemic, financial stimulus and the allure of Bitcoin as a safe haven. “Now is the time to invest in Bitcoin,” his crypto firm Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd. thundered in a newspaper ad in August. “I’d be much more nervous [about a price drop] if I thought we’re going to cure Covid and all of a sudden everyone’s going to be fiscally conservative,” Novogratz said at the time.
He got one thing right. Bitcoin is now trading near $18,000, up almost 100% in six months and it’s flirting with an all-time high reached in 2017 (which, given it was followed by an ugly crash, faithful Bitcoiners would rather forget). Shares of Galaxy have done even better, rising by 380%. Total assets at Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the biggest trust provider in the cryptocurrency, have risen fourfold this year to $8.4 billion.
But is this really being driven by people seeking protection from a more uncertain world? A Covid-19 vaccine is getting closer; Donald Trump, whose one-time adviser Steve Bannon cheered Bitcoin as part of a “global populist revolt,” is on his way out. Global equity markets are near all-time highs.
If anything, Bitcoin looks much more like the stock market on steroids than it does a digital version of gold, which has barely budged since the end of October as confidence about a Covid cure has gradually improved. You can see why hedge fund skeptics like Ray Dalio are dubious of Bitcoin’s charms.
The cryptocurrency’s recent above-average correlation with equities is fine when everything’s going up, but not in times of stress: In mid-March, for example, a flight to safety triggered by Covid cut Bitcoin’s price in half. A recent Kansas City Fed study comparing bonds, gold and Bitcoin between 1995 and Feb. 2020 found Treasuries behaved “consistently” as a safe haven, gold “occasionally” and Bitcoin “never.”
Behind the talk of digital gold is the reality of an erratic, still-speculative asset with the potential for big price swings. Serious investor money is changing hands on crypto exchanges partly because a risky trading opportunity is in the air: Charismatic hedge fund convert Paul Tudor Jones compared Bitcoin to “investing in Google early.” Right behind the smart money are the excited retail punters who apparently used their $1,200 pandemic stimulus checks to buy Bitcoin.
While digital payment firms such as PayPal Holdings Inc. and Square Inc. have launched Bitcoin applications, this price jump is not about people buying cappuccinos. Data from Chainalysis estimates merchants made up only about 1% of crypto activity in North America between mid-2019 and mid-2020, while exchanges accounted for almost 90%. In East Asia, the world’s biggest crypto market, Bitcoin trading is driven by Tether, a token used as a U.S. dollar stand-in that’s embroiled in a New York lawsuit over alleged covered-up losses.
Crypto is still a heady bet on life-changing wealth, not a disruptor of how normal people use money.
Hence the confusion of Dalio, who wondered this week if he was “missing something” after dubbing Bitcoin a bubble back in 2017. Nothing had fundamentally fixed Bitcoin’s weakness as a currency or store of value, he says, and if it ever became a threat to governments and central banks it would be keelhauled by regulators. He has a point: Bitcoin still looks like an asset with bubble-like price dynamics, exaggerated by the artificial scarcity of its 21-million supply cap and a “HODLing” mentality among its acolytes, who hoard an estimated 60% of outstanding coins.
Sure, you could call a lot of things bubbles, including stock markets supercharged by Tesla Inc. and blank-check SPACs. But the unique power of Bitcoin hype is demonstrated when celebrities such as JK Rowling and Maisie Williams ask publicly for crypto tips on Twitter. The likes of Novogratz and Elon Musk are happy to offer bullish advice.
Given this exuberance, does the 2020 price spike mean a 2021 crash? Not necessarily. But the forces that drive Bitcoin’s price aren’t as straightforward as its defenders insist. Novogratz feels this year is a milestone: “We’ve crossed the Rubicon … Bitcoin is now an asset,” he said in August. But it will take more than a second trip toward $20,000 to truly convince big banks and consumers that it’s a stable one.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the European Union and France. He worked previously at Reuters and Forbes.
For more articles like this, please visit us atbloomberg.com/opinion
Subscribe nowto stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P. || Robinhood Traders, Including Bitcoin Holders, Left in the Lurch Following Theft: Report: A handful of Robinhood users who said their accounts had been liquidated by thieves recounted less-than-helpful responses by the personal investing fintech in aFriday reportby Bloomberg News.
• Five customers interviewed by Bloomberg claimed Robinhood acted slowly and responded inadequately to heists against their trading accounts, in part because Robinhood has no emergency support line.
• One user, Bill Hurley, a Connecticut metal worker who told Bloomberg he lost $5,000 in stock andbitcoinin a theft, said it took Robinhood two weeks to respond to his requests for assistance.
• Hurley told Bloomberg he had reached out to Robinhood while the thieves were still transferring his funds to a Revolut account. But he said he heard nothing back until Thursday.
• Bitcoin held on Robinhood cannot be transferred off the platform due to regulatory restrictions. It can, however, be cashed out.
• Robinhood told Bloomberg the thieves targeted individuals’ email accounts and did not gain access from an internal security breach.
• “We’re actively working with those impacted to secure their accounts,” the fintech told Bloomberg. Robinhood did not immediately respond to multiple CoinDesk requests for comment.
See also:Robinhood Raises Cool $660M in Extended Funding Round
• Robinhood Traders, Including Bitcoin Holders, Left in the Lurch Following Theft: Report
• Robinhood Traders, Including Bitcoin Holders, Left in the Lurch Following Theft: Report
• Robinhood Traders, Including Bitcoin Holders, Left in the Lurch Following Theft: Report
• Robinhood Traders, Including Bitcoin Holders, Left in the Lurch Following Theft: Report || How bitcoin powered the largest Nigerian protests in a generation: After initially existing mainly as a recurring hashtag on social media, #EndSARSa campaign against police brutality in Nigeriaevolved into mass protests which drew thousands of Nigerians across in several locations across the country this month. With the protests growing organically and quickly across cities all over the country, the need for fundingto cover food and water for protesters as well as medical supplies and hospital bills when necessarysoon became clear. And calls for funding through donation drives were answered quickly as Nigerians at home and abroad began sending cash through local banks and online payment methods in a bid to fund what had become the largest protests in about a decade. The history of the pivot table, the spreadsheets most powerful tool But a hiccup soon emerged. Feminist Coalition, a gender equality group that had been founded just weeks earlier and had become one of the key organizations accepting donations for protests, began to notice bank transactions were being slowed down while its online payment links to facilitate donations had stopped working. While the Nigerian government has maintained a lack of involvement, the widespread suspicion was that the disruption of donation accounts and methods was the result of pressure from high up. While the move may have proven to be a death-knell for the donation drive a decade ago, it only proved a temporary setback: Feminist Coalition began accepting donations through bitcoin instead and received support from bitcoin advocate, Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. Even without the Future Group deal, Ambani is miles ahead of Bezos in India Donate via #Bitcoin to help #EndSARS https://t.co/kf305SFXze jack (@jack) October 14, 2020 The move was in keeping with an overarching theme of the protests which had seen young, internet-savvy Nigerians leverage digital tools to drive and sustain their campaign against establishment institutions, from building online teams to respond to legal issues like arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention of protesters to using social media channels to debunk misinformation spread by government actors and traditional media. Story continues As of Oct. 22, when Feminist Coalition stopped taking donations in light of a government curfew which had effectively ended physical protests in Lagos, its summary of accounts showed a bitcoin balance that accounted for around 40% of the $387,000 raised in total. That total is remarkable for a country where digital transactions still come a distant second place to cash in the day-to-day economy, which is still dominated by the informal sector. Over the past decade, bitcoin has become the worlds most prominent cryptocurrency used both as a medium of exchange and storage of value. While bitcoins adoption has happened much faster in Europe and North America, it has also been gaining more traction across Africa as users on the continent increasingly adopt it to get around the difficulties of international transactions including digital payments. Given how it was used to keep funding for the protests alive, the protests inadvertently showcased a use-case for bitcoin in a market where it is increasingly being adopted but still remains quite synonymous with fraud. It showed Nigerians bitcoin wasnt just something used by scammers, says Ray Youssef, CEO of Paxful, a global peer to peer bitcoin marketplace which counts Nigeria as a leading market. Now people are starting to see its real utility. It shows people the full spectrum of what bitcoin can do. The association with scams in Nigeria stems from when Mavrodi Mundial Moneybox, an infamous Russian Ponzi scheme which saw Nigerians lose around $50 million when it first crashed, attempted a comeback by using bitcoin as a payment method. And its a link that remains despite the growing local use of bitcoin to facilitate cross-border trade and as a medium for remittances, not just in Nigeria but across the continent. In fact, fraudulent cryptocurrency platforms received just over $8 million from users in Africa in June alone, according to research by Chainalysis, a blockchain market intelligence firm. Sign up to the Quartz Africa Weekly Brief here for news and analysis on African business, tech, and innovation in your inbox Sign up for the Quartz Daily Brief , our free daily newsletter with the worlds most important and interesting news. More stories from Quartz: Any US election outcome is more win-win than lose-lose for China How will Justice Amy Coney Barrett change the US economy? || PayPal’s Crypto Offering May Be ‘a Huge Headache’ for Taxpayers: PayPal’s decision last week toembrace cryptomay help with mainstream adoption, but it could also mean additional tax work for users unfamiliar with the crypto landscape.
Over the next few weeks PayPal will be rolling out buy, sell and hold features for cryptocurrencies on its platform to U.S. users, but the service will not allow users to withdraw or deposit holdings.
According to Internal Revenue Service rules, cryptocurrencies likebitcoin(BTC) are treated like property; therefore, each time someone buys, sells or exchanges a digital asset it is considered a taxable event wherein the capital gains tax applies.
Related:PayPal-Backed Blockchain Analytics Firm Hires Former US Treasury Adviser
Under PayPal’s plans to make cryptocurrencies a “funding source” for purchases at its 26 million merchant customers, this will also apply to situations such as paying for a cup of coffee using BTC via PayPal, where the transaction could incur a capital gain or loss of a few cents. Because PayPal said transactions with merchants would be settled in fiat, each time the platform converts a user’s crypto to cash a tax obligation is created.
Read more:Crypto Long & Short: Why the PayPal Rally Isn’t What It Seems, and Why That’s OK
“The accounting on this would be a huge headache,” said Stephen Turanchik, a tax attorney at law firm Paul Hastings and member of the AICPA’s virtual currency task force. He pointed out that regardless of crypto being involved, PayPal and Venmo can add a lot of accounting work because of the variety of transactions that occur on these platforms.
Adding crypto to the mix could make it more challenging to capture all the transactions and associated capital gains or losses, especially if users mix business and personal payments on these platforms.
Related:Tax Payers Needn't Disclose Merely Holding Crypto: IRS Draft 2020 Guidance
According to Kirk Phillips, a certified public accountant (CPA), while PayPal may help springboard crypto adoption, the tax ripple effects are also likely to depend on how good a job it does on reporting. As a payment processor, PayPal is required to issue Form 1099-Ks to users and the IRS if an account holder’s total proceeds go over $20,000 and includes more than 200 transactions in a calendar year.
Regardless of whether they meet that requirement, all users will also be able to see their transaction history and account statements through their PayPal account.
While the forms and transaction history can be helpful, these documents may not be sufficient for tax purposes because users will also need to keep track of the base price they bought the digital asset for, how much they spent on it, how long it was held before being sold and the price for which it was sold.
Venmo, which is heavily used for small purchases, could complicate this trail a little more.
“We’re gonna see more and more micro purchases, and the importance of some sort ofde minimis(too minor to merit consideration) exception might become greater,” said Lisa Zarlenga, co-chair of the tax group at law firm Steptoe & Johnson LLP.
Read more:PayPal’s Move Is Good for Crypto Adoption but Not So Much for Profits: Morgan Stanley
She pointed out these transactions are currently treated as capital gains or losses, no matter how small, and therefore are taxable events.
A best practice for users might just be to focus on keeping well-maintained records of their crypto interactions, she said.
Although PayPal’s embrace of crypto promises to bring digital assets to a mainstream base of users, the demanding tax rules may also lead to early stumbles from some of them. For now, a simple practice to start with may be to avoid using emoticons in the memo line for Venmo or PayPal transfers.
• PayPal’s Crypto Offering May Be ‘a Huge Headache’ for Taxpayers
• PayPal’s Crypto Offering May Be ‘a Huge Headache’ for Taxpayers || ALT 5 Sigma Digital Instrument Market Summary for BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / November 13, 2020 /ALT 5 Sigma Inc. an emerging leader in blockchain powered financial platforms provides its daily digital instruments market summary for Bitcoin (BTC/USD), Ether (ETH/USD), Litecoin (LTC/USD).
Real-Time Market Data is available atwww.alt5pro.comand Real-Time Market Data feed is also available atwww.alt5sigma.comALT 5 Sigma Digital Instrument Market Summary for BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH
[["Digital Asset", "Pair", "Price", "24hr Chg", "7d Chg", "24/hr Volume", "MarketCap"], ["Bitcoin", "BTC/USD", "$16,182.33", "$0.01", "$0.05", "$32,130 M", "$299,994 M"], ["Ethereum", "ETH/USD", "$468.30", "$0.03", "$0.06", "$12,856 M", "$53,111 M"], ["XRP", "XRP/USD", "$0.26", "$0.04", "$0.02", "$2,964 M", "$11,940 M"], ["Bitcoin Cash", "BCH/USD", "$257.97", "-$0.01", "$0.01", "$1,917 M", "$4,791 M"], ["Litecoin", "LTC/USD", "$64.97", "$0.10", "$0.07", "$4,261 M", "$4,280 M"], ["Bitcoin SV", "BSV/USD", "$160.58", "$0.03", "-$0.03", "$733 M", "$2,982 M"], ["EOS", "EOS/USD", "$2.59", "$0.06", "$0.03", "$2,153 M", "$2,427 M"], ["Monero", "XMR/USD", "$113.24", "$0.02", "-$0.05", "$855 M", "$2,011 M"], ["Stellar", "XLM/USD", "$0.08", "$0.03", "-$0.01", "$139 M", "$1,715 M"], ["Dash", "DASH/USD", "$76.76", "-$0.03", "$0.11", "$375 M", "$753 M"]]
About ALT 5 Sigma Inc.
ALT 5 is a fintech company specializing in the development and deployment of digital assets trading and exchange platforms. Alt 5 was founded by financial industry specialists out of the necessity to provide the digital asset economy with security, accessibility, transparency and compliance.
ALT 5 provides its clients the ability to buy, sell and hold digital assets in a safe and secure environment deployed with the best practices of the financial industry. ALT 5's products and services are available to Banks, Broker Dealers, Funds, Family Offices, Professional Traders, Retail Traders, Digital Asset Exchanges, Digital Asset Brokers, Blockchain Developers, and Financial Information Providers.
ALT 5's digital asset custodian services are secured by GardaWorld. GardaWorld is the world's largest privately-owned business solutions and security services company, offering cash management services.
For more information, visitwww.alt5sigma.com.
Contact:
Andre BeauchesneTel. 1-800-204-6203info@alt5sigma.com
For more information on ALT 5 Pay, visitwww.alt5pay.comFor more information on ALT 5 Pro, visitwww.alt5pro.com
SOURCE:ALT 5 Sigma Inc.
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/616649/ALT-5-Sigma-Digital-Instrument-Market-Summary-for-BTC-ETH-LTC-BCH
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
|
Trend: no change || Prices: 18177.48, 19625.84, 18803.00, 19201.09, 19445.40, 18699.77, 19154.23, 19345.12, 19191.63, 18321.14
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2020-02-20]
BTC Price: 9608.48, BTC RSI: 50.70
Gold Price: 1616.60, Gold RSI: 72.87
Oil Price: 53.78, Oil RSI: 51.53
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Hedera Hashgraph Asks Investors to Wait Longer for Tokens After Price Crash: Hedera Hashgraph, the company behind the blockchain-like Hedera network, is asking investors to wait longer for tokens they paid for, in order to stabilize their cratering price. In return for a delayed distribution of their HBAR tokens, investors would ultimately get more of them than originally stipulated in a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT). Over time, this additional allocation would help them recoup their initial investments. “[P]articipating SAFT holders would receive additional allocations of coins, made on an annual basis, the cumulative sum of which, over time, would equal the value of their original principal investment, in exchange for stretching out the release schedule for their remaining coins,” Hedera CEO and co-founder Mance Harman wrote in a note Monday. HBAR’s price has tanked since the Hedera Hashgraph network’s debut. Data via Nomics. Related: Bitcoin Price Set to Outshine Gold and Stocks by Big Margin in 2019 The offer would incentivize investors to support network usage and growth as well as shore up the price of HBAR, he wrote. The number of additional coins would be equal in value to 10 percent of the company’s annual revenue from treasury sales and transaction fees, capped at investors’ original investment amount. The offer is optional; investors who choose not to sign up for the new program will remain on their existing SAFTs without change. Hedera anticipates the new agreement will extend token distribution schedules by up to 25 percent. For example, investors who originally agreed to receive HBAR over a 48-month period would now wait an additional 12 months for full allocation. There is no timeframe yet for additional allocations; Hedera has said it will depend on the level of interest the program receives once it’s sent out to investors in early 2020. Related: Bitcoin Price Jumps 10%, But Bull Reversal Still $700 Away Designed as a multi-industry scalable decentralized platform, Hedera raised more than $124 million through three rounds in 2018. To comply with U.S. regulations, the sale was only open to accredited investors. Since distributions began in September 2019, more than 1.4 million HBAR (nearly $22 million) has been allocated to investors. Story continues Following the first token distribution, HBAR plummetted by over 90 percent. In response, Harman said the company was reviewing the project’s token economics model, including a new schedule that would distribute tokens on a quarterly, rather than monthly, basis to ease selling pressure and enable price discovery. Despite the tanking of HBAR’s price, Hedera has received backing from significant corporate players. IBM, Tata Communications and Boeing joined the project’s governing council in August. Related Stories Bitcoin Drops Below Major Price Support for First Time Since May Bitcoin Price Hits 3-Week Low Even as Investor Bets on a Bull Move Surge || Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin SV prices soar, reach three-month highs: Bitcoinforks are having a big day, with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) today reaching prices not seen in months.
Bitcoin Cash is up by a full 10 percent, now trading at $257 per coin.
The price of Bitcoin SV, the coin backed by the self-described “inventor” of Bitcoin, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright, has today increased by a whopping 30 percent. It’s now trading for $148 per coin—a price point it hasn’t touched since August 2019.
It’s a strong reversal of fortunes for the holders of both coins. Not that long ago,both coins were strugglingto maintain their value, when the entire market took a dive last November.
Bitcoin SV, in fact, was experiencing particularly low usage about a week before its price sunk: The number of Bitcoin SV transactionsdropped by halfin early November last year, making it one of the worst performing tokens at the time.
Today’s price jump for Bitcoin SV may have something to do with the latest details to have emerged out of the billion-dollar lawsuit being waged against Craig Wright.
Wright has reportedly submitted more than 420 documents to Ira Kleiman,the plaintiff involvedin the case. One of these documentssupposedly disclosesa secret Bitcoin stash that may be worth billions. If that’s true—and that’s abig if—then it lends credence to Wright’s Satoshi claims, which could explain the increased interest in Wright’s coin of choice, BSV.
Whatever the reason, it’s a good day for BSV holders, as the rest of the crypto market has experienced only marginal gains.Ethereumis up close to 4 percent on the day, while XRP and Bitcoin are up close to 3 percent. || BlackRock, France, Germany Govts. Seek $500M Investment For Their Joint Climate Fund: The Climate Finance Partnership (CFP) organization is seeking to raise $500 million as initial funding for its environment protection fund.
BlackRock Takes Charge
The CFP was announced at the One Planet Summit in September 2018.
Leading partnerBlackRock Inc.(NYSE:BLK) said the vehicle will feature a first-loss tranche of at least $100 million in catalytic capital, anchored by government and foundation partners, which BlackRock will use to mobilize a goal of at least $400 million in institutional capital commitments.
The governments of France and Germany, both of which are partners in the CFP, will contribute $30 million each.
The other two partners, the Hewlett Foundation of theHP Inc.(NYSE:HPQ) and theHewlett Packard Enterprise Co(NYSE:HPE) founder William and his wife, Flora Hewlett, and the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust will invest $10 million and $7.5 million respectively.
Funds To Be Invested In Developing Countries
The funds will be invested in select countries in South East Asia, Latin America, and Africa, CFP said. At least 25% of the total capital is to go towards Africa.
The organization will invest in climate infrastructure to promote renewable energy, energy storage solutions, and ultra-low emission or electric vehicles.
"Developing countries will need our support to increase their climate action. For that, both public and private funds will be essential," Jochen Flasbarth, State Secretary for the German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety said in the statement.
"By this, we are sending a strong signal of the importance of shifting financial flows towards a low carbon development."
Brian Deese, Global Head of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock, said that the company believes "creative collaboration is essential to mobilizing investment into climate infrastructure in emerging markets at scale," and provides its clients with an "opportunity to invest in the global low-carbon transition."
The partners are aiming to launch the fund by the third quarter this year, according to the statement.
Price Action
BlackRock's shares closed 1.12% lower at $529.14 on Tuesday.
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© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin Sign Guy Is Back, Bringing Sound Money to Urbits Sound Computer: If bitcoin is digital cash and ethereum is digital law, Urbit is digital land. The highly ambitious cloud computing project imagines nothing less than a rewiring of the internet, allowing users, not corporations, to own their online identities and data. While most blockchain projects rely on Amazon Web Services and other behemoths for essential infrastructure, Urbit goes back to first principles. And 2020 could be Urbits big moment. After years of trickling development, and not a little controversy owing to its connections to an online fringe movement, the project finally plans to ship. Related: Video: $1 Million? Bitcoin Sign Guy on Why Its Not Too Late to Buy Urbit quietly has built bitcoin integrations and added an iconic crypto personality to its roster of developers: Bitcoin Sign Guy. B.S.G., also known as Christian Langalis, made headlines as a 22-year-old holding up a Buy Bitcoin sign behind then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. Captured on C-SPAN, a screenshot became a widely circulated meme across the crypto space, and Bitcoin Sign Guy an inadvertent hero . After years of laying low, Langalis wants to see bitcoin gain mass adoption and thinks his work with Urbit is the way to do it. Sound money deserves a sound computer, Langalis is fond of saying . Urbit enables anyone to run his or her own server, with far more ease than current available options. Instead of handing personal data to Facebook and Google for the privilege of using their platforms, users maintain ownership for themselves. Its built as an alternative to the centralized web, where nearly all activity is managed by a handful of monoliths. Online citizens Related: Video: Bitcoin Sign Guy Tells All About Infamous Janet Yellen Photobomb At its core, Urbit is a way of marrying all online services including a users social graph, messages and photo collections to a stable identity. Weve built Urbit to be a cloud-native computer that you can use for your whole digital life, Galen Wolfe-Pauly, CEO of Tlon, the startup primarily responsible for developing Urbit, said in an email. To really satisfy that, Urbit users have to be able to transact with one another. Story continues Sound money deserves a sound computer. Langalis is a project lead at Tlon, where his main remit is to integrate bitcoin into the ecosystem. If Urbit needs a currency to fulfill its aims of complete digital citizenship, Langalis thinks bitcoin needs a decentralized platform to be used safely and effectively. Bitcoin and Urbit, he thinks, form a symbiotic pair (and a nice portmanteau ), representing a move towards a fully realized, decentralized existence. At the heart of both bitcoin and Urbit is the notion of digital sovereignty, meaning users arent beholden to the coercive effects of a higher authority. Much as bitcoin seeks a return to neutral monetary systems, Urbit seeks neutral computing infrastructure, Langalis said in a phone call. Though Tlon is moving slowly with the integration the firm placed a single bounty to add bitcoin to the Urbit wallet on Dec. 9 bitcoin will ultimately serve as money primitive for the ecosystem looking to out-compete the internet. After the wallet will come a node implementation, lightning capability and user-designed apps denominated in the cryptocurrency. There will also be an Urbit storefront page. The litany of bitcoin stuff were working on is growing by the day. It started with a bitcoin node and is moving to custodying keys like MacOS and creating an atomic swap between bitcoin and Urbit address so you wont need to own anything but bitcoin to purchase an Urbit address, he said. The features should ship in Q2. Bitcoin Sign Guy featured in CoinDesks Most Influential 2017 Bitcoin or bust Langalis approached Tlon over the summer and suggested its developers integrate bitcoin. At the time, Langalis had been attending Urbit Meetups in San Francisco for a year and half. His interest in the operating system stemmed from his obsession with bitcoin. A self-defined bitcoin maximalist, Langalis fell down the rabbit hole searching for virtual liberty. He started using virtual privacy networks (VPN) to cloak his internet activity but was frustrated by their unreliability. He invokes American whistleblower Edward Snowden when saying, Privacy protections might have a minor effect, but youre still being tracked. After failing to spin up his own email server it was beyond his technical knowledge Langalis searched and found that all the things I wanted to do, that I couldnt, are possible with Urbit. Namely, Langalis wants to own his data and make sure it never leaks. People have strong affinity with Urbit if they value digital sovereignty, demand secure and robust systems, and prefer that systems are as simple as possible from a dev perspective, he said. In this sense, Langalis said bitcoin proves itself again and again to be the most secure chain. Its the only credible option for cryptocurrency being money. Signing off Money at least on the internet is just another form of data. One of bitcoins major breakthroughs was in solving the double-spend problem, removing the need for a trusted third party to verify if a sequence of bytes is legitimate. That means bitcoin is as the code says. However, a decade after the protocol was first released, bitcoin is rarely used as the peer-to-peer payment system for which it was theorized. Bitcoin exists on exchanges, in custodial wallets, and on platforms that run on third-party servers. This reintroduces the risks of security and coercion that bitcoins pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, sought to mitigate. Bitcoin itself is quite hardened, but all of the tools we use to interact with it are questionable, Nic Carter, co-founder of the VC Castle Island Ventures, said in a Telegram exchange. Hes said previously he knows of a number of exchanges that run on centralized cloud servers but wouldnt name them. Langalis, too, is skeptical of bitcoin infrastructure that relies on a centralized server or service, which could theoretically expose users to state coercion. Feds will limit the control you have over your BTC, enforce KYC, expropriate it, etc, he said. Urbit and bitcoin are only the beginning of the mouse war against the cat called the authoritarian internet. In this sense, Urbit, as a decentralized computing system, is a way to return security to bitcoin, by returning it to its peer-to-peer state. The less systemic we can make bitcoin usage, the more stable it is, he said. Making it easier for people to run Bitcoin nodes, sign Bitcoin transactions, and engage in online commerce is part of how Urbit will address this objective. Still, Alexander Bard, the Swedish cyber-philosophist, sees a bumpy road ahead for such endeavors. Urbit and bitcoin are only the beginning of the mouse war against the cat called the authoritarian internet, exemplified by Xi Jinpings idea of himself as the Chinese Messiah and the NSA as its infantile mimicry, he said. Urbit sigil courtesy of Tlon The webs we weave There are 13 servers that run the domain name system (DNS) hierarchy, the backbone of the internet as most know it. Like other components of the web, this decision was a contingency of the internets haphazard development over the past half century. Were inundated by a technical debt of large mainframe computers and networks that were bolted together, said Kenny Rowe, a consultant for Tlon, working on integrating ethereum to Urbit, and early contributor on MakerDAO. The history of the internet is essentially one of rapid development being outpaced by growing demand. Protocols like Unix and HTTP, the foundational blocks of the web, are arguably ill-equipped to meet the strain of modern computing. These systems have been patched and hacked over time, leading to inefficiencies and vulnerabilities, he said. And the problems will only compound as more and more of daily life goes digital. Urbits designers made the choice to throw everything away and build a new stack. A reboot was needed because you cant reform the centralized system. You can only build on top of it, Rowe said. The new stack starts with a bespoke programming language, Hoon. They also built a virtual machine, an operating system, and a peer-to-peer network. This is like inventing the personal computer, the internet, email, and FTP [File Transfer Protocol, a way to send files] all at the same time. The goal is nothing less than a complete overhaul of the personal computer and internet, Rowe said. Though Urbit is a complete reworking of personal computing, there are parts that closely mirror the conventional web. Urbits routing system is composed of 255 galaxies, 65,000 stars and four billion planets, with 4.3 trillion moons, which, in turn, function similarly to DNSs, ISPs, personal computers and devices that connect to them. The difference is that Urbit IDs are owned cryptographically by many different people, according to a company blog . In other words, theres not a centralized unit that distributes network participants. Galaxy Urbits distribute star Urbits, and star Urbits distribute planet Urbits, forming a communication and identification layer over the network of personally run servers. But its not an immutable arrangement; each Urbit is free to move to other parts of the universe if it wants. And, despite the cosmological address hierarchy, communication between network participants is designed to be peer to peer. Individual Urbits are represented by a human readable namespace and have a cryptographic passkey to log in to the operating system. These Urbit IDs are stored on the ethereum blockchain. Like other cryptographic assets, Urbit IDs have value. Users are expected to pay a nominal fee for them so the network isnt inundated by low-effort trolls or spammers. Reputation is highly valued by the developers. Though bad actors cannot be kicked off the platform at large as is possible in a centralized client/server relation, like Twitter disabling an account associated with making threats Urbits galaxies or stars can refuse to validate these users, essentially leaving them floating in space. Isolated, but not deplatformed, these users will still maintain complete ownership over their data. And unlike the traditional internet where namespaces, URLs and webpages are mutable, a users Urbit preserves an immutable record of their communications, similar to how reputations follow you around in meat-space. C. Guy Martian Urbit was conceived in 2002 by Curtis Guy Yarvin, a contentious figure in the tech scene for his political writings, under the nom du plume Mencius Moldbug, that argue for the replacement of democracy with an authoritarian, neo-monarchist order. Yarvins sprawling, esoteric blog posts are thought to have inspired the alt-right, and have been read by some as supporting race science and slavery . For the next 11 years, Yarvin built the guts of Urbit, all while blogging about CEO-kings ruling a patchwork of nations. In 2013, he raised $1.1 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiels Founders Fund, and launched Tlon (named after a parallel universe in a Jorge Luis Borges story ). A team of five began turning Yarvins vaporware into an operational cloud computing system. Then, in early 2019, shortly after Urbit ID was deployed to the ethereum blockchain, Yarvin announced he would step down from the corporation and project. Im a thinker, not a doer; an explorer, not a leader; an author, not a maintainer. My goal was always to fire myself at the first possible opportunity. Im super happy to reach it, he wrote at the time. Unlike Satoshi, who also walked away from a functioning system, Yarvin left behind a divisive legacy that still follows the project. Curtis had the audacity to try to tackle the problem of building the whole stack, Wolfe-Pauly, who came to the project in 2013, said. Most of the people who have come to work on this project, myself included, had dreamed about doing this. Curtis original designs worked well to motivate other people to actually realize them. He was never the guy to actually see it through. In Yarvins own words, For me, there are always two Urbits: the Urbit that exists, and the Urbit that should exist. Yarvin did not respond to a request for comment. Urbit has evolved quite some distance from Curtis original sketch. Its sort of like Urbit in 2013 was a PhD thesis and weve taken it from a paper to a reality, Wolfe-Pauly said. According to him, the system has been almost entirely rewritten by the current Tlon team, in preparation of onboarding the general public. Under Yarvins stewardship, the working directive was to ship a basic model and encourage only the technically proficient to begin playing with the system. Photo of Galen Wolfe-Pauly, Urbit CEO, courtesy of Tlon Reboot In the first quarter of 2020, Tlon plans to ship the first complete release of Urbit. The designers have called it the Nokia 3310 of cloud computers, perhaps an oblique reference to Yarvins work developing microbrowsers for cell phones, early in his career. At launch, the system will essentially function like Slack, a place for communities of people to chat and share links. Tlon has been using this feature day to day, and is working on a G Suite-like service for Urbit. This version of the operating system will exist on an internet browser, until an app is launched as a part of OS 2 in the second quarter. Its with this second upgrade that peer-to-peer cryptocurrency payments in bitcoin and ethereum will be possible. Think CashApp for Urbit, Langalis said. Considering the slow pace of development and that Urbit has yet to be audited, not everyone in the early ecosystem is convinced this is a good thing. Urbit is definitely not a sound computer, and wont be for a while yet. Ill trust it with my bitcoins after I trust it for everything else. It has to succeed at its own mission before it can succeed as a wallet, said Brenton Milne, an Urbit hobbyist or Martian. Disempowering the deepcloud Urbit is often explained as a digital homesteading experiment. Its a way to drop off the grid and return to the basics of computing. Today, a handful of corporate entities control most of the activity online. MEGACORP, as these commercial entities are called in Urbits parlance, set the parameters of discourse and often have total say over a users experience. Platforms like Facebook, Google and Medium offer users a tradeoff: use our servers in exchange for your data, often without limits on what they can do with it. I think its been very damaging to society to have our means of communication be optimized for the profit of platform owners rather than the interests of their users, and I think that this has led to mass psychology being damaged outrage and conflict keep people clicking, said decentralized web enthusiast Dave Kammeyer, CEO of Mentality.io, a machine learning startup. Rowe, the Tlon consultant, doesnt think the traditional web is going anywhere, but that Urbit offers users a chance of setting up a geodesic dome insulated from some of the more pernicious features of the surveillance web. Milne thinks Urbit has a long-shot potential to upend the internet, but another likely scenario is it merely develops into a sustainable ecosystem for geeks and hackers. What bitcoin is to paper money, Urbit is to land, said Justin Murphy, an author and political scientist interested in internet subcultures. The more bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies penetrate our everyday lives, I think, the more people will want their entire computing experience to be similar. Carter sees the circle running in the opposite direction: If Urbit provides a meaningful identity disentangled from meatspace it will become a vital tool in catalyzing the closed-loop bitcoin economy. Speaking to his years of pseudo-anonymity as Bitcoin Sign Guy, Langalis said he never wanted his reputation to overshadow his work for bitcoin. It was an identity I enjoyed being, but I didnt want to get typecast as that guy. Two years on, hes just as tenacious about building bridges and evangelizing for bitcoin. Urbit is the way I can contribute. Related Stories Most Influential in Blockchain 2017 #1: Bitcoin Sign Guy Urbit Is Moving Its Virtual Server Galaxy Over to Ethereum || Mitigating Online Privacy Risks with Crypto Mixing: ST. ALBANS, UK / ACCESSWIRE / January 29, 2020 / The concept of blockchain and thus, Bitcoin, came riding on the advantage of the anonymity of transactions, defiance to authority, lack of centralization and overseer authority among other advantages. Cryptocurrencies became popular because their programmers touted them as anonymous. It has, however, emerged that they are not and that transactions undertaken using altcoins can be traced. Over time with the increased government scrutiny and unwanted invasion by phishers, users now realize that the cryptocurrency world is not as anonymous as most of them were led to believe. A tech startup called, SmartMixer is changing all this and giving back cryptocurrency enthusiasts their security and privacy. The start-up provides a cryptocurrency mixing platform that obscures your cryptocurrency transactions, making it hard for anyone to trace your dealings. SmartMixer reintroduces anonymity by allowing online shoppers that pay using cryptocurrency through addresses that remain anonymous when the user is completing transactions. The shoppers, as such, cannot be associated with the various addresses they use. How Does Coin Mixing Work? Coin mixers work by essentially collecting cryptocurrency from the people using cryptocurrency, mixing it with a giant pile of other cryptocurrencies, and then sending them smaller units of cryptocurrency to an address of their preference, with total the amount that you put in minus 1-3%. The 1-3 % is generally taken as a profit by the coin mixing company. This is how they make money. A cryptocurrency mixer (also known as a blender) allows you to spend, store and share cryptocurrencies, without your transactional data becoming public. In short, it makes your financial transactions anonymous in the true sense. It is done by mixing your transactional data with a pool of Bitcoin data. This ensures your data is secure, you have control over your privacy, and no data can be traced back to you, as the link between the sender and the receiver is broken. Story continues Smart Mixer: The crypto mixing solution SmartMixer is a unique cryptocurrency mixer/blender that ensures your cryptocurrency becomes untraceable, and no link exists between the stakeholders. They have designed different pools of cryptocurrencies based on their sources, with variable fee percentages. This segmentation and differentiation ensure the clean mixing of the currency. The three pools include Standard Pool, Smart Pool, and Stealth Pool. It uses a 'smart code' to avoid the same currencies from reaching a user on multiple occasions. Features of Smart Mixer Platform Zero Post-Transaction Logs - SmartMixer platform keeps transaction logs for only as long as it needs them. The longest period that these logs can remain is 24 hours, otherwise, the platform keeps them only for as long as is necessary to complete a transaction. Full Anonymity - The need for complete anonymity is greater in the online space, and it is only second to the information online prowlers seek. Users that mix cryptocurrency on the platform does not even need to input their information. Instead, only the recipient altcoin address is necessary. Customizable Process - Users can set various parameters as they so choose. You, for instance, can choose the amount of cryptocurrency to mix, the commission to pay for the mixing, and the delay period you prefer. The importance of privacy and security while transacting online cannot be stressed enough. It probably is the reason why platforms like SmartMixer are timely. The advantages it offers hold the possibility of making crypto mainstream. More details about cryptocurrency mixing and the SmartMixer platform can be gathered through their official website . Company Website : SmartMixer.io Address : St. Albans, United Kingdom, AL1 5DW Company Email : info@smartmixer.io Contact Person : Noah Baker Phone No : +44 7924441877 Youtube Telegram SOURCE: SmartMixer View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/574469/Mitigating-Online-Privacy-Risks-with-Crypto-Mixing || Crypto Markets: Cryptocurrencies Surge As Coronavirus Spreads, Singapore Brings New Regulation: A majority of the top cryptocurrencies surged in early trade on Tuesday as stock markets retreated in the wake of the rising casualties from the novel Coronavirus in China.
What Happened
The surge in cryptocurrency's price at a time when thetraditional markets are holding backalso brings focus to a long-standing debate on whether they act as a safe haven during times of increased geopolitical adversities or other global risks like posed by the latest virus outbreak.
Bitcoin (BTC) surged more than 5% earlier this month after Iran's airstrikes at the United States military airbases in Iraq, quite in tandem with established safe havens like gold and Japanese yen. Nevertheless, cryptocurrencies have proved to be too unpredictable and not adhere to specific trends over time. Kostya Etus, a portfolio manager at CLS Investments, told CoinDesk that BTC can't yet be labeled as either a risk-on asset or a safe haven. "Bitcoin isn't really viewed as a safe-haven asset like gold or cash, and it doesn't have much in common with risk-on assets like stocks either," Etus said. "While most assets are specific to risk-on and risk-off environments, in which you could predict price reactions to certain events, bitcoin is not one of those assets." Meanwhile, the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Tuesday announced that its Payment Services Act has come into force. The law gives the provisions for cryptocurrency businesses to register and get licensed to operate legally in the country.
Price Action
Here's how some of the cryptocurrencies traded at press time, according to CoinMarketCap data: Bitcoin was up 4.01% at $8,990.16. Ethereum (ETH), the cryptocurrency backing the namesake blockchain platform, traded 2.41% higher at $171.82. XRP (XRP), the cryptocurrency enabling the Ripple payment network, added 1.87% at 23 cents. Among Bitcoin hard forks, Bitcoin SV (BSV) added 5.5% at $297.33, while Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was up 1.04% at $363.97. The stablecoin Tether (USDT) traded at its intended price of $1. Cardano (ADA) made a notable gain of nearly 15% and traded at 5 cents. The cryptocurrency market overall added about 3.64% to its valuation at $247.69 billion. Bitcoin made up for about 66% of the overall market.
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© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Trump Speaks, Supporting Riskier Assets. Did Iran, China and Russia Listen?: The U.S President spoke on Wednesday, responding to the missile strike on U.S occupied bases in Iraq.
While the threat of further measures against Iran was laid out, an olive branch was also extended.
There may be some wishful thinking, however, for the U.S to expect both China and Russia to align with the request of the U.S to step back from the Iranian regime.
Both nations have a long-standing relationship with Iran and are unlikely to follow the requests of the U.S President.
Trump also called on NATO to take a greater interest and involvement, while also calling on the likes of Britain, Germany and others to support the U.S.
Few want to get embroiled in a military campaign in the Middle East that could deteriorate into a full-blown proxy war.
The markets reacted favorably to the Trump address. There will have been fears of severe measures in response to Wednesday’s attacks.
Olive branches abound and talk of a desire to reach an agreement with Iran to allow the nation to prosper was key.
We saw the Dow bounce by more than 120 points in response to Trump’s comments.
Commodity currencies also found support, with the Aussie Dollar reversing losses from earlier in the day.
For those looking at the cryptos, Bitcoin hit reverse in response to the speech. Bitcoin had surged to $8,400 levels this week as the threat of conflict in the Middle East peaked. Trump’s speech led to a sharp pullback to sub-$8,100 levels.
Interestingly, it was one of the few occasions in recent times that Bitcoin had become a safe haven. It was perhaps unsurprising when considering the possible ramifications of all-out war in the Middle East…
With the olive branch now extended, it now rests with Iran’s supreme leader to respond to Trump’s speech.
Iran has cranked up its uranium enrichment program and has promised severe retaliation to the U.S attack last Friday.
Wednesday’s missile attacks on selected bases will unlikely cut it for the Iranians and for the Revolutionary guard.
‘The face’ has been saved, however, and Trump’s olive branch could be considered a diplomatic victory for Khamenei.
One thing is certain, Iran will likely play along with the diplomatic goal of peace and prosperity. After all, the country has been under the cosh since the U.S reintroduced sanctions.
The population would be somewhat irked if the government failed to take advantage of what is currently on offer.
For the U.S, it could be game, set, and match. If Iran brushes aside the offering, uprisings within the country may well create social and economic unrest. It would even offer the U.S an opportunity to, once more, meddle in Iran’s future…
For all concerned, whatever the outcome, few would like either side to escalate beyond the events of the last week…
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• GBP/USD Price Forecast – British Pound Building Momentum For Next Move || Bitcoin price pushes upwards 5%, leading market revival: After a challenging week,the price of bitcoinhas increased five percent in the last 24 hours. One bitcoin (BTC) is now worth $7,549.
The recent price rise comes after a couple of sharp drops. On December 18, bitcoin's price dropped as low as $6,600, having fallen continuously from $7,600 over the preceeding weeks. But shortly after the dip, the price bounced back up to $7,100 before another surge yesterday.
However, the price still appears to be in a downwards channel. Looking at the long term picture, bitcoin's price has been steadily heading down from peaks of $13,700 in June. But, it's still up since the start of the year. The price of bitcoin was worth $3,740 on January 1, roughly half of its current price.
While bitcoin is performing well in the last day, it has only stimulated a minor revival for other cryptocurrencies. In the top ten coins by market cap, bitcoin cash (BCH) is leading the rest, up 3.42% for today. Most other coins are up between 2-3%, although XRP has barely moved and remains just under $0.20.
Crypto.com coin (CRO) is closing in on the top ten coins, up eight percent in the last 24 hours and is now ranked twenty fourth. Tezos (XTZ) continues to remain in the top ten coins, having ousted stellar (XLM) and tron (TRX). || A Look At Bitcoin's Crazy Decade: Bitcoin ended the 2010s just above the $7,000 per coin mark, which is far removed from it's all-time high of nearly $20,000 but also up a whopping 9,000,000 percent from its roots in July of 2010, according to Bloomberg. Bitcoin's first transaction consisted of 10,000 coins in exchange for two pizzas back in 2010 when the digital coin had a value close to zero. Since then the price of a bitcoin has risen from eight cents to $7,230.58 which translates to a return of exactly 9,038,125 percent. See Also: Boredom Is The Enemy? A Look At Bitcoin Since Peaking At ,000 Why It's Important The narrative over bitcoin's purpose in society has also shifted over the past 10 years, Bloomberg's Eric Lam said Tuesday. At the very beginning, bitcoin was supposed to either "replace the U.S. dollar" or become the "next future medium of exchange." Today, bitcoin is viewed as a form of "digital gold" that will rise in value and isn't meant to perform day-to-day transactions, he said. There are other digital currencies that are specifically designed for that purpose. Over the years bitcoin has picked up a lot of skepticism and regulatory scrutiny which makes its path forward unclear, Lam said. While it's unlikely investors will see another 9 million percent return, "crazier things have happened" over the past 10 years. 0 See more from Benzinga Munster Doubles Down, Says Apple Has 40% Upside This Year Buffett Reportedly Rejects Offer To Acquire Tiffany 2019 A Year To Forget For Hedge Funds © 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || British Court Freezes $860,000 in Bitcoin Linked to Ransomware Payout: A U.K. court has ordered Bitfinex to freeze bitcoin worth $860,000 after the crypto exchange and blockchain sleuthing firm Chainalysis traced the funds to a ransomware payment.
The victim of the ransomware attack had paid $950,000 in bitcoin to the perpetrator through an insurance company, according toa filing published last weekby the England and Wales High Court (Commercial Court) and first reported byNew Money Review. While some of the bitcoin was converted into fiat currency, the remainder appears to have been sent to an address on the Bitfinex platform.
The court ordered Bitfinex to freeze the address and share its know-your-customer (KYC) information about the account’s owner.
Related:Bitcoin Rallies to Near $9,150 as Stocks Drop Over Coronavirus Fears
The victim, an unnamed firm, had been told to pay $1.2 million in bitcoin after its computers were hijacked by ransomware. The company’s insurer, which filed the court claim, ultimately paid $950,000 in the form of 109.25 BTC, according to the filing. While some of these funds were converted into fiat and are not traceable, 96 BTC (worth $861,200at press time) were sent to an address owned by Bitfinex.
New Money Review claims this ruling marks the first instance of the U.K. High Court endorsing bitcoin as property.
In a statement, Chainalysis Director of Communications Maddie Kennedy said that “a leading cyber insurer used Chainalysis software to investigate ransomware payments made on behalf of their clients and trace the flow of funds from the point of extortion to known services such as exchanges.”
“A significant amount” of this ransom was tracked to a user on Bitfinex, and the insurance firm’s lawyers were able to successfully petition for a freeze on these funds, she said.
Related:Bitcoin Eyes $8.8K After Largely Erasing Last Week’s Dip
The filing confirms Chainalysis assisted in tracking the bitcoin.
Bitfinex and its parent firm, iFinex, are listed as defendants (“D4” and “D3,” respectively) in the filing. However, the exchange said in a statement it has been working with the claimant to trace the bitcoin and it is not now seen as being involved with the crime.
“Bitfinex has robust systems in place to allow it to assist law enforcement authorities and litigants in cases such as this,” the statement said. “We understand the focus of the Claimant’s attention is no longer on the Bitfinex platform. It now appears Bitfinex is an entirely innocent party mixed up in this wrongdoing.”
Spokespersons for the exchange declined to confirm whether Bitfinex had provided the KYC information for the account associated with the address. However, the court ruling stated Bitfinex would provide the information as long as it had a court order to comply with.
“It is fair to say that D3 and D4, at the moment at least, have cooperated with the claimant in the following sense, which is that in email correspondence they have indicated that they are not able to comply with any order to identify anyone associated with the account, absent a court order, but that it is their practice to comply with the court order for any national jurisdiction,” the ruling reads.
The judge has imposed a Jan. 18 deadline for Bitfinex to turn over the information. A search of the court database did not reveal any further filings on the case.
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
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Trend: down || Prices: 9686.44, 9663.18, 9924.52, 9650.17, 9341.71, 8820.52, 8784.49, 8672.46, 8599.51, 8562.45
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Warren Buffett Just Bought More Apple Stock -- Here's the Key Lesson to Learn: Warren Buffett told CNBC that Berkshire Hathaway 's (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) stake in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) became even more massive during the first quarter. Specifically, Berkshire added about 75 million shares of the iPhone maker, bringing the company's total stake to over 240 million shares, worth approximately $43 billion as of this writing. This easily makes Apple the largest position in Berkshire's stock portfolio , according to the latest available information. When asked about Apple's recent quarterly results, which were significantly better than analysts' expectations, Buffett shared an excellent piece of investing wisdom that all stock investors need to hear. Warren Buffett speaking to the media. Image Source: The Motley Fool. Don't buy a farm because you think rain is coming In response to the question about Apple's first quarter, Buffett didn't seem terribly excited about the company's sales. In fact, Buffett said that anyone who focuses on iPhone sales in a single quarter "totally misses the point" of investing in the stock. "Nobody buys a farm based on whether they think it's going to rain next year," Buffett said. "They buy it because they think it's a good investment over 10 or 20 years." This instantly became one of my all-time favorite Buffett quotes, and sums up how investors should approach prospective stocks. Instead of buying a stock because of how the company is doing now, buy stocks that you think will have great businesses for decades to come. What this means to you as an investor This piece of advice is even more appropriate since it was said during the middle of earnings season, when investors often make the mistake of focusing on a company's top-line and bottom-line numbers for a single quarter. To be clear, I'm not saying that you shouldn't pay attention to earnings reports -- quite the opposite, actually. However, it's important to focus on the right things, such as long-term growth trends, responsible management decisions, and the general reasons why a company beat or missed expectations. Story continues For example, if a company's earnings missed estimates because management decided to invest more capital in future growth opportunities, it's not necessarily a bad thing. If a company missed sales goals in a single quarter, but the business is otherwise healthy, it's not the worst thing in the world. Conversely, if a company surpassed earnings because of a better-than-expected benefit from tax reform , it doesn't necessarily mean that the business is doing well. The point is: It's important to evaluate a long-term stock investment for what it is -- a piece of a business. Would you sell your own business based on how well one product sold over three months, or by whether profits missed or exceeded your expectations by a small margin? Of course not. The same logic applies here. Don't copy the experts, but learn from them As a final thought, it's worth pointing out that I'm not suggesting you buy Apple stock just because Warren Buffett did. In fact, I never suggest buying or selling any investment just because a billionaire did -- even if that billionaire is the Oracle of Omaha himself. Instead, the real reason to follow what billionaires are buying and selling is to learn valuable investing lessons like this one. Don't get me wrong, Apple is a great company. However, the lesson -- that it's important to think years into the future and not just about companies' top- and bottom-line numbers -- is one that can serve you well throughout your investing career. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Matthew Frankel owns shares of Apple and Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple and Berkshire Hathaway (B shares). The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Why Shares of Nutanix, Inc. Jumped 35% in March: Stock in enterprise cloud computing service providerNutanix, Inc.(NASDAQ: NTNX)jumped 34.7% in March, according to data fromS&P Global Market Intelligence.
As I described in a previous article onNutanix's February performance, the company's fiscal 2018 second-quarter results (three months ended Jan. 31, 2018), released on March 1, propelled its shares on their steep trajectory. To recap, the organization booked robust double-digit increases in both revenue and billings. Nutanix's top line jumped 44% in comparison to the prior-year quarter, to $286.7 million, while billings rose 57% to $227.4 million.
The company's diluted net loss per share decreased on a year-over-year basis. Nutanix lost $0.39 per share, versus $0.54 in the first quarter of 2017. Free cash flow (an important measure to watch in fast-growing software companies which post losses) improved to $32.4 million, versus $7.1 million a year earlier.
Nutanix also impressed on several key customer metrics. Cumulative end customers reached 8,870 during the quarter, representing an expansion of nearly 65% against the prior year. And the organization's yield on its most important customers appears to be ramping up. Since the beginning of the fiscal year, Nutanix's cumulative customers with lifetime spends exceeding $1 million has jumped by one-third, to 541. Another way to interpret this statistic is that roughly 6% of Nutanix's customer base are significant lifetime purchasers, speaking to the quality and future potential of the company's revenue base.
Image source: Getty Images.
In other news during the month, Nutanix announced the acquisitions of Minjar, Inc., which provides visibility into customer workloads running in public clouds, and Netsil Inc., which provides application discovery and operations management in distributed cloud environments. The company did not disclose financial details for either transaction, so shareholders will likely have to wait until next quarter's earnings report for the size of the deals.
Late in March, some of the company's share-price momentum diminished, when analysts from Goldman Sachs removed Nutanix from their "conviction buy list," thus downgrading the stock to a mere buy rating. However, given the strong market for Nutanix's enterprise offerings and its healthy customer yield, investors with long holding periods are likely to see no reason to remove these shares from "conviction buy" status in the near future.
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Asit Sharmahas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Nutanix. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || NetEase Chases Alibaba and JD.com With a "Knockoff Marketplace": China's e-commerce market is dominated byAlibaba(NYSE: BABA)andJD.com(NASDAQ: JD). Alibaba's Taobao is the country's largest C2C (consumer-to-consumer) marketplace, and its Tmall platform leads the B2C (business-to-consumer) market. JD ranks second in the B2C market.
Many smaller C2C and B2C rivals have faded away over the past few years. However, an overlooked underdog,NetEase(NASDAQ: NTES), has been quietly gaining ground. NetEase is known primarily as avideo gamepublisher, but it also owns the e-commerce platforms Kaola and Yanxuan.
Image source: Getty Images.
Kaola, which focuses on cross-border purchases, is often dismissed as an also-ran in China's crowded e-commerce market. But two years ago NetEase launched Yanxuan, a private label marketplace that sells clothing, furniture, and appliances from Chinese suppliers of international brands likeKering's Gucci,Burberry, andDeckers'(NYSE: DECK)UGG.
Instead of selling brand name products like Alibaba and JD, Yanxuan sells unbranded products that are identical to their branded counterparts. For example, an original pair of UGG boots costs about $200 on JD and Tmall. However, a pair of unbranded, identical boots from an "UGG manufacturer" costs about $45 on Yanxuan.
Yanxuan's portfolio now includes over 10,000 products from these manufacturers. The marketplace's growth boosted NetEase's e-commerce revenues by 160% to 11.7 billion RMB ($1.8 billion) last year, which accounted for 22% of the company's top line. NetEase expects its e-commerce revenues to hit $3 billion this year.
$3 billion is a tiny figure compared to the $39 billion and $74 billion in revenue which analysts expectAlibaba and JDto generate, respectively, this year. Nonetheless, Alibaba and JD already responded to Yanxuan with their own private label sites.
Alibaba launched Taobao Xinxuan last year, while JD introduced its Jingzao brand in January. However, neither Alibaba nor JD claims that its private label products are made by suppliers of top international brands.
Alibaba and JD avoided that claim for an obvious reason: They didn't want their marketplaces to be associated with counterfeit goods. Yanxuan's claim that its products are made by the same manufacturers of leading international brands suggests that their suppliers are stealing designs and IP to sell unbranded products -- which would likely violate their manufacturing contracts.
Speaking toForbes, American Apparel & Footwear Association VP Steve Lamar raised concerns about Yanxuan's "potential theft of intellectual property," while an UGG spokeswoman noted that "Yanxuan's promotion would mislead consumers to believe they are buying authentic UGG products."
Image source: Getty Images.
NetEase's strategy with Yanxuan also contradicts Alibaba and JD's attempts to purge their marketplaces of counterfeit products. JD often claims that its tighter control over its fulfillment and logistics network blocks out more counterfeit products than Alibaba, whichmainly relieson C2C and B2C transactions fulfilled by third-party logistics providers.
That's why JD's stock tumbled in mid-March after renowned Chinese novelist Liu Liu accused JD's cross-border marketplace, JD Worldwide, of selling counterfeit products to a friend. JD stated that the customer received the wrong product with a similar name rather than a "fake", but the damage was done.
As Chinese consumers with rising incomes start scrutinizing the authenticity of their products, the flaws in Yanxuan's business model will become more apparent. Lower income shoppers might still buy Yanxuan's goods, but NetEase is shouldering a lot of risk to grow the business.
International brands could drop Yanxuan's suppliers, customers could demand proof that their goods are actually made by those suppliers, or the company could be pilloried by the Chinese government, which has been cracking down on counterfeit goods over the past few years. Alibaba and JD -- which likely see Yanxuan's reckless strategy as a threat to their own businesses -- could run marketing campaigns likening "unbranded" goods to counterfeits.
NetEase will likely generate big gains from Yanxuan over the next few quarters, but that growth could quickly evaporate. Instead of expanding Yanxuan's marketplace, NetEase should figure out how to legitimize it before it becomes the "Tmall of knockoffs."
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Leo Sunowns shares of JD.com. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends JD.com and NetEase. The Motley Fool recommends Deckers Outdoor. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Amazon.com, Inc. Earnings Obliterate Expectations Yet Again: Rewind about three months, and you may recall when e-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) reported fourth-quarter results that absolutely crushed consensus analyst estimates for the period. Further, if you perused the quarterly report, you'll also probably remember Amazon's monstrous guidance for first-quarter revenue to rise 34% to 42% year over year. Well Amazon's first quarter is here, and it looks like a repeat: Revenue exceeded management's guidance range, and Amazon's outlook for its second quarter implies there's more enormous growth ahead. And did I mention that operating income and earnings per share soared? Here's a breakdown of Amazon's big first quarter in eight metrics. Boxes in Amazon's fulfillment center Image source: Amazon.com. 1. Revenue jumped 43% year over year Going into its first quarter, management had guided for first-quarter revenue to be between $47.75 billion and $50.75 billion, up from $35.7 billion in the year-ago quarter. Actual first-quarter revenue was $51 billion, up 43% from the year-ago period. 2. Operating income rose to $1.9 billion This was up 92% compared to Amazon's $1 billion of operating income in the first quarter of 2017. In addition, operating income was $900 million above the high end of management's guidance range. Management had said it expected first-quarter operating income to be between $300 million and $1 billion. 3. Earnings per share skyrocketed 143% This triple-digit increase put Amazon's first-quarter earnings per share at $3.27 -- more than doubling the consensus analyst estimate for earnings per share of $1.27. 4. AWS revenue soared 49% Amazon's cloud-computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), continues to be a major driver of the company's growth. AWS revenue increased 49% year over year to $5.4 billion, accounting for 10.6% of revenue, up from 9.9% of revenue in the year-ago quarter. Remarkably, this is Amazon's second quarter in a row of accelerating Amazon Web Services revenue growth. In Amazon's third and fourth quarters of 2017, AWS revenue increased 42% and 45% year over year, respectively. Story continues 5. AWS accounted for 73% of total operating income Amazon's operating income from its cloud-computing business increased 57% year over year, rising from $890 million in the year-ago quarter to $1.4 billion in the first quarter of 2018. This put AWS's operating income at 73% of the company's total operating income. 6. Subscription services revenue increased 60% One key catalyst Amazon investors should watch is the company's rapid growth in subscription services . This segment particularly stood out in the first quarter, as the segment's 60% year-over-year growth marked a notable acceleration over a 49% year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter. Made up of revenue from "monthly fees associated with Amazon Prime membership, as well as audiobook, e-book, digital video, digital music, and other non-AWS subscription services," first-quarter subscription services revenue was $3.1 billion, up from $1.9 billion in the year-ago quarter. 7. Amazon Music Unlimited subscriptions increased 100% Fueled by the proliferation of Amazon's Alexa-enabled Echo smart speakers, Amazon's streaming music service is seeing exploding growth, rising 100% year over year. 8. Amazon is increasing the price of Amazon Prime memberships to $119 Reflecting Amazon's confidence in the increasing value of the Prime benefits available to its subscribers, a $119 annual subscription fee in the U.S. is up from a current rate of $99 per year. This price increase, which was announced alongside Amazon's first-quarter results, will be effective for new members beginning May 11 and for renewing members as of June 16. There's more where that came from Amazon expects another period of rapid growth in the second quarter. Management guided for revenue to increase between 34% and 42% year over year to between $51 billion and $54 billion. Considering that Amazon usually reports revenue at the high end of its guidance range, or even above it, this outlook is more optimistic than the current consensus analyst estimate for second-quarter revenue of $52.2 billion. Amazon also expects its breakneck growth in operating income to persist, guiding for second-quarter operating income to be between $1.1 billion and $1.9 billion -- up from $628 million in the second quarter of 2017. Even as Amazon's trailing-12-month revenue closes in on $200 billion (a milestone that will likely be achieved in the second quarter), the e-commerce giant is as much of a growth stock as it has ever been. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Daniel Sparks has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Mobile Simpsons Game Adds Bitcoin Mining, Annoying Blockchain Evangelist in Latest Update: simpsons Krusty has lost everything on bitcoin! The March Towards Mass Adoption Bitcoin is taking further steps towards mass adoption, now featuring in the popular freemium game, The Simpsons: Tapped Out . In the game, Homer has neglected his work, playing mobile games instead of monitoring Springfield nuclear power station. In the new quest, called Crypto Cool , added to the game this week, the player is first tasked with getting Martin to mention blockchain numerous times, without ever explain what it is. At one point during the dialogue, he says “I mined some bitcoin with my computer, and then the value went through the roof” and also says he had never heard of blockchain “until last week. But now I act like I’m an expert on it!” Once you’ve completed this task, you will also be asked to encourage three youngsters to mine bitcoin on their computers. The Simpsons : Tapped Out game adds an interesting new update. 👍 #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/kbveN2jmT4 — Armin van Bitcoin ⚡ (@ArminVanBitcoin) May 15, 2018 Bitcoin Mainstream Adoption Notably, it isn’t the first time bitcoin has been mentioned in the popular cartoon’s universe. In a 2013 episode , when Krusty is asked by Lisa whether he is broke, he responds by saying that “all it takes is bad luck at the ponies, worse luck in the bitcoin markets…” In a 2014 episode, bully Jimbo Jones is pictured on a billboard saying that he accepts bitcoin payments. Being mentioned on the Simpsons represents a degree of mass media attention and a step towards mass adoption, which many investors and proponents of bitcoin believe to be critical to its long term success. Other shows have started to mention bitcoin more often, too. It was mentioned in Family Guy in 2014 and Supernatural in the same year. It has also been mentioned in Almost Human, House of Cards, Person of Interest, and the Good Wife. Story continues Tapped Out The Simpsons: Tapped Out is a mobile game available for iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire. It was launched in 2012 and is published by gaming giant EA Mobile. EA estimates that it has made more than $130 million since its launch, and while critics initially hit out at the game’s use of the Freemium model, alleging that the in-game micro-transactions required that players invest large sums of money to progress, it has continued to perform for EA, albeit at a reduced rate. Featured Image from Shutterstock The post Mobile Simpsons Game Adds Bitcoin Mining, Annoying Blockchain Evangelist in Latest Update appeared first on CCN . || Harley-Davidson Sales Go From Bad to Worse: Another quarter, another dismal performance by Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG) , though the market seemed to buy into the promise that this time it will be able to turn things around. Don't count on it. Same old, same old U.S. sales of motorcycles tumbled 12% in the first quarter and were down 7% worldwide. Sales were up 8% in Europe, though, a rebound from last quarter, which saw sales drop there, too. But it is, of course, the U.S. market that remains of primary concern because it continues to represent almost 60% of total sales, and they continue to be in a tailspin. Harley-Davidson quarterly sales growth chart Data source: Harley-Davidson quarterly SEC filings. Chart by author. That hasn't stopped management from promising to fix things again by "crafting strategy accelerants" to deliver shareholder returns. Yet admitting that its efforts thus far haven't worked, it also said it was "refining" the plans it had already devised, but it wouldn't reveal how it was going to achieve them until this summer. Out of favor The problems Harley-Davidson are encountering aren't necessarily of its own making, though it also hasn't helped itself along the way. It noted that the motorcycle industry for bikes 601 cubic centimeters and larger had shrunk over 11% in the first quarter, so Harley's performance was only minimally worse than the market average. The problem is that Polaris Industries (NYSE: PII) , which also sells into that market, continues to notch higher motorcycle sales. Indian Motorcycle wholegood sales were up by double-digit percentages, with retail demand rising by low single-digit percentages. Its target market is the slightly large engine displacement segment of 900 cc and above (where most of Harley's bikes also reside), and it notes the industry was down by mid-teen percentages in the quarter. What those two positions say is that although the market for big bikes continues to fall hard, those who are buying prefer Indian Motorcycles. Even though Harley-Davidson still owns half of the U.S. market, Indian continues to gain market share at the expense of the leader. Story continues Unfortunately, Harley-Davidson CEO Matt Levatich remains vague on what the motorcycle company is going to do to change that dynamic. He asserts Harley will achieve its goals of bringing in 2 million new U.S. riders, building 100 new bikes, and increasing international volumes to attain 50% of the total, but that's a pretty tall order in a rising market, let alone one in decline. Harley also refined its wording on when we would see its new electric motorcycle, changing from within the next 18 months to "before 2020." While both indicate the e-bike will appear in 2019, it sounds like Harley-Davidson may have pushed back its deadline a few months. Too high a price to pay That's where Harley has contributed to its problems. It has failed to make motorcycles that today's current bike buyer wants. As it became clear that its core customers were no longer buying bikes, it still produced big, gleaming machines. It has more recently tried producing some smaller bikes, like its Street 500 and 750s, but sales in that segment fell 30% year over year. Harley-Davidson Sportster-Seventy Two Image source: Harley-Davidson. Now it has a new contender in Royal Enfield targeting the low end of the market, along with Honda and others, and though there is potential in its investment in electric bike maker Alta Motors, it's hard to see Harley producing the kind of small, lightweight, but affordable e-bike the market would probably respond to. Harley-Davidson continues to protect its premium image at all costs, and even this quarter, as sales were falling, it was able to report higher revenues (up almost 3%) because it isn't discounting its bikes like its rivals, but instead has introduced pricey new bikes equipped with its powerful Milwaukee-Eight engine. It's rising prices, not higher sales that are sustaining Harley-Davidson at the moment, yet the market is counting on it getting the equation right this time even though it's failed before. The spring season is when Harley makes most of its sales, and the first half of it has already been extremely disappointing. Even so, management maintained its guidance that it will ship to dealers between 231,000 and 236,000 motorcycles globally this year. That's only 2% to 4% less than what it shipped in 2017, suggesting once again we're going to need a big revision as the year progresses. It's not going to be only Harley-Davidson's unit numbers going from bad to worse, but its earnings, too. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Rich Duprey has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Polaris Industries. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Barron's Picks And Pans: Best CEOs, Altice USA, Micron Technology And More: This weekend's Barron's cover story spotlights Barron's 14th annual list of the world's best CEOs. Other featured articles offer beneficiaries of the AI revolution and results of a screen for safe dividend stocks. Also, the prospects for a European telecom subsidiary, a Hong Kong conglomerate and retailers. " World's Best CEOs: 30 Leaders With Talent to Spare ," the cover story this week, indicates that two themes stood out in Barron's 14th annual list of the world's best chief executive officers: they were cloud savvy and made smart acquisitions. See how Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dimon and many others fared. Companion articles focus on growth leaders, turnaround experts, readers' picks and more. Tiernan Ray's " AI Technology Revolution Is Just Getting Started " examines why artificial intelligence is more than a buzzword and developments in the technology will mean strong demand not just for the likes of Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MU ), but also for chip makers that are just starting up or those that are yet to be founded. In " Altice's U.S. Spinoff Looks Like a Winning Bet ," Bill Alpert points out that this European telecom and cable company is selling more shares of its U.S. unit, Altice USA, Inc. (NYSE: ATUS ), as its prospects appear to be brightening. Find out why Barron's believes the bulls think this stock could rise as much as 50 percent. A screen of the S&P 500 for high yields, solid cash flows, good payout ratios and durable balance sheets resulted in the likes of Kraft Heinz Co (NASDAQ: KHC ) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ ), according to "A Dozen Safe and Solid Dividend Stocks" by Lawrence C. Strauss. See which other defensive picks made the list. See Also: Analyst: Additional Model 3 Production Shutdowns Would Be Negative For Tesla Stock In Andrew Bary's "Li Ka-shing's Flagship Is Looking Like a Bargain," see why Hong Kong-traded global conglomerate CK Hutchison now appears to have a low valuation, in the wake of Hong Kong business magnate Li Ka-shing passing the reins of the empire to his son. And find out what effect that might have on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE: BABA ). "Retail's Next Surprise" by Ben Levisohn suggests that when it comes to retailer earnings, it's as if the whole world has been turned upside down. More than 20 retailers and retail brands reported their quarterly results, prompting massive moves in some of these stocks. See what that means for Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT ) and others. Also in this week's Barron's: The real danger for stocks Playing the oil rally ahead of a key OPEC meeting Small-cap ETFs that are chalking up big returns Why gold has fallen in a geopolitically tense world Best bets in the emerging markets deluge Why to expect more bank mergers after Dodd-Frank rollback Story continues See more from Benzinga Benzinga's Bulls & Bears Of The Week: Apple, Colgate, Ford, Macy's And More Benzinga's Insider Buys Of The Week: JPMorgan, Philip Morris And More Barron's Picks And Pans: Bitcoin, Bogle, Lowe's, Procter & Gamble And More © 2018 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || Take-Two Interactive Stock Upgraded: What You Need to Know: Every day, Wall Street analysts upgrade some stocks, downgrade others, and "initiate coverage" on a few more. But do these analysts even know what they're talking about? Today, we're taking one high-profile Wall Street pick and putting it under the microscope...
Video game specialistTake-Two Interactive(NASDAQ: TTWO)won a new upgrade on Wall Street this morning. Investors are responding as you'd expect, bidding up Take-Two stock by more than 2% in pre-market trading, and helping to reverse a recent trend of declining share price in the stock.
This decline, argue the analysts atWedbush, is unwarranted because Take-Two Interactive is about to start earning a lot more than many investors expect. Is the analyst right or wrong?
Here's what you need to know.
Image source: Getty Images.
Wedbush takes Take-Two Interactive's closing share price on Friday -- $98.63 a share -- as its starting point. As Wedbush explains, Take-Two has at least two big game releases scheduled over the next couple of years:
• Red Dead Redemption 2, a Western; and
• an "unnamed" game from publisher 2K Games, which will probably beBorderlands 3, a sci-fi first person shooter.
Both are sequels to popular titles, and Wedbush is predicting good results. "We expect Take Two to deliver average EPS of $5.00 or more over the next two fiscal years," says Wedbush in a note covered today onStreetInsider.com(subscription required). Factoring Take-Two's $11 per share in cash ($1.3 billion total) into the valuation, Wedbush says the company's shares are selling for "roughly 17.5 times" its projected $5 a share in earnings.
For context, Wedbush notes that "[v]ideo game publishers have generally traded at 20x earnings or more in recent years," and for as much as 25 times forward earnings when there are "significant runways for continued top line and EPS expansion" (such as successful franchises likeRed DeadandBorderlandsprovide).
With Take-Two shares selling for a big discount to both those valuations, Wedbush argues that the stock presents a "compelling value."
But does it really? Paying 17.5 times earnings for a stock that should perhaps sell for 20 or 25 times earnings certainly sounds like a bargain, but here's the thing: According to most analysts surveyed byS&P; Global Market Intelligence, Take-Two will not earn $5 next year (or in 2020 either) -- at least notGAAPearnings. Rather, consensus targets for Take-Two's profits are just $1.84 per share this year, when calculated according to generally accepted accounting principles, then $3.72 per share in 2019, and just $3.04 per share in 2020.
And at $3 a share in 2020, this means that Take-Two Interactive's shares are arguably about 40% more expensive than what Wedbush makes them out to be at its projected $5 profit target.
Granted, Wedbush is probably not valuing Take-Two on GAAP earnings when it makes its projections, but rather using the more lenient and malleablepro formaprofits standard that's more common on Wall Street. Even here, though, consensus targets call for Take-Two to earn a bit less than Wedbush is promising -- $4.89 in 2019 for example, and only $4.73 in 2020.
To avoid this GAAP vs. non-GAAP debate, I prefer to value my stocks onfree cash flow-- the cash profits that they have actually already produced -- and proceed from there. In that regard, I've got both good news and bad news for Take-Two investors.
The good news is that over the last 12 months, Take-Two Interactive threw off more than $215 million in real cash profits from its business -- 18% more real cash profit than its income statement claimed it had earned. The bad news is that, at an ex-cash market capitalization (anenterprise value) of $10 billion, Take-Two stock still sells for about 46.5 times trailing free cash flow.
Relative to analysts' expected 18% annualized earnings growth rate, I fear that's too much to pay for Take-Two Interactive stock.
One final thought: Take-Two Interactive will be reporting its earnings after close of trading on Wednesday, May 16. Keep a close eye on those results, and in particular watch out for commentary on any effects Take-Two is experiencing from the popularFortnitegame released by Epic Games (backed byTencent Holdings).
In a related note on Take-Two, covered onTheFly.comtoday, analysts at Stifel cut their price target for Take-Two stock by $4 (leaving a target that's still above Wedbush's though, at $131 a share). The reason: Stifel worries that "cannibalization" fromFortnitecould eat into Take-Two's bottom line. If Take-Two confirms that worry, then the consensus expectation that Take-Two's earnings will grow at 18% could come into question -- and Take-Two stock could begin to look even more expensive than it already does.
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Rich Smithhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Take-Two Interactive and TCEHY. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Twitter, Inc. Earnings: 6 Metrics to Watch: Twitter's(NYSE: TWTR)first-quarter earnings release is less than a week away. Ahead of Twitter's earnings report on April 25,expectations are high. Investors will be looking for Twitter to maintain its recent return to revenue growth, deliver more strong growth in users, post strong growth in ad engagements, expand its EBITDA margin, and more.
Before Twitter reports its first-quarter results, here's an overview of some of the most important areas for investors to watch.
Image source: Getty Images.
In Twitter's fourth quarter, the social network had 330 million monthly active users. Though Twitter's monthly active users in Q4 were up 4% year over year, they were flat sequentially. Stalled user growth may concern some investors, sparking them to look for reinvigorated growth in the key metric in Q1.
Twitter management cited several reasons for its stalled sequential growth in monthly active users in Q4.
MAU was impacted by seasonality and the change to Safari's third-party app integration, which affected approximately 2 million MAU in Q4 (roughly 1 million in the US and 1 million in international markets), as well as increased information quality efforts, which are our overall efforts to reduce malicious activity on the service, inclusive of spam, malicious automation, and fake accounts.
A return to the low single-digit sequential growth Twitter saw in quarters prior to Q4 for its monthly active users would put the company's first-quarter monthly active users at about 334 million or more.
Though Twitter doesn't disclose its absolute number of daily active users, it does share growth rates for the key metric. Daily active users were up 12% year over year in Q4, marking the company's fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year growth.
Investors should look for similar growth in daily active users in Q1.
Twitter has been benefiting from a surge in ad engagement, with total ad engagements rising 75% year over year in Q4. Though this metric can be volatile, it has been consistently high recently. Total ad engagements have risen 95%, 99%, and 75% year over year in the second, third, and fourth quarters of 2017, respectively.
Can this strong catalyst keep up its momentum in Q1?
Twitter's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) has been surging, so much so that Twitter was able to report itsfirst profit everin its fourth quarter.
For Twitter's first quarter, management guided for adjusted EBITDA to be between $185 million and $205 million, up from $170 million in the first quarter of 2017.
Also highlighting Twitter's improving profitability recently, the company's adjusted EBITDA margin has also been on the rise. Management expects further year-over-year improvement in the metric in Q1, guiding for an adjusted EBITDA margin between 33% and 34% -- up from 31% in the first quarter of 2017.
Of course, there's no escaping the importance of revenue growth in Twitter's first-quarter results. Twitter's 2% year-over-year revenue growth in Q4 wasa total surprise. After the pleasant upside to Twitter's revenue in Q4, the pressure is on for Twitter to report another quarter of revenue growth. Indeed, given Twitter'srecent momentum, investors may be looking for revenue growth to accelerate in during the period.
For Twitter's revenue growth to persist in Q1, it will need to be higher than year-ago revenue of $548 million.
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Daniel Sparkshas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Twitter. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Crypto exchanges could be less secure than email accounts: Bitcoin mining computer servers are seen in Bitminer Factory in Florence, Italy, April 6, 2018. (Image: Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi) NEW ORLEANS — Cryptocurrency exchanges and apps aren’t just among the most valuable targets for hackers, they also remain among the most vulnerable. That’s the warning Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at the security-tools firm Veracode , offered during a talk at the Collision conference here on May 1. It’s something that should be at the top of concerns for people looking to trade or invest in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, which are generated through increasingly complex mathematical “mining” and allow pseudonymous transactions online and across international borders — and have increased in value wildly, even after recent plunges. “When we talk about cryptocurrency, we’re not talking about just stealing someone’s data that we then have to monetize,” he said. “We’re actually talking about stealing money. It’s a very, very attractive target for attackers.” Mistakes were made Wysopal recounted a series of embarrassing but preventable hacks of cryptocurrency exchanges and apps. A partial selection: In 2016, a bug in the smart-contacts code meant to allow automatic execution of transactions at a network called the Distributed Autonomous Organization allowed a hacker to siphon out $50 million worth of the cryptocurrency Ethereum . (Onstage, Wysopal said this happened in 2014; in an email Thursday, he said he mixed up that date with that of another cryptocurrency hack, the theft of some $460 million from the Mt. Gox exchange in 2014.) In August of 2016, the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex got hacked to the tune of $73 million. A key cause: That Hong Kong-based site kept all of its security keys online instead of putting one in offline “cold storage.” In January, attackers broke into another exchange, Coincheck, and stole $534 million in cryptocurrency. Their work was eased by that Tokyo-based firm keeping all of its customers’ funds in a single “hot wallet.” Observed Wysopal: “That seems really, really dumb. This isn’t how banks work, right? They don’t have all the money in the tellers’ drawers all the time.” In February, the Ukrainian hacking group Coinhoarder stole $50 million from users of the Blockchain.info digital wallet by running Google ( GOOG , GOOGL ) ads that conned victims into thinking they were logging into the real site. Since then, Google, Facebook ( FB ) and Twitter ( TWTR ) have banned cryptocurrency ads . Story continues What you can do Wysopal — who began his information-security career as one of the first members of the L0pht hacking collective and then co-founded Veracode, now owned by CA Technologies ( CA ), in 2006 — offered some specific tips to his audience. Enabling “two-step verification” — in which you confirm a login with a one-time password sent to your phone or computed by an application on it — topped that list. “You definitely want to use two-factor,” Wysopal said. (Note that two-step systems that rely on text messages to deliver those codes can be defeated if an attacker can take over your mobile number .) He also advised complicating the efforts of would-be phishers by not logging in with a publicly-known email or number. “Don’t use an email address or a phone number that’s associated with that account that you’re then going to publish somewhere,” he said. “They need that identifier to then go try to impersonate you, either through SMS or just through email.” For local cryptocurrency storage, Wysopal endorsed using hardware wallets (see my colleague Daniel Roberts’ how-to post ) instead of mobile apps, saying “they’re not too expensive.” Finally, he advised a little social-media modesty. “Don’t brag about your crypto fortune online,” Wysopal said, noting a January home-invasion bitcoin robbery in the U.K . “If you’re bragging about it, you’re just making yourself a target.” What you can’t do Wysopal closed his talk on a semi-optimistic note: “I think in the future we’ll have services that will help people understand the security behind an exchange, behind a wallet, behind a smart contract; we’re just not there yet.” (See, for example, Consumer Reports’ initiative to test and grade the security of internet-of-things connected gadgets .) In a phone interview, though, he noted a structural obstacle to digital money attaining the same security as government-issued money in a bank: We don’t have regulations holding cryptocurrency firms responsible for losses due to hacking like those that hold banks accountable today. “We’re so used to doing transactions and storing our money in places where there’s regulation and you have some liability by your provider,” he said. “That’s totally not there with cryptocurrency.” Instead, it’s up to individuals in cryptocurrency markets to insist on better security. Wysopal is among them, although he said he only holds “a small amount” of digital currency. “The thing that has to happen is, investors or customers need to demand some evidence that things are built securely,” he said. The upside, as he noted in the talk, is that building a secure system for cryptocurrency should make other “infosec” problems look easy: “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” More from Rob: The agency that protects your privacy is in for big changes Gmail still lacks these important features 8K TVs are coming, but don’t buy into the hype How advertisers target you on Facebook Email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#putyourmoneysomewhereelse How do bitcoin faucets make money? http://bit.ly/2AVG640 pic.twitter.com/ErEgDv1tcF || Current price of Bitcoin is $6860.00 via Chain || Interesting Typing This In Google!...
#LitecoinFam #Ltc #Litecoin $LTC #Crypto #Bitcoin #cryptocurrencypic.twitter.com/Wr27yfg2BE || #New #crypto domain name for sale http://CryptoCentury.com .
#names #domains #naming #blockchain #fintech #cryptocurrency #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Rb1cbDckqp || #Bitcoin 0.87%
Ultima: R$ 31775.38 Alta: R$ 33287.99 Baixa: R$ 30300.00
Fonte: Foxbit || Tools used for penetration testing are often purchased or download http://bit.ly/1LN6e0L #Cybersecurity #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/q9kYJsfZt2 || #Bitcoin -0.43%
Ultima: R$ 22901.00 Alta: R$ 23500.00 Baixa: R$ 22700.00
Fonte: Foxbit || #Hero Node https://icodrops.com/hero-node/ #ICO #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #ethereum #iconewstoday || Bitcoin al || Valores | dolar R$3.3656 | BITCOIN(MCDTBC) R$25696.00000000 | BITCOIN(BLCHAIN) R$22629.16 | LITECOIN(MCDTBC) R$450.00000000
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Trend: down || Prices: 7720.25, 7514.47, 7633.76, 7653.98, 7678.24, 7624.92, 7531.98, 6786.02, 6906.92, 6582.36
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Debunked: Top European Central Bank Official’s False Arguments Against Bitcoin: EU Blockchain Benoît Cœuré, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, condemned Bitcoin (BTC), describing it a bubble, ponzi scheme, and an environmental disaster. “Lightning may strike me for saying this in the Tower of Basel — but bitcoin was an extremely clever idea. Sadly, not every clever idea is a good idea. I believe that Agustín Carstens summed its manifold problems up well when he said that bitcoin is ‘a combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster,’” Cœuré said , at the Economics of Payments IX Conference Argument 1: Bitcoin is a Bubble Since 2009, BTC has experienced four major corrections, recording a drop in the range of 70 to 80 percent. The definition of a bubble in finance is established as an economic cycle “characterized by the rapid escalation of asset prices followed by a contraction,” which occurs when investors are simply not willing to buy the asset at an elevated price and triggers a sell-off. Bitcoin suffered four massive drops in its price throughout its nine-year history. But, subsequent to every 70 to 80 percent decline in value, the price of BTC recovered to a higher point. Hence, while BTC was considered a bubble at $100 and investors were not willing to purchase the asset at that valuation, the market recovered beyond that point as time passed, achieving $10,000, $10,000, and $ 20,000 . There were bubbles in Bitcoin and there will continue to be bubble-like behavior in the crypto market in the months to come. But, characterizing Bitcoin, a decentralized finance network that is widely utilized as a consensus currency and a store of value, as a bubble is incorrect. Every market goes through a bubble but as it pops, the market endures a correction and revives. As security expert and cryptocurrency researcher Andreas Antonopoulos said, the bigger financial bubbles are in traditional markets like stocks and bonds. “Bitcoin grows by bubbles. Bitcoin’s bubble is also the least dangerous, least systemic, and yet most talked about bubble. The bigger and scarier bubbles are in stocks, bonds, national debt, real estate, student loans, healthcare, etc. All of these bubbles are driven by anemic productivity growth in the context of massive stimulus and negative interest rates; money is cheap and there are no good investments that are not already inflated into bubbles,” Antonopoulos said. Story continues This week, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that outstanding student loan debt in the U.S. increased by $37 billion in the third quarter and stood at $1.44 trillion as of September 30, 2018. Argument 2: Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme The weakest argument against Bitcoin is falsely describing it as a ponzi scheme. A ponzi scheme is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors by using funds obtained from new investors. Bitcoin is a decentralized protocol and no central entity or individual has control over the network. It is technically not possible for anyone or any organization within the network to provide early investors with any additional compensation by taking away funds from new investors, because no individual or organization has the power or authority to remove funds from wallets. Bitcoin is a consensus currency, as former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said. Argument 3: Bitcoin is Killing the Environment Bitcoin’s impact on the global environment fails to consider many variables such as the growing amount of clean energy, increasing efficiency of cryptocurrency mining, and changes in the ecosystem. As Andreas Antonopoulos put it: “Extrapolation for dummies: ‘I am concerned about the progression of your pregnancy madam. If your belly is this big at 8 months, in 2 years you will be as big as this room.’” All three arguments outlined by Benoît Cœuré against Bitcoin have already been addressed many times in the past and are weak to justify an opposing stance towards cryptocurrencies as consensus currencies. Feartured image from Shutterstock. The post Debunked: Top European Central Bank Official’s False Arguments Against Bitcoin appeared first on CCN . || Morgan Stanley: Bitcoin is a New Institutional Investment Class: There is arapidly growing interestin bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies among institutional investors while there seems to be lethargy in the number of retail buyers operating within the space.
As such,bitcoinand altcoins now constitute a new institutional investment class since 2017, according to new research from major US bankMorgan Stanley.
In thereport titled“Bitcoin Decrypted: A Brief Teach-in and Implications” and dated Oct. 31, the multinational investment bank’s research department gave an overview of the last six months of bitcoin and brought up insights about observable trends. This new report serves as an update to an earlier report published in December titled “Bitcoin Decrypted: A Brief Teach-in and Implications.”
The findings underscored the researchers’ observation of what the report described as the rapidly morphing thesis of the market, covering evolving perceptions of bitcoin since it was introduced into circulation as “electronic cash” in 2009.
In 2009, bitcoin came into reckoning as a viable alternative to the big banking cartels after it was first issued through open-source software. It attained a cult-like following, and by 2012, it was in the spotlight of mainstream news as the means of transaction in the online black market infamously referred to as theSilk Roadmarketplace. Its growing market capitalization drew the attention of entrepreneurs, tech-oriented individuals across the globe, activists, journalists, and blockchain-based crypto initiatives followed in their droves.
Bitcoin has been able to provide a decentralized payment mechanism which employs the use of a distributed ledger. While it appealed to some as a novel system capable of disrupting existing business models, it also proved to be a veritable tool for facilitating new economic relationships and linkages. As a digital currency, its distributed ledger makes it easier to process retail payment transactions such as e-commerce, person-to-person payments, and cross-border transactions with lesser costs and logistics attached when compared to what is obtained in financial institutions.
While it is still widely regarded as a speculative investment, it is already being used as a store of value and has been touted as a potential means of payment in the next decade. Dr. Zeynep Gurguc from Imperial College London has said that the criteria which need to be fulfilled for it to be fully incorporated into the payment systems include: scalability, usability, regulation, volatility, incentives, and privacy.
The report highlighted developments such as the recording of all transactions on a permanent ledger, the emergence of novel and cheaper technologies than bitcoin, volatility in the market, the volume of hacks, and hard forks as concerns which have affected the bitcoin ecosystem.
In view of this, theprevailing bear marketcoupled with the decline in price predisposes bitcoin and altcoins as a “new institutional investment class,” and this has been the trend in the last year.
The study cited the new crypto services division ofFidelity, investments in crypto firms such asBinance, and regulatory approvals as evidence of the increased participation of financial institutions lending credence to the market thesis.
According to the Morgan Stanley Research, some of the bottlenecks faced by clients who were interested in investing in the cryptocurrency industry include regulatory disparities, the absence of regulated custodial solutions, and the lack of formidable financial institutions operating in the industry.
The report also recorded the gradual rise of fiat-pegged cryptostablecoins, which more or less began in 2017 but hasquickenedthis year. The decline in cryptocurrency prices elicited an increase in the share of BTC trade volumes taken byUSDT. Exchanges were used to trading crypto for crypto with relatively few involved in the trade of crypto for fiat.
The research, however, does not see all stablecoins surviving on the long-term. Those who would survive will most likely have relatively lower transaction costs, very high liquidity, and a clear regulatory structure.
Images from Shutterstock
The postMorgan Stanley: Bitcoin is a New Institutional Investment Classappeared first onCCN. || Crypto Market Recovers by $3B: Oversold Conditions Show Bitcoin Bottom: bitcoin futures cryptocurrency crypto In the last 24 hours, the valuation of the crypto market increased from $137 billion to $140 billion after a minor recovery of around 2 percent. Both major cryptocurrencies and small market cap tokens have ended the day with relatively minor losses in the range of 1 to 3 percent. Is Bottom Near For Bitcoin? The volume of Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped from $5.5 billion back to $4 billion over the past several days, by more than 27 percent. Given that the value of BTC has not fallen substantially during the time wherein its volume fell, a case can be made that the sell-pressure on the dominant cryptocurrency has subsided. A cryptocurrency trader and economist Alex Krüger explained : “Yesterday, BTC triggered my main oversold signal on the daily. This signal printed only once before: Jan/17/2015. Very close to a bottom that held for eight months, and was breached only once ever after, briefly, during the Aug/18/2015 flash crash.” Generally, after a 30 to 40 percent drop, major cryptocurrencies tend to recover in the mid-term, as seen in the case of Ripple (XRP). A similar trend could be portrayed by BTC in the upcoming weeks if the asset could begin demonstrating stability at its low price range. Even if BTC falls below the $4,000 mark prior to engaging in a corrective rally, which is a possibility given that the $4,000 support level was tested twice in the past five days, stability in the range of $3,800 to $4,200 could allow BTC to establish roots in the $4,000 region and signal a bottom. “Some nice buyback wicks showing up, but don’t think we’re out of the woods until a daily close above green,” noted Hsaka, a cryptocurrency technical analyst. Bitcoin is still only down 78 percent from its all-time high, which is relatively low when compared to the average drop in the price of BTC from its all-time high in previous major corrections. In 2011, 2013, and 2015, BTC recorded an average drop of over 85 percent in every major correction it experienced. Story continues So far, VeChain , Binance Coin , and Bitcoin remain as the best performing cryptocurrencies throughout the bear market, with Binance Coin down 78 percent from its all-time high. Tokens are in Trouble On Friday, tokens seemed to be experiencing a sudden short-term recovery as Augur and Maker demonstrated gains in the range of 5 to 13 percent. In the past 12 hours, Augur dropped by 10 percent and Maker recorded a decline of 7 percent, deleting their weekly gains. From their all-time highs, most tokens, even those that have performed well against BTC and the US dollar in early 2017, are averaging a drop of around 98 percent. With increasing pressure from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and dozens of pending cases against initial coin offering (ICO) projects being evaluated by local authorities, the price of tokens is expected to drop substantially in the weeks to come. Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts from TradingView . The post Crypto Market Recovers by $3B: Oversold Conditions Show Bitcoin Bottom appeared first on CCN . || Exclusive: Exxon, Chevron seek to exit Azerbaijan's oil after 25 years: By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Ron Bousso
LONDON (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) and Chevron (CVX.N) are seeking to sell their stakes in Azerbaijan's largest oilfield, marking the retreat of the U.S. majors from the former Soviet state after 25 years as they re-focus on domestic production.
Exxon is hoping to raise up to $2 billion from the sale of its 6.8 percent in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field in the Caspian Sea, according to industry sources.
Rival Chevron said in a statement to Reuters it had also decided to launch the sale of its 9.57 percent stake in ACG as well as its 8.9 percent interest in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.
Exxon spokeswoman Julie King declined to comment, saying "we don't comment on market rumors or speculation". A spokesman for Azerbaijan's state energy company Socar said: "The report is about Exxon and there is no need for Socar to get involved."
For both companies, the sale would mark the end of a 25-year involvement. Exxon and Chevron were among five U.S. oil companies that helped create Azerbaijan's current oil industry soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and acquiring a stake in ACG in 1994.
The deal was dubbed by Azerbaijan and partners as the "the contract of the century" thanks to the field's large reserves and hopes of future major discoveries that would help Europe diversify away from Russian oil and gas.
Even though the project is operated by British oil major BP (BP.L), it had received substantial U.S. government support and a total of five American companies initially participated in the deal, including Exxon, Amoco, Unocal, Pennzoil and McDermott.
BP said it had no information about Exxon's or Chevron's plans.
The ACG project received particular Western support due to hopes it would help cut Europe's reliance on Russian energy, but those hopes faded as new large discoveries failed to materialize.
Most U.S. companies sold out of the project or were acquired by rivals, while U.S. support to the Azeri administration also shrank.
Azerbaijan also became more assertive in controlling its energy wealth by building up large stakes in its energy projects via state company Socar.
Other than Exxon and Chevron, BP holds a 30.4 percent stake in ACG and Socar a 25 percent stake.
The ACG fields still account for the lion's share of Azeri oil output. They produced around three quarters of overall Azeri crude output, or nearly 600,000 barrels per day, in the first half of 2018.
Other ACG consortium members include Japan's Inpex with 9.3 percent and Norway's Equinor with 7.3 percent. Turkey's TPAO, Japan's Itochu, and India's ONGC Videsh have smaller stakes.
Exxon and Chevron have in recent years increasingly focused on developing shale fields in the United States. Exxon is also set to invest billions in developing a string of large oil discoveries in Guyana, while Chevron is developing the extension of the giant Tengiz field in Kazakhstan, estimated to cost $37 billion.
The BTC pipeline transports the majority of ACG production from Baku through Georgia to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, Turkey.
(Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze; Writing by Ron Bousso and Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and David Evans) || Paxful’s ‘Built with Bitcoin’ Campaign Completes Second School in Rwanda: Paxful, a peer-to-peer crypto exchange, has completed its second school in Rwanda using entirely Bitcoin donations through the#BuiltWithBitcoincampaign. The new school is a primary school for students up to age 14, with Paxful intending to provide students with smartphones and tablets, and the curriculum to be a return to the basic liberal arts notion oftrivium et quadriviumor classical education.
Both teachers and students will have blockchain and Bitcoin information at the heart of their education, potentially preparing students for a thriving future in Rwanda which is being fomented by the government’swillingness to embrace new technologies. Students will learn how to transact in Bitcoin and even exchange it for local currency, an important real-world lesson they can take home to their parents. Paxful is, of course, a realistic method of safely doing so, one of many.
The school has a total of 6 classrooms with a teacher for each, running water and electricity, a cafeteria, and all the other modern things that Western students take for granted. In a press release, Paxful CEORay Youseffsaid:
“We encourage the cryptocurrency sector to contribute more to humanitarian projects. The #BuiltWithBitcoin initiative is an example of bitcoin being used as more than a speculative tool but a testament to the usefulness of cryptocurrency. To date, we have built two schools – a nursery, and a primary school in Rwanda, Africa- and provided scholarships to Afghan refugees, and plan to continue these philanthropic ventures.”
The company announced in July a partnership withZamZam Waterto ensure that the school had the vital resource which isfar from a guaranteeat all in that part of the world.
In total, Paxful aims to build 100 schools across the country, and there’s no saying the project has to stop there. They raise donations through their own platform and through social media awareness, and convert the donations into schools. The power of the blockchain is leveraged, as Ray Youseff says in the above video: “Bitcoin people don’t wait around. Cryptocurrency is fast.”
And they are doing a lot with a little. The Bitcoin address (donations can be made in other major cryptos as well) used for donations,3Q5CESP85hhXTLSy2HDbSyNchb5Bi8D7ku, had received just 15 BTC at time of writing. While it’s not nothing, it demonstrates the amount of good that a relatively small amount of money can do in a place like Rwanda, and potentially the powerful impact that blockchain will play as Rwandan society increasingly adapts to it.
As forPaxful, they remain one of the top peer-to-peer crypto marketplaces, working hard to unseat veteran LocalBitcoins.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
The postPaxful’s ‘Built with Bitcoin’ Campaign Completes Second School in Rwandaappeared first onCCN. || Bitcoin approaching its worst ever slump — here's what's driving it: Bitcoin (BTC-USD, BTC-GBP) is having a terrible year.
The cryptocurrency has fallen over 70% since January and is down by about 80% since its high of close to $20,000 (£15,680) in December 2017. Bitcoin’s decline in the last month has been stark, with the price down over 40%.
What’s behind this terrible slump? Analysts believe bitcoin’s poor performance has been driven by its record rally in 2017, which most now say was unfounded.
Bitcoin’s price surged over 1,000% against the dollar during 2017 in what many commentators said was a speculative bubble. Inexperienced investors bought into the rally in the hopes of making big returns, rather than for any fundamental belief in bitcoin as an asset or technology.
Will Orde, an investment manager at early-stage venture capital fund Oxford Capital, told Yahoo Finance UK: “You had this populist wave that all pushed into bitcoin and then out again.
“A lot of that was actually off the back of Thanksgiving dinners where the people who had been in bitcoin in the first half of last year went home, talked with their families, said ‘oh, I’ve made so much money on bitcoin,’ and got dad, cousins, and sisters excited about it — people who didn’t really understand the asset class and went in and bought it.
“As soon as it dropped off a little bit, I think people panicked because they didn’t understand the asset class and they didn’t want to get caught out and lose all their money.”
David Jones, the chief market strategist at Capital.com, said:“It does feel like any people who bought in during the bubble are now throwing in the towel in the face of the recent weakness.”
Recent news hasn’t helped bitcoin’s price either.The US Securities and Exchange Commission took enforcement action against crypto crowdfunding projects earlier this month, there have been reports ofa US investigation into possible bitcoin price rigging, and this week there were claims thathundreds of thousands of crypto miners are going out of business due to the price slump.
“It’s all about sentiment and momentum,” said Mati Greenspan, a senior analyst with trading platform eToro.
“Just as during the bull run, even bad news was taken in stride and the markets kept moving up, while the prices have been declining there are stories that probably should have been interpreted as good news and in the prices went down.
“If you think about it long term, bitcoin is up more than 1,000% over the last 3 years which is incredible gains in any asset and any respect,” Greenspan said. “These bitcoin cycles have played out over and over again where we see an incredible boom and then large percentage pull backs on the bust cycle.”
Capital.com’s Jones said: “There’s no signs of a base forming just yet though – do not be surprised if there is more volatility in cryptocurrencies over the next few days.” || Bitcoin Cash Community is Working to Kick CSW Out: Billionaire Jihan Wu: craig wright nchain bitcoin cash Jihan Wu, the billionaire co-founder of Bitmain, a cryptocurrency conglomerate valued at $15 billion, has said that the Bitcoin Cash community is working together to kick Craig Steven Wright out of the community. The whole BCH community are working together to kick Fake Satoshi out. The resistance against cult leader proves the inner strength and sophistication of the BCH ecosystem. The statement of Wu comes after CSW threatened Roger Ver and Bitcoin Cash miners, controversially claiming that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin. I will ensure that ANY miner passing DSV can be held liable (under the law of the UK, China and US, they can be) The end will be a drop in value for those using DSV And, I will help ensure those who lose claim against this act. The developers in ABC will be able to be held personally liable. Oh
I do have a Masters in Law on just this area, CSW said . Conflict Between Bitcoin Cash and CSW CSW, CoinGeek , and Calvin Ayre, a billionaire casino mogul, have created a camp to force a blockchain split on November 15, the day when the Bitcoin Cash network updates its protocol. The group led by CSW has created a Bitcoin Cash implementation called Bitcoin SV and plans to activate the competing proposal on November 15 as the Bitcoin Cash protocol forks. Major cryptocurrency exchanges including Coinbase , which publicly expressed support for the roadmap set forth by ABC and bitcoincash.org, told investors that the hard fork will cause instability on the network and will stop operating Bitcoin Cash wallets for a short period of time. bitmain We will monitor the Bitcoin Cash network during the upgrade. Coinbase cannot predict the duration of this upgrade process. When the upgrade is complete, we will evaluate the network and take appropriate next steps, including re-enabling sends and receives. In an email sent to Roger Ver, CSW threatened to intentionally hold the network hostage, stating, if you want a war, I will do 2 years of no trade. Nothing. In the war, no coin can trade. Story continues In response, Ver stated that CSW seems to lack technical knowledge to back up his identity, as CCN reported. Some things Craig says, I think are really spot on, but other things, he has no clue what hes talking about. It seems strange to have Craig refuse to engage in any sort of technical debate there, and my suspicion at this point is that he cant. And Ive seen a bunch of things happen that make me skeptical very, very, deeply skeptical. Current State of Bitcoin Cash Subsequent to the November 15 hard fork, the majority of investors, developers, and miners remain confident that the current version of Bitcoin Cash and the roadmap set forth by ABC will remain as BCH. There is not a single exchange that will reward BSV with the BCH ticker symbol for successfully 51% attacking BCH. Thats not how it works. Ticker symbols arent given out like spoils of a war. BSV will forever be BSV regardless of what they do to BCH, Chris Pacia, a backend developer for Open Bazaar, stated. However, it remains uncertain whether the outcome of the fork will positively benefit any side. On Poloniex, the combined value of Bitcoin Cash and SV remains lower than the current price of BCH. Featured Image from nChain/ YouTube The post Bitcoin Cash Community is Working to Kick CSW Out: Billionaire Jihan Wu appeared first on CCN . || Bitcoin Price Becoming Less Volatile than Amazon Stock: CBOE Analyst: The next time your nocoiner friends or relatives criticize your decision to allocate a (hopefully reasonable) percentage of your investments into bitcoin, you can tell them that you’ve chosen to put money the flagship cryptocurrency because you don’t have the stomach for more volatile asset classes — stocks, for instance.
Granted, that argument doesn’t have a strong historical track record, but, according to an educational analyst at the first U.S. derivatives exchange to list bitcoin futures, BTC has lately experienced less price volatility than some of Wall Street’s most popular stocks, including tech heavyweights likeAmazon,Netflix, and chipmaking giantNvidia.
Writing in commentary cited inMarketWatch, CBOE Options Institute senior instructor Kevin Davitt stated that bitcoin’s 20-dayhistorical volatility(HV) — i.e., the rate of change in its daily price — has dropped to 31.5 percent.
By comparison, Amazon’s 20-day HV of 35 percent, Nvidia’s stands at 40 percent, and Netflix’s is nearly twice as large at 52 percent. At its current level, bitcoin is almost as stable asApple(AAPL), the world’s most valuable company. Per the report, AAPL — whose market cap eclipses $1 trillion — has a 20-day HV of 29.3 percent.
Moreover, Davitt noted that even at its most volatile, the bitcoin price was far more stable than the share price of cannabis producer Tilray, the face of the pot stock bubble and an investment that short seller Citron Research called “more ridiculous than bitcoin.”
Davitt speculated that it’s possible the cryptocurrency market is maturing and that the drop in HV indicates a “structural shift” in the ecosystem. However, he cautioned that it’s “far too early” to conclude that this is the “new normal.”
“Perhaps we are witnessing the maturation of a market. It’s far too early to declare this the ‘new normal’ but the persistent range over the last few weeks may be hinting at a structural shift. Time will tell,” he wrote.
Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts fromTradingView.
The postBitcoin Price Becoming Less Volatile than Amazon Stock: CBOE Analystappeared first onCCN. || Bitcoin Price Stabilizes above $3,500 as CME Futures Expiry Approach: Bitcoin price steady Bitcoin on Tuesday showed some signs of bottoming out as it consolidated sideways a little above $3,500, its psychological support. The BTC/USD is now trading at 3734-fiat, up 1.58% from the previous day close . Meanwhile, the pair is trading inside a range that is no more than $230 wide. Though volatile, the choppy price action is still stable compared to Bitcoins performance in the past two weeks. The CME Bitcoin Futures are also going to expire this week on Friday. Tom Lee from Fundstrat had earlier noted that volatility in Bitcoin spot market increases every time a contract heads towards its expiry date. Eventually, the price does down, finds a support and picks up again soon after the expiry date. It is expected that BTC/USD will once again test new support levels perhaps towards 3000-3500-fiat range even without any influence from the futures contracts, before it rebounds. The US Dollar, meanwhile, established its two-week high after President Donald Trump threatened China of higher trade tariffs. It could make investors hold on their greenbacks and avoid liquidating for quoted assets, including stocks, commodities and even crypto. As of now, the pressure is visibly on 3500-fiat to hold what is the minimum bullish presence in the bitcoin market. The BTC/USD pair is already trending inside a downward parallel channel, now the midst of two equally strong levels. The prevailing bearish momentum could allow the pair to test the channel support first and then could see a rebound towards the channel resistance. In another scenario, BTC/USD could break below the channel support and continue its fall to find next support at 3000-fiat. The bearish bias is also visible in the RSI momentum indicator which has reversed from 45 already, proving a selling sentiment. The MACD, for now, is placed slightly inside a bullish zone albeit hinting a reversal anytime soon. BTC/USD Intraday Analysis The BTC/USD in near-term is trending inside a symmetric triangle, giving plenty of exit and entry hints for day traders and take out attractive intraday profits. We are now reversing from the triangle resistance, which has allowed us to enter a short position towards the triangle support. A further break below the said support would have us open another short, this time towards 3560-fiat. In both the positions, we will be maintaining our stop losses just 4-5 dollar above the entry point. It will help us avoid getting chopped during an unexpected price action. Story continues Looking the other way, a break above the triangle resistance would have us target the 200-period exponential moving average as an intermediate upside target. A further break and we would have another long opportunity towards 3818-fiat. In both the positions, a stop loss just 4-5 dollar below the entry point will define our risk management perspective. Trade safely! Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Bitcoin Price Stabilizes above $3,500 as CME Futures Expiry Approach appeared first on CCN . || $2 Million: Lightning Network Hits Record Capacity Despite Bitcoin Price Decline: Perhaps it’s unsurprising to readers familiar with Blockstream CEO Adam Back’srecent predictionof a $500,000 Bitcoin, but one of the blockchain startup’s chief technological efforts, the Lightning Network (LN) — which facilitates off-chain Bitcoin payments instantly at very little cost — saw a rise to over $2 million in capacity while theprice of Bitcoinsharpened its decline.
Back is not an economist, he is a cryptographer, and his firm thrives whenBitcoindoes well. However, Tom Lee is a Wharton School graduate and financial analyst with more than 25 years experience doing financial research, and his prediction, with just several weeks left in the year, is still a$15,000 Bitcoinby year’s end.
When we refer to “capacity” in the Lightning Network, we mean the amount of money that is locked up in smart contracts on the platform, and therefore the amount of funds that can be transacted instantly at any given time. Payment channels are typically set up by merchants who would like to receive payments instantly, and used by customers who would like to pay drastically reduced transaction fees.
The spike is notable because it correlates witha declining Bitcoin value, indicating that Lightning usage and adoption is not necessarily tied to fiat feelings toward Bitcoin or cryptos in general. There are several factors coming to light as regards the dollar flight, one of which is recent reporting which reveals that theUS Department of Justice is pursuing a criminal casefocusing on price manipulation at the hands of several major players in the USDT/BTC markets.
1ML.comanalyzes the Lightning Network and provides data about the scaling solution. Even as the price of Bitcoin continued to slide, the effective throughput of its more than 11,000 nodes had surpassed $2 million when we first began researching this article. Volatility being what it is, the actual throughput at time of writing stands somewhere over $1.97M, or 432.7 BTC.
The figures on the Lightning Network are important in particular to those who believe “market adoption” and “merchant adoption” are mutually inclusive and equally important. Those who’d like to buy a cup of coffee with Bitcoin, as the old argument goes, can do so on the Lightning Network for an infinitesimally small fraction of what it would cost to do so on the regular blockchain.
Among the top channels on Lightning at time of writing wereBitrefill, a company which facilitates prepaid phone payments via Bitcoin, and Torguard VPN. Blockstream, which is one of the three primary developers of LN software, was also unsurprisingly near the top of the list of more than 11,000 providers.
Lightning Networkis still relatively nascent, and with overall demand for Bitcoin seeing a marked decline, it may take some time yet to achieve its full potential.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
The post$2 Million: Lightning Network Hits Record Capacity Despite Bitcoin Price Declineappeared first onCCN.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price: $0.023220
Node count: 859
Total accounts: 525930
Coins burned: 2,669,031.00 TRX
#tron #trx $trx $btc #btc || 11-13 09:00(GMT)
#SPINDLE price
$SPD (BTC)
Yobit :0.00000040
HitBTC :0.00000040
LiveCoin:0.00000031
$SPD (JPY)
Yobit :0.28
HitBTC :0.28
LiveCoin:0.22 || ツイート数の多かった仮想通貨
1位 $C20 1303 Tweets
2位 $BTC 716 Tweets
3位 $TRX 181 Tweets
4位 $ETH 110 Tweets
5位 $XRP 77 Tweets
2018-11-26 10:00 ～ 2018-11-26 10:59
COINTREND いまTwitterで話題の仮想通貨を探せ！
https://cointrend.jp/ || SEC's Clayton needs to see key upgrades in cryptocurrency markets before approving a bitcoin ETF https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/sec-wants-key-upgrades-in-crypto-markets-before-approving-bitcoin-etf.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar … || $BTC
トレンドイズフレンド pic.twitter.com/bwa8qrCKa7 || 24H
2018/10/23 23:00 (2018/10/22 23:00)
LONG : 20982.06 BTC (+805.62 BTC)
SHORT : 30921.56 BTC (-1604.05 BTC)
LS比 : 40% vs 59% (38% vs 61%) || TRON Announces $100 Million Blockchain Gaming Fund
http://BTCPeek.com Earn FREE Bitcoin in less than 10 Minutes
#Bitcoin #BTCPeek #FreeBitcoin #BTC #FreeBTC #Money #cryptocurrency #crypto #blockchain #ethereum #bitcoinprice #getbitcoinpic.twitter.com/D5yx9SkDkr || 無料でBTCゲット💰
※ウズラ蛇口 3900Sprts×100名
条件 RTのみ
タダコインで30分毎に 40satoshiは間違いなく高額の部類ですよ👍
まだの方は始めてみては？？↓↓
https://t.co/UvJjOg6X5f
#Tadacoin #Faucet #Bitcoin #Cryptocurrency #タダコイン #仮想通貨 || #Bitcoin Price: USD $4220.66 $BTC http://ow.ly/4naJD6 pic.twitter.com/1QSp0eEH3j || Current price: $0.023110
Node count: 863
Total accounts: 528206
Coins burned: 2,683,498.00 TRX
#tron #trx $trx $btc #btc
|
Trend: down || Prices: 3521.10, 3419.94, 3476.11, 3614.23, 3502.66, 3424.59, 3486.95, 3313.68, 3242.48, 3236.76
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2018-04-02]
BTC Price: 7083.80, BTC RSI: 33.85
Gold Price: 1342.10, Gold RSI: 56.06
Oil Price: 63.01, Oil RSI: 49.27
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Why Baozun Inc. Stock Skyrocketed Today: What happened Shares of Baozun Inc. (ADR) (NASDAQ: BZUN) popped 31.1% on Tuesday after the Chinese e-commerce solutions provider announced stronger-than-expected fourth-quarter 2017 earnings. More specifically, Baozun's quarterly revenue climbed 23% year over year to $240.6 million, and translated to adjusted net income of $24.7 million, or $0.42 per diluted share. Analysts, on average, were anticipating lower adjusted earnings of $0.31 per share on higher revenue of $245.2 million. Stock market prices in red and green on an LED display IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES. So what Baozun's top-line growth was led primarily by a 56% increase in services revenue, which accounted for almost exactly half of total sales, driven by the momentum of the company's consignment and service fee models. Meanwhile, product sales grew a more modest 1.5%, as increased popularity of brand partners' products and effective marketing initiatives were offset by a transition of one leading electronics brand partner's business from the distribution model to a consignment model. "We continue to gain growth momentum and are increasingly benefiting from our competitive strengths and ability to rapidly develop and adapt our technology as the market environment changes," said CEO Vincent Qiu. "We plan to continue investing in technology to further strengthen our leadership position and expand the array of services we are able to offer in order to create greater value for our shareholders." Now what For the first quarter of 2018, Baozun expects revenue to be between $136.3 million and $141 million (given steady currency exchange rates), assuming a more than 50% increase in services revenue. By comparison, most investors predicted first-quarter sales of roughly $127.8 million All told, this was a straightforward quarterly earnings beat followed by a strong forward outlook. It's no surprise to see the market so aggressively bidding up Baozun shares in response. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Steve Symington has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || 4 States With Generous Social Security Tax Exemptions: As of December, 61.9 million people were receiving a monthly stipend from Social Security, and almost 69% of these recipients were retired workers. Of these seniors, more than three out of five rely on their monthly payout to account for at least half of their income. It's simply that important to the financial well-being of our nation's retired workforce. But America's most important social program may have an unpleasant surprise in store for seniors in the years and decades to come. A Social Security card lying atop an IRS tax form and next to a pair of glasses. Image source: Getty Images. Who's ready to pay federal tax on their Social Security benefits? The biggest shock for most future beneficiaries is the likelihood that they'll wind up paying at least some tax on their Social Security benefits. Despite having paid into the program via the payroll tax throughout their working years, Social Security benefits also become taxable at the federal level, up to a certain extent, based on your earned income. In 1983, the Reagan administration passed the last sweeping overhaul of Social Security. With the program running a long-term actuarial deficit, the federal government passed a series of measures designed to boost revenue and cut costs. Among them included the adoption of the federal taxation of Social Security benefits. Essentially, single taxpayers with more than $25,000 in adjusted gross income (AGI), and couples filing jointly earning over $32,000 in AGI, who are currently receiving benefits, can have 50% of their benefits exposed to federal ordinary income taxes. In 1993, the Clinton administration added another tier of federal taxation. It allowed 85% of Social Security benefits to be exposed to federal income-tax rates if a single beneficiary earned more than $34,000 in AGI, or if a couple filing jointly earned over $44,000 in AGI. When first introduced, this tax was designed to affect around one in 10 senior households. However, because the income thresholds haven't been adjusted for inflation since they were introduced nearly 35 years ago, approximately 56% of senior households receiving benefits are now on the line for some form of federal taxation. Story continues A senior man tightly grasping his piggy bank as outstretched hands reach for it. Image source: Getty Images. A quarter of U.S. states tax Social Security benefits, too I wish I could say that were all, but it's not. There are 13 states that tax Social Security benefits , too. In alphabetical order, these states are: Colorado Connecticut Kansas Minnesota Missouri Montana Nebraska New Mexico North Dakota Rhode Island Utah Vermont West Virginia You'll note the apparent bright side here: If you're in one of the 37 states not on this list, your Social Security benefits are free from any potential state-level taxation. A surprised senior man looking at cash in his wallet. Image source: Getty Images. Four states with generous Social Security tax exemptions Of course, the list of 13 states that tax Social Security has quite the bifurcation of its own. For instance, Minnesota, North Dakota, Vermont, and West Virginia all mirror the tax schedule of the federal government. Meanwhile, four of the aforementioned states offer generous exemptions despite taxing Social Security income. Missouri: No state that taxes Social Security benefits offers more lucrative exemptions than Missouri. The Show Me State won't even consider touching a dime of your Social Security benefits via taxation unless you've earned more than $85,000 in AGI as a single taxpayer, or $100,000 in AGI as a couple filing jointly. What's more, even if taxpayers exceed these limits, partial exemptions may still apply. Translation: Most beneficiaries won't owe any extra tax. Rhode Island: The Ocean State is nearly as generous as Missouri when it comes to state-level Social Security tax exemptions. Single filers can earn up to $80,000 in AGI and get a free pass, while couples filing jointly can earn up to $100,000 in AGI. Though you'd owe federal tax on your benefits at this level, Rhode Island wouldn't take a red cent. Kansas: The Sunflower State is yet another relatively welcoming home for retirees. Social Security beneficiaries are able to earn up to $75,000 in AGI without owing any additional tax to the state. With a median annual household income of roughly $46,200 for those over age 65, it suggests most seniors won't be subject to this state tax. Connecticut: Last, but not least, the Constitution State tends to give Social Security recipients the benefit of the doubt when it comes to tax time. Though not as generous as the previous three states, Connecticut still exempts individual taxpayers with less than $50,000 in AGI, and married couples filing jointly with under $60,000 in AGI, from owing state-level tax. Even though Connecticut has the highest average income in the U.S., its per capita income of $41,087 in 2016 suggests that plenty of folks are getting a free pass. In short, pay attention to where you retire, because no one wants to have to pay state and federal tax on their Social Security benefits if they don't have to. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Banks in Britain and U.S. ban Bitcoin buying with credit cards: By Lawrence White and Emma Rumney LONDON (Reuters) - Banks in Britain and the United States have banned the use of credit cards to buy Bitcoin and other "cryptocurrencies", fearing a plunge in their value will leave customers unable to repay their debts. Lloyds Banking Group Plc , which issues just over a quarter of all credit cards in Britain, and Virgin Money said they would ban credit card customers from buying cryptocurrencies, following the lead of U.S. banking giants JP Morgan Chase & Co and Citigroup . The move is aimed at protecting customers from running up huge debts from buying virtual currencies on credit, if their values were to plummet, a Lloyds spokeswoman said. Concerns have arisen among credit card providers because their customers have increasingly been using credit cards to fund accounts on online exchanges, which are then used to purchase the digital currencies. However, other banks said on Monday they will continue to allow credit card customers to buy cryptocurrencies. "We constantly review our protections for customers as a responsible bank and lender, and are keeping this matter under close review," a spokeswoman for Barclays said. Barclays is Britain's leading credit card issuer with a market share of around 27 percent through its Barclaycard brand. "At present UK customers can use both their Barclays debit card and Barclaycard credit card to purchase cryptocurrency legitimately," the Barclays spokeswoman said. Spain's second-biggest bank BBVA also said it has no restrictions in place on such purchases. Last week Mastercard Inc , the world's second biggest payments network, said customers buying cryptocurrencies with credit cards fueled a 1 percentage point increase in overseas transaction volumes in the fourth quarter. At that time Bitcoin was staging a spectacular rise in value, reaching a peak of $19,187 on Dec. 16 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange. But the biggest and best-known cryptocurrency has since fallen dramatically and on Monday was down by 11 percent to $7255 at 1719 GMT on Bitstamp, extending losses from Friday amid worries of a global regulatory clampdown. CREDIT RISK The decision on whether to allow credit card users to buy cryptocurrencies is a credit risk decision made by the card-issuing banks, a spokesman for Mastercard said. A spokeswoman for Chase bank said it is not currently processing credit card purchases of cryptocurrencies because of the volatility and risk involved, while a Citi spokeswoman confirmed a similar ban, but did not give a reason. The bans extends only to credit card purchases, with debit card users still able to buy cryptocurrencies. "Across Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, Halifax and MBNA, we do not accept credit card transactions involving the purchase of cryptocurrencies," the Lloyds spokeswoman said in an email. Lloyds did not say how it planned to enforce the ban, although the Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday that its credit card customers will be blocked from buying Bitcoin online through a "blacklist" that will flag sellers. A spokeswoman from the Royal Bank of Scotland declined to comment on the bank's policy. Europe's biggest bank HSBC did not respond to requests for comment on whether it permits credit card purchases of cryptocurrencies. Concerns about the use of Bitcoin and other such currencies extend beyond the use of credit cards for borrowing. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said Britain should take a serious look at digital currencies such as Bitcoin because of the way they can be used by criminals. (Additional reporting by Anjuli Davies in London and Jesus Aguado in Madrid; Editing by Peter Cooney and Alexander Smith) || GE's Recent Tumble Could Be a Step in the Right Direction: In this week's episode of Industry Focus: Energy , host Sarah Priestley talks with Motley Fool Canada Premium analyst Taylor Muckerman about a flurry of news in the sector this week. General Electric 's (NYSE: GE) stock has tanked lately, but the company is straightening itself out for the long term -- and this week's disclosure about new, more transparent accounting standards is just one of many concrete steps in that direction. Hyundai is shaking up the electric vehicle game with their new Kona Electric crossover SUV, which could have massive market potential. The International Energy Agency forecasts that the U.S. will dominate the oil industry for the next five years. Tune in to find out more. A full transcript follows the video. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This This video was recorded on March 8, 2018. Sarah Priestley: Welcome to Industry Focus , the show that dives into a different sector of the stock market every day. Today, we're talking Energy and Industrials . It's Thursday, the 8th of March, and we're going to be discussing all kinds of things in the news and energy and industrials. I'm your host, Sarah Priestley, and joining me in the studio is the marvelous Motley Fool Canada Premium analyst -- did you like that introduction? Taylor Muckerman: Yeah, marvelously premium. [laughs] Priestley: So, are you into March Madness? Because it's taking over my household. Muckerman: It actually caught up with me. I had really no idea. I saw some of the ACC tournament on TV upstairs yesterday in The Fool cafe. I have to get my game back. Priestley: Yeah, we work in a nice place that allows us to play the games. My husband, who is super, super into it, he's a UNC Tarheels fan, does not have the pleasure. I think he has to surreptitiously look on his phone. Story continues Muckerman: Yeah. At least during March Madness, a lot of the networks have the boss button, where you can click it and it'll switch windows really quick for you. Priestley: [laughs] So, first thing I wanted to touch on was, we got a great listener question from Brendan around the likelihood of Baker-Schultz carbon tax. If you don't know what that is, you are not alone. [laughs] I'll go into it. Muckerman: Yeah, I'm very much in that boat. Priestley: The Baker-Schultz carbon tax was devised by the Climate Leadership Council and released in February 2017. It was created by a group of Republicans headed by Reagan's Secretary of State, George Shultz and George W. Bush's Secretary of State, James Baker. It's called "The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends," and you can read it online. The proposal aims to tax CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels at a rate of $40 per ton. A crucial aspect of this proposal is that it would return the revenues from this in dividends to Americans -- every American, child, adult. I'm paraphrasing the report, but it says these dividends would be distributed on an equal monthly basis via dividend checks or as contributions to an individual's retirement account. They give an example in which a family of four would receive $2,000 in carbon dividends payments the first year, and that would grow over time as the carbon tax rate increases. This is direct quote. They say, "This would create a positive feedback loop. The more the climate is protected, the greater the individual dividend payments to all Americans." So, that's the premise of this. That was a very, very high-level overview. If you want to learn more about it, just google Baker-Schultz carbon tax, or shoot me an email and I can send it to you, industryfocus@fool.com . I find it really hard to say Baker-Schultz without saying Baker Hughes . Muckerman: Yeah, I'm so used to that. We might talk about that later in the show. Priestley: So, Brendan's question was, how likely is it to come into effect? Well, it seems very unlikely for the next few years. I talked to Eugene Mulero, who was on the show last week. He's the Capitol Hill reporter for Transport Topics. He said the proposal has barely reached discussion level so far, which is unsurprising because it's pretty new. It was only released last year. So, it's not part of the President's tax overhaul. Although there's an outside chance it could be brought into the reform debate, it doesn't look likely at the minute. But, it takes a long time to communicate these things and educate people on what it would actually mean before these things even get put forward. However, it does have some ground level support with what you might term the next generation of politicians. Which is terrifying. [laughs] Muckerman: Yeah, but that seems like it's probably a pretty small subset of overall politicians on Capitol Hill. Priestley: Yeah. So, Brendan, in answer to your question, and thank you very much for sending it in, it seems quite unlikely in the next few years, but it's certainly something to keep an eye on. Thank you, as always, to people writing into the show. We always appreciate hearing from listeners. Taylor, after that boring soliloquy ... [laughs] Muckerman: No, I was excited, I was pretty interested. Like I said, I didn't know too much about it. I think it's probably going to take a change in the administration, or at least a rollover on Capitol Hill before anything dramatic happens in terms of environmental protection. Priestley: Yeah, it's a very interesting proposal. I think it's more academic at this point. And I always love reading stuff like that. But, yes. Another interesting report, the International Energy Agency, IEA, has forecast that the U.S. will dominate the oil industry for the next five years, and it will become the world's largest oil exporter. That's quite the turnaround from being the world's largest importer at one point. Muckerman: Yeah. Much to OPEC's demise. Priestley: It anticipates the states will be able to export five million barrels a day around the world by 2023. We currently export two million barrels a day. This probably didn't come as much of a surprise to you, did it, Taylor? Muckerman: No. This has been under way for a few years now. It's the reason why prices of oil collapsed down in the $30 range and are now oscillating in the $50-$60 range over the last few months. That's pretty astounding. The first time we've produced over 10 million barrels per day in over 40 years, looking at 11 million barrels per day next year. And as you alluded to, 17 million barrels per day by 2023. So, overtaking Saudi Arabia, Russia, and really putting the screws to OPEC and those countries that have said that they're going to continue to cut production for at least the rest of the year. But, if they do decide to bring production back online, what's that going to do to prices? You can imagine that the U.S. producers are still going to want to keep the pedal to the metal, as they have. Although, when you think about out a few more years as spending on capital expenditures really fell off the same cliff that oil prices did in the last few years, people are expecting some kind of a shortfall in the next five years because these long-tail projects do take multiple years to bring online. We're talking big, unconventional oil fields and offshore oil that's lost everyone's attention. So, shale has very steep decline curves. You're looking at needing to replace, I think they say, roughly about 3 million barrels per day of oil each year are lost, so, you have to replace that. And if spending hasn't been following suit, maybe OPEC will finally have some salvation if that oil supply isn't there. Maybe holding back will be the smart play in the long run. Priestley: Absolutely. You've obviously mentioned this, historically low investment, those rates in the report. OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo also mirrored these concerns. Investments have fallen by 25% in both 2015 and 2016, haven't seen 2017 figures yet. Muckerman: I'm sure a little bit came back, but yeah, for the most part, still down. Priestley: And you've mentioned this, it matches up with the period where we had oil over $100 a barrel in 2015. And they fell to below $30 at one point in 2016. It is a concern, like you said. This isn't something that you can just switch on. It's a lot of infrastructure that you have to build, testing, permitting. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out. Muckerman: Yeah. And like you mentioned, we were at one point a very large importer. We're down to just four million barrels per day of importation. We were at 12.5 million barrels per day in 2005, so cut that in a third in just 13 years, which is pretty impressive. It's kind of ironic that, when you're talking about our exports, with all this tariff talk going on, that China is actually the largest importer of U.S. oil. Kind of interesting to see that dynamic play out. Priestley: Over the next five years, demand is supposed to increase by 7%. Half of that is meant to come from China. And obviously some of that is the burgeoning middle class, so you have a lot of people wanting plastics and chemicals to make the stuff that you want when you're in the middle class. Then, some of that is also, they brought a lot of refining capability online. Is that right? So, they're importing a lot more crude? Muckerman: Yeah. So, they can obviously distill that and make the fuels and the petrochemicals, fractionate all of that out into the ability to make, like you said, plastics and pretty much everything you touch on a daily basis, outside of anything that says organic on it. [laughs] Even though, I guess it's technically organic, because it came out of ground. But, yeah, very interesting. And, the LNG export trade that we're getting into in the United States with additional facilities expected to come online this year and over the next several years, in addition to the Cheniere Energy Sabine Pass that's already been exporting LNG for some time now. Priestley: And you've already mentioned what has sparked all of this, which is shale. For anybody listening who doesn't know what shale, can you explain the difference between that and conventional extraction? Muckerman: Very briefly, we can go into that. Conventional oil is, you find these huge basins that are in the ground and you basically just have to tap it, and the oil is naturally pressurized. Because it's a large basin, you don't need to open up any fissures, it's just basically a pool of oil down there. Shale is oil that's more or less trapped in layers of rock and shale and sediment over time. You're drilling down through all these layers. And in total, there's a lot of oil down there. But it's not as easy to access as just basically sticking a straw in the ground. So, they'll drill down and basically send a canister down -- it's much more technical than this -- but, they send a canister down into the ground filled with proppants, and they'll basically light the fuse, explode it, which sends fissure through the shale. Then, they flood it with water, different chemicals, and sand to A, add pressure, and the sand will then keep the fissures open, allowing basically a maze-like structure for oil to flow out of the singular hole being the well. So, they're able to do that, drilling down several miles and horizontally several miles. And that's all increased over time, therefore giving us access to more oil and natural gas that was once thought to be unattainable. Even still, we're leaving more than 50% of that in the ground. The pipe dream there, no pun intended, is to be able to extract more of that. They're slowly doing that over time, but because of the nature of it, the decline curve is so much steeper than conventional oil. The initial spurt is insane, but you lose a lot of that daily production over the first few months and certainly the first year. It's a much faster replacement cycle with shale vs. the conventional oil that you're seeing offshore and that you're seeing in the Middle East. Priestley: Absolutely. And that's definitely a consideration, like you were talking about. These don't have the life cycle that we're used to. This really revolutionized the industry, and what furthered that was the ongoing efficiency. That lower cost per barrel, or lower price per barrel, has led to people really concentrating on lowering the cost per barrel. And that enforced discipline on the industry. Muckerman: Yeah, it did. Originally, it was just a huge land grab. Everyone went out and spent a ton of money. They tried to do it secretly, acquiring land rights at the courts without trying to draw a bunch of attention, but quickly people caught on to the best basins. You've seen energy companies and high production numbers leapfrog from basin to basin to basin. Marcellus and Utica in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, still very prolific for natural gas. That really hasn't changed. At one point, you were hearing a lot about the Bakken up in North Dakota with Continental Resources and Harold Hamm. Then, everyone was all in on the Eagle Ford. Now everyone's all in on the Permian. You're extracting the low-hanging fruit. And once that starts to run dry, you start to worry about low oil prices preventing people from making money on this. But, like you mentioned, efficiencies. You have pad drilling. Basically, instead of having to deconstruct a drilling rig every time you want to drill a new well, which takes time and money, they have what they call pad drilling, which is basically putting a rig on, basically, if you imagine a bulldozer with tractor wheels and the track, is I guess what they call it, you can move these drilling rigs around without having to deconstruct it and then rebuild it. So, you're drilling these wells much faster within a certain parameter of land, and it's making it easier and cheaper. Multi-stage fracking, which is basically just extending that line out underground, and using multiple canisters, drawing the line wire backwards, fracking further out, then fracking closer and closer and closer so that you continue to hit more and more pockets oil. Definitely more efficient. We've talked about people drilling for under $30 a barrel, break even cost. That's the best drillers in the U.S., doing that. Priestley: Yes. Hopefully that background was helpful to anybody who's been reading any transcripts of conference calls and kind of doesn't understand what any of that stuff means. It was very helpful for me. Muckerman: And they use seismic data, they can directionally drill with a joystick directly at where they need to be. It's very, very precise these days. But, EOG 's former CEO came out recently saying that he's a little nervous that these projections for shale are a little outlandish because of the declines in shale and because he thinks the prime acreage is all but taken. Some people say he's busy talking his own book, because obviously if that's the case, oil prices are likely to rise, and he is the CEO of a small company that has prime acreage in the Permian now. So, only time will tell if that's correct or not, but the pace we're on right now certainly doesn't hint that that's the case. Priestley: Absolutely. Coming up, we're going to be talking about the stock that everybody seems to love to hate right now, which is GE, and news of Hyundai's new electric contender. I believe that the British say Hyundai differently to how it's said here. Muckerman: Yeah. I've heard it both ways. I didn't know it was a regional thing. I just think it's people like, "How the heck do you pronounce that name?" [laughs] Priestley: We need to get some company spokesman to come and set us both right. Just to recap the tragedy that has been GE recently -- Muckerman: That's a good word for it. Priestley: -- the stock has fallen 50% since last June. It's now trading at its lowest levels for seven years. And it seems like the bad news just doesn't stop coming. Most recently, they filed a full disclosure which recognizes the impact of their new accounting standards. For background on this, there was an SEC investigation. It's been known for many years that they do not have the most transparent accounting. If you look at their free cash flow, for instance, under Bornstein, their former CFO, it's not done the same way as any other industrial company. They've implemented these new accounting standards or revenue recognition rules to try and become more transparent, more accessible for investors. They've recognized this. They also recognized the effects of tax reform. They're revising back to 2016, which, under the new rules, results in a non-cash charge of retained earnings at $4.2 billion. They also lowered earnings per share for both 2016 and 2017 by $0.13 and $0.16 respectively. Now, the issue here is that this was misrepresented by a lot of the financial journalists and even some analysts, that it was a correction of a misstatement. Muckerman: Yeah, that's not the case. Priestley: No, that's absolutely not the case. The company is trying to become more and more transparent. I, as a shareholder, really appreciate that. Muckerman: Yeah. It's tough, with a company this big. Priestley: It is, yes. Muckerman: So diverse. Maybe not the size, but the diversity is definitely a hurdle to get over. Priestley: Yeah, absolutely. And GE Capital is really the devil on their back right now. Muckerman: Yeah, it's that thorn in your boot you just can't get out. Priestley: Yeah. And they have Power, which is underperforming, but Aviation and Healthcare are doing really well. So, it's kind of this mixed bag, and they're trying to parse it all out for people. Then, to top it all off, their CFO Jamie Miller said of earnings estimates, I think you should expect it's at the low end of guidance. Wall Street did not like that. Muckerman: No. Bad news continues. But, if you think about the way that they report things, maybe they're trying to address that moving forward with a new board member that they're bringing on, Leslie Seidman, a former chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. So, maybe there will be a little more oversight into how they're going to represent their numbers moving forward. And a couple of other new board members that I think are going to bring a lot of diversity and experience to the board. And, they're shrinking it from 18 to 12, which is still a pretty big board. Priestley: It is a big board. I personally really like the shakeup. I think the one thing that this whole ordeal for GE shareholders has revealed is the mismanagement, essentially, of the company. It's easy for people to say that as commentators, but I would say objectively, there's been mismanagement. So, I like the fresh faces on the board. From my perspective, this is almost over-transparency. However, if you're going to air your dirty laundry, you might as well get it all done in a six-month period. Muckerman: Spring cleaning, yeah, for sure. Priestley: I'm praying that it's over. Muckerman: One other one, Thomas Horton, former chairman and CEO of American Airlines . So, some good insight into one of the largest sector customers, the airline industry. So, that and the former CEO of Danaher , which is a competitor of GE in several lineups. Priestley: Yeah, very smart moves. Fourth quarter earnings weaker than expected, as we mentioned, due to the Power unit. They didn't revise those estimates before they released earnings, which I think a lot of analysts were perturbed by. The reason that they gave was that they thought the strength of Aviation and Healthcare would offset. That's kind of the ongoing story. Siemens also released earnings, and they performed slightly better. They were showing a bit of more strengthening in pricing, services taking a bit of an uptick, which is something that we haven't seen in that segment before. It's oversubscribed, for want of a better word. So, possibly, there's light at the end of the tunnel there. Muckerman: And speaking of Siemens, I just saw an announcement today that GE is going to be getting into the battery storage game for solar and wind. So, maybe that'll help out a little bit. Priestley: I feel that's very sensible. Some stuff to watch out for if you're interested in this stock -- we've had asset sales promised by the CEO, the new CEO, John Flannery. Improvement in operating performance with regard to cost cutting measures. And we're starting to see that somewhat already. Cutting the board. Presumably, the new people will not be cheap, but, cutting boards, cutting exec-level. There's been a lot of layoffs. Obviously awful for the people impacted, but in the next two years or so you're going to start to see that have an effect on the bottom line. Muckerman: And the ever-growing storm cloud of the pension shortfall is narrowing from 67% funded to 71% funded now, and they say that rising interest rates will only help to close that gap. Priestley: Yeah, absolutely. I wish I could remember this, I saw something somewhere and it was saying a 0.1% rise in interest rates would almost pay off for that. Muckerman: Yeah, they're supremely levered to even the most micro increase in interest rates, for sure. Priestley: So, one good thing to look out for with rising interest rates. They're also looking for a margin recovery. We just discussed GE Power. A lot of that will come from the Services side, which is the high-margin aspect of the business. They almost give away the turbines, having worked in that industry. They also want a trouble-free resolution of the SEC investigation. The revisions that they've made and the new board members suggests to me that that should be within sight. Muckerman: I agree. Priestley: So, yeah, we're hoping. We're hoping this is it. Who knows. The next thing I wanted to talk to you about is Hyundai's new SUV. The Korean auto manufacturer has created what our senior auto specialist John Rosevear describes as a potentially world-beating new product, an all-electric small SUV with nearly 300 miles of range. They're calling it the Kona Electric crossover SUV. It's clear this could provide some real competition to the current frontrunner, General Motors ' Chevy Bolt. The Bolt is currently America's best-selling electric vehicle. It's sold more than all of Tesla 's (NASDAQ: TSLA) models, I believe. The big point of interest essentially is the range available. We don't know if that's going to be a long-range version and then there'll be a shorter-range version. But, 300 miles is very good. Muckerman: Yeah, for sure. Priestley: What I wanted to get your opinion on is, as somebody else who follows the industry, Elon Musk trumpeted from the beginning that this was all part of his plan. He wanted to encourage traditional automakers to take electric seriously. I guess this is an indication that that's happening. What do you make of this? Muckerman: It certainly is. And they went straight at Elon with a couple of Billboards that they've placed around, I don't know exactly where, but I assume it's more in Elon Musk's neighborhood, with the lineup of the Hyundai cars, and it just says, "Your turn, Elon." Interesting, because he's already the first mover in this category for the most part, in terms of broad scale electric vehicle sales. He was the first to make the move. Maybe it should have said, "Your second turn," or, "Your third turn, Elon." But, it's geared toward the mass market, which, maybe the Model 3 is for Tesla. But still, it's not really stepping on his toes in terms of their SUV, because the Model Y is definitely geared more toward the luxury market, and more of a status symbol than anything else. But, great to see more cars coming out with this electric capability. Yeah, 300 miles is impressive. Getting ahead of a lot of other companies for Hyundai. Definitely good to see. I don't necessarily think this is a shot over Tesla's bow, just because I think they're tracking different markets. Priestley: Absolutely. The one thing that I do think it's interesting is, it's not a zero-sum game, because the more people who want to buy electric vehicles, the more people are going to be incentivized to establish the infrastructure necessary for electric vehicles. Right now, that's probably the biggest prohibitor for anything long-range. So, it's all very interesting. We're not sure if it's going to be available in the U.S. I presume that some model or some version will be available in the U.S. But, absolutely, it's an indication that the master plan is taking effect. It's interesting that electric is being chosen when you had all of these alternative energy sources touted when all of this was going off. You had fusion technology, hydrogen fuel cells -- Muckerman: Compressed natural gas, liquefied natural gas. Priestley: Exactly. And electrics seem to be the choice du jour. Muckerman: It sure does. And they're not just attacking people buying new cars. Their addressable market is everyone who has a car. As your car gets older and you retire it, or maybe you want a new one, it makes sense to at least consider electric vehicles. The competition there is so much smaller than all petrochemical vehicles that I don't think new entrance is really as big of a threat to even other players in this market as some people make it out to be. You're addressing a smaller pool of competitors. There's thousands of petrol cars vs. a handful of electric vehicles. I think there's a much bigger opportunity there than people are giving everyone credit for, not just Tesla. Priestley: This plays into our previous discussion about GE's latest investment. I think a lot of people don't understand that an electric vehicle has a huge battery on it. This is kind of a huge cell made of lots of conventional batteries, essentially. So, any investment that you're seeing right now in that area is already sold up, it's already been bought up. But, it's sensible. Muckerman: And, if you know anything about batteries, they die. There's going to be a replacement cycle on that, as well, not just the car itself. Tesla, far ahead of the game with their Gigafactory, in terms of lithium battery production. Priestley: Thank you so much for being on the show -- Muckerman: Absolutely. Priestley: -- and talking about all these different things with me. We hope the listeners enjoyed it. That's it from us today, but if you would like to get in touch, please feel free to email us at industryfocus@fool.com , or tweet us on Twitter @MFIndustryFocus. As always, people on the program may own companies discussed on the show, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against stocks mentioned, so don't buy or sell anything based solely on what you hear. Thank you to Steve for mixing the show today. For Taylor, I'm Sarah Priestley. Thanks for listening and Fool on! Sarah Priestley owns shares of General Electric. Taylor Muckerman owns shares of General Electric and Tesla. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool is short shares of General Electric. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || The 3 Biggest Risks for Canadian Pot Stocks: The legal marijuana industry is absolutely budding before our eyes, and perhaps no country is on track to take advantage of that growth more than Canada. Though ArcView is projecting North American legal weed sales growth of 26% through 2021, Canada is where legal pot sales are expected to grow the fastest. Canada is running circles around the U.S. Truth be told, the United States could easily be the world's most lucrative market for marijuana. Unfortunately, Congress has dug in its heels and isn't adjusting its classification of pot as a Schedule 1 substance. This means it's entirely illegal, is prone to abuse, and has no recognized medical benefits. It also puts cannabis businesses at a major disadvantage , with most unable to access basic financial services, and nearly all unable to take normal corporate income tax deductions thanks to U.S. tax code 280E. A lit cannabis joint in front of a red Canadian maple leaf. Image source: Getty Images. By comparison, Canada legalized medical weed back in 2001 and has been expanding the program for medical patients in recent years under the oversight of Health Canada. In fact, a handful of medical pot growers have been profitable solely on the basis of medical weed sales. More importantly, Canada appears to be on track to legalize recreational marijuana by July 2018. Legislation introduced by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in April 2017 has overcome numerous obstacles along the way. This includes the federal government recently reaching a tax-sharing agreement with all of the Canadian provinces. With progressive lawmakers outnumbering conservative in parliament, legalization is looking increasingly likely. Should Canada green-light adult-use cannabis, it would become the first developed country in the world to do so, and it would potentially be adding $5 billion in annual sales, once fully ramped up. This, along with being a highly consolidated industry, is a big reason why Canadian pot stocks have soared. Don't overlook these risks with Canadian pot stocks However, Canadian pot stocks aren't perfect. Even though they've been a blueprint for success in recent years, they carry risks that could mean shareholders losing money. If you're already a Canadian pot stock investor, or are considering dipping your toes in the water, here are the three biggest risks to be aware of. Story continues Jars filled with dried cannabis stacked on each other. Image source: Getty Images. 1. An oversupply of pot It's no secret that if Canada legalizes recreational marijuana, demand in the country is going to soar. Consumers within Canada, medical patients who don't want to go through the normal channels of obtaining cannabis, and tourists, could all effectively push recreational demand through the roof. Health Canada has been tasked with regulating the pot industry by OK'ing licensing and facility approvals. Thus far, with only medical patient demand, and a handful of licensed Canadian growers able to export, supply hasn't been an issue. But that's about to change if Canada meets its July 2018 timeline for approval. Canadian pot growers have been expanding at a truly breakneck pace. Canopy Growth Corp. (NASDAQOTH: TWMJF) acquired Mettrum Health and dramatically boosted its production capacity at the beginning of 2017, and now has 2.4 million square feet of capacity under construction or in development in British Columbia. What's more, it has the option of leasing another 1.7 million square feet in B.C. Between Canopy Growth, Aurora Cannabis (NASDAQOTH: ACBFF) , Aphria , MedReleaf , and Cannabis Wheaton Income Corp. , these five companies could be delivering around 900,000 kilograms of combined annual production by 2019, by my best estimate. I'm not even certain the entire Canadian market will demand that much cannabis, even with the euphoria of a recreational weed bill possibly becoming law. Furthermore, don't double-count demand switching from the medical side of the equation to the recreational side. As noted, medical patients may no longer choose to take that extra step of seeing a doctor and getting a prescription before purchasing cannabis. This could have growers overthinking just how much demand there will really be come July. If Canadian pot stocks considerably overshoot on supply, margins and profitability are likely to suffer. A street sign that says risk ahead. Image source: Getty Images. 2. Provincial delays Another concern that Canadian pot stock investors shouldn't discount is the possibility of problems with Canada's provinces. Even though the federal government and the provinces worked out a two-year tax-sharing agreement that gives the provinces at least 75% of the tax revenue collected, this isn't a guarantee that they're going to be ready to handle being at the front line of regulating recreational pot's launch. Provincial mayors have frequently expressed concern since this past summer about have police and regulators in place prior to a July 2018 launch. While tax sharing was a valid issue, and mayors did chime in that a larger portion of the revenue pie was needed given their direct regulatory needs, this could simply come down to a matter of manpower. In other words, some of the provinces may not have regulators or police trained in time for a July launch. So, what happens if the launch of recreational pot in Canada is delayed? Chances are, we'd see pot stock valuations modestly deflate. Investors have been pricing in the expected legalization of adult-use weed by July, so any delay beyond July would be viewed with skepticism or outright pessimism. Personally, I do foresee recreational pot being legalized in Canada, but I'm not quite sold on the federal government hitting Wall Street's July timeline. A hundred dollar bill on fire. Image source: Getty Images. 3. Bought-deal offering-based dilution Last but not least, I wouldn't be as concerned about near-term profitability so much as I would caution investors to be wary of intermediate-term dilution brought about by bought-deal financing. Bought-deal financing is a common method in Canada of raising capital, and it often involves the sale of stock or debentures to an investor or institution prior to the release of a prospectus. Within the U.S., for example, getting access to loans is incredibly difficult for marijuana companies. Canadian pot stocks, though, have had no trouble finding willing investors. Prior to announcing its acquisition of CanniMed Therapeutics , Aurora Cannabis has piled up more than $400 million in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet, almost entirely from bought-deal financing. This capital has been critical to expanding growing capacity in Canada's ever-more-consolidated industry. But here's the issue: Each bought-deal offering is slated to increase the number of shares outstanding, be it immediately or within a few years. Common stock offerings increase a company's outstanding share count immediately, while warrants, options, and convertible debentures tend to do so within a year to three years. As the share count increase, the exclusivity of existing shares declines, diluting the value of existing shareholders. For some pot stocks, this dilution has been absolutely incredible. Cash-rich Aurora Cannabis has seen its outstanding share count rise by more than 2,200% to over 375 million shares since mid-2014. Mind you, this doesn't include more than $250 million worth of bought-deal financing since the end of its fiscal first quarter. Aurora's outstanding share count is set to balloon in the years to come, meaning it'll have to earn a whole lot more in profits just to move the needle. Caveat emptor, Canadian pot stock buyers. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Sean Williams has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Bitcoin Cash Leads Crypto Gainers, Litecoin & Ethereum Slump: Amid what appears to be renewed sell-off sentiment in the stock market, several of the worlds largest cryptocurrenciesincluding Bitcoin Cash and Monerosurged on Thursday. Nevertheless, todays winners were outnumbered by the losers, marking a rare day of divergence in the crypto market. According to CoinMarketCap.com, the price of Bitcoin Cash, a so-called hard fork of the original bitcoin, has gained over 27% within the past 24 hours. Monero, the 13 th -largest crypto by way of market cap, has moved about 7% higher over that same timeframe. Meanwhile, bitcoin was basically flat on the day. Ethereum slumped about 2.9%, and Litecoin lost more than 4%. Overall, eight out of the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies were down at least slightly on Thursday. The high correlation between the different crypto currencies worries me, Goldmans head of research, Steve Strongin, told Markets Insider . Contrary to what one would expect in a rational market, new currencies don't seem to reduce the value of old currencies; they all seem to move as a single asset class. Thursdays biggest winner, Bitcoin Cash, has emerged as an interesting option in the crypto marketplace. Launched in August, Bitcoin Cash is hard fork of bitcoin. A hard fork in the cryptocurrency world refers to a change in the rules of the blockchain infrastructure that is not recognized as valid by the older software. In some ways, hard forks are similar to stock splits in that they are designed, in part, to alleviate barriers to entry for new users. There have been a number of bitcoin forks, but Bitcoin Cash has become the largest by far. The altcoin is now the fourth-largest cryptocurrency in terms of total market cap. Another popular bitcoin fork, Bitcoin Gold, currently sits at number 20 on that list. Want more stock market analysis from this author? Make sure to follow @Ryan_McQueeney on Twitter! Story continues Dont Even Think About Buying Bitcoin Until You Read This The most popular cryptocurrency skyrocketed last year, giving some investors the chance to bank 20X returns or even more. Those gains, however, came with serious volatility and risk. Bitcoin sank 25% or more 3 times in 2017. Zacks has just released a new Special Report to help readers capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly. See 4 crypto-related stocks now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report BITCOIN INVT TR (GBTC): ETF Research Reports To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research || Why NetApp Inc. Shares Fell 14.2% Today: Shares ofNetApp(NASDAQ: NTAP)fell as much as 14.2% lower on Thursday morning, following the release of the data storage expert's third-quarter results. As of 10:00 AM EST, the stock had made a modest recovery to trade 12.6% lower instead.
Top-line revenues rose 9% year over year to $1.52 billion, just above the Street's $1.5 billion consensus estimates. On the bottom line, adjusted earnings landed at $0.99 per share, a 21% year-over-year improvement. Here, analysts had been looking for a $0.91 profit per share. The revenue result was above the midpoint ofmanagement's guidance for the quarter;Earnings rose above $0.94, the top end of the official guidance range.
Looking ahead, NetApp's fourth-quarter guidance was in line with current analyst expectations.
Image source: Getty Images.
Merely adequate guidance wasn't enough to impress investors this time. Looking back tothe second-quarter earnings release, shares jumped 17% higher on a beat-and-raise report that exceeded analyst views in both the present and future tenses.
NetApp's healthy results tap into the booming markets for cloud computing and large-scale data analysis. I would argue that today's pullback is a mistake. NetApp shares are now trading at just 16 times trailing earnings and 14 times forward estimates.
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Anders Bylundhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Bitcoin and Ethereum Price Forecast BTC Prices Consolidate: The BTC prices have been consolidating and ranging as we head towards the end of the month. We had mentioned in a couple of forecasts over the last few weeks that the crypto prices had a similar fall in the same period of last year and the great bullish run in the BTC prices began only after this period and it remains to be seen whether it is going to be the same this year as well. The prices have been trading near their support region of the $8500 region over the last couple of days and this shows that there is some accumulation going on. For the bulls, they would hope that this would mean bullish accumulation which would in turn mean that the next bullish leg is around the corner. Suggested Articles Why Bitcoin Cash is Better than Bitcoin? How to Buy Bitcoin Cash? How to Short Bitcoin? Prices In Range There has not been much fundamental developments over the weekend for the traders to be worried about or be happy as well and that is also one of the reasons for the consolidation that we are seeing in the prices as of this writing. We expect this sort of consolidation to continue in general, with a bearish tinge, over the next few days as the traders await the tax season to get over and the BTC futures to expire for this month before they launch the prices and begin to buy or sell the BTC according to the trend. Once again, we continue to believe in the bullish trend and we might see the beginning of the next leg pretty soon. Bitcoin 4H The ETH prices have also been generally consolidating but the weakening in the ETH prices has been more profound than in the BTC prices and this is something that we have been seeing over the last few weeks. The ETH prices trade just above the $500 region and we may not be surprised if the prices make a visit to the $480 support region once again in the short term. Forecast Looking ahead to the rest of the day, we might see some calm trading for most of the day today as the lack of news and fundamentals is likely to weigh on the crypto markets for now. This is likely to give way to some volatility in the days to come. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Crude Oil Price Forecast March 27, 2018, Technical Analysis Silver Price Forecast March 27, 2018, Technical Analysis Ethereum Price Forecast March 27, 2018, Technical Analysis US Dollar Index (DX) Futures Technical Analysis Plenty of Room to Downside With 87.83 Next Target Natural Gas Price Forecast March 27, 2018, Technical Analysis Bitcoin Deep in the Red, $9,000 Becoming a Distant Memory View comments || Hedge Fund Billionaire Alan Howard Makes ‘Sizable’ Bet on Cryptocurrency: Hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard is betting big on cryptocurrency. Billionaire Alan Howard Makes ‘Sizable’ Bet on Cryptocurrency Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reports that Howard, 54, began personally investing in cryptocurrencies last year and plans to continue to do so moving forward. Howard, a co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management, has already hired at least one employee to assist him with managing his “sizable” cryptocurrency investments, and he intends to hire more as he expands his reach into initial coin offerings (ICOs) and private equity investments in blockchain startups. The sources added that other Brevan Howard partners have made personal investments in the cryptoasset space as well, though the $9.1 billion hedge fund firm itself has not purchased or traded any cryptocurrencies. This pivot to cryptoassets and affiliated companies — if only on a personal level — comes as Brevan Howard’s flagship macro hedge fund suffered a 5.4 percent loss in 2017 — its largest annual loss since the fund was opened in 2003. This poor performance has eroded the firm’s assets under management (AUM), which now sit below $10 billion after once peaking above $40 billion. This phenomenon is not unique to Brevan Howard, though, as macro hedge fundss generally have not fared well during the recent economic climate and investors have been evacuating them en masse. Billionaires Warm to Cryptocurrency Investments As CCN has reported, a growing number of the world’s wealthiest individuals have begun to invest in cryptocurrencies. Venture capitalist Tim Draper become one of the first high-profile individuals to publicly disclose his investments in the space when he purchased a large share of the Silk Road Bitcoins in 2014. Draper — who is now worth an estimated $1 billion — holds a significant percentage of his wealth in cryptoassets and equity in blockchain startups. Story continues More recently, hedge fund legend Mike Novogratz began investing in cryptocurrency, and he is now in the process of establishing a cryptoasset merchant bank that has been described as the “Goldman Sachs of Crypto.” Peter Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal, also revealed that his venture capital firm — Founders Fund — invested in Bitcoin in 2017 and at one point held several hundred million dollars’ worth of the flagship cryptocurrency. Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Hedge Fund Billionaire Alan Howard Makes ‘Sizable’ Bet on Cryptocurrency appeared first on CCN . || 3 Stocks That Could Put Amazon's Future Returns to Shame: Few stocks have delivered better performance over the last two decades than Amazon . And with the internet giant's cloud segment thriving, lots of room for growth in e-commerce, and the company constantly evaluating and pursuing new opportunities to expand its global reach, Jeff Bezos' business still has plenty of promise ahead. That said, there are stocks on the market today that will go on to post even better returns. We asked three top Motley Fool investors to spotlight companies they think have the potential to trounce Amazon's future stock performance. Read on to see why they believe Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) , Proofpoint (NASDAQ: PFPT) , and Baozun (NASDAQ: BZUN) have what it takes to be big winners. A biotech with a monopoly in its niche Keith Speights (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) : As huge as Amazon is, it doesn't have anything close to a monopoly in any of its businesses. Customers can go elsewhere for any type of product or service sold by the internet giant. Contrast that with a company that's less than one-tenth its size that not only has a monopoly in its niche market for now, but is also poised to grow much faster: Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Until recently, there were only two FDA-approved cystic fibrosis (CF) treatments -- Kalydeco (ivacaftor) and Orkambi (a lumacaftor/ivacaftor combo) -- and both belonged to Vertex. That count just increased to three, and the third is also owned by Vertex. The FDA announced its approval for Symdeko, a combination of tezecaftor and ivacaftor, on Monday. Right now, around 34,000 CF patients have the gene mutations that make them responsive to Kalydeco and Orkambi. With approval of the tez/iva combo in the U.S. and Europe, and label expansions for Orkambi, Vertex should be able to increase its addressable market to 44,000. Ultimately, though, the biotech plans to be able to treat all 75,000 CF patients worldwide through triple-drug combos in development and the use of gene-editing therapies. Story continues A few other companies have CF candidates in their pipelines, but Vertex has a big head start over all of its rivals. The biotech is also expanding its focus into other rare diseases. I pointed to Vertex as one of the best biotech stocks to buy in January , and continue to think this fast-growing company is a great pick for investors. A high-growth cybersecurity play Leo Sun (Proofpoint): Proofpoint provides a cloud-based security platform that blocks threats in emails, mobile apps, and social media accounts. It serves more than half of the Fortune 100, as well as 14 of the top 15 research universities in the world. Its services scan over 600 million emails, more than 7 million mobile apps, and hundreds of thousands of social media accounts daily. Proofpoint's market will continue expanding as the usage of emails, apps, and social media accounts rises. That's why its revenue rose 37% to $515.3 million last quarter, and analysts anticipate another 30% growth in 2018. Deferred revenue, a key indicator of future growth, jumped 47% to $381.9 million in 2017. Those figures were boosted by its acquisitions of Cloudmark (messaging security) Weblife (web browsing security) in late 2017. On the bottom line, Proofpoint's non-GAAP net income surged 149% to $42.1 million. Analysts expect that figure to rise another 39% this year. CEO Gary Steele attributed his company's strength in 2017 to its "robust add-on and renewal activity," along with an "increased penetration of the Fortune 1000". Proofpoint's stock has rallied more than 600% over the past five years, and it isn't cheap at more than 90 times forward earnings. However, the cybersecurity market today bears similarities to the e-commerce market Amazon occupied in the late 1990s -- it's growing, but highly fragmented. Therefore, I believe that Proofpoint, with a market cap of just over $4 billion, could emerge as a major market leader over the next few years. A Chinese multimedia giant Keith Noonan (Baozun): Like Amazon, Baozun stands to benefit from having a highly scalable business model that operates at the intersection of a variety of favorable industry and economic trends. The company's core business is providing an online retail platform for its partner brands, and it looks poised to benefit as rapid economic development expands China's middle class and paves the way for more growth in that country's red-hot e-commerce space. McKinsey & Company estimates that average household discretionary spending in the China's urban areas will have increased from $4,000 in 2010 to $8,000 in 2020, a trend that bodes well for consumer brands. The number of people living in those urban areas is expected to continue growing as well. Roughly 56% of the country's population lived in cities as of April 2017, and its government expects this figure to reach 60% in 2020. These developments will only add to the momentum behind online retail. Last quarter, the total sales volume on the company's platform increased roughly 71% year over year, and its number of brand partners grew from 127 to 146. Those are encouraging statistics, but they also leave a long runway for sales growth, and profitability is on track to improve as the company shifts away from physical order distribution in favor of simply connecting vendors with consumers. Baozun also has a partnership with Alibaba , China's largest e-commerce platform -- a dynamic that allows it to tap into the larger company's customer base and insulates it somewhat against competitive threats. Trading at roughly 32 times forward earnings estimates, Boazun stands out as an appealing growth stock. Its roughly $2 billion market cap means it will have an easier time delivering explosive capital appreciation than Amazon, and a confluence of macroeconomic and industry-specific growth catalysts suggest that the stock has a promising chance of making good on that potential. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Keith Noonan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Keith Speights has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Leo Sun owns shares of Amazon. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool recommends Vertex Pharmaceuticals. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
China empieza un gran ataque contra el Bitcoin http://bit.ly/2nNW2wb pic.twitter.com/0Od4UhE8re || I only own blue chip cryptocurrencies. I.e., I only own Bitcoin. || Bitcoin Slumps to 12-Week Low Below $6K https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-slumps-to-12-week-low-below-6k/ … || Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain #xbt #btc #fintech #currency #crypto #blockchain http://makebitcoins.de/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-for-blockchain … || At our company, we research cyber hacking attacks all over the wor http://bit.ly/2jTJTHu #Cybersecurity #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/KTbb1hvk6z || Truth.
#crypto $btc $alts #bitcoin https://twitter.com/hvemine/status/960874418443563008 … || #squashtraining have you looked at https://t.co/fdkgc2GxDh #coaching tips ?
Discount wow! #rackets have you seen the bargain clearance sale ? #squash #grips #trx #tron #bitcoin #money #tennis #welsh #wales #mens #womens https://t.co/fdkgc2GxDh https://t.co/7yAF3Fi9qq || 2018年02月04日 16:00
[DOGE建]
1XP=0.0719163円
24時間の最高値 0.0849287円
24時間の最安値 0.0515235円
[BTC建]
1XP=0.0696093円
24時間の最高値 0.0848863円
24時間の最安値 0.0459577円
時価総額ランキング: 122 位 / 全 891 中
#XP $XP || Possible C&H in the making
$BTCUSD $BTC #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/lkkFI8O49c || @aelfblockchain
ELF listed on Cointiger
ELF deposit will be available at 14:00 on March 7th.(UTC+8)
ELF/BTC trading pair will be ready at 14:00 on March 8th.(UTC+8)
ELF withdraw will be available at 14:00 on March 14th.(UTC+8)
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Trend: up || Prices: 7456.11, 6853.84, 6811.47, 6636.32, 6911.09, 7023.52, 6770.73, 6834.76, 6968.32, 7889.25
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
7 Stocks to Sell When Consumer Confidence Is Falling: An economic recession is looking increasingly likely and it’s time to look around for stocks to sell.
A majority of economists (72%) polled by the National Association of Business Economics say they expect the U.S. toenter a recessionby the middle of next year.
By some measures, the U.S. isalready in a recession, popularly defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. This is bad news for consumers and businesses.
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Consumers, who are already feeling the impact of inflation that isrunning at 8.5%and higher interest rates used to dampen it are likely to batten down the hatches should the economy turn negative and companies begin mass layoffs.
There are already signs that consumers are beginning to roll over. According to the U.S. Commerce Department,consumer spending rose a tepid 0.1% in Juneafter falling 0.3% in May.
Should things worsen on the consumer front, it could spell bad news for the economy overall, and also for certain stocks that are reliant on robust consumer spending to keep their share prices elevated. Here are seven stocks to sell when consumer confidence is falling.
[{"TSLA": "SPG", "Tesla": "Simon Property Group", "$891.29": "$106.68"}, {"TSLA": "DRI", "Tesla": "Darden Restaurants", "$891.29": "$127.68"}, {"TSLA": "GPS", "Tesla": "The Gap", "$891.29": "$9.91"}, {"TSLA": "LUV", "Tesla": "Southwest Airlines", "$891.29": "$37.80"}, {"TSLA": "MA", "Tesla": "Mastercard", "$891.29": "$339.71"}, {"TSLA": "MGM", "Tesla": "MGM Resorts International", "$891.29": "$34.67"}]
Source: University of College / Shutterstock.com
Tesla(NASDAQ:TSLA) is so closely associated with its chief executive, Elon Musk, and technology that it’s easy to forget the company makes and sells electric vehicles.
Consumers tend toplace big ticket items on the backburnerwhen they are feeling uncertain about the economy or their personal finances. Tesla’s vehicles are among the most expensive. The company’s lowest-priced Model 3 retails for an average of $44,900. The range-topping “Performance” Model 3 sells for nearly $60,000. Those are the types of prices that scare off nervous consumers.
For a lot less money, environmentally-conscious consumers can get themselves into a brand newToyota(NYSE:TM) Prius ($28,000) or aFord(NYSE:F) Escape hybrid SUV ($32,000).
The prospect of slowing sales helps to explain why Tesla has been increasing its prices this year, most recently announcing that it willraise the priceof its full self-driving assistance software by 25% this September.
In June, the companyhiked the prices of its electric vehiclesacross the entire line-up, raising prices an average of $6,000 per vehicle model. The cost of its long-range Model X SUV now approaches $140,000. These are not the types of expenses consumers shell out for during hard times.
Year to date, TSLA stock is down 26% at $885 a share. The stock is scheduled to split on a 3-for-1 basis on Aug. 25, which may give it a pop and you a chance to get out at a profit.
Source: Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock.com
While not a household name,Simon Property Group(NYSE:SPG) is the largest operator of shopping malls in the U.S.
The real estate investment trust owns 232 shopping malls and outlet centers that, together, comprise approximately 241,000,000 square feet of retail nirvana.
Simon Property Group hasweathered many economic cyclesover the years, but its business tends to decline whenever America enters a recession. When the economy is bad, consumers spend less time shopping at the mall and spend less money on frivolous things, concentrating their hard-earned dollars on consumer essentials.
Simon Property also took somebig blows during the Covid-19 crisiswhen its malls and outlets were either forced to close entirely or operate under capacity restrictions. The company’s earnings declined nearly 30% during the pandemic and it was forced to help bailout bankrupt retailers such as J. Crew, Forever 21, and J.C. Penny to help keep its malls occupied during the downturn.
The prospects of an economic recession do not bode well for Simon Property Group, which makes it one of the stocks to sell before they tank. Its recovery from Covid-19 has been slow.
Source: Shutterstock
Investors might want to avoidDarden Restaurants(NYSE:DRI) stock. Darden Restaurants operates popular restaurant chains such as The Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse and is among the more risky stocks to sell now.
The company currently has 1,800 restaurant locations and 175,000 employees, making it the world’s biggest full-service restaurant operator.
Darden Restaurants suffered during the pandemic and is only now starting to recover.
DRI stock is currently trading, 6% higher than before Covid-19, but a recession could certainly upend its business. Indeed, manyrestaurant stocks sold offheavily ahead of their most recent earnings.
This was in anticipation of the impact high inflation would have on their results, including Darden.
Confidence in the company’s stock was also shaken recently by reports that Darden’s chief executive officer (CEO), Ricardo Cardenas,sold 1,945 shares of DRI stockworth $236,025. Other shareholders may want to follow Cardenas’ lead.
Source: Shutterstock
Clothing retailers such asThe Gap(NYSE:GPS) tend to perform badly when the economy turns south and are prime candidates for stocks to sell.
The same can be said of other stocks such asRalph Lauren(NYSE:RL),Abercrombie & Fitch(NYSE:ANF), andFoot Locker(NYSE:FL).
Inflation already is taking a toll on GPS stock. Year-to-date, theshare price is down 46%.
The company announced last month that CEO Sonia Syngal wasstepping down“effective immediately.” This could have contributed in part to the underperformance of GPS stock.
Syngal had only been the head of Gap since March 2020 when the pandemic started. Her departure might have been hastened by the fact that the retailer posted a net loss of $162 million in the three-months ended April 30. That’s compared with a profit of $166 million a year earlier.
Revenue in the quarter declined 13% to $3.48 billion from a year ago. The Gap has said that global supply chain issues and slumping sales have hurt it financially. Expect things to get worse if the economy really tanks.
Source: Ryan Fletcher / Shutterstock.com
Concerns about inflation, rising interest rates, and the outlook for the economy are the main reasons whySouthwest Airlines(NYSE:LUV) is among the best airline stocks to sell now.
When people are having trouble affording their mortgage or putting gas in their cars, they are less likely to fly to the Caribbean or Florida for a vacation.
LUV stock isdown 14% so far in 2022and 35% lower than where it was prior to March 2020.
Southwest recently reported second-quarter earnings per share of $1.30 on record revenues of $6.7 billion, beating Wall Street forecasts across the board.
However, LUV stock fell immediately following the earnings print on weaker-than-expected forward guidance. Plus, the company said its full-year 2022 available seat miles are likely to be down 4% from a year ago.
While travel across theU.S. remains strongthis summer, things could turn negative quickly if consumer confidence is shaken.
Source: Alexander Yakimov / Shutterstock.com
Slowing consumer spending means less revenue forMastercard(NYSE:MA).
Many consumersrely on their credit cards when traveling, booking flights and hotels and dining in restaurants. Any slowdown in those activities could spell disaster for Mastercard.
The stock already is down 8% this year.
Coming out of the pandemic, Mastercard has been seeing steady improvements. The company reportedsecond quarter revenuesrose 21% to $5.5 billion. This was ahead of analysts’ estimates of $5.26 billion.
Mastercard said its earnings per share for the three months ended June 30 amounted to $2.56. This was up 31.3% from a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street forecasts of $2.36 per share.
While the earnings have been impressive, Mastercard’s fortunes could quickly become gloomy if consumers wait out a recession.
Source: Michael Neil Thomas / Shutterstock.com
In good times, when consumers are feeling flush,MGM Resorts International(NYSE:MGM) performs well. But when consumer confidence plunges, so too do revenues and MGM stock.
MGM Resorts’share price is down 24%this year, trading where it was pre-pandemic.
Increasingly, MGM Resorts ispushing into sports wageringthrough its “BetMGM” brand. But here too, revenues are dependent on consumers feeling confident.
People are less likely to take risks when they are feeling financially constrained and have less money to play with.
The company reported net revenues of $960 million in this year’s second quarter. That’s an increase of 12% over last year due largely to an increase in business volumes. But will people continue visiting Las Vegas and Atlantic City should the economy turn sour? I wouldn’t bet on it.
Disclosure:On the date of publication, Joel Bagloledid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
Joel Baglole has been a business journalist for 20 years. He spent five years as a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, and has also written for The Washington Post and Toronto Star newspapers, as well as financial websites such as The Motley Fool and Investopedia.
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The post7 Stocks to Sell When Consumer Confidence Is Fallingappeared first onInvestorPlace. || ECB Hikes Interest Rate 75 Basis Points as Inflation Hits: The European Central Bank (ECB) raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points Thursday, the biggest single hike since it began setting monetary policy in 1999. Bitcoin (BTC) prices were stable on the announcement, which follows a 0.5 percentage point rise announced in July as Europe faces up to significant inflation and energy shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The decision takes the interest rate on the main refinancing operations, which provide the bulk of liquidity to the banking system, to 1.25%. In general, crypto markets are less affected by decisions taken by the ECB and its U.K. counterpart, the Bank of England, because it’s the Federal Reserve’s decisions on the U.S. dollar that have a greater impact, analysts have previously told CoinDesk . The announcement may also have been priced-in by markets after ECB executive board member Isabel Schnabel said in an August speech that she favored “robust” action that could head off greater economic damage later on. As such, the ECB's latest move demonstrates that global liquidity tightening is in full swing, which weakens the case for bullish revival in risk assets, including cryptocurrencies. Later this month, the Fed is expected to deliver its third 75 basis point hike – with the U.S. agency’s previous hikes contributing to a slide across the crypto market this year. Read more: ECB, BOE Have Scant Leeway to Influence Bitcoin || Wounded Crypto Traders Desperate for Clues From Fed’s Big Meeting This Week: Crypto investors have been wounded so badly from recent market declines that they can be forgiven for desperately hoping U.S. Federal Reserve officials attending their annual gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, dangle something – anything – positive about the months ahead. Bitcoin (BTC) has gotten slammed this year, down 53% in value since New Year’s Eve, according to CoinDesk data . Ether (ETH) has done a hair worse, plunging 54% , though its price recently doubled in the last month amid excitement about the upcoming overhaul of its underlying blockchain consensus protocol known as the Merge . The carnage in crypto is largely about interest rates, or, more specifically, the Fed’s campaign to tamp down inflation by dramatically hiking them. The importance of inflation to crypto was underscored Friday when bitcoin sank 11% after minutes from the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) July meeting showed central bankers weren’t quite as optimistic about inflation as first perceived by markets – a sign interest rates might have to rise even more. Read more: US Federal Reserve Minutes Show More Rate Hikes Coming, Concern About Stablecoin Risks More hawkish comments from Jackson Hole, where the conference runs from Aug. 25-27, could continue the plunge in crypto assets. The broad fear among investors, both crypto and conventional, is that the Fed’s tightening campaign risks driving the economy into a recession. U.S. Treasury bonds – one of the world’s key markets – appear to bolster that concern. Short-term bond yields currently exceed longer-term ones, a yield curve inversion that tends to happen before the economy contracts. Yet, central bankers and most economists insist that the U.S. economy is not in a recession, and that a soft landing – bringing inflation down without causing a recession – is very much a possibility. This disconnect has rattled both the crypto and stock markets in recent weeks. Both rallied briefly after Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s last speech in July, which most analysts perceived as dovish. However, prices retreated following the slightly more hawkish FOMC minutes. High stakes So the stakes in Jackson Hole are high for Powell and his colleagues to provide clarity for the markets. “I’m looking forward to seeing if Powell can straighten the market out,” said David Wessel, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution and former Wall Street Journal economics editor. “At a time when the Fed’s public forecast is at odds with the market, he knows that this is his chance to steer the markets.” Story continues Prices in interest-rate futures markets show traders seeing a possibility the Fed will have to undo some of its tightening next year by cutting rates, though central bankers have said multiple times that expectations of rate cuts are “ definitely premature .” This not only shows that there is a strong mismatch between market expectations and Fed statements, but that traders may have a credibility issue with the central bank. Read more: It Doesn't Matter If They're Wrong, Central Bankers Set Guidance for Crypto, Too “If the Fed continues to shrink the balance sheet, then basically they’re serious about inflation,” said Dick Bove, chief financial strategist at Odeon Capital Group. “If they don't do that, it doesn't matter what they say – they're not serious.” The Fed promised to reduce its almost $9 trillion balance sheet in June, but only started the process a little over a week ago by selling Treasury bonds. But both Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities are supposed to be sold by the central bank. Bove sees an issue with the latter. “I believe [the Fed] will shrink Treasurys but I am very wary about what they might do with the mortgage-backed securities because they could set off a collapse which would be as big as 2008,” he said, referring to the last big recession. Weakening housing market New home sales dropped sharply in July and exceeded expectations widely, a report showed Friday, reflecting the effect of the Fed’s interest rate hikes on the housing market. Some economists predict that the worst is ahead, given that inventory is likely to continue rising, which will lead to further declines in home prices in the near term. That outlook, however, could be positive for crypto, pressuring the Fed to be more dovish, which would result in a weaker U.S. dollar and therefore a stronger crypto market, Joshua Lim, head of derivatives at Genesis Trading said. (Genesis is owned by Digital Currency Group, which also owns CoinDesk.) Brooking’s Wessel says that the market isn’t “stupid,” and knows that the Fed is going to reduce mortgage-backed securities, but that the question is whether they will try to do more. “The focus will more be on short-term rates,” he said. Powell knows that traders will expect the Fed chair to give clear guidance on where the Fed stands on inflation and recession fears, but markets won’t likely glean what FOMC members plan to do in September. “I think everybody will be looking for hints, so whatever adverb he uses will lead some people to think 50 or 75 basis points. But I think he will try to avoid giving hints,” Wessels said. “I think they're trying to wean the markets off this forward guidance, this thing that everything has to be clear before” FOMC meetings. Bove agrees and said that the Fed will double down on its belief that inflation is the biggest threat and can only be tamed by increasing rates. “I think that they keep their mouths shut a little bit more and they just do what needs to be done,” he said. View comments || 7 Stocks to Sell Before the 2022 Housing Market Crash: While no guarantees of a housing market crash exist, investors may need to start considering sector-related stocks to sell. Primarily, its no longer amateur doom-and-gloom luminaries broadcasting bearishness. Instead, the National Association of Realtors confirmed what the National Association of Home Builders admitted : residential real estate has entered a recession . Per a CNBC report, home sales slipped 6% sequentially from June to July. Further, sales dropped about 20% from the same period one year earlier. However, not everyone has their hair on fire regarding real estate-related stocks to sell. In terms of economic impact we are surely in a housing recession because builders are not building, said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors. However, are homeowners in a recession? Absolutely not. Homeowners are still very comfortable financially. InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Admittedly, Im not sure what Yun is getting at. Ultimately, the labor market determines whether homeowners will succumb to a recession. And with many tech jobs disappearing , circumstances for gainful employment dont look swell. Therefore, the idea of stocks to sell remains relevant. Finally, only about 37% of U.S. households own their homes free and clear. Therefore, if we suffer a broader recession, these are the housing-related stocks to sell. RDFN Redfin $10.06 Z Zillow $33.54 ZG Zillow $33.78 COMP Compass $3.74 OPEN Opendoor $4.70 DHI D.R. Horton $74.43 KBH KB Home $30.99 MTTR Matterport $4.92 Redfin (RDFN) Redfin sign posted in front of a house for sale; Redfin (RDFN) is a real estate brokerage whose business model is based on sellers paying Redfin a small fee Source: Sundry Photography / Shutterstock.com A full-service real estate brokerage, Redfin (NASDAQ: RDFN ) took much of the spotlight during the new normals housing boom. On a year-to-date (YTD) basis, RDFN stock has hemorrhaged an astonishing 74% of market value. What makes this figure more remarkable is that over the trailing month ended Aug. 18, RDFN gained more than 18%. Even with the sentiment lift such as a better-than-expected July jobs report Redfin cant run from its recent past. Story continues From a basic level, as the Federal Reserves aggressively hawkish strategies spike up borrowing costs, Redfins addressable market declines. Moreover, its financial picture offers no encouragement. While sales for the companys second quarter increased 29% year-over-year, gross margins declined 20%. A continuation of this trend presents sustainability issues. Therefore, RDFN is one of the stocks to sell. Zillow (Z, ZG) The Zillow logo displayed on a web browser and magnified by a magnifying glass Source: II.studio / Shutterstock.com Another name among stocks to sell in the housing sector, Zillow (NASDAQ: Z , NASDAQ: ZG ) faces major problems despite its market downfall. Since the start of the year, Z stock has shed nearly 47% of value. To be fair, between June 16 and Aug. 19, shares gained 24%. Nevertheless, over the longer term, this dynamic probably represents a dead-cat bounce. Fundamentally, Zillow operates in a dwindling consumer ecosystem. Frankly, its foray into the iBuying business provides all you need to know. For a quick recap, iBuying involves leveraging technology to facilitate instant offers on peoples homes. Well, Inc. had something to say about that. Recently Zillow announced the end of its iBuyer service , and unfortunately, the need to lay off 25 percent of its workforce as a result, the publication wrote. Bluntly speaking, if the demand profile existed, iBuying ventures would be compelling. But prospective homebuyers have walked away. On the financial side, Zillows Q2 report disclosed YOY revenue and operating income declines. To be fair, were talking about operating income, not losses. Nevertheless, the pressure has clearly squeezed Zillow, so dont play games. Z and ZG represent stocks to sell. Compass (COMP) The Compass (COMP) office in Seattle, Washington. Source: Tada Images / Shutterstock.com When it comes to the defining narrative of Compass (NYSE: COMP ), it may pay to go old school. I understand the company leverages the internet as a marketing medium in conjunction with real estate technologies. Unfortunately, you can have all the tech in the world. If people dont want your service, youre not going to succeed. Pretty simple. Another no-nonsense framework to consider comes down to layoffs. Job cuts are often characterized as promoting efficiency protocols or other euphemisms. Shareholders usually respond positively, assuming greater value for their portfolios. However, a well-run, successful organization shouldnt be conducting layoffs. Rather, they should be hiring. Sadly, Compass moves in an undesirable trajectory. Not too long ago, the company laid off 10% of its workforce , citing rising borrowing costs cooling housing sales. Now, it plans to lay off more workers by October. At risk of stating the obvious, if theres smoke, theres fire. Therefore, COMP is one of the stocks to sell. Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) The Opendoor website is open on a smartphone that is resting on top of a map. OPEN stock. Source: Tada Images / Shutterstock.com Straight up, full stop, Opendoor Technologies (NASDAQ: OPEN ) is a disaster. And dont say I didnt warn anyone about OPEN being one of the stocks to sell. Below is a trip down memory lane. On Dec. 21, 2021, I warned, Opendoor Technologies stock is a lot more vulnerable than you might think. Shares have hemorrhaged nearly 69% since the date of publication. I reiterated my warning on Jan. 12 and Jan. 28 , and revisited the topic on March 25 with much the same sentiment . You get the point. If I may summarize, Opendoor introduces problems (unfavorable rates compared to traditional brokers) and solves almost none. Frankly, real estate transactions should be long and cumbersome. You dont want to half-bake what could be the biggest deal of your life. D.R. Horton (DHI) In this photo illustration the D.R. Horton (DRI) logo seen displayed on a smartphone. Source: Casimiro PT / Shutterstock.com Interestingly, homebuilders declared the real estate sector a recession before the brokers did. While both entities feature incentives to keep the spigot running, homebuilders sober quicker since they face realities first. And what are those realities? Mainly, people are rushing to the sidelines. Just take a look at the financials for D.R. Horton (NYSE: DHI ), specifically its days inventory line item . In its fiscal years 2020 and 2021 (ended Sept. 30), D.R. Horton posted days inventory of 279.2 and 263.4, respectively. Interestingly, the average days inventory between 2007 and 2019 is 352. Now, something alarming happened in the companys most recent Q2 report. Days inventory popped up to more than 300, a staggering 20.7% increase over just one year. For context, days inventory declined nearly 39% between 2009 and 2021. Frankly, that such an extreme swing of magnitude occurred in such a short period demands greater analysis. Ultimately, once you perform your due diligence, I believe you will come to the conclusion I have: DHI is one of the stocks to sell. KB Home (KBH) KB Home logo at headquarters building. KBH stock. Source: Sundry Photography / Shutterstock As with D.R. Horton above, just look at the financials for KB Home (NYSE: KBH ), a rival homebuilder. Its days inventory in 2016 amounted to about 403, but in 2017, it fell as low as 333.7. That represented a significant demand bump. That figure remained below 400 until the coronavirus pandemic hit. The main point is housing sentiment ties in very strongly with monetary policy. In KB Homes quarter ended May 31, 2022, days inventory jumped to nearly 383. This represented a 13% increase from the year-ago level. With a more aggressive Fed running the show, its probably time to consider KBH as one of the stocks to sell. Matterport (MTTR) Matterport company logo on a website with blurry stock market developments in the background, seen on a computer screen through a magnifying glass. MTTR stock. Source: Dennis Diatel / Shutterstock Although imaging service and advanced camera manufacturer Matterport (NASDAQ: MTTR ) doesnt directly relate to the real estate sector, investors should still keep MTTR on their radar for stocks to sell. Unfortunately, the company features significant dependency on the housing market. When circumstances printed positive sentiment, MTTR represented a buy. Now, its time to take a cautious approach. Admittedly, though, Matterport revealed some encouraging developments in its Q2 earnings conference call. Management disclosed strong subscription and services growth. Moreover, it revealed the company experienced record product backlog exiting Q2. Nevertheless, in writing for Barchart, I presented a counterargument . Still, the subscription revenue appears to depend heavily on the real estate market. In another section of its Q2 earnings presentation, Matterport cited information showing that 82% of prospective homebuyers would switch to an agent offering 3D tours. This breaks down to 94% of Generation Z, 83% of millennials and 63% of Gen X. Bottom line, with fewer people interested in acquiring real estate, providing an immersive imaging service for the sector seems moot. On Penny Stocks and Low-Volume Stocks: With only the rarest exceptions, InvestorPlace does not publish commentary about companies that have a market cap of less than $100 million or trade less than 100,000 shares each day. Thats because these penny stocks are frequently the playground for scam artists and market manipulators. If we ever do publish commentary on a low-volume stock that may be affected by our commentary, we demand that InvestorPlace.com s writers disclose this fact and warn readers of the risks. Read More: Penny Stocks How to Profit Without Getting Scammed On the date of publication, Josh Enomoto did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines . A former senior business analyst for Sony Electronics, Josh Enomoto has helped broker major contracts with Fortune Global 500 companies. Over the past several years, he has delivered unique, critical insights for the investment markets, as well as various other industries including legal, construction management, and healthcare. More From InvestorPlace Buy This $5 Stock BEFORE This Apple Project Goes Live The Best $1 Investment You Can Make Today Early Bitcoin Millionaire Reveals His Next Big Crypto Trade On Air It doesnt matter if you have $500 or $5 million. Do this now. The post 7 Stocks to Sell Before the 2022 Housing Market Crash appeared first on InvestorPlace . || Marathon Digital Holdings Schedules Conference Call for Second Quarter 2022 Financial Results and Announces Q&A Platform for Shareholders: Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. Earnings Webcast and Conference Call Set for Monday, August 8, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. ET LAS VEGAS, Nev., July 29, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA ) ("Marathon" or "Company") , a leader in supporting and securing the Bitcoin ecosystem, will hold a webcast and conference call on Monday, August 8, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time to discuss its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2022. Financial results will be published in a press release prior to the call and available on the investor relations section of the Company’s website at ir.marathondh.com . To register to participate in the conference call, or to listen to the live audio webcast, please use this link . The webcast will also be broadcast live and available for replay via the investor relations section of the Company’s website at ir.marathondh.com . Marathon also announced a new Q&A platform powered by Say Technologies to enhance the overall experience and engagement of the shareholder community. Verified retail and institutional shareholders will be able to submit and upvote questions ahead of the earnings call. A selection of these questions may be addressed by Marathon’s management team during the earnings call. The platform will open today, July 29, at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time and close on August 5 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. To submit questions, please use this link . Earnings Webcast and Conference Call Details Date: Monday, August 8, 2022 Time: 4:30 p.m. Eastern time (1:30 p.m. Pacific time) Registration link: LINK If you have any difficulty connecting with the conference call, please contact Marathon’s investor relations team at ir@marathondh.com . Investor Notice Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. Before making an investment decision, you should carefully consider the risks, uncertainties and forward-looking statements described under "Risk Factors" in Item 1A of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021, filed with the SEC on March 10, 2022 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2022, filed with the SEC on May 5, 2022. If any of these risks were to occur, our business, financial condition or results of operations would likely suffer. In that event, the value of our securities could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment. The risks and uncertainties we describe are not the only ones facing us. Additional risks not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial may also impair our business operations. In addition, our past financial performance may not be a reliable indicator of future performance, and historical trends should not be used to anticipate results in the future. Future changes in the network-wide mining difficulty rate or Bitcoin hash rate may also materially affect the future performance of Marathon's production of bitcoin. Additionally, all discussions of financial metrics assume mining difficulty rates as of July 2022. The total network’s hash rate data is calculated from a third-party source, which is available here: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate. Data from third-party sources has not been independently verified. See "Forward-Looking Statements" below. Story continues Forward-Looking Statements Statements made in this press release include forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as “may,” “will,” “plan,” “should,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “continue,” or comparable terminology. Such forward-looking statements are inherently subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties, many of which the Company cannot predict with accuracy and some of which the Company might not even anticipate and involve factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements and are advised to consider the factors listed above together with the additional factors under the heading “Risk Factors” in the Company's Annual Reports on Form 10-K, as may be supplemented or amended by the Company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement forward-looking statements that become untrue because of subsequent events, new information or otherwise. About Marathon Digital Holdings Marathon is a digital asset technology company that focuses on supporting and securing the Bitcoin ecosystem. The Company is currently in the process of becoming one of the largest and most sustainably powered Bitcoin mining operations in North America, while remaining asset light. Marathon Digital Holdings Company Contact: Telephone: 800-804-1690 Email: ir@marathondh.com || Dave Nadig Joins “Pennies From Heaven” to Open Day 2 of Future Proof: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. VettaFi financial futurist Dave Nadig appeared with Spark founder and CEO Jim Wiandt, ETF Think Tank head of research Cinthia Murphy, and Bitwise CEO Matt Hougan for a special Future Proof edition of the " Pennies From Heaven " podcast. Wiandt kicked off by asking the panel, “What’s the big idea of what’s going on this year?” Nadig said he had five things he was tracking, but if he had to pick one thing, it would "this ridiculous fight we’re having about what ESG is, whether it's good or bad.” One of the biggest criticisms of ESG from its detractors is that ESG “boycotts energy companies,” a demonstrably false claim, according to Nadig. “People on the other side of this argument are making a lot of disingenuous claims about ESG.” Wiandt sees it as unfortunate that ESG is becoming politicized, and the panel at large wondered if ESG as a term can survive. Trying to dig into what it truly is, Wiandt said, “It’s a reframing around innovation and an opportunity for innovation.” The group discussed how ESG is a broad category that essentially drives innovation, which Wiandt sees as a positive. Nadig agreed, saying, “This is legit money doing real work." “At the end of the day, I think U.S. investors are really focused on performance,” Murphy said, speculating that some investors see ESG as untethered to or even in opposition to performance. As for the big ideas Hougan was tracking, he said, “The two things that stand out to me are the massive capitulation of mutual funds. The other thing is the rise of active.” Mutual funds are effectively going away in favor of ETFs, which are a more efficient vehicle. Active, meanwhile, has taken a non-trivial slice of the pie. “I still think direct indexing is the only solution that works for ESG,” Hougan remarked. Murphy said she had a lot of “little ideas” instead of one big idea. The notion of ETFs as a service is striking to her, and she noted that single-stock ETFs play into this idea. “I am going to hate having to write about every single one,” she quipped, continuing, “as an innovation, I think it is really interesting.” Story continues Single stocks sparked some division in the panel, with Nadig being skeptical about some aspects of these products. “Every one of these things has an opportunity to misprice,” Nadig said, noting that thousands of single-stock products are thousands of opportunities for errors. Wiandt pivoted to blockchain, remarking, “Way more interesting to me than crypto assets is investing in companies that will transform trading systems.” He wondered if it would take five or 10 years for the transformation to truly become substantial. Hougan thought that five years was unlikely, but said he believed it was highly possible in about a decade. “I think the derivatives markets will be the first to change.” Nadig noted that the regulatory issues are standing in the way. “That ability to tokenize your beta exposure and have smart contracts and roll those up in your portfolios -- that’s clearly the future.” Wiandt said he views ETFs and blockchain both as tools of efficiency which have changed the user experience of investors. Hougan says you can see it in crypto, which trades 24/7/365 around the globe. “You don’t have things like captive capital,” he noted. Hougan wondered if asset management companies become purer IP companies. Jumping from that idea, Nadig imagined a world where smart contract-based asset management could turn everyone into an asset manager, with influencers taking an increased role. Crypto Regulation The hesitancy around regulating crypto, Wiandt said, comes from fear of unintended consequences. “It's like a Pandora’s box and being worried about opening this box.” “I don’t think the government knows how to regulate something new like crypto,” Hougan said. Pondering the obstacles to regulation, Nadig said, “I think crypto is changing at a faster cycle rate than regulation is possible.” He speculated that when regulation comes for crypto it will regulate “2015’s version” of crypto. Hougan likened it to the early stages of the internet. “In the early days of the internet, they didn’t tax sales,” which he saw as intentional, a deliberate choice to let the disruptive technology blossom and make the regulatory needs clearer. In the short term, Hougan is concerned about regulatory overreach and rising interest rates. In the long term, he’s bullish. “Now I’m extremely convinced that the next cycle is 10 times bigger than the last cycle,” he said, remarking on the increased interest and improved products. He sees the crypto sector as on the doorstep of some really big innovations. “I was just looking at the ProShare Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) , which is going to be a year old next month. It’s a half a billion dollar fund, which to me is surprising that it found that much traction. But the next biggest product doesn’t even approach it,” Murphy said, “It’s sort of a one-hit wonder.” The conversation turned toward how people and institutions get exposure to crypto and where the true value lies. There are three pillars of crypto exposure, according to Hougan: private, public, and liquid. He noted that a majority was in liquid assets. Murphy sees a bullishness to the story, but the stocks have been creamed. “I think most of the value is going to accrue to the protocols themselves,” Hougan said, noting that funds like the Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) offer investors who can’t purchase the direct assets a concrete option for exposure to the space. Hougan said that crypto is the best-performing asset in the past 10 years, despite the pullback. Speaking to the social aspect of crypto and the passion of its believers and scorn of its detractors, Hougan joked, “I think everyone who hates crypto hates it for superficial reasons,” while claiming that anyone who digs into it gets extremely intrigued. Pivoting to bonds, Nadig said, “I think there’s a tremendous opportunity for bonds as a portfolio asset packaged in better ways.” Hougan agreed that fixed income and crypto are two of the most compelling spaces in the ETF world. Speaking to the products that are gaining more attention this year, Murphy remarked, “This year has been a good reminder of the power of an alternatives ETF.” Nadig observed that there’s a lot of “academic nerdy” around portfolio construction these days. The panel concluded by talking about the unique aspects of Future Proof. As an outdoor conference with a unique mix of attendees, the panel was eager to see how this event will unfold. “I am super excited for what’s going on the stages here. It's voices we don’t always hear,” Nadig said. “The vibe is different, I think that actually allows you to make better connections with people.” For more news, information, and strategy, visit the Crypto Channel . POPULAR ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM SPY ETF Quote VOO ETF Quote QQQ ETF Quote VTI ETF Quote JNUG ETF Quote Top 34 Gold ETFs Top 34 Oil ETFs Top 57 Financials ETFs Direct Indexing, Tax Loss Harvesting, and Customization For Inflation-Fighting in a Volatile Market, Follow the U.S. Consumer Suzanne Siracuse and Joan Solotar on Solving the Alts Riddle “Animal Spirits” Podcast Live at Future Proof Covered a Wide Range of Topics The ETF Industry Crossed a Milestone: 3,000 ETFs Are Currently Trading READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || FOREX-Dollar firm as markets brace for another big Fed rate hike: By Kevin Buckland TOKYO, Sept 20 (Reuters) - The dollar remained firm below a two-decade high versus major peers on Tuesday, as investors braced for the Federal Reserve to continue its aggressive interest-rate-hiking campaign to rein in overheated inflation. The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six counterparts, was little changed at 109.53, stable for the moment after pulling back from as high as 110.79 earlier this month, a level not seen since June 2002. The two-year U.S. Treasury yield, which is extremely sensitive to policy expectations, rose as high as 3.970% overnight for the first time since November 2007. The 10-year yield reached a high of 3.518%, a level not seen since April 2011. Investors have fully priced another 75 basis point bump by the Federal Open Market Committee for Wednesday, and lay 19% odds for a super-sized full percentage point increase. While still elevated, those bets have come down from around 38% on Wednesday, when they were shocked higher by a surprise acceleration in U.S. consumer prices for August. The dollar eased 0.15% to 142.96 yen, continuing a week-long consolidation following two attempts at 145 this month that took it as high as 144.99 on Sept. 7 for the first time in 24 years. The dollar-yen currency pair tends to track the long-term yield spread between U.S. and Japanese government bonds. The Bank of Japan decides policy on Thursday, and is widely expected to keep its ultra-easy stimulus settings unchanged. They include pinning the 10-year yield near zero. "We have to see the FOMC," said Tohru Sasaki, a strategist at J.P. Morgan in Tokyo. "Dollar-yen will eventually break above 145, but the speed depends on how hawkish the Fed is, and developments in interest rate differentials." The euro was little changed at $1.0030, after grinding slowly higher over the past week and strengthening its position above parity. It dropped as low as $0.9864 on Sept. 6 for the first time in two decades. Story continues Sterling was flat at $1.14295, finding its feet after a drop to a 37-year low of $1.13510 at the end of last week. The Bank of England will decide policy on Thursday. Investors are split over whether a 50 or 75 basis point hike is on the way. The risk-sensitive Australian dollar slipped 0.07% to $0.6722 and the New Zealand dollar fell 0.23% to $0.59435. Bitcoin eased 0.48% to $19,445, after swinging between a two-month low of $18,540 and a 3 1/2-week high of $22,781 over the past two weeks. (Reporting by Kevin Buckland; Editing by Bradley Perrett) || Markets: Bitcoin sole gainer in crypto top ten, Ether dips, Polkadot leads losers: Bitcoin held weekend gains to move toward US$22,000 in Monday morning trading in Asia, while other tokens in the top 10 by market capitalization were flat to lower. Ether slipped, along with Polkadot and XRP. See related article: Markets: Bitcoin, Ether little changed; Polkadot leaps Dogecoin into crypto top ten Fast facts Bitcoin rose 0.3% in the past 24 hours to trade at US$21,690 at 8 a.m. in Hong Kong, while Ethereum lost 0.8% to US$1,762, according to data from CoinMarketCap . Ethereum has out-performed Bitcoin over the past three months — gaining nearly 50% compared to Bitcoin’s loss of 2% over that time frame — amid growing interest in Ethereum’s long-awaited network “Merge” that is expected to take place in the middle of this week. Polkadot led the losses in CoinMarketCap’s top 10, falling 1.11% to US$7.70, while XRP dropped 0.7% to US$0.35. The governance token of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) ecosystem, ApeCoin, was up 11% to its highest price in over three weeks, trading at US$5.64. Three of the top six highest-selling non-fungible token (NFT) collections in the past 24 hours are associated projects of the BAYC, according to CryptoSlam . U.S. equities rose on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 1.2% higher, the S&P 500 was up 1.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite Index finished the day with a 2.1% gain. Investors await the release of August’s Consumer Price Index data on Tuesday as an indication of how effective the Federal Reserve’s attempts to tackle inflation have been, and what the central bank may do next. “Based on what I know today, I support a significant increase at our next meeting,” Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller told the Institute for Advanced Studies in Austria on Friday. The Fed is next scheduled to meet on Sept. 20-21, where investors expect it to raise interest rates by 75-basis-points from its current range of 2.25%-2.5%. See related article: Ethereum Merge’s Impact on NFTs View comments || Why We’re Bullish on ATOM: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. By Patrick Bush and Matthew Sigel Our bullish thesis on Cosmos’ ATOM token centers around the power of the Cosmos SDK, the importance of IBC, the clear product market fit of the Cosmos Hub and strong token value accrual. Please note that VanEck has a position(s) in the ATOM token described below. Based on our discounted cash flow analysis of potential Cosmos ecosystem value in 2030, we arrived at a $140 price target for the ATOM token, with downside to $1. With ATOM’s price at $10 as of 8/2/2022, we like the 14-1 odds presented and believe this is a buying opportunity for the token. To arrive at the model’s assumptions, we found it helpful to answer the following questions: What is a layer 0? Why is cross-chain bridging so hard? How will value accrue to ATOM holders? What is the role of market-makers in crypto? An Introduction to the Cosmos Hub: What Is a Layer 0? A layer 1, smart contract blockchain like Ethereum is simply an enterprise platform that hosts decentralized applications while enabling payments between users. Ethereum generates revenue by charging deployers of smart contracts storage fees, while exacting a toll on users who send transactions or utilize the deployed smart contracts. Conceptually, these customer bases can be segmented into B2B and B2C components, with the deployers of smart contracts thought of as businesses and the end users of the blockchain thought of as consumers. Ethereum rents secure storage space to those businesses to host their enterprise and sells the blockspace to users that allows them to interact with those businesses or send funds. This simple business model, with some tweaks, defines most layer 1 blockchains. By contrast, layer 0 blockchains like the Cosmos Hub, Polkadot and Avalanche are highly specialized B2B models. The main customers are other blockchains, and the product provided is security. In essence, a layer 0 is a type of blockchain software that coordinates a network of computers where hosted blockchains can deploy their blockchain data and blockchain logic to have it executed to make transactions. This allows the hosted blockchain, or (security) consumer chain, to execute its suite of functions and applications in an environment protected by the layer 0’s security. Because consumer chains deploy as blockchain logic to the layer 0s rather than as smart contract code on a layer 1, they are free to create custom environments for their hosted applications. Story continues To ensure the layer 0 computers are honest, each computer in the network must put up collateral, or “stake”, consisting of the layer 0 tokens. If a computer acts maliciously or fails to properly execute the hosted blockchains’ logic, the computer, called a validator, can lose a portion or all of its stake. This is termed a “proof of stake” (PoS) security model. Effectively, layer 0s are outsourcing host blockchain security to enable each blockchain to focus on its own business model. Security fees can be paid by the consumer chains through a number of different mechanisms, including renting one of a limited number of security spots on a layer 0, collecting a portion of transaction fees, receiving inflationary rewards from consumer chains, or some other combination of these mechanisms. Because layer 0s are secured by validators backed by staked tokens, the value of the security flows through to those staked tokens. The Cosmos Hub’s target market is the blockchains that make up the Cosmos ecosystem of blockchains. 48 of the 49 blockchains that populate “the Cosmos” are written using the Cosmos Software Development Kit (SDK) . Released out of a blockchain start-up called Tendermint in January 2018, the Cosmos SDK is the most popular blockchain framework in terms of number of deployments. Cosmos SDK chains include Binance Smart Chain, Thorchain, Oasis, OkEx, Terra and Crypto.com’s Cronos chain. The Cosmos SDK is a modular framework for developers to create proof of stake (PoS) blockchains. Rather than having to write each component of a blockchain from scratch, developers can pick, choose, and modify components from the Cosmos SDK to assemble their own blockchain. At the heart of the Cosmos SDK is the consensus engine known as the Tendermint Core. Tendermint, utilized in the Terra blockchain, has proven itself extremely robust under the extreme duress of Terra’s collapse. Though the coin values of Terra and Luna were eradicated in the panic, Terra’s Tendermint-based blockchain remained fully operational throughout the entire melee. Arguably the most important and revolutionary component of the Cosmos SDK is the IBC module. Using IBC, separate Cosmos SDK blockchains can open up communication channels to exchange data, messages, tokens and other digital assets. The permissionless and trustless communication technology of IBC solves many of the issues presented by trusted bridging solutions that have led to over $1B in funds stolen through bridge hacks. IBC not only allows assets to transfer across chains, but also enables cross chain composability. Composability is the property of seamless communication between applications. This allows applications on Ethereum to work together to create a super application whose combined edifice is greater than the individual components. An example of this concept is pairing an options protocol application with a DEX application. The DEX application could embed a feature on their application that enables a liquidity provider the ability to automatically have their liquidity position hedged using the options protocol. Essentially, the ability to compose a structured product has been created. Users can save both time and gas fees and gain the ability to hedge, while each application builder only needed to understand their respective product but have also added new use cases. As a result, both businesses and the consumer are better off. Many projects choose to deploy to the Cosmos by becoming stand-alone blockchains because being a sovereign chain enhances each chain’s ability to offer a great product and a friendlier user experience. IBC enables these application specific blockchains (ASBs) the ability to smoothly and safely collaborate using secure message passing and safe asset transfers. This capability will lead to both new use cases for blockchain technology and potentially scale up blockchain processing capabilities. IBC is such an important component of future blockchain communication that recent advancements have brought IBC outside of the Cosmos to connect to both NEAR and Polkadot . The team building these extraterrestrial IBC connections, Composable Finance , is currently working on connecting IBC to ETH as well and it’s rumored IBC may be added to Ethereum 2.0s roadmap in the future. Why Is Cross-Chain Bridging So Hard? A peak beneath the hood of how cross-chain bridging typically works and why IBC is different helps illustrate why IBC is so important and revolutionary. Blockchains have great difficulty trusting data introduced from the outside, because blockchains are designed as closed loop systems that use complex mathematical processes to verify information occurring inside of their domains. As such, introducing data from the outside requires extensive computational proof and entities to verify the data’s veracity and liveness. Chainlink , for example, incentivizes a network of data providers to bring data from offchain sources to blockchains by combining proofs of data validity with economic incentives tied to the provision of reliable, demonstrably correct. If a data provider presents incorrect data, it is penalized, but if the data is correct, it receives rewards. Bringing data from trusted centralized repositories to blockchains using these economics and mathematics is a feat arguably worthy of an academic prize. However, introducing data between blockchains has proven to be even more complex. Passing data between blockchains is exponentially more difficult because most blockchains have different designs that make the certainty of what is transpiring on one chain very hard to prove to another chain. This is due to the fact that, depending on the type of blockchain consensus mechanism, not all transactions on blockchains are immediately considered final and irreversible. Likewise, there are different mechanisms by which each chain proves the validity of transactions. For example, Ethereum’s consensus currently operates on the assumption that transactions are considered final with only a high probability until the block they are included in is built upon by enough follow-on blocks full of transactions. On the other hand, Cosmos blockchains that run the Tendermint consensus engine have instant finality once transactions are included in a block. The consequence of these two different consensus mechanisms is that each chain, Ethereum and Cosmos, has difficulty trusting what is happening on the other chain with enough certainty to risk sending assets, passing message or sending data. To solve the issue of bridging these two ecosystems, a clunky and relatively unsafe mechanism has been adopted. This is referred to as a multi-signature bridge, which relies on a set of trusted parties who verify each chain and assume the risk of asset transfer failure. This popular bridging mechanism is far from optimal as it takes far too long to for many cross-chain important use cases while placing enormous risks on users due to hacks and bridge failures. IBC’s Secret Sauce Explained IBC is a superior technology that relies upon several unique components enabled by the Cosmos SDK underpinning each Cosmos chain. First, every Cosmos chain shares the Tendermint consensus engine where finality is instant. Once a block is produced, the transactions included in that block are irreversible. Because of this commonality, offchain counterparties, called light clients, are able to quickly query and sample the current state of each blockchain. Light clients are computers that are used by applications or blockchains to understand the recent history of another blockchain. These light clients understand what is happening on each blockchain by simply proving that the mathematical code that each blockchain uses to link together its blocks, its history of transactions, is correct. The light clients then use this code to deduce the recent history of transactions of each blockchain. Utilizing light clients solves the first issue of trusting and proving what is going on in each blockchain. Now, because light clients enable a blockchain to understand what is occurring on another blockchain, IBC architecture then enables each blockchain to perform activities on another blockchain without relying upon a trusted third party. In IBC, cross-chain interaction is not accomplished by direct messaging between chains. Instead, when one chain, Chain A, wishes to interact with Chain B, it commits the desired action to its own finalized block with a specialized message. Then, a trustless third party, called a relayer, who is looking for these types of messages, remits the observed specialized message to the other chain. Thereafter, Chain B performs the action wanted by Chain A and finalizes the result of that action in a finalized block on Chain B through a specialized message. The relayer then picks up Chain B’s action and relays a confirmation of that action to Chain A. As a result, both blockchains have agreed to an action and committed it to their respective history books without intervention of a trusted party. This action was also seamless and accomplished extremely quickly – in seconds. This is arguably the most powerful piece of technology today, because it unifies blockchains in the Cosmos, which both solves scaling issues and enables complex use cases. IBC Packet Flows IBC Packet Flows Source: ibcprotocol.org How Value Accrues to ATOM While the Cosmos SDK enables coders to spin up PoS blockchains out of open source software and use IBC to connect them, each blockchain still needs to secure large sums of high value digital assets on its own. That is because in the PoS security model, a blockchain’s security is only as great as the economic value of the stake backing the validators of the chain. Nascent chains in the Cosmos are currently forced to either pay highly inflationary token rewards to validators or increase the probability of hacker attacks on their chains. Both these choices are suboptimal, and there exists a clear need in the Cosmos ecosystem for a well-capitalized provider of security. The Cosmos Hub will fulfill its security duties, called “Interchain Security,” by leasing out its high-valued, ATOM token-backed validator set to secure budding blockchains. The Cosmos Hub has 175 validators who collectively have 193M ATOM tokens staked, worth just north of $2B. An attacker who wants to economically attack the Cosmos Hub will need to spend much more than this figure to hack the Cosmos Hub and its hosted blockchains. While the precise economic model of that security pricing and its roadmap have not been solidified due to large stakeholder disagreement, the revenue will come from the transaction of hosted blockchains and inflationary (security) rewards from those blockchains. As the Cosmos Hub progresses, it may eventually form the backbone of IBC by functioning as the secured element in cross chain data passing through IBC and collect tolls from those messages. At its onset, the Cosmos Hub will act as a permissioned security environment where all of its validators must validate hosted consumer chains. Onboarding consumer chains will be conducted by online community vote using the ATOM tokens. After a future Cosmos Hub upgrade, consumer chains who seek Hub security can onboard permissionlessly and each validator will select which chains to secure. Our bullish thesis on Cosmos’s ATOM rests upon: The power of the Cosmos SDK. The revolutionary importance of IBC. Clear product market fit of the Cosmos Hub. Strong token value accrual. We believe that the ease of use of the Cosmos SDK and the seamless communication of IBC will enable 5,000 Cosmos blockchains to spawn by year 2030. Consequently, there will be an ample market for the Cosmos Hub’s B2B model to secure customers. Because the Cosmos Hub will offer greater security at a more affordable rate than most bootstrapping chains can supply themselves, many Cosmos chains will lease security from the Cosmos Hub. Our reservations about ATOM stem from questionable tokenomics, competition and key developer disputes. The inflation of the ATOM token under its current economic model is targeted roughly at 13%, which may be too high to sustain strong token price appreciation over the long term. At the same time, several blockchains in the Cosmos have achieved strong communities and economic momentum. These chains, such as Juno, EVMOS, Osmosis and Axelar , have expressed desire to becoming security hubs themselves. If these chains choose to compete in the interchain security market, this will clearly decrease market share and pricing power of the Cosmos Hub. At the same time, the core contributors of ATOM are dispersed among more than seven different entities with different ideas about the future of the Cosmos Hub. The result of this dynamic has been public disputes on Twitter between key figures building the Cosmos Hub as well as delays in execution due to the highly contentious environment. Model Assumptions Under our base case assumptions for the long-term estimates of crypto penetration , we see potential for the Cosmos Ecosystem to increase by over 100x its current valuation by 2030, with downside to $1. By consequence, we estimate the value of the Cosmos Hub to be 160x its current market capitalization by 2030. This value is calculated using a revenue estimate based upon the MEV, transaction tolls, ecosystem airdrops, and inflationary security payments received from the Cosmos Hub’s consumer blockchains and multiplied by a free cash flow (FCF) multiple of 33.37. The FCF multiple is estimated from a terminal FCF growth rate of 3.6% and a FCF yield of 6.6%. To find a token price in 2030, the chain’s value of 540B is then apportioned among the ATOM token supply of 609M in 2030. The supply of ATOM in 2030 is estimated using today’s token supply figure of 302.3M and a target inflation rate of 13% with an estimated deceleration rate of 10% per year. Discounting that price back to today using a 26% discount rate, we arrive at a price today of $139.62. We derive these dramatic estimates from our expectation that public blockchains will settle transactions, coordinate real-world activity and host data for several key end market verticals. We then assume blockchains will capture a portion of the revenues and monetary value hosted on the crypto “rails”. Our projections for crypto begin with assumptions of the most feasible use case end markets. The most logical applications for blockchain technology can be sectioned into three distinct categories: Finance, Banking and Payments; Metaverse and Gaming; and Web Infrastructure. In our first category, Finance, Banking and Payments, we predict that due to significant back-end and personnel cost savings, 10% of the transactions of the financial services industry including commercial and retail banking, trade finance, financial exchanges, wealth management and cross-border payments will be settled using public blockchains by the year 2030. As a result, 10% of the revenues of those activities will be monetizable by smart contract blockchains. Consequently, we see blockchains accruing, by various value capture mechanisms on transactions, 1% of this monetizable revenue. We project this end market’s annual revenue to be approximately $11.7T by 2030 and therefore calculate public blockchains monetizing $11.7B of this revenue each year. With respect to the Metaverse and Gaming sector, we believe public blockchains to be the ideal settlement and storage layer for immutable global repositories of digital identity, social graphs, gaming assets and the property rights to digital assets. As a result, we project that 50% of these end markets will be settled on public smart contract blockchains by 2030. Likewise, we estimate that blockchains will be able to capture 2% of the revenue settled on chain by transaction fees. We forecast Metaverse and Gaming to be a $4.1T market by 2030, which implies blockchain revenue from this segment to be $82B annually. Finally, we see public blockchain as the optimal mechanism to globally coordinate and provision business and retail digital infrastructure services such as cloud data storage, cloud compute and other SaaS businesses. We classify these sleeves of businesses for crypto usage under the category of Web Infrastructure. We forecast that 10% of these services will be allocated utilizing public blockchains in 2030 and estimate blockchains will derive revenue equal to 1% of the Web Infrastructure revenues deployed to them. With total Web Infrastructure revenue expected to be $2T, we calculate $20B of revenue annually accruing to blockchain through transaction tolls. The Role of Market-makers in Crypto Most controversially, in our long run estimates of blockchain revenues, we believe a significant portion of revenue will arise from the value capture of MEV . MEV, or maximum extractable value , is the amount of money that can be derived from ordering transactions on each block. Because most blockchains do not order transactions based upon first-in-first-out, but upon willingness to pay for block inclusion and ordering within that block, there is enormous value to be gained by traders by getting the ideal position. Thus, traders who insert their transaction in front of, behind, or sandwich other orders, can make arbitrage profits. As a result, traders are willing to pay validators for better positioning, and validators will in turn remit those payments to token stakers who back the validators. The ability to gain the profit-maximizing queue slot is being democratized over time by mechanisms such as Flashbots, Skip Protocol , and Jito Labs . Each of these firms offer blockchain software patches for validators to auction off ordering priority to the highest bidder in a sealed bid auction. This creates a balancing mechanism that will fairly distribute profits away from traders and towards the blockchain ecosystem stakers. We calculate MEV to be directly correlated with the amount of assets, or total value locked (TVL), held on a blockchain. Therefore, as blockchains scale to hold more digital assets, we believe that MEV will appreciate accordingly. However, we expect decreases in blockchain asset volatility and deepening liquidity to emerge and consequently reduce the dollar for dollar take MEV has over time. We calculate that MEV was able to extract 0.52% of all TVL on Ethereum over the last 12 months. We believe that this extraction figure will decrease to approximately 0.10% by 2030 of all TVL in an ecosystem like Cosmos – a significantly lower expense ratio than traditional asset managers charge. Inherent in our assumption in MEV is that a significant portion of the world’s assets migrate to the blockchain to become tokenized representations of value. Though there exists much work to be completed before enabling the world’s financial system to be entirely moved to blockchain, we see a clear path for many important assets to be moved to the blockchain “rails.” Besides digital native assets like cryptocurrencies and metaverse assets like in-game items and virtual property, we see enormous potential for real-world assets to be transitioned to blockchain. Projects like Centrifuge are tokenizing asset-backed business loans, Avalanche is digitizing initial litigation offerings and Medibloc is building a blockchain to secure personal health records. As a result, we estimate that 10% of all the world’s financial assets migrate to blockchain by 2030, approximately $60T. Based upon this assumption and our MEV extraction estimate, MEV would constitute $60B in potential revenue annually that accrues to blockchains. Conclusion To tie together our blockchain projections to value accrual of the ATOM token, we then assume Cosmos ecosystem blockchains represent 33% all future blockchains and estimate that the Cosmos Hub secures 50% of Cosmos blockchains. Thereafter, we derive a take rate for ATOM based upon transaction revenue, consumer chain security inflation and MEV revenue. Current community expectations, not yet proposed and subject to a future ATOM community vote, suggest that the Cosmos Hub will price security at 25% of consumer chain transactions. Additionally, we see Cosmos Hub also accruing 25% of the inflation rewards of its consumer blockchains. We then apply this same split between the Cosmos Hub and its consumer chains to arrive at our MEV revenue share of 25%. Given our forecast of Cosmos Ecosystem growth and inflation, we determine that the Cosmos Hub will accrue $21.6B annually by 2030. Since this revenue comes net of all fees and costs of running a blockchain, we classify it as free cash flow. Because of efficiency, cost-savings and user experience arguments, there exists a massive target market for blockchain technology. Due to the reliability and ease of use of the Cosmos SDK and the boundless interoperability offered by IBC, we believe that a substantial portion of future public blockchains will exist in the Cosmos. In turn, it is likely that the Cosmos Hub becomes the security layer for a significant portion of the Cosmos ecosystem blockchains and accrues value accordingly. As a result, the Cosmos Hub’s ATOM token is in a premier position to capture a substantial share of the public blockchain market’s value, and we expect its price will perform according to this expectation. Daily Transaction Volume by Number of Transactions: Ethereum vs Cosmos Hub Daily Transaction Volume by Number of Transactions: Ethereum vs Cosmos Hub Daily Transaction Volume by Value of Transactions in USD: Ethereum vs Cosmos Hub Daily Transaction Volume by Value of Transactions in USD: Ethereum vs Cosmos Hub Source: Dune Analytics, VanEck Research. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. This article was originally publish on August 15th by VanEck. For more news, information, and strategy, visit the Crypto Channel . DISCLOSURES Sources: Interchain Foundation, Interchain GmbH, Iqlusion, Messari, DelphiDigital, Glassnode, VanEck research. Token Definitions: Cosmos (ATOM) is a cryptocurrency that powers an ecosystem of blockchains designed to scale and interoperate with each other. The team aims to "create an Internet of Blockchains, a network of blockchains able to communicate with each other in a decentralized way." Cosmos is a proof-of-stake chain. ATOM holders can stake their tokens in order to maintain the network and receive more ATOM as a reward. Ethereum is a decentralized, open-source blockchain with smart contract functionality. Ether is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. Amongst cryptocurrencies, Ether is second only to Bitcoin in market capitalization. Polkadot is a sharded heterogeneous multi-chain architecture which enables external networks as well as customized layer one “parachains” to communicate, creating an interconnected internet of blockchains. Avalanche is an open-source platform for launching decentralized finance applications and enterprise blockchain deployments in one interoperable, scalable ecosystem. Tendermint is software for securely and consistently replicating an application on many machines. NEAR is a proof-of-stake smart contract platform with an innovative tooling suite that leverages WebAssembly to enable the use of standard programming languages such as Java, Go, rust and others. Chainlink is a blockchain abstraction layer that enables universally connected smart contracts. Through a decentralized oracle network, Chainlink allows blockchains to securely interact with external data feeds, events and payment methods, providing the critical off-chain information needed by complex smart contracts to become the dominant form of digital agreement. Juno is a sovereign public blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem, which provides an environment for the deployment of interoperable smart contracts. Evmos is a scalable, high-throughput Proof-of-Stake blockchain that is fully compatible and interoperable with Ethereum. It's built using the Cosmos SDK (opens new window)which runs on top of Tendermint Core (opens new window)consensus engine. Osmosis (OSMO) is an automated market-making protocol (AMM) that specializes in the InterchainDeFi movement and is built on its own blockchain, utilizing the Cosmos SDK and IBC technologies. Osmosis is an advanced protocol focused on customizable AMMs, where users can create, construct, design and deploy individual and highly-customized AMMs with various modules and the on-chain governance system. Axelar is an overlay network, delivering Turing-complete message passing via proof-of-stake and permissionless protocols. Developers use Axelar to go beyond bridges, creating dApps that securely integrate users, functions and assets across all of the decentralized web. Skip is building ecosystem-aligned MEV products on Cosmos. We amplify the effects of "good MEV" (arbitrage & liquidations) and reduce the effects of "bad MEV" (sandwiching & frontrunning), distributing the rewards to those who deserve it most: validators and their stakers. MediBloc is a patient-centered health data platform developed based on the blockchain Panacea and designed to connect fragmented health data. The information herein represents the opinion of the author(s), but not necessarily those of VanEck or its employees. The securities/ financial instruments discussed in this material may not be appropriate for all investors. The appropriateness of a particular investment or strategy will depend on an investor’s individual circumstances and objectives. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy or sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any security/financial instrument, or to participate in any trading strategy. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Certain statements contained herein may constitute projections, forecasts and other forward looking statements, which do not reflect actual results, are valid as of the date of this communication and subject to change without notice. Information provided by third party sources are believed to be reliable and have not been independently verified for accuracy or completeness and cannot be guaranteed. VanEck does not guarantee the accuracy of third party data. References to specific securities and their issuers or sectors are for illustrative purposes only. Cryptocurrency is a digital representation of value that functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, or a store of value, but it does not have legal tender status. Cryptocurrencies are sometimes exchanged for U.S. dollars or other currencies around the world, but they are not generally backed or supported by any government or central bank. Their value is completely derived by market forces of supply and demand, and they are more volatile than traditional currencies. The value of cryptocurrency may be derived from the continued willingness of market participants to exchange fiat currency for cryptocurrency, which may result in the potential for permanent and total loss of value of a particular cryptocurrency should the market for that cryptocurrency disappear . Cryptocurrencies are not covered by either FDIC or SIPC insurance. Legislative and regulatory changes or actions at the state, federal, or international level may adversely affect the use, transfer, exchange, and value of cryptocurrency. Investing in cryptocurrencies comes with a number of risks, including volatile market price swings or flash crashes, market manipulation, and cybersecurity risks. In addition, cryptocurrency markets and exchanges are not regulated with the same controls or customer protections available in equity, option, futures, or foreign exchange investing. There is no assurance that a person who accepts a cryptocurrency as payment today will continue to do so in the future. Investors should conduct extensive research into the legitimacy of each individual cryptocurrency, including its platform, before investing. The features, functions, characteristics, operation, use and other properties of the specific cryptocurrency may be complex, technical, or difficult to understand or evaluate. The cryptocurrency may be vulnerable to attacks on the security, integrity or operation, including attacks using computing power sufficient to overwhelm the normal operation of the cryptocurrency’s blockchain or other underlying technology. Some cryptocurrency transactions will be deemed to be made when recorded on a public ledger, which is not necessarily the date or time that a transaction may have been initiated. Investors must have the financial ability, sophistication and willingness to bear the risks of an investment and a potential total loss of their entire investment in cryptocurrency. An investment in cryptocurrency is not suitable or desirable for all investors. Cryptocurrency has limited operating history or performance. Fees and expenses associated with a cryptocurrency investment may be substantial. There may be risks posed by the lack of regulation for cryptocurrencies and any future regulatory developments could affect the viability and expansion of the use of cryptocurrencies. Investors should conduct extensive research before investing in cryptocurrencies. Information provided by Van Eck is not intended to be, nor should it be construed as financial, tax or legal advice. It is not a recommendation to buy or sell an interest in cryptocurrencies. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investing is subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest. As with any investment strategy, there is no guarantee that investment objectives will be met and investors may lose money. Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss in a declining market. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. ©️ Van Eck Securities Corporation, Distributor, a wholly owned subsidiary of Van Eck Associates Corporation. POPULAR ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM SPY ETF Quote VOO ETF Quote QQQ ETF Quote VTI ETF Quote JNUG ETF Quote Top 34 Gold ETFs Top 34 Oil ETFs Top 57 Financials ETFs ESG Is Not the Dark Lord We Do Not Speak Of The U.S. Jobs Market Has Fully Recovered, Favoring Travel And Shipping Industries The Era Of Low Inflation May Be Over. Are Commodities The Solution? Energy Sector’s Relative Strength Against The Market Is Looking Very Attractive Investors Turned to Short-Term Bond ETFs in Face of More Fed Rate Hikes READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || Crypto platform Zipmex to start releasing Bitcoin, Ether for customers: BANGKOK (Reuters) - Crypto exchange Zipmex will release Ethereum and Bitcoin tokens from this week, a spokesperson said on Monday, allowing 60% of its customers to retrieve their digital assets after a suspension of withdrawals from its Z Wallet product. The Singapore-based Zipmex, which also operates in Thailand, Australia and Indonesia, in July halted withdrawals from Z Wallet, which it said had $53 million worth of cryptocurrencies exposed to Babel Finance and Celsius. Ethereum will be released on Thursday and Bitcoin on Aug. 16, the company said. Last week it allowed digital coins XRP, ADA and SOL to be withdrawn. Zipmex late last month said it was in talks with investors for potential funding. The Thai Securities Exchange Commission on Saturday said it was collecting further information on affected customers and was working with customer representatives on the issue. (Reporting by Chayut Setboonsarng; Editing by Martin Petty)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 19222.67, 19110.55, 19426.72, 19573.05, 19431.79, 19312.10, 19044.11, 19623.58, 20336.84, 20160.72
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2016-02-22]
BTC Price: 437.75, BTC RSI: 68.16
Gold Price: 1209.50, Gold RSI: 62.82
Oil Price: 31.48, Oil RSI: 51.61
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Celltick Partners With Cable & Wireless to Bring Startscreen to Android Devices: MIAMI, FL and SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 19, 2016) -Celltick, a global leader in mobile marketing announces a partnership with leading Caribbean and Latin American network provider,Cable & Wireless Communications(C&W) (LSE:CWC). C&W will provide a branded, localized and customized version of Celltick's Start on its android phones across its Caribbean and Latin American markets.
Start provides users with an intelligent next-generation startscreen giving users what they want most when they wake up their phones. The Start platform learns from the way users operate their phone and provides convenient productive ways to enhance the intelligence of the device. C&W users will get a new startscreen on their android devices under the C&W brands -- Flow, LIME, Mas Movil and BTC. Users will be able to better utilize their phones and personalize their devices with stickers, interactive themes as well as play games on their first screen.
"Through this partnership, our customers will now have the benefit of a much more personalized, interactive start screen on their mobile device that meets their specific individual needs," said John Reid, President of C&W's Consumer Group. C&W will provide users with local 'infotainments' such as news and weather, rapid access to social media feeds, web search, latest videos and more on the startscreen. "This underscores our ongoing commitment to continuously innovate and transform the total telecommunications experience across the region," added Reid.
"We're excited to partner with Cable & Wireless across its 14 mobile markets to provide an enhanced user experience for their subscribers," said Fernando Bortman, GM CALA, Celltick. "The selection of Start by C&W highlights the innovative approach that we have taken in delighting consumers and the excellence of the product."
Start's growing ecosystem includes hundreds of themes, plug-ins, stickers and lockgames. Celltick's Start has been adopted by over 40 large operators, OEMs and media companies who distribute over 100M devices around the globe. In 2014, Celltick powered billions of mobile-initiated commerce transactions for virtual and physical goods serving more than 150 million active consumers across 25 countries.
About Cable & Wireless Communications
Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) is a full service communications and entertainment provider, operating in the Caribbean and Latin America. With annual sales of over $2.4bn, it operates both mobile and fixed networks, supported by submarine and terrestrial optical fibre backhaul capacity. Through the acquisition of Columbus International Inc. on 31 March 2015, CWC now delivers superior high-speed mobile data, broadband and video services. It has leading market positions in Mobile, Fixed Line, Broadband and Video consumer offers.
Through its business division, CWC provides data centre hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customised IT service solutions, utilising cloud technology to serve business and government customers.
The company also operates a state-of-the-art subsea fibre optic cable network that spans more than 42,000 km -- the most extensive in the region -- as well as 38,000 km of terrestrial fibre providing wholesale and carrier backhaul capacity.
CWC has more than 7,200 employees serving over 6.3 million customers (Mobile 4.1m; Fixed Line 1.1m; Video 465k and Broadband 680k) as well as over 125k corporate clients across 42 countries. The Company's leading brands include; LIME and Flow in the Caribbean; BTC in The Bahamas; Mas Movil in Panama; C&W Business and C&W Networks. CWC is the market leader in most products offered and territories served. It is a major contributor to local communities through its corporate social responsibility programmes.
Cable & Wireless Communications' shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker CWC. The company is headquartered in London with its operational hub located in Miami, within close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America.
For more information visit:www.cwc.com.
About Celltick
Celltick is a global leader in mobile marketing. Celltick's Start is a next generation personalized intelligent interface for Android devices. Celltick is unique in creating and managing mass market mobile marketing solutions for mobile operators, large media companies, device manufacturers and large brands. Celltick enables its partners to engage and monetize their users on the mobile. The company drives billions of transactions annually across more than 150 million active consumers across its different mobile platforms in over 25 countries. A rapidly growing company, Celltick has subsidiaries in Europe, Asia, South America and the U.S. For more information, visitwww.celltick.com. || Bitcoin's biggest investor bought its leading news outlet: There is one trade publication in the digital currency industry that every mainstream news outlet knows well, and cites regularly in stories about bitcoin: CoinDesk . It is a source of news about bitcoin investments, price spikes or crashes, and executive hires, and it is a regular destination for journalists who write about bitcoin (as well as for bitcoin enthusiasts who don't get paid to write about the currency). Last week, CoinDesk reported some news about itself . The website has been bought by Digital Currency Group, the investment firm of Barry Silbert, who in 2004 founded SecondMarket, which allows for the trading of private-company stock. He sold the platform to Nasdaq ( NDAQ ) last year. This is DCG's first full acquisition; it did not disclose the sale price, but sources tell Yahoo Finance it was around $750,000. DCG has invested in 60 different digital currency companies, and the companies in its portfolio have raised 70% of the venture capital in the industry . You might think that creates an obvious conflict of interest here. Silbert owning CoinDesk is like Red Sox co-owner John Henry buying the Boston Globe (which actually happened), or Peyton Manning buying the Denver Post, or Donald Trump buying Politico. But Ryan Selkis, the DCG executive who will oversee business at CoinDesk for the time being, insists that won't be a problem. Nonetheless, he says the possibility did concern him at first. The subject of changing ownership at a bitcoin news site may seem like granular inside-baseball, but it is significant when viewed in the context of ongoing fears about who owns the media. From NewsCorp to Bloomberg to recent changes at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, it is a topic on the minds of both journalists and their readers. Is bitcoin's primary news site selling to bitcoin's biggest investment firm another piece of bad news for the industry? Selkis, DCG's director of growth, spoke to Yahoo Finance about that question and about DCG's plans for the site. What follows is an edited transcript. Yahoo Finance : Before we get into CoinDesk, what was your take on the fallout from Mike Hearn's post last week? [Hearn, a bitcoin developer, declared that bitcoin had "failed" and that he was leaving the industry; it resulted in a media firestorm.] Ryan Selkis: I won’t comment on the theatrics of it. I will say that Mike Hearn was one of the really solid developers, he’s contributed a good chunk of his life and energy into making bitcoin what it is today, so, style aside, there’s not a whole lot people can say to critique his overall contribution to the industry. But this [ ongoing debate over the size of blocks, or bundles of transactions, recorded on bitcoin's public ledger] is more of a governance issue than it is a bitcoin issue, in terms of how this will get resolved. I think it will get resolved. But the governance of the overall project needs to be better. Story continues What was DCG's approach to buying CoinDesk, what were the considerations? The first priority we had when we considered this acquistion, my main hesitation, was whether we’d be able to preserve CoinDesk’s editorial independence. And it’s why I’m working with the team full-time now on operating activities. We are going to create both informational and physical barriers between the editorial team and Digital Currency Group. From a policy standpoint, I’ve recused myself from all investing activity at DCG. I was its director of investments; I have completely transitioned away from that and now I’m director of growth. How does handling growth for DCG pertain to CoinDesk? In this particular instance it means making sure we have a smooth transition post-acquisition. We’re combining two teams. We’ve kept all the CoinDesk employees and our plan is to continue to employ everyone that came over, hopefully for a long time. But we also have a professional events team we’ve been working with that were already in the midst of planning a large conference in May, and now we’re merging those two teams to plan one event, Consensus 2016. So now everyone, with the exception of myself, is a CoinDesk employee. And functionally, I’m full time with the CoinDesk team. So how are you separating CoinDesk from DCG? We are physically relocating offices to a different part of Manhattan. So the CoinDesk folks are not going to be sitting right next to our Genesis [a broker dealer that is another DCG subsidiary] trading team or our investment team, which has proprietary information on how 60 or so bitcoin companies that we are invested in are performing. What if CoinDesk is now afraid to write bad news about companies DCG is invested in? Or it could go the other way: Will CoinDesk start getting all the scoops on DCG companies? On the latter point, I’m not concerned because even before this, CoinDesk had established itself as a clear industry leader in terms of a trade journal. So they were already getting most of the scoops. When you talk about embargoed news releases, they are going to continue to be on the same lists as the other folks that DCG reaches out to. So that doesn’t really change. To be honest, CoinDesk was typically part of a broad group of outlets that would be contacted whenever there was news about a DCG company, because we never want to restrict press attention to just one outlet for any of its business interests. So that is the much easier question to answer. With respect to editorial conflicts, look, that’s what I’m here for, is to make sure there’s a buffer between both entities. So on the one hand, I’m not influencing CoinDesk editorial, but on the other hand, I’m leading the team on a day-to-day basis, and I’m able to interface with DCG but I’m no longer privy to any inside-baseball related to the portfolio companies. That seems like a contradiction: You won't influence CoinDesk editorial, but you'll lead CoinDesk day to day? So will you be full time at CoinDesk, or at DCG? I’m DCG's director of growth, but I'm focused full time on CoinDesk and this acquisition, and the 10 or so employees we’ve absorbed, and the large-scale conference we’re producing in May. That makes CoinDesk our top priortity in terms of growth initiatives. Is the conference the main reason DCG bought CoinDesk? Why else? We think there’s a lot of organic growth potential for CoinDesk. They’ve had display advertising and various sponsors, but last year they hosted Consensus 2015, it was profitable, it was well-attended, folks were raving about the content of the event. And in mid-2015 they also began publishing paid research reports. As we continue new investments in CoinDesk, paid research and live events are going to be meaningful drivers of growth for the business. We have the resources to invest not only in fantastic new editorial talent, as in full-time reporters, but also strengthen the ranks of freelance contributors. One area we will invest in is looking beyond just bitcoin the currency and the very insular community there, and branching much further out into blockchain applications that enterprise is taking a look at. Now, that doesn’t mean we are on this "blockchain, not bitcoin" bandwagon, because I don’t want to give that impression at all and it’s a very shrill conversation that happens on Twitter and Reddit when you bring it up. But I do think there will be private ledger solutions that work for enterprise where bitcoin isn’t necessarily a good alternative. Yes, big financial institutions and banks, from Nasdaq to JPMorgan, have been on the "blockchain, not bitcoin" trend lately. Do you think that's all talk? I think the interest is definitely real. The bigger question is, over what time frame does this play out? I don’t think that anyone should expect fully functioning products in the next year, two years, handful of years. It will take many years to build some of these core products that are used currently for clearing and settlement. But I think it’s not just a buzzword, I think "blockchain for banks" truly is more relevant in many cases than using the bitcoin blockchain. If you’re a large institution and you’re looking to create an open ledger where you can move securities around safely and transparently to other regulated institutions, you don’t need a native currency like bitcoin or a consensus mechanism that uses anonymous miners. You already know the parties. You could have five banks that are the only signatories to that particular blockchain. So that would be interesting. -- Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Read more: Bitcoin industry consolidates: Why Kraken bought Coinsetter Here's a sign that PayPal is embracing Bitcoin Fantex, the 'athlete stock exchange,' signs first golfer View comments || Lead developer quits bitcoin saying it "has failed": By Jemima Kelly
LONDON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Bitcoin slid by 10 percent on Friday after one of its lead developers, Mike Hearn, said in a blogpost that he was ending his involvement with the cryptocurrency and selling all of his remaining holdings because it had "failed".
Hearn, one of five senior developers who has spent more than five years working on the web-based currency, said he would no longer be taking part in development.
"Despite knowing that bitcoin could fail all along, the now inescapable conclusion that it has failed still saddens me greatly," Hearn said in his post on blog-publishing platform Medium.
Along with Gavin Andresen, who was chosen by bitcoin's elusive creator Satoshi Nakamoto as his successor when he stepped aside in 2011, Hearn has been locked for months in a battle with the other lead developers over whether the "blocks" in which bitcoin transactions are processed should be enlarged.
Each block currently has a capacity of one megabyte, which Hearn says is "an entirely artificial capacity cap", and allows a maximum of just three payments to be processed per second.
In August, Hearn and Andresen released a rival version of the current software, called Bitcoin XT, which would increase the block size to 8 megabytes, allowing up to 24 transactions to be processed every second. While that is still a fraction of the 20,000 or so that Visa can process, it would increase every year, so that bitcoin could continue to grow.
But the new software has not been adopted by the "mining" computers that secure the network, the majority of which are in China, according to Hearn.
Hearn says the bitcoin network is about to run out of capacity as the volume of transactions increases. And when that happens, the network will become unreliable, with payments unable to be processed and vulnerable to fraud.
"If an IT system runs out of capacity like that then all kinds of things go wrong - all hell breaks loose," he said in an interview with Reuters in late December.
Hearn reckons the bitcoin community has "failed" in its governance of the crytocurrency's code.
"What was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked 'systemically important institutions' and 'too big to fail' has become something even worse: a system completely controlled by just a handful of people," he wrote.
SUDDEN DEPARTURE
Just months ago, in August, Hearn told Reuters that whether or not Bitcoin XT was adopted, the crypocurrency would live on. "If we thought it might be the end of bitcoin, we wouldn't do it," he said then.
Bitcoin was trading at around $390 on the itBit exchange by 2000 GMT, down from $430 before Hearn's blog post was published.
In his December interview, Hearn said that when people realised that the bitcoin network was at breaking point, the price would fall.
"The current price of bitcoin is supported almost entirely by people speculating on its future, in the assumption that this could be the money of tomorrow," he said. "So if the network starts to collapse, then a lot of people are going to look at it and say: well maybe we've miscalculated (its) future value."
Hearn is now working for the R3CEV consortium of banks working on using the blockchain technology that underpins bitcoin in financial markets.
Stephan Tual, the former chief operating officer of blockchain firm Ethereum, who now works at blockchain-based app developer Slock.it, also reckons bitcoin's future looks shaky.
"Bitcoin is outdated technology - almost prehistoric by crypto standards," he said. "It's because of petty quarrels such as these that it hasn't been able to evolve in five years."
Others were more upbeat.
"I'm not ready to declare that Bitcoin has failed," wrote U.S. venture capitalist Fred Wilson.
"Sometimes it takes a crisis to get everyone in a room... So if we are going to have a crisis, let's get on with it. No better time than the present." (Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) || Surprising Gift Offered to Bitcoin Sellers at Coin Reverse Inc.: Coin Reverse Inc. Is Now Offering Engraved Bitcoin to Their Customers NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / January 29, 2016 / Coin Reverse Inc. ( http://www.coinreverse.com ) has hit the charts with their latest offer on Bitcoin purchase: they're not only offering 15% more than Blockchain's official rate for each Bitcoin they purchase, but they are also putting a surprise gift on transactions amounting 10+ BTC. CoinReverse's marketing team has gone creative enough to attach a special gift to each and every transaction amounting more than 10 BTC: they are offering a 24-karat gold coin with the Bitcoin engraved on both sides. The mechanism is simple: each customer selling over 10 BTC within one transaction is asked to provide a mailing address and the company delivers the gift via a courier. CoinReverse's Marketing Manager Jacob Gustavo is enthusiastic with their latest gift idea, while being positive that people involved in the cryptocurrency market are definitely welcoming a jewelry-like item engraved with the Bitcoin logo, being offered to them for doing business with CoinReverse. "In this way, we are offering our customers a somehow materialized version of this virtual, non-material coin. We think it's pretty cool to put your hands on a coin carrying the Bitcoin's logo, especially if you're passionate about the cryptocurrencies," declares Jacob Gustavo, company's Marketing Manager. Coin Reverse Inc. is a cryptocurrency trading company based in NewYork, USA, founded and developed by few bold investment professionals who have seen the business opportunity outside the traditional capital markets and have targeted cryptocurrency trade in terms of medium and long-term investments strategy. Business is operated in an effective manner, with a user-friendly platform and easy contact means through the company's website and via e-mail, with 24/7 assistance through a Live Chat Section offered. Payments for the trade are free of any charges on the customer's side, while the company covers all the costs involved. The most common payment methods are available: PayPal and Bank Transfer. Story continues All the details related to the company's offer and other information, together with the contact details of the Sales Team are available on their website: http://www.coinreverse.com . No restrictions on customers' provenience and payment destination countries or currencies are in force within the company's policy. For more information about us, please visit http://coinreverse.com . Contact Info: Name: Tom Juno Organization: Coin Reverse Inc. Address: 1370 Broadway, 5th Floor Phone: (315) 210-8349 SOURCE: Coin Reverse Inc. || Blockchain Moves Forward In The Financial Industry: Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin have had a lot of negative attention over the past year, as several hacking attacks and scams have painted the coins as an unsafe way to make transactions. However, blockchain, the ledger-like system that bitcoin runs on, has received a great deal of praise across several industries that say the technology has the potential to completely reform the way they do business. This is especially true in the financial space, where banks say that although they are still wary of bitcoin transactions, incorporating blockchain into their operations could actually improve their businesses. Related Link: Now You Can Play The Lottery With Bitcoin Cross-Border Payments One way blockchain could improve the financial industry is by improving the way banks make cross-border transactions. The current system is cumbersome and takes a great deal of time and effort for both the sending and receiving bank. This process has made it difficult for banks to interact with one another from country to country, but incorporating blockchain could change all of that. The ledger system would streamline cross-border payments and take out much of the administrative work associated with processing international transactions. Closer To Integration From January 11 to January 15, several major banks began testing whether blockchain could be used in this way and the results looked promising, according to the Wall Street Journal. Eleven different banks were able to use a private blockchain in order to exchange tokens across several continents. The test included big name financial institutions like Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE: BCS ), Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE: CS ) and Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE: WFC ), and it is expected to pave the way for future blockchain investments. While this initial test provided only a small snapshot of what blockchain is capable of, many believe that its success will push banks to continue testing the technology and eventually put it into practice. Story continues See more from Benzinga Top 5 Losers When The Fed Raises Rates © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Anarchists love 2015's best performing asset: Gold is down nearly 10 percent, major U.S. stock indexes are roughly flat and energy commodities have nearly all fallen more than 30 percent: It's been a tough year for investors. And while individual stocks have seen big pops on headlines, perhaps the best performing non-equity asset of the year is a favorite among crypto-anarchists.
Bitcoin(: BTC=), the digital currency heralded as a potential successor to the global monetary system, is up about 37 percent against the U.S. dollar since the beginning of the year. The cryptocurrency went for about $313 at the beginning of the year, according to CoinDesk's composite price index, and is now changing hands at around $430.
Those huge gains come after starting the year on rocky footing: Bitcoin dipped to below $175 in mid-January. But after a few false starts, the digital currency has been largely gaining ground since the beginning of October.
(One of the few investment options with a comparable 2015 return is Argentina's benchmark Merval — up about 40 percent on the year. Although U.S. investors playing the Global X Argentina ETF would be disappointed by the fund's slight loss in 2015.)
It's hard to say what's actually caused Bitcoin's rise during the last three months of 2015.
In November,digital ecosystem observers told CNBCthat a 70 percent one-month spike may have been caused in part byheadlines like theWinklevoss twins launching their exchangeand the Digital Currency Groupannouncing fundingfrom Bain andMasterCard.Others suggestedthat the relatively lightly traded asset could have been jumping on speculators' fear of missing out (FOMO).
For Brendan O'Connor, the CEO of bitcoin trading firm Genesis Global Trading, the year-end run up was the result of a series of positive trends for the asset.
On the one hand, O'Connor said, funding announcements from bitcoin-related start-ups helped to establish the legitimacy of the sector — and its underlying technology. This has helped push institutional investors into making investments in both the digital token and the over-the-counter Bitcoin Investment Trust (more on that ETF-like vehicle can be found here).
"They're looking for investments in non-correlated asset classes," O'Connor said, explaining that financial firms regularly come to his office to learn how to trade bitcoin. "I still think that by and large they're viewing it as a speculative investment, but I think that their willingness to test the waters has increased dramatically."
Another important trend in the space has been the gradually increasing interest the technology — and it's negligible fee structure — for remittance payments and as a daily currency in monetarily challenged parts of the world, O'Connor said.
That potential came to the forefront of the tech discussion during the summer's Greek crisis: When the country instituted capital controls in the face of increasingly dire eurozone negotiations,countlessarticleswerewrittenaboutbitcoin'spotentialforstrugglingcitizens.
It's unclear if those prophecies ever came to any real fruition, but investors in the space say the positive press coverage at least boosted awareness of bitcoin's potential.
Finally, bitcoin may have simply benefited from the lack of any disastrous headlines. Many traders say the cryptocurrency has shed the pall offailed exchange Mt. Gox— which quickly shuttered in 2014 after saying it lost 850,000 bitcoins (worth about $365 million today).
Bitcoin's fall from more than $1,150 near the end of 2013 to this January's $200 levels represented the asset's "long winter," according to economist Tuur Demeester, editor-in-chief of bitcoin-focused Adamant Research. The story of 2015, therefore, has been a bottoming out for the digital asset, and a climb to revaluation.
Bitcoin's fall from its highs, Demeester said, was the result of "bubblicious" investing in 2013 (with some help from Mt. Gox). Pricing levels remained depressed for so long because companies had become over-leveraged, and so had been squeezed into heavy bitcoin selling, he said.
As for 2016, Demeester suggested that the cryptocurrency could likely see another leg up as newly confident investors seek the right market valuation.
"But," he said, "with bitcoin you have to expect to be surprised."
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• Personal Finance || New Study Shows Bitcoin Still Has A Long Way To Go: Bitcoin has gained notoriety quickly over the past few years, as more people become familiar with cryptocurrencies. While the majority of the public is still skeptical regarding the safety and security of the currency, bitcoin's user base has been growing. However, although bitcoin enthusiasts say the payment system has made major gains over the past few years, a new study shows the cryptocurrency is still widely misunderstood, even by those who use it. Limited Understanding A peer-reviewed study conducted by Janne Lindqvist of Rutgers Wireless Information Network Laboratory showed both users and non-users of the cryptocurrency have only a basic understanding of how bitcoin works and how safe it is to use. Related Link: Interest In Bitcoin Mining Returns For those who have yet to try bitcoin, the study indicated they worried about adopting the currency and saw setting up an account as too difficult. Users Misinformed Surprisingly, the study also showed that many of those who use bitcoin regularly also found the system difficult to understand. Not only were bitcoin users misinformed about the level of security bitcoin transactions provide, but they also struggled to wrap their minds around how bitcoin transactions are carried out. Government Backing Important Another factor from the study that garners attention was that both users and non-users were keen for further government intervention for Bitcoin. While users typically expressed anti-government views and said less regulation was important to them, they still said that backing from the government would make the bitcoin system more secure. Image Credit: Public Domain See more from Benzinga Under Armour's Partnership With IBM Could Revive Both Brands Can Bank Stocks Recover? A New Way To Advertise © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || Bank of America is going big on blockchain: Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is trying to steal a march on the latest developments in the technology behind digital currency bitcoin (: BTC=) by loading up on blockchain-related patents. Blockchain works like a huge, decentralized ledger for the digital currency bitcoin which records every transaction and stores this information on a global network so it cannot be tampered with. Major financial institutions -- including the Bank of England -- have released a number of notes over the last year on the potential of the technology and have created teams within their organizations to look into how to develop the cryptocurrency. But Bank of America is going one step further by attempting to patent some of the use cases of the technology. The company has already filed for 15 blockchain-related patents and is currently in the process of drafting another 20 to be submitted to the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) later this month, a spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday. "Blockchain's very intriguing and for us it's a balance between not wanting to be Neanderthal but not wanting to put something out in a commercial application where the commercial application is still very unclear as a technologist, the technology is fascinating," Catherine Bessant, the chief operations and technology office at Bank of America, said during a CNBC event at Davos last week. "And we have tried to stay on the forefront, I think we have somewhere around 15 patents, most people would be surprised at Bank of America with patents in the blockchain or cryptocurrency space. (It's) very important in the intellectual property world to reserve our spot even before we know what the commercial application might be." In December, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published 10 of Bank of America's applications. The USPTO publishes patent applications 18 months after they're filed. But the latest information shows that the number of patents Bank of America has filed for and is looking to apply for is much higher. Story continues Bank of America patents published by the USPTO showed proposals for a "cryptocurrency risk detection system" and "suspicious user alert system" among others. These patents have not yet been granted. The technology might be some years off before becoming mainstream for banks, but institutions are taking a collaborative approach to the technology, working with start-ups and even rival lenders. A consortium of more than 25 banks, led by fintech (financial technology) company R3, is currently developing a framework for applying blockchain technology to markets. Last year, Goldman Sachs released a note that said blockchain could "change everything" while banks from Barclays to UBS explained how the technology could be used in areas from remittances to drawing up contracts. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || 4 stocks to watch if market falls even more: U.S. stocks dropped Wednesday, continuing a rough start to the year for investors. "Fast Money" traders picked through the battered markets for names that could have potential ahead. The S&P 500 (INDEX: .SPX) slid 2.5 percent Wednesday and has lost 7.5 percent of its value this year. But opportunities still exist amid the weakness, traders said. Investors may want to avoid U.S. multinational companies that have significant exposure to a stronger dollar, contended trader Dan Nathan. Instead, he looked to the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE Arca: XLU) , which he has previously described as a defensive play with the benefit of a dividend yield. Nathan has a stake in the fund as well as the PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund (NYSE Arca: UUP) , which he said could continue to rise with strength in the dollar. Trader Karen Finerman, meanwhile, pointed to U.S. consumers stocks that have endured recent losses. She owns Macy's (NYSE: M) shares, which have fallen 41 percent in the last year in trading that she described as "ridiculously overdone." The stock has climbed more than 10 percent already this year. Finerman also said that Home Depot (NYSE: HD) would look appealing on a price dip. The stock has fallen 8 percent this year. Disclosures: Pete Najarian Long AAPL, BAC, BKE, BMY, BP, DIS, DISCA, FOXA, GE, KO, MRK, PEP, PFE, he is long calls A, AAL, ABX, BAC, CHS, CMI, COP, DAL, EMR, GDX, GE, HAIN, HUN, LC, MOS, MSFT, NRF, NRG, PNR, POT, UAL, VZ, WYNN, YDKN, ZIOP, he is long puts FCX, MRO Dan Nathan Long MCD Feb Put Spread, long PFE buy-write, long TWTR March Risk Reversal, long UUP March call, long XLU Feb Call spread, long PYPL Jan Risk Reversal, long M Jan16 call spread, long NTAP Jan risk reversal, long QCOM feb calls, short SPY, long UUP, long WMT puts, long INTC JAN 32 puts. Brian Kelly Brian Kelly is long BBRY, Bitcoin, GDX, GLD, Hong Kong Dollar, TLT, US Dollar; he is short British Pound, Euro, Canadian Dollar, GSG, EEM, EWC, EWH, SPY, DB Story continues Karen Finerman Karen is long BAC, C, FL, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, KORS, KORS call spreads, M, SEDG, SPY calls, URI. She is short SPY. Her firm is long ANTM, AAPL, BAC, C, FL, FL calls, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, KORS, LYV, M, MA, MOH, PLCE, URI, URI long puts, WFM, her firm is short IWM, MDY, SPY. Karen Finerman is on the board of GrafTech International. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || Bitcoin group scores funds from biggest names in industry: Bitcoin-related businesses raised more venture capital money in 2015 than in any year before: $485 million, according to industry news siteCoinDesk. And yet, even as they court more VC interest, these companies continue to deal with skepticism from the general public and from top executives of big financial institutions, likeJamie Dimonof JPMorgan (JPM).
So they're turning to a non-profit advocacy group for help.
Coin Center, a 501(c)(4) lobbying group founded in 2014, calls itself the "leading non-profit research and advocacy center" for public policy on "cryptocurrency technologies such as Bitcoin." Its supporters already included well-known venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen is a vocal bitcoin believer), and some of the biggest companies in the industry, including Chain, Coinbase, and Xapo. Now Coin Center is about to get a lot louder: This month it has raised $1 million in new donations, Yahoo Finance has learned.
In an industry where the hottest companies have had recent fundraising rounds of $116 million (21 Inc.), $50 million (Circle) and $30 million (Chain), $1 million may sound like small potatoes—and it is, although Coin Center says it will help fund travel for its five staff members, who spend much of their time meeting with lawmakers to discuss policy.
But as some big banks have joined a consortium to explore the possibilities of the blockchain (the public, open ledger on which all bitcoin transactions are logged), what is significant here is that Coin Center's extensive list of new supporters includes some of the most powerful people in the exploding fintech sector. Among those who donated are 21 Inc. (which last year released a small bitcoin-mining computer aimed at making it easier to develop bitcoin apps), BitStamp, Overstock.com (OSTK), which was one of the first major online retailers to accept bitcoin as payment, and Digital Currency Group.
That last firm is key: Led by SecondMarket founder Barry Silbert, DCG has invested in 65 different bitcoin companies, and the companies in its portfolio have raised 70% of all the venture capital in the space. DCG is to the bitcoin industry what Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD) is to the beer market, or what IAC (IAC) has been to online-dating companies.
"Our mission is to accelerate the development of a better financial system," Silbert tells Yahoo Finance, "and the way we will do that is investing in great companies, starting companies, buying companies, and helping organizations like Coin Center." In other words: Silbert wants to have his hands in as many digital-currency entities as possible to ensure his influence, and he is quickly carrying out that strategy. It's why DCGbought outrightthe industry's leading news site, CoinDesk."There are many ways lawmakerscould stifle the bitcoin blockchain," Silbert says, "so providing awareness and education is a very important part of what will make this industry sustainable."
In short: Coin Center is getting more influential, and now it has people backing it who have deep pockets and major interest in keeping regulators from interfering too much in what bitcoin companies are doing. Coin Center is not a trade association—none of the companies in the bitcoin industry are members. But it certainly shares their interests.
Jerry Brito, Coin Center's executive director, isa law professor who has testified before Congress about cryptocurrencies. Hesays Coin Center's primary audience is policy-makers—and these people can often be confused about the industry. The fear of bitcoin businesses is that politicians will hastily regulate, or even shut down startups, before they understand the technology. (The tension is not unlike the battle raging in daily fantasy sports right now.) Coin Center can help, Brito says: "Policy makers hear about these negative aspects, whether it’s ransoms, or drug sales, or the like, and they will often contact law enforcement and say, 'What's up with this?' This is a challenge just like all new technologies have been, from email to pagers, butwe think that we can get a handle on this."
To that end,Coin Center teamed with the Chamber of Digital Commerce in October to help create The Blockchain Alliance, a safe-space private forum in which law enforcement groups like the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice can pose questions to bitcoin startup executives and policy pundits. Think of the alliance like a Justice League for bitcoin. But it is unclear how frequently the forum is being used, since the media isn't allowed in.
Last year, New York became the first state to release its own regulatory framework specifically devoted to digital currency businesses. Called the BitLicense, it was met with so much opposition from the bitcoin community that a slew of companies packed up and left New York, cutting off service to customers in the state. Other companies happily applied for a license, but bemoaned the high cost.
Coin Center makes its stance on legislation clear. "If you look back, [former New York Department of Financial Services superintent]Ben Lawsky said he didn't want to interfere with innovation or hurt business. Ultimately, the BitLicense that we got did not succeed at that. It is not a good model for other states to follow," he says. "I think the only solution is a light touch approach. If you go heavy-handed, as a regulator, you’ll do two things: not meet your goals, typically, becasuse you’ll make it so difficult that people can’t even comply with it, and not get the visibility that you want as a regulator." Those in the bitcoin business, of course, like that argument quite a lot.
Marc Andreessen has been Coin Center's biggest donor since the beginning, giving the lion's share of help. But with Silbert flexing his muscle, Coin Center's role in advocating for digital currency will strengthen. (Brito says donors "can give input," but not dictate what Coin Center does.)
Coin Center has received $2 million in donations to date, and it now plans to seek $1 million every year. It won't have much trouble getting it.
--
Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology.Read more:
Bitcoin industry consolidates: Why Kraken bought Coinsetter
Bitcoin's biggest investor bought its biggest news site
Here's a sign that PayPal is embracing Bitcoin
Fantex, the 'athlete stock exchange,' signs first golfer
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
LIVE: Profit = $246.08 (2.92 %). BUY B20.49 @ $420.00 (#VirCurex). SELL @ $423.87 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 15 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $124.78 #bitcoin #btc || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 13 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $79.41 #bitcoin #btc || $433.55 at 00:00 UTC [24h Range: $430.42 - $435.99 Volume: 2972 BTC] via #btcusdpic.twitter.com/P3CY3bIMUH || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges:
Cryptsy: 0.00000005
Bittrex: 0.00000005
Average $1.9E-5 per #reddcoin
00:00:02 || $454.66 at 08:15 UTC [24h Range: $445.00 - $465.00 Volume: 13661 BTC] || $382.37 at 04:30 UTC [24h Range: $352.00 - $392.07 Volume: 23675 BTC] via #btcusdpic.twitter.com/41K9EvEdfH || LIVE: Profit = $45.77 (3.34 %). BUY B3.60 @ $380.00 (#VirCurex). SELL @ $395.30 (#BTCe) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges: Cryptsy: 0.00000005 Bittrex: 0.00000005 Average $1.9E-5 per #reddcoin 21:30:00 via #p…pic.twitter.com/QSpNnnGuWO || 1 #bitcoin 1223.99 TL, 390 $, 361.99 €, GBP, 29601.00 RUR, 45473 ¥, CNH, 543 CAD #btc
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Trend: no change || Prices: 420.74, 424.95, 424.54, 432.15, 432.52, 433.50, 437.70, 435.12, 423.99, 421.65
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
GE limps into investor day with shareholders demanding answers on dividend and turnaround plan: Not that long ago, General Electric (GE) was seen as the very model of corporate success, the American capitalist system in action under a sprawling umbrella of synergized interests. No more. As the company limps into its investor day presentation Monday, it has gone from a paradigm of success to a morass of excess. Where GE once was held as a beacon of how a multinational conglomerate is supposed to function, it now faces an uncertain future and a bevy of questions from investors and analysts. The crisis is not quite existential, but conditions are critical. Company executives must convince their constituency that there is a viable path forward. "That will be up to GE," said Eric Ause, who covers GE for Fitch Ratings. "How they do it will be up to GE's management team. They've got a new CEO and a new CFO, and they've been making some changes to the board. That will all play into their long-term decisions, what the mix of their business should be and how they get there." Investors have shown little confidence that even with the management shake-up, GE has a clear direction forward. The company has pledged to trim the parts of the operation that don't work, like GE Capital and the industrial solutions business, and focus on the future with core industrial businesses and GE Digital. The market, though, has been hard to please.
GE shares have tumbled 37 percent in 2017 and are less than half where they stood when Jeffrey Immelt took over as CEO in September 2001. Immelt left the company in October, leaving behind a bevy of questions that likely will be addressed at Monday's event. The shares traded higher by more than 2 percent on Friday as it appeared the company had already begun taking some of the hard steps it will unveil Monday by reportedly cutting staff in its GE Digital division.
The past and the present The company's woes have been well-dissected —a flat-footed investment strategy in which decision-makers always seemed to be at least one step behind prevailing trends. GE made poorly timed bets against financials and for energy and paid the price. More immediate, though, are the lingering questions over the dividend, which currently stands at 96 cents, translating to a 4.19 percent yield, or the highest in 30 years not including the financial crisis. There's both an expectation and a drumbeat that the company either will pare or eliminate the dividend at the investor day. Company officials, though, haven't tipped their hand yet. "We will be reviewing our outlook for 2017 and 2018 in terms of sources of cash and (cash flow from operating activities) generation," new CEO John Flannery said during the third-quarter earnings call. "We will do that with an appropriate balance of growth investment and dividend payout, and we will share our overall capital allocation framework with you in the November meeting." That same call marked what, optimistically, could be a seminal moment for the company. Flannery stunned investors with his candor , openly acknowledging how poorly GE has performed and vowing to do better. "While the company has many areas of strength, it's also clear from our current results that we need to make some major changes with urgency and a depth of purpose. Our results are unacceptable, to say the least," he said, adding: "Things will not stay the same at GE." Accepting an activist Just in the odd case that Flannery wasn't serious, he'll have somebody new looking over his shoulder to monitor the company's performance. Among the indignities with which GE has had to deal is the presence of an activist investor. The board in October agreed to bring on Ed Garden , chief investment officer and founding partner at Trian Partners, the hedge fund he runs alongside the more high-profile Nelson Peltz . Believing that the corporate restructuring was not moving quickly enough, Trian decided to get more aggressive in its oversight. Trian's stake in GE most recently was valued at $1.43 billion, down from $2.1 billion at the end of 2016. "Like other GE shareholders, I am disappointed by the recent performance of GE's stock," Garden said when he was appointed. "But I continue to believe that GE represents an attractive long-term investment opportunity with significant upside." Trian declined to comment. GE is in a quiet period heading into the investor day and declined comment, referring a reporter to recent presentations by Flannery. A bevy of concerns Other investors as well as analysts have been giving the company as hard time as well. The earnings call featured a number of pointed questions emanating from concerns over where GE is headed. GE badly whiffed on third-quarter earnings , with just 29 cents a share against expectations of 49 cents. "So, how is that level of dividend sustainable without jeopardizing the future growth of the company?" UBS analyst Steve Winoker asked, reflecting similar sentiments from his cohorts. Just four of 18 analysts have a buy rating on GE while two have it rated as outperform. Only one has a sell on the stock and three have an underperform on the shares, according to S&P Capital IQ. Most are on the fence, with six hold ratings. Credit agencies are generally downbeat though not in despair. S&P has GE on credit watch negative and Fitch has a negative outlook, meaning the debt is still considered stable but could be downgraded if the company does not address concerns. In addition to all the other concerns, GE has run up a huge pension liability that has investors concerned. "There would be a lot of different viewpoints" on GE's health, Fitch's Ause said. "They've got good diversification, strong market positions in a number of key markets and a fair amount of financial flexibility." Then there's the dividend Yet perhaps no issue represents just now far this mighty company has fallen than the dividend. Having to take that away would amount to maybe the toughest blow the company, and its investors, would have to face. "Clearly a dividend cut would free up a lot of flexibility for John Flannery to execute his restructuring; $8 billion a year in dividends is a big burden," longtime GE shareholder Jack De Gan told CNBC recently. "It would upset the shareholder base. And the stock would be dead money for [a] while. [But] this is when he should do it, if he's going to do it." Investors have bought GE stock over the years in large part because it provided a reliable cash cow even in lean times. Income investors would lose an important incentive, possibly sending more shareholders to the exits. The situation is exacerbated by the shrinking level of free cash flow, which is down to $7 billion, about half the normal level. The company's market cap has contracted by about one-third over the past year as it struggles with some fundamental business issues. "They've been making some changes to the board. That will all play into their long-term decisions, what the mix of their business should be and how they get there," Ause said. "Their dividend is a significant cash use." Then there's perception: A few years ago there were headlines about GE's maneuvering to get out of paying taxes; this year it was the embarrassing story of the company allocating not just one but two corporate jets for Immelt . All of it will be on the table when management faces the investor music Monday. "We're looking for some additional information and details on what they expect to do," Ause said. "It's hard to know how much they'll talk about Monday." WATCH: An analyst looks at the challenges ahead for FlanneryMore From CNBC
• Top health care analyst on how to play Amazon’s encroachment on the industry
• PRO Talks: Top health care analyst Lisa Gill on drug pricing, her favorite stock ideas
• Bitcoin is giving this stock a huge boost || Traders were blindsided by Celgene's massive earnings flop (CELG): Andrew Burton/Getty Images
• Celgene turned in a brutal third-quarter earnings report, missing revenue forecasts and cutting its long-term profit outlook.
• Traders were woefully unhedged by several measures, leaving them vulnerable to feel the brunt of the stock's 20% drop.
Traders weren't prepared at all for the huge stock drop that befellCelgeneafter a disastrous third-quarter earnings report.
The drug developer saw shares plummet as much as 20% after quarterly revenue fell short of analyst estimates and the companylowered its long-term profit forecastfor 2020, yet investors entered the reporting period woefully unhedged.
Investors were paying the lowest premium in almost three years to protect against a 10% decline in Celgene's stock over the next three months, relative to bets on a 10% increase, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. When the measure — known as skew — is low, it implies either directional bullishness or a simple lack of downside protection.
Business Insider/Joe Ciolli/Andy Kiersz, data from Bloomberg
It was an even starker situation for traders placing hedges against a deeper drop. Skew for 20% downside hedges over a three-month period, relative to wagers on a 20% spike, was the lowest since December 2007 heading into Celgene's earnings.
Business Insider/Joe Ciolli/Andy Kiersz, data from Bloomberg
One would think traders would've been more wary heading into the quarterly report, considering the company was less than one week removed from announcing that they'dfailed a late-stage trialin a highly anticipated Crohn's disease drug. That news caused an 11% single-day drop in the stock, which has plunged 30% since the start of September.
One possible explanation is that investors thought that weakness meant the stock was at low risk of slipping further, and they pared hedges accordingly.
That they were so wrong provides a cautionary tale for traders heading into earnings season. No matter how downtrodden a stock may appear, all it takes is a devastating report to make matters even worse.
Markets Insider
NOW WATCH:$6 TRILLION INVESTMENT CHIEF: Bitcoin is a bubble
See Also:
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• General Electric's disastrous earnings report caught traders off guard
SEE ALSO:Traders betting against Chipotle made $260 million in a single day on its earnings disaster || SEC warns celebs about legal dangers of bitcoin endorsements: When celebrities endorse things on social media, a lot of people tend to take their word for it. Now that some of them have also begun endorsing a controversial means of crowdfunding called "initial coin offering" or ICO, which was recently banned in China and South Korea , the US Securities and Exchange Commission has had to step in with a warning . Since ICOs are an unregulated means to raise money using cryptocurrencies, people could use them to sell products that don't exist or to entice investors to sink their money into projects that will never materialize. That's why SEC has decided to be on the lookout for celebrity ICO endorsements to protect potential investors. The agency's warning says: "Any celebrity or other individual who promotes a virtual token or coin that is a security must disclose the nature, scope, and amount of compensation received in exchange for the promotion. A failure to disclose this information is a violation of the anti-touting provisions of the federal securities laws. Persons making these endorsements may also be liable for potential violations of the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws, for participating in an unregistered offer and sale of securities, and for acting as unregistered brokers." SEC's warning comes after The New York Times published a piece on celebrities like Floyd Mayweather and Paris Hilton endorsing various ICOs. The famous boxer help a Miami-based ICO called Centra Tech raise $30 million. According to the publication, Centra Tech's founders created a chief executive that doesn't exist. In addition, despite promising a Visa or a Mastercard debit card to its backers that will supposedly allow them to spend their Centra coins anywhere, the company reportedly doesn't have any kind of deal or partnership with either credit card company. Centra's (CTR) ICO starts in a few hours. Get yours before they sell out, I got mine https://t.co/nSiCaZ274l pic.twitter.com/dB6wV0EROJ — Floyd Mayweather (@FloydMayweather) September 18, 2017 I just received my titanium centra debit card. The Centra Card & Centra Wallet app is the ultimate winner in Cryptocurrency debit cards powered by CTR tokens! Use your bitcoins, ethereum, and more cryptocurrencies in real time across the globe. This is a Game changer here. Get your CTR tokens now! #CryptoBilli #Bitcoin #Ethereum #Digitalcurrency A post shared by DJ KHALED (@djkhaled) on Sep 27, 2017 at 4:09pm PDT Going forward, posts like the ones above need to disclose if they're paid promotions -- NYT has confirmed that Mayweather got paid for his Centra endorsement, though it's unclear whether he got paid in cash or in Centra coins. If you ask the FTC, though, Instagram's and YouTube's "includes paid promotion" marks are nowhere near enough to indicate sponsorship: the agency recently said those platforms' built-in disclosures are a bit too subtle for its liking. Story continues For interested investors, SEC has this to say: "Investors should note that celebrity endorsements may appear unbiased, but instead may be part of a paid promotion... Celebrities who endorse an investment often do not have sufficient expertise to ensure that the investment is appropriate and in compliance with federal securities laws. Conduct research before making investments, including in ICOs." View comments || Why You Should Leave Target Corporation Stock Off Your Shopping List: Even on Black Friday, there’s no reason to be excited about Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT ). Yes, you can be excited by the products it offers and very competitive prices. I have a store nearby and am in there quite a bit, because it is convenient and the prices are pretty darn good. That’s not a positive for TGT stock. Why? When prices are pretty darn good, that’s a good indication that margins aren’t great. Given that Target said that price wars would be a main fixture of its near-term strategy, that would make me, as an investor, nervous. Yes, TGT’s third fiscal quarter seemed pretty good on the surface, but when you dig into the actual results, you realize that the numbers are actually rather depressing. If you read my column you know that comparable stores sales are the most important metric I examine. It determines if there is increasing traffic and/or if the retailer has pricing power. InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips TGT’s Falling Comps If comps are above 5%, that’s fantastic. Home Depot Inc (NYSE: HD ) has been on fire in that regard. If comps are 3-5%, that’s just fine. It shows modest growth and is perfectly acceptable. If comps are below 3%, then it shows the business is probably just holding its own. The growth is nice, but it better be coming all from increased traffic to impress me. Of course, if comps are declining, that’s a disaster. 7 Best Dividend Funds for Retirement Target came in with comp traffic of 1.4% and comp sales of 0.9%. Meh. Not surprisingly, then, total revenues only rose 1.4%, and that was met with a 1.5% increase in cost of sales. So gross margins did improve by $50 million, or 1%. Alas, SG&A increased by $173 million, or 5%. That ended up on the bottom line, so operating income fell 18% from $1.06 billion to $869 million. I see no way of spinning this into good news. Add in another $112 million in added interest from higher debt, and net income finished at $480 million, down 21% from $608 million. Story continues This is not growth. TGT stock is not in great shape with these numbers. However, TGT stock is also not at death’s door. A profit is still a profit. Nine months into the year, and TGT stock has enjoyed $1.83 billion in profit. I won’t complain about that at all. The other thing I won’t complain about, and in fact will applaud, is TGT stock has great cash flow — the second-most important retailing metric. The first nine months shows $4.14 billion of it. Target also has $2.72 billion of cash on hand. Trading TGT Stock Which brings us to the challenge of gauging the direction of TGT stock price. The stock trades at 11x earnings, which isn’t expensive on an absolute scale. The problem is that net income is declining and investors pay for growth. Yes, to a certain extent they pay for the dividend, which is at a not-insignificant 4.3%. We also cannot ignore that in a bad environment for retail, TGT stock price hasn’t fallen below $48.56 per share, and is presently at $57.49. Macy’s Inc Stock Price Bump Does Not Mean Good Times Are Returning The stock is somewhat buoyed by the dividend and the overpriced market as a whole. So I would not go anywhere near TGT stock as an investment here. However, traders may want to think about opening a position, hoping for an upside holiday sales surprise, which could result in some solid upside. I would set a stop loss at around $54 to be safe. Lawrence Meyers is the CEO of PDL Capital, a specialty lender focusing on consumer finance and is the Manager of The Liberty Portfolio at www.thelibertyportfolio.com. He does not own any of the aforementioned stocks. He has 22 years’ experience in the stock market, and has written more than 1,600 articles on investing. Lawrence Meyers can be reached at TheLibertyPortfolio@gmail.com . More From InvestorPlace The 10 Best ETFs to Buy for Yield-Starved Investors 8 Bitcoin Stocks That You Won’t Lose Your Shirt Over 5 Blue-Chip Stocks to Buy for December The post Why You Should Leave Target Corporation Stock Off Your Shopping List appeared first on InvestorPlace . || Take Five - World markets themes for the week ahead: LONDON (Reuters) - Following are five big themes likely to dominate thinking of investors and traders in the coming week and the Reuters stories related to them. 1/TRUMP ON TOUR U.S. President Donald Trump embarks on his first trip to Asia in the coming week, stopping in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. Security concerns in the Korean peninsula and the South China Sea will grab a lot of attention, but investors will also look at trade talks, with Trump particularly keen to address his country's vast trade deficit with China that Beijing calls unintentional, but which he calls "horrible". There is also the first deluge of data since last month's People's Party Congress in China. Import and loan growth figures will be particularly closely watched. A weakening of the former would point to domestic demand finally flagging, while an acceleration of loan growth would show borrowers are finding ways around tighter new lending rules. China to cut consumer product tariffs, lift financing to boost imports-vice minister China's trade with the United States - http://reut.rs/2h7NNMm 2/BALLISTIC BITCOIN Investors' appetite for bitcoin appears to have no bounds. The digital currency climbed above $7,000 on Thursday for the first time ever, after an astronomical increase of more than 900 percent over the past 12 months. News that the world's biggest derivatives exchange operator, CME Group, was set to launch bitcoin futures was seen as a significant step in bitcoin's road to mainstream adoption, driving the latest surge in price. But with high-profile investors such as Warren Buffett and the head of Credit Suisse saying in recent days that the bitcoin market represents a bubble, could that be set to burst in spectacular fashion? What is to stop a rival cryptocurrency - of which there is a potentially unlimited quantity - from becoming investors' digital currency of choice? With bitcoin now worth more than $120 billion, more than Citi or Goldman Sachs, the consequences of a sudden crash could be severe. Story continues Bitcoin boom or bubble - http://reut.rs/2zbzihI 3/ NEED A JOLT? The Nov. 7 release of the September Job Opening and Labor Turnover (JOLT) survey (USJOLT=ECI) will show whether demand for labour has held up or is in need of an - ahem - jolt. At the moment, the ratio of job openings versus quit jobs is close to 2 to 1, hovering in a range close to the all-time peak of 2.12 hit in July 2015. It all comes following strong recent U.S GDP data and after Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives released plans on Thursday for a tax overhaul they believe will help lift the economy. U.S. Job Openings and Labor Turnover (JOLTS) - http://reut.rs/2zaKAT2 4/ITALIAN BANKS JOB Italy's biggest banks, including UniCredit (CRDI.MI), Intesa (ISP.MI) and Banco BPM (BAMI.MI), report their latest earnings and they could make encouraging reading following the euro zone-wide pick-up in growth and a strong rally in Italian debt over the last month. It certainly seems a long time since last year's bail out of problem child Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS.MI). It is now back in the market, and the main Italian banks are comfortably outperforming their euro zone peers in share performance (.SX7E) in 2017, so the results round should be telling. Italian banks doing the job - http://reut.rs/2h721gs 5/ VENEZUELA RESTRUCTURING After what feels like years of speculation, OPEC member Venezuela's socialist leader Nicolas Maduro wants to restructure the ailing country's foreign debt. Maduro has invited Venezuelan bondholders to a Nov. 13 meeting in Caracas to discuss the matter, although getting clearance from the compliance department could be interesting for the bankers involved. Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who is on a U.S. blacklist for alleged drug trafficking, said the country remained committed to paying all its debt but wanted to reformulate terms with creditors, which is likely to mean some lively bouts of price discovery. Venezuela oil exports - http://reut.rs/2zb0BIX (Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Hugh Lawson) || Bitcoin Shrugs Off “Russia Ban” Rumors, Keeps Rising: FromTyler Durden: After weeks of uncertainty surrounding Russia’s plans for cryptocurrencies, local news outletRBC reportsovernight that Bank of Russia is working with the country’s general prosecutor to block all exchanges offering Russians the opportunity to buy and sell cryptocurrency.
As CoinTelegraph reports, first deputy of the central bank, Sergey Shvetsov, said during an international finance forum in Moscow:
“It’s obvious that when a pyramid (scheme) grows, interest in this pyramid hots up with the high rate of return.”
The move is the most sweeping yet from Russian authorities regarding cryptocurrency access for citizens, and echoes the less coordinated bans of various industry resourcescommonuntil last year. The debate as to how to handle cryptocurrency has raged throughout 2017 in Russia, with various high-profile entitiesgiving conflicting viewsas to what the future will hold in terms of regulation.
This regulation is ostensiblydue to go publicby the end of the year.
The reaction was varied.As Coinivore notes,Bitcoin prices flash-crashed on CoinDesk…
Notably,this would be thethird timethat the country has issued some form of ban against Bitcoinand digital currency in the past several years.
Russia’s Central Bank justapprovedits first exchange “Voskhod,” sothis is likely a temporary banuntil regulations are set which will likely ban normal Russian citizens from investing into cryptocurrency due to high volatility.
However,Bitcoin is now higher on the day(bouncing back as it did from China’s ban), and as BitStamp data shows,not every exchange shows the flash-crash…
It seems the market for Bitcoin is quick to realize that the dcecentralized nature of the cryptocurrency framework means that whiole short-term demand from localized exchange closures may hobble prices, it does not affect the overall value of the independent currency (just as many have found out since China blocked exchanges).
We would not expect this to be the last nation to attempt to ‘ban’ Bitcoin.As Cybersecurity expert John McAfee warns,cryptocurrencies may encompass the sum of all fears for governments the world over.
With no centralized exchange to control or influence, national authorities around the world will find it increasingly difficult to determine a given citizen’s income and thus their income tax owed, undermining a critical source of government revenue.
The often outspoken and eccentric McAfee did highlight the need for some regulation, however, preaching caution over the latest trend of government-sponsored Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).
“China is right about one thing, the ICOs, the initial coin offerings, there are lots of scams, lots of people who are fraudulently taking money from other people, so that’s got to stop.But I don’t think governments can stop it. We as users and the bitcoin community have to be self-regulated,” McAfee said.
McAfee concluded:
“So banks and governments are the ones that have the fear. Well they should have some fear. They have taken control and power away from their citizens for hundreds of years. It’s time that we, as citizens, took that power back.”
Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust ETF (COIN)rose $0.62 (+0.24%) in premarket trading Tuesday. Year-to-date, COIN has gained 14.94%, versus a % rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.
This article is brought to you courtesy ofZeroHedge. || $8,000? Goldman Sachs Analysts See Possible Bitcoin Price Jump: Goldman Sachs analysts predicted that the price of bitcoin could surge as high as $8,000 in a note distributed to clients earlier this week.
According toBusiness InsiderandBloomberg, the note came as the cryptocurrency's price cleared a new all-time high above $7,600. Technical analysts Sheba Jafari and Jack Abramowitz cautioned that the signs are pointing to a new run up – albeit one that may take time to develop.
"This break indicated potential for an impulsive advance, one that could reach at least 7,941. This is the minimum target for a 3rd of 5-waves up and should therefore be a level from which to watch for signs of a consolidation," they wrote, according to Bloomberg.
At press time, the price of bitcoin is trading at around $7,092, according to CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).
The note represents the latest instance in which the investment bank has offered some possible guidance for its client base, which Goldman begancirculatingearlier this summer.
Andamid rumorsthat Goldman is considering a new client-facing brokerage built around cryptocurrencies, its influential CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, has struck a decidedly neutral tone on bitcoin, declaring his "openness" in recent statements and interviews.
"I’ve learned over the years that there’s a lot of things that work out pretty well that I don't love," he told Bloomberg last week.
Markets graph imagevia Shutterstock
• Confusion and Euphoria As Bitcoin Cash Surges Past $30 Billion
• Bitcoin Price Decline Continues As Markets Drop Below $6,500
• '2x' Boost? Bitcoin Cash Closes on Record High
• Bitcoin Isn't 'Too Expensive,' Says BTCC Boss Bobby Lee || Cryptocurrency hedge funds top 100 for first time: By Maiya Keidan LONDON (Reuters) - Hedge funds that trade cryptocurrencies reached over 100 for the first time, according to new data from fintech research house Autonomous NEXT, of which more than three-quarters launched in 2017. A rise from 55 funds at Aug. 29 to 110 funds at Oct. 18 comes as investors pile into the high-performing cryptocurrency market, which has seen a tenfold increase in its value so far this year. A booming Bitcoin rallied to record highs above $5,000 in recent days. Of the 110 funds, 84 were launched in 2017, 11 in 2016 and the remainder previously, according to the data. Assets across the 110 funds rose to $2.2 billion. (Reporting by Maiya Keidan and Jemima Kelly; Editing by Adrian Croft) || Global stocks dip on U.S. tax reform doubt; no respite in havens: By Trevor Hunnicutt NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global stock indexes and the U.S. dollar cooled off Friday as signs that U.S. tax reform could be delayed impeded the market's momentum. MSCI's global stock index, which tracks shares in 47 countries, declined 0.15 percent, slipping further from a record level. On Thursday, the global index fell 0.4 percent following 10 straight days of gains. The dollar index, too, fell 0.06 percent. The MSCI world index surged more than 20 percent so far this year, and some investors believe a pullback is due. "The pause that the market is currently in is directly related to what's going on from a tax standpoint," said Jim McDonald, chief investment strategist for Northern Trust Corp. Adding insult to injury, the pullback in stocks as well as softness in high-yield "junk" bonds this week did little to support traditional safe havens. Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury notes fell 21/32 in price to yield 2.4037 percent. The 30-year bond fell 50/32 in price to yield 2.8845 percent. [US/] Meanwhile, German government bond yields climbed to their highest in over a week as euro zone bonds were sold across the board for a second consecutive day. The yield on Germany's benchmark 10-year government bond hit 0.40 percent for the first time since Oct. 27. Spot gold dropped 0.7 percent to $1,275.61 an ounce. Gold pays no interest, so demand for it wanes when bonds offer higher yields. [GOL/] Citigroup Inc equity trading strategist Alex Altmann said it is rare for government bonds and equities to be hit at the same time. "It's a classic hallmark of momentum strategies unwinding," he said, referring to a investment strategy that favours buying recent winners and selling losers. "We may not get that calm ride into the end of the year.” Coal producer Canyon Consolidated Resources became the second junk-rated company to pull a bond sale this week, on Friday, capping a bout of volatility in credit markets. TAX OVERHAUL U.S. Republican senators said they wanted to slash the corporate tax rate in 2019, later than the House's proposed schedule of 2018, complicating a push for the biggest overhaul of U.S. tax law since the 1980s. The House was set to vote on its measure next week. But the Senate's timetable was less clear. "I would say a compromise will be reached," said Hirokazu Kabeya, chief global strategist at Daiwa Securities. "But if they indeed decide to delay the tax cut by a year, there is likely to be some disappointment." Wall Street retreated a bit on concern over delays in corporate tax cuts, which would hike profits, though a rise in some media and industrial stocks limited the slide. [.N] Story continues The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 39.73 points, or 0.17 percent, to 23,422.21, the S&P 500 lost 2.32 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,582.3 and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.89 point, or 0.01 percent, to 6,750.94. The pan-European STOXX 600 index suffered its worst week in three months, down 0.4 percent on Friday and falling for a fourth day in row. [.EU] "There's a feeling out there that there's a long-awaited correction, and no one wants to be caught by surprise," said Emmanuel Cau, global equity strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Crude was down as expectations the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers will extend their production cut agreement were offset by U.S. drillers adding the most oil rigs in a week since June, indicating output will continue to grow. [O/R] U.S. crude fell 0.56 percent to $56.85 per barrel and Brent was last at $63.61, down 0.5 percent on the day. Bitcoin dropped below $7,000 on Friday to trade more than $1,000 down from an all-time high hit on Wednesday, as some traders dumped it for a clone called Bitcoin Cash. Graphic - Major MSCI Indexes Price Performance YTD: http://reut.rs/2zqsj4B (Additional reporting by Kit Rees and Helen Reid in London and Hideuyki Sano in Tokyo; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and James Dalgleish) View comments || Retail sales, inflation, big banks — What you need to know in markets on Friday: The busiest day of the week for investors will come on Friday, with key economic data, big bank earnings, and the unlucky date of Friday the 13th looming.
The day’s biggest story will hit markets at 8:30 a.m. ET, when both the retail sales numbers and inflation data for September will be released.
Wall Street is looking for retail sales to rise 0.6% over the prior month, better than the 0.4% jump we saw in August.
Inflation will also be closely watched with this data having disappointed for most of the year, confounding some Federal Reserve officials who have been raising rates even as prices rise slower than the central bank’s 2% per year target.
“Core” inflation — which strips out the cost of food and gas and is the preferred measure used by the Fed — is expected to rise 1.8% over last year in September, up from the 1.7% increase we saw in August.
Also on the economic calendar will be the preliminary reading on consumer sentiment in October from the University of Michigan.
On the earnings side, big banks earnings are expected from Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC), the second- and third-largest U.S. banks by assets.
Wall Street is looking for Bank of America to earn $0.46 per share on revenue of $21.9 billion while Wells Fargo should earn $1.03 per share on revenue of $22.4 billion.
These results will follow earnings from JP Morgan (JPM) and Citi (C) on Thursday which both beat analyst expectations on the top and bottom line, though both firms noted weakness in their trading segments.
We’d also note that Friday is the 13th of the month, considered a day of bad luck, and one that has actually been a bit worse than average for the S&P 500. LPL Financialnotesthat since 1928, there have been 152 instances of Friday the 13th, and the S&P 500 has averaged an annualized gain of 4.2% on these days, below the 12.8% annualized return the index averages on all Fridays.
Right now, the most interesting thing happening in finance is in the cryptocurrency space.
To those not steeped in the field, watching the price moves and news related to Bitcoin serves as a broad proxy for interest in the space. On Thursday, Bitcoin hit a new record high andtraded above $5,000for the first time.
And while the cryptocurrency evangelists and early adopters will contend that the blockchain technology and its possible uses are way broader than Bitcoin — and, look, these people know a lot more than I do — Bitcoin is the world casual observers know.
And in this case, casual observers include big bank executives.
Recall that back in September JP Morgan CEOJamie Dimon made waveswhen he called Bitcoin a “fraud” and a bubble worse than the tulip bubble of the 1600s. Dimon added that he would fire anyone at JP Morgan he found trading Bitcoin. One of Dimon’s colleagues at JP Morgan, strategist Marko Kolanovic,also said in a note last monththat the cryptocurrency market “exhibits some parallels to fraudulent pyramid schemes.”
On Thursday, Dimon was asked by reporters for his thoughts on Bitcoin and said he was done talking about the cryptocurrency,according to Bloomberg. JP Morgan CFO Marianna Lake, however, was less done talking about cryptocurrencies as a general concept, saying that the bank is, “very open minded to the potential use cases in the future for digital currencies that are properly controlled and regulated.”
This is notable for two reasons: one being that, again, Dimon does not seem to be the biggest fan of this stuff and two, this is essentially a bank calling for regulation. And that is not something you see everyday.
But the commentary out of JP Morgan comes on the heels of Goldman Sachs (GS)reportedlylooking at setting up a trading venue for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfeinsaid on Twitterearlier this month that he was, “still thinking” about Bitcoin wasn’t endorsing or rejecting the concept.
Blankfein added that, “folks also were skeptical when paper money displaced gold.” So, there’s that.
Additionally, Wall Street strategist Tom Lee — mostly known for his calls on the stock market — has spent considerable time in the last few months writing research reports on cryptocurrency and said back in August that he had a $6,000 price target for Bitcoin by mid-2018.
Lee also sees Bitcoin rising to $25,000 by 2022 and his bullish view on the currency is “premised on expanded acceptance of digital currencies (as payment platforms), and ultimately broader adoption as a “store of value” (digital currencies have a lot of characteristics that make gold attractive).”
Now, some cryptocurrency early adopters would argue that Wall Street and banking types are merely covering their butts by caring about the technology now because eventually fiat money will be replaced by digital money. This is certainly a grand vision, and in this vision the rise of Bitcoin poses a systemic risk to the Western banking industrial complex that has predominated since World War II.
But Wall Street’s interest in Bitcoin is also likely driven by the fact that it’s new, it’s interesting, trading this stuff is exciting, and the potential upside is big. There is, at this point, clearly no putting the cryptocurrency genie back in the bottle and a development in how money moves around is something the financial sector cannot miss if it wants to continue being known as the financial sector.
When Bitcoin first entered the public consciousness in 2013, the meme was that all you could do with it was buy drugs online. But in 2017, there is real money to be made and real money being invested in the space. And finding new ways to make money is more or less the whole point of modern finance.
—
Myles Udland is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter@MylesUdland
Read more from Myles here:
• Why a new Federal Reserve chair won’t rattle markets
• America’s shortage of workers is about to get ‘much worse’
• The government can’t stop people from making the single-biggest investing mistake
• It’s never been harder to fill a job in America
• Berkshire’s Bank of America win is more proof you can’t invest like Buffett
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Russia's Central Bank Backs Move to Block Bitcoin Websites https://www.fxinter.net/en/free-realtime-forex-news.aspx?ID=206431&direct=Russia%27s+Central+Bank+Backs+Move+to+Block+Bitcoin+Websites … || Trezor Wallet, ##BitCoin, litecoin, BLACK, with ... - https://goo.gl/yUi6Zo #Antrouter #BitcoinMiner #BITCOINMININGCONTRACT #GntMiningpic.twitter.com/naeu4tUpFN || Oct 28, 2017 01:30:00 UTC | 5,866.90$ | 5,053.80€ | 4,468.80£ | #Bitcoin #btc pic.twitter.com/5g6gcIy14z || #bitcoin non si ferma più? Analisi tecnica || #Bitcoin #satoshi #BTC Las mejor FAUCETs2017,sin invertir,cada hora PAGANDO la única q te da intereses sobre saldo || Rumor or Not: Goldman Trading Would Change Bitcoin https://lnkd.in/emVjzSj || BTC Price: 4282.00$,
BTC Today High : 4434.01$,
BTC All Time High : 4742.42$
ETH Price: 291.85$ #bitcoin #BTC $BTC #ETH $ETHpic.twitter.com/1z7d5YWg5X || #bitcoin non si ferma più? Analisi tecnica || Price of 1 LTC to USD: $50.64 (Change: -0.88 %)
Price of 1 LTC to BTC: 0.0106262 Ƀ (Change: +0.63 %)
#litecoin #LTC $LTC || Oct 11, 2017 11:00:00 UTC | 4,815.40$ | 4,078.50€ | 3,650.20£ | #Bitcoin #btc pic.twitter.com/iDA6pgIrc7
|
Trend: up || Prices: 9330.55, 9818.35, 10058.80, 9888.61, 10233.60, 10975.60, 11074.60, 11323.20, 11657.20, 11916.70
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin to be major reserve currency by 2030: Research: Bitcoin(: BTC=)industry insiders have issued an optimistic prediction for the cryptocurrency over the next few decades, suggesting it could be as widely used as the Swiss franc or the Australian dollar.
U.K.-based Magister Advisors, which advises the technology industry on mergers and acquisitions, interviewed thirty of the leading bitcoin companies from across the globe. It found a consensus view that bitcoin will become the sixth largest global reserve currency within 15 years.
A reserve currency is a currency that is held in large amounts by governments and institutions as part of their foreign exchange reserves, with the U.S. dollar(Intercontinental Exchange US: .DXY)currently being the most popular.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency that allows users to exchange online credits for goods and services. It was trading at $374 on Tuesday morning, just off its year-to-date high, according to industry websiteCoinDesk. However, many observers believe the real value of the cryptocurrency lies in the technology behind the coin known as the blockchain, a public and transparent ledger of all bitcoin transactions.
The survey found that an estimated $1 billion will be spent by the top 100 financial institutions on blockchain-related projects over the next 24 months. Jeremy Millar, partner at Magister Advisors who led the research, said that the blockchain was the most significant advancement in enterprise IT in the last decade.
"We have now reached a fork in the road with bitcoin and blockchain. Bitcoin has proven itself as an established currency. Blockchain, more fundamentally, will become the default global standard distributed ledger for financial transactions," he predicted in an accompanying press release on Tuesday morning.
In September, 13 of the world's leading banks joined a project to explore the possibilities behind using a type of distributed ledger in the mainstream financial world. Institutions like Bank of America, Citi and Deutsche Bank joined others like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan which had already signed up.
For many, it's the ledger that shows the real promise while the cryptocurrency itself is seen by some as having more of a shelf life. Aside from financials, the public ledger has a host of other useful applications. Pantera Capital in the U.S. is investing in a firm that is using the technology to help detect counterfeiting in the luxury goods industry. Simon Derrick, chief currency strategist at BNY Mellon, told CNBC via email Tuesday that he suspects the interesting part to the bitcoin story will be the underlying technology and whether it facilitates the introduction of truly digital currencies.
Bitcoin is also renowned for its volatility and has been heavily criticized for facilitating illegal activity, given that it can be used anonymously.
Jeffrey Robinson, the author of "BitCon: The Naked Truth about Bitcoin" is one such notable critic. He has told CNBC previously that he believes it is a "pretend currency masquerading as a pretend commodity" and says bitcoin advocates are akin to "snake oil salesmen."
The report by Magister Advisors on Tuesday directly tackled this issue of volatility. It said that the primary usage of bitcoin today in developed markets was for speculation. The survey's respondents estimated that 90 percent of bitcoin by value is being held for speculation, not for commercial transactions.
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• Personal Finance || Ripple Adds Santander InnoVentures Fund as Series A Investor: SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 6, 2015) -Ripple, provider of global financial settlement technology (formerly known as Ripple Labs), today announced thatSantander InnoVentures--Santander Group's $100 million fintech venture capital fund -- has joined itsrecent Series A funding roundas an investor, bringing the round's total to $32 million.
Ripple's Series A funding round included a mix of traditional investment firms and global strategic investors that all support the vision for Ripple to enable an Internet of Value (IoV) by powering the real-time, secure settlement of funds for financial institutions and their customers worldwide.
"Santander InnoVentures is a natural fit in this round because of their demonstrated support for real-time international payments and their commitment to new technologies that enable Santander to empower its customers," said Ripple CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen. "We are excited to work closely with them in building the Internet of Value and accelerating adoption amongst financial institutions, market makers and businesses worldwide."
The Santander InnoVentures fund is an investment vehicle designed to partner with portfolio companies and explore new technologies that can be used in support of Santander's customer base.
"Santander has long been an advocate for modernizing banking infrastructure," said Mariano Belinky, Managing Partner of Santander InnoVentures. "In our recentFintech 2.0 report, we highlighted the $20 billion opportunity available to the financial services industry, and many of the scenarios where distributed ledger technology will have a positive impact."
Belinky added: "We believe Ripple possesses the talent, technology, and momentum to address many of these scenarios, and are actively exploring where and how best to apply Ripple technology inside the bank. Ripple and Santander share a common vision of the future of the industry, and we intend to jointly advocate it in the community."
Other investors in Ripple's Series A round includeIDG Capital Partners, the venture arms ofCME Groupand global data storage companySeagate Technology, Jerry Yang'sAME Cloud Ventures,ChinaRock Capital Management,China Growth Capital, Wicklow Capital, the investment vehicle for Dan Tierney and Stephen Schuler, co-founders of GETCO (now KCG),Bitcoin Opportunity Corp.,Core Innovation Capital,Route 66 Ventures,RRE Ventures,Vast Ventures, andVenture 51.
Ripple provides bank-grade solutions that enable the world's disparate financial networks to securely transfer funds in any currency in real time. Financial institutions use Ripple as an alternative to correspondent banking to facilitate real-time, certain settlement at the lowest total cost possible.
Ripple was created to enable the world to move value as easily as information moves today, giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV) akin to today's Internet of Knowledge. For more information about Ripple, please visithttp://www.ripple.com.
About Ripple
Rippleprovides global financial settlement solutions to ultimately enable the world to exchange value like it already exchanges information - giving rise to an Internet of Value (IoV). Ripple solutions lower the total cost of settlement by enabling banks to transact directly, without correspondent banks, and with real-time certainty of settlement. Banks around the world are partnering with Ripple to improve their cross-border payment offerings, and to join the growing, global network of financial institutions and market makers laying the foundation for the Internet of Value.
Ripple is a venture-backed startup with offices in San Francisco, New York and Sydney. As an industry advocate for the Internet of Value, Ripple sits on theFederal Reserve's Faster Payments Task Force Steering Committeeand is a member of theW3C's Web Payments Interest Group.
About Santander InnoVentures
Launched in July 2014 with a global remit to invest in transformational fintech business, Santander InnoVentures is based in London. The fund builds on the bank's philosophy of collaboration and partnership with small and start-up companies. Santander InnoVentures provides fintech companies with growth finance, industry expertise and access to Santander's internal technology and operations organisations.
Through this hybrid approach to investing, Santander Group ensures continuous innovation within its own business to the benefit of customers around the world, as well as helping new fintech businesses to succeed. Santander InnoVentures focuses on working with fintech businesses operating within digital delivery of financial services, e-commerce and payments, online lending, e-financial investments, big data and analytics.
The Fintech 2.0 Paper is a call to action for both banks and fintechs to consider the multi-billion dollar opportunities available through partnership. Download the full paper, exploring these opportunities in-depth and identifying specific use-cases, here:www.santanderinnoventures.com/fintech2
For more information, visitwww.santanderinnoventures.com. Follow Santander InnoVentures on Twitter:@SanInnoventures.
Banco Santander(SAN.MC, STD.N, BNC.LN) is a leading retail and commercial bank, based in Spain, with a meaningful market share in 10 core countries in Europe and the Americas. Santander is the largest bank in the euro zone by market capitalization and among the top 12 banks on a global basis. Founded in 1857, Santander had EUR 1.51 trillion in managed funds, 12,910 branches and 190,000 employees at the close of June 2015. In the first half of 2015, Santander made ordinary attributable profit of EUR 3,426 million, a 24% increase. || Liberal Interpretation Of IPO Helps This ETF Enjoy Facebook's Surge: There are a few certainties surrounding Facebook Inc (NASDAQ: FB)'s meteoric rise. It is irrefutable that the stock is up more than 17 percent over the past month. Likewise, it cannot be debated that now home to a market value north of $306 billion (as of Thursday's close), Facebook is worth more than all but a handful of S&P 500 companies. What can be debated is whether or not Facebook is a “new” stock. Three and a half years removed from its initial public offering, Facebook might be new compared to some public companies, but in this case, it depends on what one's view of “new” actually is. In the eyes of the First Trust US IPO Index Fund (NYSE: FPX) and the IPOX®-100 U.S. Index, that ETF's underlying index, Facebook still qualifies as an IPO. In fact, FPX currently possesses the largest weight to Facebook of any U.S.-listed ETF. With a Facebook allocation of 10.9 percent as of November 4, FPX's weight to Mark Zuckerberg's weight just nudges past the weights to that stock found in the First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund (NYSE: FDN) and the Global X Social Media Index ETF (NASDAQ: SOCL). Approximately 80 ETFs currently hold shares of Facebook. Related Link: A New Sector ETF Defends Against Rising Rates On The Cheap Indeed, FPX and its index are somewhat liberal when it comes to viewing how long a new stock is, well, new. For example, AbbVie Inc. (NYSE: ABBV) is coming up on its third anniversary as a public company while Phillips 66 (NYSE: PSX) is more than three and a half years removed from its debut as a public company. Yet those companies combine for 14.5 percent of FPX's weight. FPX's primary rival, the Renaissance IPO ETF (NYSE: IPO), is more strict. It limits components' stays in the fund to two years, meaning Facebook no longer resides in IPO. FPX's underlying index “is a rules based value-weighted index measuring the average performance of U.S. IPOs during the first 1000 trading days. Index constituents are selected based on quantitative initial screens,” . Story continues The bit about 1,000 trading days is important because investors looking to use FPX as a proxy on further upside in shares of Facebook do not need to worry about the ETF suddenly dropping the stock. Based on FPX allowing stocks to stay for 1,000 trading days and how many trading days Facebook has currently been around for, it will be sometime in 2017 before FPX has to part ways with the stock. See more from Benzinga Ferrari Races Into Its First ETF Home Buy Some Bitcoin With This ETF Tech ETFs Depend Heavily On Apple Earnings © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || IBM Gets Behind Blockchain: While bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have struggled to find mainstream appeal, blockchain, the ledger like technology that they run on, has been touted as one of the most important technological advancements of the past decade. The system has the ability to facilitate transactions in a way that many say will transform more than just the financial industry.
That idea is now being put into practice by tech giantInternational Business Machines Corp.(NYSE:IBM), as the company announced that it is working to use the technology to create a "smart contracts" system.
Related Link:Buy Some Bitcoin With This ETF
Smart Contracts
TheWall Street Journalreported that IBM Research Senior Vice President Arvind Krishna said that the firm is working on a way to develop blockchain technology into a system that can facilitate contracts. The system is expected to eventually be released as open-source software and will likely give other big name companies reason to look into using the technology.
Improving Business Transactions
IBM's smart contracts system won't include the use of cryptocurrencies, but will instead draw on blockchain's ability to track individual transactions but keep the details private. The idea is to allow companies to embed rules into their contracts and allow the blockchain system to enforce them.
One example the company is looking into would be a system that automatically pays for goods once they are delivered, however the possibilities for using the technology could reach into several aspects of business operations.
See more from Benzinga
• IBM Uses Tennis To Demonstrate Its Dominance In Data
• U.S. Tech Firms Hope To Have A Say In New EU Digital Market Rules
• iBusiness, iPrograms: Apple Stretches Its Legs
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Caribbean's Next Top Model Set for Season 2 Premiere: MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Oct 15, 2015) - On October 19, young women from all over the Caribbean will begin chasing their dreams of success as career models, when the second season of Caribbean's Next Top Model (CNTM) makes its premiere on Flow TV. Cable and Wireless, which operates both the Flow and LIME brand, is the premium sponsor for the show's sophomore season, which will run for 11 episodes, starting on October 19.
The Caribbean reality show is based on the successful original production -- America's Next Top Model. This regional program follows the stories of young women seeking to launch a career in the competitive world of modelling, and is produced and presented by Wendy Fitzwilliam, a former Miss Universe, successful model and entrepreneur.
"We are extremely excited to be partnering with Wendy Fitzwilliam and her Caribbean's Next Top Model team," said John Reid, President of the C&W Communications, Consumer Group. "We are not just committed, but we are also proud to support Caribbean producers who generate quality local content for the region." Reid also noted that customers now have more options to access the exciting regional programme across multiple platforms, including their TV and other smart devices, where the mobile option was available. Customers in Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Cayman, and Curacao will also be able to access the show at their convenience using Flow's Video on Demand (VOD) feature. Aside from the many viewing options, Flow customers, will also be able to participate in other exciting promotions including weekly SMS competition to win a new iPad, tablet, or other great prizes.
Commenting on the partnership, Fitzwilliam said, "It is so refreshing when a corporate entity recognises the need for support and undertakes the responsibility of enabling the development of Caribbean talent and content -- Flow has definitely got it right. With Flow you get more -- CNTM's fans will get a wholesome entertainment experience, one that is as interactive and engaging as possible. With Flow's quad play technology, viewers can truly enjoy the upcoming season to the fullest extent."
Caribbean Next Top Model will be broadcast simultaneously on the Flow TV platform across the region on Monday nights from October 19 at 7:30 p.m. in Curacao, Jamaica, Cayman Islands and at 8:30 p.m. -- in Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, St. Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda and The Bahamas. As the season unfolds, each CNTM episode will first air on Flow TV and will then air on other stations, five days after the initial Flow airing.
Season Two of Caribbean's Next Top Model will premiere with a star-studded fashion event at the Betsy Hotel on South Beach, Miami on October 19.
About C&W Communications
Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) is a full service communications and entertainment provider, operating in the Caribbean and Latin America. With annual sales of over US$2.4 billion, it operates both mobile and fixed networks, supported by submarine and terrestrial optical fibre backhaul capacity. Through the acquisition of Columbus International Inc on 31 March 2015, C&W now delivers superior high-speed mobile data, broadband and TV/video services. It has leading market positions in Mobile, Fixed Line, Broadband and TV consumer offers.
Through its business division, C&W provides data centre hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customised IT service solutions, utilising cloud technology to serve business and government customers.
The company also operates a state-of-the-art subsea fibre optic cable network that spans more than 48,000 km -- the most extensive in the region -- as well as 38,000 km of terrestrial fibre providing wholesale and carrier backhaul capacity and a growing suite of wholesale managed services.
C&W has more than 7,500 employees serving over 6 million customers (Mobile 3.8m; Fixed Line 1.1m; Video 460k and Broadband 665k) as well as over 125k corporate clients and 225 wholesale customers across 42 countries. The Company's leading brands include: LIME and Flow in the Caribbean; BTC in The Bahamas; Mas Movil in Panama; C&W Business and C&W Networks. C&W is the market leader in most products offered and territories served. It is a major contributor to local communities through its corporate social responsibility programs.
Cable & Wireless Communications' shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker CWC. The company is headquartered in London with its operational hub located in Miami, within close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America. For more information visit:www.cwc.com. || Pot Resort To Open Fully Booked On New Year's Eve: In September, the Santee Sioux tribe of South Dakota announced that it was embracing new laws that allow Native American Tribes to sell and consume marijuana on their reservations by opening a marijuana-themed resort. The tribe outlined plans to create the ultimate "adult playground" where people could come to relax and enjoy marijuana in public spaces without fear of being prosecuted. Now, the Tribe's lawyers say that reservations for the resort's opening night are flying in, and that the establishment will likely open its doors for the first time to a sold out weekend. See Also: Relax And Get High New Year's Eve Opening The marijuana resort is slated to open on New Year's Eve, providing the perfect atmosphere for partygoers who are interested in making cannabis a part of their 2016 celebrations. The venue will feature dance clubs and a dedicated smoking lounge where around 30 different strains of cannabis will be on offer. The tribe's attorney Seth Pearman said the resort has already booked in rooms for 100 people as interest continues to grow. Tribal Revenue Much like casinos, many Native American tribes are hoping to bring in revenue from marijuana sales as laws allow them to sell and use the drug even if the state they reside in has classed it as illegal. For the Santee Sioux tribe, that has opened the door for a revolutionary idea to create the world's first cannabis resort. However, the venture comes with its own risks as the marijuana industry is still under the microscope. For one, the tribe will have to ensure that marijuana isn't taken off the reservation and that visitors aren't buying too much of the stuff. However, for the tribe, which has struggled to stay afloat financially, the estimated $2 million per month the resort is forecast to bring in is well worth it. See more from Benzinga Bitcoin Takes A Hit In Australia Small Businesses Turn To Online Lenders As California's Drought Drags On, Winners And Losers Emerge © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin is going nuts: (George Frey/Getty Images)
Another day, another monster run for bitcoin traders.
Bitcoin was trading around $240 in the beginning of October. Now — after a gain of 10% on Tuesday added to its earlier run — it's closer to $400.
Now, bitcoin traders are looking for answers as to why the cryptocurrency is skyrocketing in value.
"You're seeing more and more institutional investors moving into the space," said Brendan O'Connor, CEO of Genesis Global Trading, a bitcoin broker.
Demand has been coming from China. O'Connor said the daily volume of bitcoin trades from China has been two to three times the ordinary amount over the past two weeks.
It's not just the value of bitcoin that's increasing; it's also the prevalence of use.
The number ofdaily bitcoin transactions appears to be steadily rising, according to tracking site Coinbase. And that has the potential to have a tremendous effect on the cryptocurrency.
"We are seeing unprecedented volume globally," said Michael Sonnenshein of Grayscale Investments, which manages the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a publicly listed vehicle that tracks bitcoin. Bitcoin Investment Trust hasn't been public very long, but it enjoyed a run-up ofmore than 7% on the good news Tuesday.
Neither O'Connor nor Sonneshein centered on a single factor that is boosting bitcoin's value. Sonneshein pointed out that as bitcoin auctions run by the US Marshals draw closer (only in a handful of instances), the cryptocurrency tends to see increased trading activity.
The next government auction of seized bitcoin isNovember 5.
Here's a graph tracking bitcoin:
(Blockchain.info)Blockchain.info captures the run-up in bitcoin prices.
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• FINANCE PROFESSOR: Bitcoin Will Crash To $10 By Mid-2014 || Cable & Wireless Communications Scores With Exclusive Premier League Football Rights From Seasons 2016/17 to 2018/19: MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Oct 7, 2015) - Starting next season, the Premier League will have a new home in the Caribbean. Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) today announced that it has won the exclusive rights to broadcast live all 380 matches per season of the Premier League across 32 Caribbean countries from 2016/17 to 2018/19. Commencing in August 2016, the Premier League will be available on the Caribbean's newest sports network -- Flow Sports . CWC was also awarded the mobile clip rights, allowing fans to follow the latest goals and action from the world's best football league on any mobile device. The extensive coverage of live Premier League matches will form the centerpiece of Flow Sports' programming schedule. The network will be launched in November 2015, with content that includes coverage of international and regional football, cricket, rugby, tennis and athletics, as well as CWC's exclusive NFL and Rio 2016 Olympics coverage. Flow Sports will broadcast across the region from a new 4-K-ready, state-of-the-art facility in Trinidad, offering 24/7 sports coverage in HD. Commenting on the exclusive rights award, John Reid, President of CWC's Consumer Division said: "We are thrilled to partner with the Premier League across the Caribbean. As the most popular league of the world's greatest sport, the Premier League will be at the heart of Flow Sports, the region's newest and largest sports network. We are excited as well to bring additional jobs, skills and investment into the Caribbean with our new Trinidad facility, truly showcasing the power of the new Cable & Wireless and our commitment to the region." CWC's market research has shown that sports programming is a key decision driver for customers purchasing TV and broadband packages. Approximately 70% of customers identify as being 'sports fans,' with the Premier League dominating sports viewing in the Caribbean. Reid added: "As the region's leading quad play operator, we look forward to bringing Caribbean sports fans closer to the action with our innovations in mobile and online viewing. With our Flow ToGo application and access to mobile clips, fans won't miss any of the excitement that truly defines this tremendous sports asset. Flow Sports will be available in our basic subscription package, meaning more games for more fans, and instantly positioning Flow as the home of sports in the Caribbean." Story continues Phil Bentley, Chief Executive of Cable & Wireless Communications said: "Following our merger with Columbus and our re-branding to Flow, the agreement with the Premier League is yet another example of the growing momentum building across the Caribbean, delivering significant additional revenue synergies through cross-selling and upselling, as well as improving customer loyalty. This is set to accelerate over the next few years." Richard Scudamore, Chief Executive of the Premier League said: "We are very pleased that Cable & Wireless Communications has chosen to invest in Premier League broadcasting rights in the Caribbean. "We look forward to welcoming them as a new partner and are sure they will do excellent job making the competition available to fans across the region." About Cable & Wireless Communications: Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) is a full service communications and entertainment provider, operating in the Caribbean and Latin America. With annual sales of over $2.4bn, it operates both mobile and fixed networks, supported by submarine and terrestrial optical fibre backhaul capacity. Through the acquisition of Columbus International Inc. on 31 March 2015, CWC now delivers superior high-speed mobile data, broadband and video services. It has leading market positions in Mobile, Fixed Line, Broadband and Video consumer offers. Through its business division, CWC provides data centre hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customized IT service solutions, utilizing cloud technology to serve business and government customers. The company also operates a state-of-the-art subsea fibre optic cable network that spans more than 42,000 km -- the most extensive in the region -- as well as 38,000 km of terrestrial fibre providing wholesale and carrier backhaul capacity. CWC has more than 7,000 employees serving over 6 million customers (Mobile 3.8m; Fixed Line 1.1m; TV 460k and Broadband 665k) as well as over 125k corporate clients across 42 countries. The Company's leading brands include; LIME and Flow in the Caribbean; BTC in The Bahamas; Mas Movil in Panama; C&W Business and C&W Networks. CWC is the market leader in most products offered and territories served. It is a major contributor to local communities through its corporate social responsibility programmes. Cable & Wireless Communications' shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker CWC. The company is headquartered in London with its operational hub located in Miami, within close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America. For more information please visit: http://www.cwc.com About the Premier League: The Barclays Premier League is the most-watched, continuous, annual sporting event in the world. Last season 13.9 million fans attended matches with record average stadium occupancy of 95.9%. Across nine months of the year, 380 matches are viewed in 185 countries with coverage available in over 725 million households. || October Treat: Junk Bonds and Gold ETFs Pop: The stock market rebound continued this week as the S&P 500 touched its highest level in nearly two months. The SPDR S&P 500 (SPY | A-99) is now up 5.8 percent in October, a strong performance in a month that has historically been the second-worst of the year (after September). Gold & Silver Miners Dominate Jump On Monday, we highlighted the best-performing exchange-traded funds of October . Those funds, comprising mostly copper and energy producers, are still doing well in the month. However, a new group of ETFs have bullied their way into the top 10: gold and silver miners. In fact, precious-metals-related funds now make up six of the top 10 positions for October, as can be seen from the table below. Top 10 ETF Of October Ticker Fund Return (%) SILJ PureFunds ISE Junior Silver (Small Cap Miners/Explorers) 27.86 COPX Global X Copper Miners 25.61 PLTM First Trust ISE Global Platinum 25.30 CU First Trust ISE Global Copper 25.23 SLVP iShares MSCI Global Silver Miners 25.07 SGDM Sprott Gold Miners 24.04 KWT Market Vectors Solar Energy 23.29 RING iShares MSCI Global Gold Miners 23.28 GDX Market Vectors Gold Miners 22.60 SIL Global X Silver Miners 22.41 Considering the big jump in gold prices this month, the performance of these ETFs hasn't been surprising. The yellow metal hit the highest point since mid-June this week, leading the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD | A-100) to a gain of 5.7 percent in October. Miners tend to be much more volatile than the underlying metal, which explains their significant outperformance. Yet even as these ETFs rally, investors haven't been too keen on buying into them. None of the top 10 price performers saw significant inflows, and in fact, investors pulled out $429 million from the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX | C-79) during the first half of the month. Investors Buying Bonds While ETF investors haven't been too enthusiastic about miners, they did show interest in gold itself. So far this month, GLD has attracted $483 million in inflows, putting it just outside the top 10 inflows list for the month. Story continues One salient theme that has emerged during October is the idea that the Federal Reserve will hold off on hiking interest rates this year due to global slowdown concerns and the recent string of weak U.S. economic data. That's propelled gold higher, as well as bonds. In fact, bonds are the asset class that's attracted the most capital this month. As can be seen from the table below, generated using the ETF.com fund flows tool , a number of bond ETFs made the top 10 inflows list: Source: ETF.com Fund Flows Tool The iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF | A-51) was a big winner, with nearly $1 billion in inflows. To the extent that the Fed's overnight interest rate stays lower for longer, that puts pressure on the longer end of the yield curve as well (supporting bond prices). Even more popular than IEF were corporate bond ETFs like the SPDR Barclays High Yield Bond ETF (JNK | B-68) and the iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD | A-77) . In addition to support from low interest rates, corporate bonds benefited from speculation that defaults may not be as high as feared. That's particularly true for the junk bond space, which was hammered in August and September, sending yields to their loftiest level since 2011. Investors may be seeing those yields as attractive now that the stock market has stabilized and the Fed looks to be on hold. In addition to the bond ETFs, other funds that saw notable inflows were the tech-heavy PowerShares QQQ (QQQ | A-66) and the large-cap iShares Russell 1000 Value (IWD | A-90) . In terms of sectors, investors liked the Industrial Select SPDR (XLI | A-92) and the Consumer Discretionary Select SPDR (XLY | A-91) . Contact Sumit Roy at sroy@etf.com . Recommended Stories Gundlach: Sell Junk Bonds, Buy India Bitcoin Rally Benefiting ETFs NatGas Investing Not For Faint Of Heart October Treat: Junk Bonds & Gold ETFs Pop Twitter Chatter Packed In New Index Permalink | © Copyright 2015 ETF.com. All rights reserved || Blockchain For Banks Could Be A Big Business: Cryptocurrencies have received a lot of attention over the past few years as more and more people took an interest in the technology. However, much of the buzz surrounding cryptocurrencies like bitcoin was negative after a spate of high profile scams and criminal cases involving the currency painted it as a tool for illicit activities. While bitcoin may never become a mainstream payment method, blockchain, the ledger-like technology that it runs on, has been touted as one of the most important developments of the decade. Related Link: Bitcoin May Be Flailing, But Blockchain Is On The Rise Banks On Board Traditional finance firms have been reluctant to embrace bitcoin as a currency, but blockchain is another story. Banks around the world including Bank of America Corp (NYSE: BAC ), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS ) and Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB ) have all taken an interest in blockchain , saying they could see the technology improving how they do business. Blockchain provides a secure way to facilitate transactions without involving a third party intermediary. Banks say this could be useful for everything from sending payments to setting up a smart contracts system. Implementing Blockchain While many banks are studying blockchain using task forces set up within their own company, several startups have emerged to help banks study the impact of blockchain on their operations. Blockstack, Eris Ltd and Coin Sciences are all private firms that offer companies blockchain solutions. They offer banks the ability to experiment with blockchain systems that meet their specific needs, rather than providing them with something that needs to be modified. See more from Benzinga Can Social Media Firms Compete With Amazon In The E-Commerce Space? Cyberweapons Replace Nuclear Threats In Global Arms Race Things Are Looking Brighter For Europe © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$332.65/$332.78 #Bitstamp
$329.44/$330.00 #BTCe
⇢$-3.34/$-2.65
$334.78/$334.93 #Coinbase
⇢$2.00/$2.28 || In the last hour, 8 people won 1.00 BTC playing Bitcoin lottery at http://10xbtc.com , the easiest BTC lottery, 160BTC Jackpot || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges:
Cryptsy: Error
Bittrex: 0.00000004
Average $1.5E-5 per #reddcoin
03:00:01 || Current price: 228.99€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2015-10-17 00:40:21 CEST || Current price: 284.91$ $BTCUSD $btc #bitcoin 2015-10-25 21:00:03 EDT || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges:
Cryptsy: 0.00000004
Bittrex: 0.00000005
Average $1.0E-5 per #reddcoin
17:00:01 || $331.00 at 16:15 UTC [24h Range: $322.91 - $342.00 Volume: 25974 BTC] || 1 #bitcoin 800 TL, 272 $, 247.22 €, GBP, 17100.00 RUR, 33000 ¥, CNH, 366.88 CAD #btc || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges: Cryptsy: Error Bittrex: 0.00000004 Average $1.2E-5 per #reddcoin 21:00:02 via #priceo…pic.twitter.com/Es51Mlwabf || LIVE: Profit = $114.72 (1.90 %). BUY B26.16 @ $230.00 (#BTCe). SELL @ $231.50 (#HitBTC) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org
|
Trend: no change || Prices: 330.75, 335.09, 334.59, 326.15, 322.02, 326.93, 324.54, 323.05, 320.05, 328.21
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2022-06-07]
BTC Price: 31155.48, BTC RSI: 50.42
Gold Price: 1847.50, Gold RSI: 46.76
Oil Price: 119.41, Oil RSI: 65.19
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
El Salvador Acquires 500 Additional Bitcoin Amid Market Drop: Don't miss CoinDesk'sConsensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.
The government of El Salvador, which was the first country to make bitcoin (BTC) legal tender last fall, has continued its bitcoin buying spree with the purchase of an additional 500 tokens for roughly $15.3 million, President Bukeletweetedon Monday.
• According to Bukele, the average price El Salvador paid for each bitcoin was $30,744. The price of bitcoin has dropped almost 10% to $31,053 over the last 24 hours.
• The bitcoin purchase made on Monday appears to be the tenth and the largest made by El Salvador so far.
• On Jan. 21,El Salvador made its last bitcoin purchase, acquiring 410 bitcoins at an average price of $36,585 per coin.
• El Salvador now appears to hold around 2,301 bitcoins, currently worth just under $71 million.
• El Salvador postponed its planned $1 billion bitcoin bond offeringin March because of unfavorable market conditions, according to Finance Minister Alejandro Zelaya.
Read more:US House of Representatives to Consider Legislation on El Salvador’s Bitcoin Adoption || MORNING BID-TGIF - is it over yet?: A look at the day ahead in markets from Dhara Ranasinghe.
After a wild ride, markets are in a calmer mood for now. Yet, it is Friday 13 and those prone to superstition would be forgiven for being extra cautious on a day renowned for being unlucky.
Given turbulence across asset classes this week, it's not hard to see why. Look at the euro, it suffered its biggest one-day drop against the dollar on Thursday since March 2020, tumbling over 1%.
The S&P 500, which managed to claw back some ground late Thursday, is set for a sixth straight week of declines. That would mark the first time in over a decade the U.S. stock index would have done so, Deutsche Bank says.
And then there's the carnage in the crypto currency universe, with the market nursing large losses even if bitcoin has edged back above $30,000.
To be fair there's a lot of head scratching over why exactly some crypto currency tokens supposed to be pegged to the dollar faltered earlier this week.
One underlying reason for the pain there, as well as across risk assets, comes back to worries about high inflation and rising interest rates and whether this will bring a hard landing for the world economy.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday the battle to control inflation would "include some pain," repeating his expectation of half-percentage-point rate rises at the next two policy meetings.
The day ahead is relatively quiet on the data front, perhaps giving investors time to take stock of a wild week. But there's also the potential for more volatility.
In Europe, pressure to secure alternative gas supplies is increasing after Moscow imposed sanctions on European subsidiaries of state-owned Gazprom.
Gas prices surged on Thursday, with the key European benchmark gaining 12% as buyers were unsettled by the mounting threats to Europe's supply given its high dependence on Russia.
That's just one more headwind to the world economy rattled markets could do without.
Key developments that should provide more direction to markets on Friday: - Kuroda rules out near-term chance of tweaking BOJ's dovish guidance - Bitcoin eyes record losing streak as 'stablecoin' collapse crushes crypto - ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel speak - Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari - Central Banks meet in Mexico, Peru Serbia - University of Michigan sentiment index/ inflation expectations - European earnings: Deutsche Telekom
(Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe, editing by Karin Strohecker) || Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Discount Widens to All-Time Low of 30.79%: Don't miss CoinDesk's Consensus 2022 , the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12. The $18.3 billion Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the world's largest bitcoin ( BTC ) fund, has seen its market discount widen to an all-time low of 30.79% this week as crypto markets suffered one of their most volatile weeks in recent times, data shows . Each share of GTBC holds $26.46 worth of bitcoin as of Friday, according to Grayscale. But GBTC itself trades at $18.35 at writing time. GBTC is currently one of the only ways for stock traders in the U.S. to gain exposure to the price movements of bitcoin without the need to purchase the actual cryptocurrency. For years, the GBTC fund traded at a premium to the underlying bitcoin price, but it flipped negative in early 2021 due to several factors , including the launch of spot-based exchange-traded funds (ETF) in Canada, which provided an alternative to those looking to invest in bitcoin through a stock market vehicle. The discount could be taken as a bearish indicator because it might mean a waning interest in bitcoin among traders. But it also is seen by some opportunistic traders as a way of scooping up bitcoin on the cheap. GBTC discount Unlike for exchange-traded funds, the trust has no built-in market mechanism to keep the GBTC share price trading close to the underlying value of the bitcoin. Last year Grayscale applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to convert GBTC into a spot exchange-traded fund. Many analysts are skeptical the SEC will approve the conversion anytime soon, though some traders have bought GBTC as a way of betting on the prospect of the SEC's nod; in that sense, a wider discount signals dimming optimism for such an approval. In the meantime, investors are getting charged fees. The recent crypto sell-off also may have contributed to a wider GBTC discount. Bitcoin fell as low as $24,000 on Thursday, before recovering to over $30,000 early Friday. The asset has lost 23% of its value in the past month amid inflation concerns and weak sentiment in broader equity markets. Grayscales parent company, Digital Currency Group, is also the owner of CoinDesk, which is run as an independent subsidiary. || Bitcoin whale Michael Saylor tries to defuse fears over MicroStrategy margin call: Crypto diehards suffered a brutal month, and there are few bigger backers than the Bitcoin whale himself, Michael Saylor. His software company, MicroStrategy, has effectively become little more than a levered play on rising Bitcoin adoption rates through events like Fidelitys 401(k) launch , a shot heard round the world, according to Saylor this month. Since his titular core business is unable to produce enough cash to satisfy his appetite for the cryptocurrency, the CEO has borrowed heavily to finance his buy-and-hold strategy. Lately that included the first-ever Bitcoin-backed term loan for $205 million, which resulted in 19,466 Bitcoin from its own holdings set aside to meet the minimum requirement of $410 million security. With leverage, however, comes the risk of margin calls. So when news emerged earlier this month that it might be forced to post further collateral if the price drops below $21,000 , investors were spooked, fearing a whale might be forced to liquidate part of his holdings. Saylor, after all, has made it crystal clear his company is not the equivalent of a crypto prop desk earning trading income from short-term fluctuations in Bitcoins price that could prove to be a systemic risk for the crypto community. [MicroStrategy] has 115,109 Bitcoin that it can pledge, he tweeted, referring to his Q1 presentation and assuring fellow HODL (hold on for dear life) believers on Tuesday there were other ways of meeting obligations without a fire sale. Thanks to reserves of 129,218 Bitcoin currently worth $2.9 billion on its balance sheet and roughly $4.1 billion at the going market price, MicroStrategy is the largest public holder of the cryptocurrency. Saylor is positioning his company to investors as little more than an exchange-traded fund, with two key differences. Our goal will be to offer them the same Bitcoin holding but without charging that [management] fee, and to use intelligent leverage from time to time when the opportunity presents itself, Saylor told investors last week. Story continues If you think it would be a reasonable idea to borrow money at 1.8% interest to buy Bitcoin, then MicroStrategy looks like a rational company to invest in. Over the past month, however, the father of all cryptocurrencies has seen a quarter of its value wiped out thanks to an inflation-fighting Federal Reserve raising demand for its fiat rival. This story was originally featured on Fortune.com || Stocks rise, U.S. yields slip as markets await Fed rate hike: By Herbert Lash and Danilo Masoni
NEW YORK/MILAN (Reuters) -A gauge of global equity markets edged higher on Tuesday while 10-year U.S. Treasury yields slid from the 3% level as investors remained cautious, expecting the Federal Reserve to hike rates by the most in a single day since 2000 to curb inflation.
Feeding inflation worries, data showed U.S. job openings hit a record in March as worker shortages persisted. This suggested employers may need to raise wages, which likely would increase consumer prices.
Investors expect the Fed to hike rates by half a percentage point on Wednesday, and to detail plans to reduce its $8.9 trillion balance sheet. The U.S. central bank raised its policy interest rate by 25 basis points in March.
Major stock indices in Europe rose, but Wall Street eked out smaller gains as traders braced for a potentially more aggressive decision by policymakers on Wednesday.
"The Fed's not going to be worried if eventually these next few rate hikes start to hurt growth and lead to some job losses, because right now the economy is on solid footing," said Ed Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA.
MSCI's all-country world index rose 0.39% and the pan-European STOXX 600 index gained 0.53% the day after a "flash crash" in Nordic markets caused by a trade involving a single Citigroup sell order.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 0.2%, the S&P 500 gained 0.48% and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.22%.
"We could get a dead-cat bounce after the Fed meeting if it's not more hawkish than what the market has been fearing," said Jimmy Chang, chief investment officer at the Rockefeller Global Family Office, "but I do think the broader trend is still very cautious on the equity side."
Nine of the S&P 500's sectors rose, led by a 2.87% gain in energy, while oil and gas jumped 4.1% in Europe to lead markets there.
Overnight in Asia, Australia's central bank raised its key rate by a bigger-than-expected 25 basis points, lifting the Aussie dollar as much as 1.3% and hitting local shares.
The Bank of England is expected to raise rates on Thursday for the fourth time in a row.
Asian equities on Tuesday were mostly steady in holiday-thinned trade, with both Chinese and Japanese markets shut. But in Hong Kong, Alibaba shares fell as much as 9% on worries over the status of its billionaire founder Jack Ma.
A state media report that Chinese authorities took action against a person surnamed Ma hit the stock hard, but it recouped losses after the report was revised to make clear it was not the company's founder.
Germany's benchmark 10-year Bund yield rose to 1% for the first time since 2015, before retreating as caution set in ahead of the anticipated U.S. and UK rate hikes this week.
The yield on 10-year Treasury notes fell 1.5 basis points to 2.981%, after breaching the key milestone of 3% for the first time since December 2018 on Monday.
The dollar fell against a basket of major currencies as investors weighed how much of the Fed's expected move to hike rates this week and beyond was already priced in.
The dollar, which has been supported by safe haven buying on worries over the economic outlook, stayed just below the nearly two-decade high reached in April and the euro steadied above the lowest level in more five than years hit last month.
The dollar index fell 0.106%, while the euro rose 0.17% to $1.0522. The Japanese yen was little changed at 130.16 per dollar.
Oil slipped as concerns about demand due to China's prolonged COVID lockdowns outweighed support from a possible European oil embargo on Russia over the war in Ukraine.
U.S. crude futures settled down $2.76 at $102.41 a barrel, while Brent fell $2.61 to settle at $104.97 a barrel.
Copper and aluminium prices fell sharply as weak manufacturing data on Monday, COVID-19 outbreaks in China and rising rates stoked fears that demand for metals will soften.
Gold firmed, tracking a slight retreat in Treasury yields and the dollar, while investors eyed an aggressive rate hike by the Fed on Wednesday.
U.S. gold futures settled up 0.4% at $1,870.60 per ounce.
Bitcoin fell 2.56% to $37,535.85.
(Reporting by Herbert Lash, additional eporting by Danilo Masoni in Milan; Editing by Alexander Smith, Bernadette Baum and David Gregorio) || Senator Elizabeth Warren Questions Fidelity’s Offering To Allow Bitcoin for 401(k) Plans: Not everyone’s on board with Fidelity’splan to allow bitcoin in 401(k) plans, especially with the asset’s recent extreme volatility. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Tina Smith sent a letter to Fidelity’s CEO, asking the company to explain why they have failed to heed the Department of Labor’s (DOL) warning about 401(k) crypto investments and raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest presented by Fidelity being both a bitcoin miner and a purveyor of bitcoin.
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“We write to inquire about the appropriateness of your company’s decision to add bitcoin to its 401(k) investment plan menu and the actions you will take to address ‘the significant risks of fraud, theft and loss’ posed by these assets,” the Senators wrote in the May 5 letter.
On April 26, Fidelity Investments launched what it deems the industry’s first offering that will enable investors to have a portion of their retirement savings allocated to bitcoin through the core 401(k) plan investment lineup.
The new offering, which bitcoin-bull firm MicroStrategy plans to add to its 401(k) plan later this year, will be available broadly to employers mid-year.
“Fidelity is thrilled to launch a first-of-its-kind workplace digital assets account that will enable individuals to have a portion of their retirement savings allocated to bitcoin through the core 401(k) plan lineup. This new offering represents the firm’s continued commitment to evolving and broadening its digital assets offerings amidst steadily growing demand for digital assets across investor segments,” Dave Gray, head of workplace retirement offerings and platforms at Fidelity Investments, told GOBankingRates at the time.
The senators added in the letter that, “investing in cryptocurrencies is a risky and speculative gamble, and we are concerned that Fidelity would take these risks with millions of Americans’ retirement savings.”
POLL:Do You Think the Fed Raising Rates Will Help or Hurt the Economy?
Amid a market bloodbath following the Fed’s decision last week, cryptos have not been spared. On May 9, Bitcoin was hovering around $32,000, 52% down from its all-time high level of $69,044, reached in November 2021, according to CoinGecko.
Simon Peters, Market Analyst at eToro, wrote in a note on May 9 that the concern now for crypto-asset investors is when the slide will end.
“The market is caught in the wider adversity of investment markets that are battling to decide where comfortable levels are in the wake of interest rate hikes designed to quell soaring inflation around the Western world,” he wrote in the note sent to GOBankingRates. “The market is now moving more closely with other major risk assets such as tech and other stocks. This is indicative of the major shift in the presence of institutions within the crypto-asset market, which now account[s] for a much greater proportion of ownership and tend[s] to bundle their decision-making on crypto with other major assets.”
Peters added that market volatility and underperformance tend to correct in time so what is key now is for investors to ensure they’re happy with their investment cases and are prepared to stay the course for more volatility ahead.
Finally, the Senators added in the letter that bitcoin’s volatility, “is compounded by its susceptibility to the whims of just a handful of influencers. Elon Musk’s tweets alone have led to bitcoin value fluctuations as high as 8%. The high concentration of bitcoin ownership and mining exacerbates these volatility risks.”
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In an email sent to CNN, Fidelity said that “as a Massachusetts-based company with a proven 75-plus-year history of doing what’s in the best interest of our customers, we look forward to continuing our respectful dialogue with policymakers to responsibly provide access with all appropriate consumer protections and educational guidance for plan sponsors as they consider offering this innovative product.”
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This article originally appeared onGOBankingRates.com:Senator Elizabeth Warren Questions Fidelity’s Offering To Allow Bitcoin for 401(k) Plans || Bitcoin losses steepen, dangling at $40K before March inflation report: Bitcoins losses accelerated on Monday, capping off a week of declines during the cryptocurrencys annual conference and ahead of the latest inflation reading on Tuesday that is spooking investors. As of Monday afternoon New York time, BTC is losing ground and currently changing hands below $40,000, having dropped 8.5% in the last five days, worse than the S&P 500 (-3.7%) but closer to the Nasdaq Composite (-7.1%). Ether (ETH) is down 5.9% and trades just below $3,000 per unit. Bitcoin is struggling here as rising rates are leading to a de-risking moment for many traders, wrote Edward Moya a senior analyst with Oanda in a research note, With no momentum from the Bitcoin 2022 conference, the focus shifts to inflation and expectations are for a very hot report that will probably be the peak. Since cresting its year-to-date high above $48,000, bitcoin has sold off more than 17% yet still holds a 1.8% gain on where it stood a month ago. Ether is down more than 20% year to date, but improved 16% in the last month. A bitcoin ATM is seen at a stand during the Bitcoin Conference 2022 in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S. April 6, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello (Marco Bello / reuters) Based on the data from crypto derivatives aggregator, Coinglass, and digital asset firm, CoinShares, last week started a correction in the crypto market. Total liquidations on the short and long side of the Bitcoin derivatives market has steadily increased to $768.54 million in net long positions from Tuesday to Sunday, meaning Bitcoin bulls might have over-invested based on conference expectations. Additionally, during last weeks conference investors shed $134 million of positions in digital asset funds with 98.5% coming from Bitcoin investment products such as the Bitcoin ETFs $BITO and $BTF (both down more than 13% in the last 5 days), according to a new report from CoinShares. Meanwhile, investment products shorting bitcoin received $2 million. We believe that price appreciation the previous week may have prompted investors to take profits last week, the authors wrote in the report, pointing out that the selling period for Bitcoin investment products alone doesnt suggest any significant stress among investors. Story continues Bitcoin investment products make up 7.6% of Bitcoins total volume but overall BTC volumes remain below average as well, the report noted. Over the weekend, the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), a nonprofit which manages the reserves for the Terra protocols algorithmic stablecoin (UST), added an additional $173 million in BTC to its treasury. After having made regular BTC purchases over the past several weeks, the organization holds 39,898 BTC ($1.6 billion) but their persistent buying efforts havent dissuaded the sell-off. The logo of Crypto.com is seen at a stand during the Bitcoin Conference 2022 in Miami Beach, Florida, U.S. April 6, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello (Marco Bello / reuters) According to the crypto analytics firm, Glassnode, the percentage of circulating BTC that have not moved in a year reached its highest level Sunday at 63.7% of the coins total issued supply. The figure shows that while long-term investors remain bullish on the assets trajectory, its less liquid supply means 36.3% of investors holding Bitcoin are driving the assets sell-off. The latest reading on consumer prices for March is due out on Tuesday, with the White House predicting the inflation reading will be extraordinarily elevated due to Putins price hike, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. In the past five months, bitcoin has sold off an average of 2.36% on the day of U.S. CPI release with January readings proving an outlier, staying flat (0.37%) according to charts from Yahoo. Most analysts agree that Bitcoin hasnt proved itself out as an inflation hedge. However, a recent survey from the crypto exchange Gemini indicates that newcomers outside the U.S. might think otherwise . According to the survey, 46% of respondents living in countries where the local currency has experienced high inflation, said certain cryptocurrencies are a great way to protect against inflation. Before todays performance in the crypto market, Michael Safai, a founding partner with the proprietary crypto trading firm Dexterity Capital, would have considered the latest U.S. inflation reading to have a negligible impact on crypto prices even if the reading shows new highs. Since bitcoin has tumbled to $40,000 he isnt so sure. After such a drop investors wonder whether its a blip or a sign of prolonged bearishness to come. Their search for meaning magnifies the impact of news and data, positive or negative, Safai told Yahoo Finance. Investors may take high inflation data as a sign of economic weakness that governments cant shake off and sell off a bit more strongly than they would have otherwise. They may also choose to ignore it, depending on how Asia reacts to what's unfolded overnight," he added. YF Plus David Hollerith covers cryptocurrency for Yahoo Finance. Follow him @dshollers . Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter , Instagram , YouTube , Facebook , Flipboard , and LinkedIn || Bitcoin payments for local taxes in the works, Gold Coast mayor says: The mayor of Australias Gold Coast, Tom Tate, has suggested that city residents could be paying council rates, or local property tax, in Bitcoin. See related article: Aussie watchdog obtains cold wallet holding US$20M in Bitcoin involved with alleged scam Fast facts It sends a signal that were innovative and bring in the younger generation, said Tate, acknowledging the plan is still in the research phase. Critics argue Bitcoin is too volatile to be used for purposes such as tax payments, but Tate dismissed the concern, saying the volatility is not that bad. Bitcoin has fallen over 56% since its all-time high in November to trade at US$29,951 as of press time . Residents of both El Salvador and the Central African Republic can pay taxes in Bitcoin, where the cryptocurrency is legal tender. The Gold Coast is the second-largest city in the eastern Australian state of Queensland and is a popular holiday destination due to its long beaches and excellent surfing conditions. See related article: Byron Bay to host Australias largest Bitcoin mining operation using green energy || GLOBAL MARKETS-U.S. yields jump to 3-year highs, stocks slide on CPI outlook: (Adds closing U.S. markets prices) By Herbert Lash NEW YORK, April 11 (Reuters) - Global stock markets fell on Monday, pulled lower by technology shares in Europe and on Wall Street, as U.S. Treasury yields jumped ahead of inflation data that could prompt the Federal Reserve to tighten policy enough to slow a rebounding economy. The euro rose against the dollar to snap a seven-day losing streak as the single currency rallied after French leader Emmanuel Macron beat far-right challenger Marine Le Pen in France's first round of presidential voting on Sunday. The dollar held just below almost two-year highs against a basket of currencies and strengthened against the Japanese yen, up 0.88%, and versus the commodity currencies - the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand dollars. The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries rose more than 7 basis points to 2.793%, the highest level since January 2019. Yields have surged in anticipation of Fed rate hikes, which Dec Mullarkey, managing director of investment strategy and asset allocation at SLC Management, expects to be by 50 basis points at each of the Fed's next three policy meetings. "The Fed is going to move aggressively. The market has appropriately priced it in," Mullarkey said. "They don't want to be an issue in the midterms," Mullarkey added, referring to elections in November that will determine whether Republicans can wrest control from President Joe Biden's Democrats in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. "They also do not want to be in the position where they don't have inflation under control." Economists polled by Reuters forecast the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) on Tuesday would post an 8.4% year-over-year increase in March. Separately, they also saw the probability of a recession next year at 40%. Technology shares, which have been underpinned by record low interest rates, fell 2% in Europe and 2.6% on Wall Street. Story continues MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe closed down 1.33% and the pan-European STOXX 600 index slid 0.59% as regional bourses fell with the exception of France's CAC 40. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.19%, the S&P 500 lost 1.69% and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.18%. All 11 S&P 500 sectors fell. Volatility gripped French blue chips on the outlook for a tight Macron-Le Pen race in the final round of voting. French assets have underperformed as markets are uneasy about Le Pen's agenda of protectionism, tax cuts and nationalization. The CAC 40 index, which is off 1.5% so far in April as the STOXX 600 gains about 0.4%, closed up 0.12%. "I don't expect the French equity markets to rally until we have the second round - we expect a lot of volatility and range-bound trading," said Mathieu Racheter, head of equity strategy at Julius Baer. "It is really a close call in the runoff." Overnight in Asia, MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1.6% and the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo slid 0.61%. Oil prices dropped by $4 a barrel, with Brent tumbling below $100 on plans to release record volumes of crude from strategic reserves and on continuing COVID-19 lockdowns in China. U.S. crude futures fell $3.97 to settle at $94.29 a barrel while Brent settled down $4.30 at $98.48. Palladium steadied after jumping as much as 5% on supply concerns following a recent suspension on trading of the metal sourced from Russia in the London metals hub, while gold was buoyed by inflation fears. U.S. gold futures settled up 0.1% at $1,948.20 an ounce. Bitcoin fell 5.66% to $39,748.60. China's inflation figures surprised on the high side on Monday although they were still relatively modest at 1.5% year-on-year in March. But that still saw yields on China's 10-year government bonds fall below U.S. Treasury yields for the first time in 12 years on Monday. (Reporting by Herbert Lash, additional reporting by Samuel Indyk and Elizabeth Howcroft in London, Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Angus MacSwan, Will Dunham and David Gregorio) || Quantum International Corp. (QUAN) Provides The Origins Of The LootUp App And The Technical Reasons It Was Conceived: Denver, Colorado--(Newsfile Corp. - April 25, 2022) - Quantum International Corp. (OTC Pink: QUAN), today is providing the origins of the LootUp App.
An explanation of the origins and the technical reasons Justin Waiau and his team from LGCY decided to build LootUp.
The LGCY Blockchain team debated for months on tokenomics, ethics, and decentralization trying to create a bulletproof blueprint without ego. Satoshi's vision was to have Bitcoin be perfect and never altered. The LGCY team felt that perfection was not possible nor should it even be a goal. As time changes the technology needs to be able to change along with it. It is impossible to create future proof tech, but tech that can grow with the future should be the goal of any good company.
LGCY Network is not about perfection, it's about being flexible and adapting. This is how they came up with the Governing Bodies.
LGCY Network utilizes a Delegated Proof of Stake system of government. Governing Bodies are a group of incentivized and educated delegates that vote on network proposals. Not everyone should be allowed to vote on what changes need to be made on a network (as in the classic Proof of Stake system). But token holders should be allowed to have their vote represented by a qualified delegate.
The biggest contribution to this new system is USDL. USDL is a stable gas coin that is backed by network fees. The biggest issue with building a decentralized application (besides speed and low fees) is volatility. By backing 1 USDL with approximately 1 USD worth of network fees, projects are able to budget properly.
As an added benefit, with a stable gas token users can exchange funds without worrying about skyrocketing gas fees. Cryptocurrency will never be useful for buying and selling goods in a system where gas fees cost more than the merchandise.
Sorting out gas fees and transaction speeds was only half of the initial problem. What about the long addresses, no room for error, and general non-intuitive nature of cryptocurrency as it stands?
The solution to this is the LootUp App.
LootUp, amongst many other features, will allow the user to send to usernames instead of long addresses, give sponsored gas options, and will have the ability to cancel and confirm transactions. Since the app is built on the LGCY Network blockchain, LootUp will be non-custodial and peer-to-peer. Allowing users to discuss payments through a messenger inside the app, creating invoices, and providing a decentralized marketplace to buy and sell products, the LootUp app will have everything needed for the general public to utilize the safety and security of blockchain technology without the headache.
The goal has always been to make blockchain technology user friendly and accessible to everyone. LootUp is the path forward.
"We are currently in the testing phase of the LootUp App. Will have more news on the release in the coming weeks. We are very excited about the forthcoming release of LootUp, it will truly change the way users will transact Decentralized Payments," said Justin Waiau CEO.
About LootUp
Welcome to a New Era of Decentralized Payments. LootUp, a Non-Custodial P2P Payment Platform, aims to become the first globally adopted decentralized payment platform that is self-regulated and which is backed by a digital asset.
Statements in this press release that are not historical fact may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Although Quantum International Corp believes the expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, Quantum International Corp is unable to give any assurance that its expectations will be attained. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law.
Contact Information:Justin Waiauquantumintlcorp@gmail.com
To view the source version of this press release, please visithttps://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/121540
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 30214.36, 30112.00, 29083.80, 28360.81, 26762.65, 22487.39, 22206.79, 22572.84, 20381.65, 20471.48
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2021-05-20]
BTC Price: 40782.74, BTC RSI: 32.76
Gold Price: 1881.80, Gold RSI: 74.83
Oil Price: 62.05, Oil RSI: 43.65
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Apple claims websites can replace iOS apps, but cant name a single developer that has done it successfully: (Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash) Apple has claimed that web applications accessed through its browser are comparable in quality to downloading apps from its App Store . This is despite technical limitations, an inability to cite a single developer who had substituted a native app for a web app successfully, and having conducted no studies into the matter. The apparent contradiction comes in filings for an antitrust case in Australia , and recent court documents submitted as part of Apples dispute with Fortnite developer Epic Games . Apple and Google have 40 per cent and 60 per cent of the global smartphone market, respectively; yet because iOS apps do not work on Android, and visa-versa, the Australian government is examining whether there is adequate competition for the smartphone giant. In its defence, Apple made the case that: Web browsers are used not only as a distribution portal, but also as platforms themselves, hosting progressive web applications (PWAs) that eliminate the need to download a developers app through the App Store (or other means) at all. Progressive web applications are websites that cache information on the smartphone; they can have an app icon on the home screen, can work offline, support push notifications, and can load faster than the browser. Web apps are becoming increasingly popular, Apple continued. Amazon, for example, has just launched its Luna mobile gaming service as a web app. Microsoft and Google are also launching gaming apps on iOS via web apps. The developer of the Telegram messaging app has also recently stated that it is working on a rich web app for iOS devices. However, as revealed by court documents in Epic Games case , Apple has apparently not performed any studies or analysis that have examine[d] potential performance differences between web apps and native apps. This is possibly due to the restrictions that web apps have versus native apps, those downloaded through Apples App Store. Web apps can only access 50MB of cache memory, and browsers have limited access to APIs. Story continues Epic Games filings state that the ability to create and directly distribute web apps does not lead developers to opt out of distributing native apps through the App Store, with Ron Okamoto, Apples VP of Developer Relations, unable to name a single developer that withdrew an app from the App Store because the developer could substitute to distributing a web app. Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, has also criticised Apple for its ability to completely restrict which apps you use , despite Apple citing the service as an example of competitive practices. Telegrams rich web app, which would run via Safari on iOS, works almost as smoothly as the native app but is still not the same thing and is meant to work only in extreme cases if for any reasons, Durov continued. Amazons Luna and Microsofts xCloud are also prohibited from the App Store, due to Apples rules that prevent separate app store options on iOS . These rules do not exist on Android, where smartphone manufactures like Samsung and Huawei operate their own app stores. In response, Apple pointed out that Fortnite would be available through streaming on Nvidia GeForce Now, providing an alternative means for Epic to reach all of the iOS consumers that it could otherwise reach through the App Store. For this case, the issue of app store payments remains a key issue between Apple and Epic Games, with Apple banning Fortnite from iPhones and iPads after Epic attempted to circumvent the smartphone companys in-app payment system which takes a 30 per cent cut of any purchase made. In response many third-part developers, including Spotify and Protonmail , have claimed that Apple has near total control over the mobile ecosystem and what apps consumers get to use
with no oversight, regulation, or fair competition. Epic Games customers, Apple argues, would be able to make purchases via Safari or another platform like a PC and then use the in-game items on their iPhone and as such are not limited by App Store restrictions. Read More Secret service agent's daughter shares advice father gave to protect herself What is Bitcoin mining and why is it so harmful to the environment? Elon Musk shares video of monkey playing video games with its mind || Fidelity applies to launch a bitcoin ETF: March 24 (Reuters) - Fidelity applied on Wednesday to launch an exchange traded fund to track the performance of bitcoin, the latest move on Wall Street to embrace the digital currency.
Fidelity's Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust would hold bitcoin and value its shares based on prices from major cryptocurrency exchanges, including Coinbase and Bitstamp, according to a preliminary filing https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1852317/000119312521092598/d133565ds1.htm to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"The digital assets ecosystem has grown significantly in recent years, creating an even more robust marketplace for investors and accelerating demand among institutions. An increasingly wide range of investors seeking access to bitcoin has underscored the need for a more diversified set of products offering exposure to digital assets,” Fidelity said in an emailed statement.
Fidelity's filing follows bitcoin's surge to an all-time high of nearly $62,000 this month, the latest milestone in a meteoric rise partly fueled by bigger U.S. investors.
Earlier this week, former Trump administration White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci jumped into the fray for a bitcoin exchange-traded fund with his SkyBridge Capital joining forces with First Trust Advisors, according to a filing.
Coinbase Global Inc, the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, said last week that recent private market transactions had valued the company at around $68 billion this year ahead of a planned stock market listing. (Reporting by Noel Randewich; Editing by David Gregorio) || The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Vishay Intertechnology, Applied Materials, MACOM Technology Solutions, Micron Technology and Analog Devices: For Immediate Release Chicago, IL – April 6, 2021 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. VSH, Applied Materials, Inc. AMAT, MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc. MTSI, Micron Technology, Inc. MU and Analog Devices, Inc. ADI. Here are highlights from Monday’s Analyst Blog: 5 Semi Stocks to Gain from Infrastructure Overhaul Shortage of semiconductor chips has necessitated heavy investments in the manufacturing domain. Global chip shortage has also aggravated fears regarding China targeting global leadership in the semiconductor industry. Notably, U.S. semiconductor companies account for 47% of global chip sales, while 12% of global manufacturing is done in the country. The apprehensions gained further momentum following an investment of $120 billion by Chinese government to shore up the semiconductor industry in the country. In fact, on Feb 11, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) board of directors, emphasized in a letter to President Biden that the share of global semiconductor manufacturing in the United States has steadily declined from 37% in 1990 to 12%, presently. The letter was intended to draw the President's attention to this concern and urge him to include robust funding for semiconductor manufacturing and research in his recovery and infrastructure plan. In this regard, President Biden earmarking a significant amount on infrastructure spending is expected to come as a respite for semiconductor manufacturing stocks. Biden's $2.3 trillion infrastructure overhaul spending package calls for $50 billion for the American semiconductor industry in an attempt to address a worldwide shortage of chips. The plan also sets aside an amount of $174 billion to boost the electric vehicles markets. Story continues Biden's focus on the electric car industry and expansion of high-speed broadband access is expected to aid semiconductor companies, which provide chips and other components utilized in electric cars and support the digitization. Growth Prospects Abound Technology is driving digitalization and semiconductors are the backbone of the current-day technology-driven economy. The digitization across industries, adoption of cloud computing, and the integration of AI and machine learning are fueling the demand for semiconductors, like never-before. This has highlighted the need to tackle the manufacturing woes to the core. The SIA announced on Mar 1 that global semiconductor sales reached $40 billion in January 2021, up 13.2% year over year, driven by rise in semiconductor production to meet pent-up demand and ease the ongoing chip shortage that is persistently affecting the auto sector and others. Also, sales inched up 1% beginning December 2020. In fact, per IDC data, the global semiconductor market is projected to hit $476 billion in 2021, up 7.7% on a year-over-year basis, based on gradual recovery as economies open up following circulation of COVID-19 vaccines. Further, increasing adoption of multi-cloud and network upgrades to support 5G is a tailwind. The optimism surrounding semiconductor stocks can also be ascertained by the robust performance of iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF in the past year, which has rallied 103.5% compared with the SPDR S&P 500 ETF's rise of 51.3%. Further, SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF, which tracks the S&P Semiconductor Select Industry Index, has gained 113.9% in the past year. Considering growth prospects of the chip makers driven by the optimism stemming from the new plan amid the 5G boom and HPC push tailwinds, it makes sense to invest for long-term gains. Here we shortlisted five stocks that appear alluring investment options at the moment. Vishay Intertechnology is riding on strength across its resistor, diode and opto product lines and expanding manufacturing capacities. Further, robust magnetics offerings, which are driving growth in the specialty business, are contributing to its performance. Also, expanding presence in the industrial, military and medical end-markets owing to strong resistors and capacitors is a positive. Additionally, growing opportunities for capacitors in the areas of power transmission and electro cars are tailwinds. Further, recovery in the automotive sector and Asian markets especially China is another positive. Moreover, solid momentum of MOSFETs across automotive market is a tailwind for this currently Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here . The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company's 2021 earnings has been revised upward by 30.1% in the past 60 days to $1.73 per share. Applied Materials is driven by strong momentum across Semiconductor Systems and Applied Global Services. Further, solid demand for silicon in several applications across various markets remains a tailwind. Additionally, growing momentum among long-term service agreements is fueling the performance. Furthermore, increased consumer spending in foundry and logic on the back of rising need for specialty nodes in automotive, power, 5G rollout, IoT, communications and image sensor markets is a major positive. Also, strong momentum in conductor etches is benefiting the company's position in DRAM and NAND. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company's fiscal 2021 earnings has been revised upward by 19.4% in the past 60 days to $5.98 per share. Applied Materials currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). MACOM Technology Solutions is gaining from the growing proliferation of cloud services and solid momentum across data center and telecom markets. Increasing clout of cloud services is benefiting both domestic and international deployments of the company. Additionally, high-performance analog components such as TIAs, CDRs and drivers, which are required in 100G deployment, are strengthening the company's presence in the data center market further. The company remains optimistic regarding strong 5G network deployments, rising demand for its RF and microwave products, strength across defense applications and growing data center traffic, which are expected to continue driving its top-line growth in the near term. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for MACOM's fiscal 2021 earnings has been revised upward by a penny in the past seven days to $1.89 per share. MACOM carries a Zacks Rank #2, at present. In semiconductor-memory vertical, Micron Technology is gaining from solid memory-chip demand among data-center operators as more and more workers and students work and learn from home amid coronavirus induced social-distancing measures. Furthermore, it is well-poised to benefit from the resurgence in DRAM demand, backed by a progress in customer inventory adjustments in the cloud, graphics and the PC markets. Increasing mix of high-value solutions, enhancement in customer engagement and improvement in cost structure are positives. Growing demand from cloud-computing providers and acceleration in 5G adoption are also contributing to the performance of this currently Zacks Rank #2 company. Digitization across industries, increased uptake of cloud computing and services, and the integration of AI and machine learning are likely to fuel demand for Micron's chips. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2021 earnings has been revised upward by 15.9% in 30 days' time to $4.52 per share. Last but not least, investors can count on Analog Devices , which is benefiting from strengthening momentum across electric vehicle space on the back of its robust Battery Management System (BMS) solutions. Markedly, the company offers solid power protection, optical network control, sensor and connectivity infrastructure, and DC-DC power conversion solutions utilized in high density servers, storage and networking equipment, which enable data center operators to bolster efficiency. Additionally, rising acceptance of advanced radio systems in 5G infrastructures is strengthening the company's communication business. Furthermore, the solid momentum of the HEV platform across the cabin electronics ecosystem remains a tailwind. Management also remains optimistic about growth opportunities related to 5G. Further, growing power design wins are major positives for this currently Zacks Rank #2 company. Notably, the company is acquiring Maxim. The deal is expected to drive Analog Devices' growth across several emerging growth markets. The consensus mark of $6.01 per share for its fiscal 2021 earnings has moved north by a penny over the past seven days. Bitcoin, Like the Internet Itself, Could Change Everything Blockchain and cryptocurrency has sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the "Internet of Money" and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree we're still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities. Zacks' has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly. See 3 crypto-related stocks now >> Media Contact Zacks Investment Research 800-767-3771 ext. 9339 support@zacks.com https://www.zacks.com Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss . This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Micron Technology, Inc. (MU) : Free Stock Analysis Report Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI) : Free Stock Analysis Report Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (VSH) : Free Stock Analysis Report MACOM Technology Solutions Holdings, Inc. (MTSI) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research || Bitcoin, ethereum and the blockchain technology behind decentralised finance: Ethereum is the worlds second largest cryptocurrency platform. Photo: Budrul Chukrut/SOPA/LightRocket via Getty (SOPA Images via Getty Images) Decentralised finance, also known as DeFi, is a fast-growing sector of the cryptocurrency industry. Its a blockchain-based form of finance that doesnt rely on central financial intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges or banks to offer services. Instead, DeFi offers a more open alternative that is accessible to anyone with a smartphone and good internet connection. As of January 2021, approximately $20.5bn (£15bn) was invested in DeFi. But what exactly is it - and why is it transforming financial services? What is DeFi? DeFi, a rapidly growing sector within financial services, is a technology that uses the blockchain and cryptocurrencies to remove financial intermediaries from transactions. This creates a quicker, cheaper, more efficient and more secure way of providing financial services, explains Mike Edwards, the CEO of Dispersion Holdings , the second DeFi investment firm to list in the UK. Edwards is the co-founder of the LSE-listed Argo Blockchain ( ARB.L ). A decentralised financial system at its core allows for buyers, lenders and borrowers among others to interact with each other without involving themselves with any intermediaries such as banks, companies and institutions, he explains. Read more: Record-breaking Bitcoin tumbles on Yellen warning Most DeFi applications are built on top of ethereum, the worlds second largest cryptocurrency platform. Decentralised applications use smart contracts, which are digital programmes operating autonomously to facilitate contracts and transactions. DeFi is transparent and accessible to everyone, allowing users to keep full control over their assets and interact with each other through decentralised technology and applications, adds Edwards. Watch: What are the risks of investing in cryptocurrency? How does DeFi work? DeFi services are carried out on a blockchain a decentralised account of all transactions between two parties and essentially cut out the middleman in financial transactions. Story continues Usually in any transaction your money will be controlled externally by a bank or institution, Edwards says. With DeFi, smart contracts cut out the intermediaries. Smart contracts are essentially computer codes or programmes which execute all parts of a financial agreement. This means that transactions carried out with DeFi are faster and do not involve any intermediary costs. Funds are also entirely in the users custody which reduces the risk of security issues, he adds. Ethereum allows for complete financial autonomy as it is not owned by anyone and you are always in control of your funds. Crucially, much of the interest in DeFi is linked to giving people more control over their money and what they do with it. Read more: Bank of England's Bailey on crypto: 'Be prepared to lose all your money' DeFi is a pioneering force with regards to accessibility and is, in my opinion, set to create one of the most significant changes in the financial sector, says Edwards. Most DeFi platforms take the form of decentralised apps, otherwise known as dapps. These use a series of smart contracts to automate financial transactions. This automation enables faster, cheaper and more efficient transactions within the financial world and avoids any potential human biases, Edwards explains. Another major benefit is that anyone with an internet connection and personal device will be able to use DeFi technology to access financial services, he adds. DeFi can provide innovative financial services which are tailored to the needs of individual users as opposed to institutions, presenting consumers with greater control over as well as bespoke opportunities for using their money. DeFi is also entirely transparent and all transaction activity is public for anyone to view as contracts are open sourced. Privacy is also retained as transactions are not linked to any real-life identities. As such, DeFi boasts an incredibly high level of user trust, something which traditional FinTech still struggles to achieve, Edwards says. What are the challenges facing the DeFi sector? That being said, DeFi is still in its infancy. There are still challenges to overcome, including a lack of understanding around DeFi and how it operates. Moreover, there are an array of decentralised platforms which differ in quality and reliability, says Edwards. Users have also been subject to ineffectual platforms, regressive technologies and in some cases, scams. However, he adds, companies like his own are well-suited to address these challenges. We have assembled a highly qualified team with an established track record and deep expertise in the DeFi, crypto and digital asset management sectors, Edwards says. Using our contacts and expertise we will successfully identify and invest in projects that we deem to be reliable and efficacious. As such, we are not only helping innovate the DeFi ecosystem, but we are also providing investors with a safe, reliable and effective route to invest in DeFi. Watch: What is bitcoin? || Penthouse in the Netherlands Set to be Sold for 21 BTC: A penthouse in the Netherlands is set to be purchased entirely with bitcoin totaling one million euros.
The sale will become the first ever purchase of a property in the Netherlands, completely paid for using bitcoin.
According to Dutch online publicationNOS, the buyer of a penthouse in Veghel is set to purchase the property entirely using bitcoin. The property is currently up for sale at a whopping one million euros.
Accordingto Van de Laar Makelaardij in Sint-Oedenrode, the purchase will be completed “within a few days”.
“Yes, in principle we have someone who wants to buy this,” says Bart Greijmans of Van de Laar Makelaardij. “Now we are exactly figuring out how we can arrange all this, but we will succeed” he stated.
Greijmans believes the deal will be done. But the sale ofpropertyusing cryptocurrencies is not a common. He states that there are no examples of how cryptocurrency transactions for property purchases are done. “…we have to work with lawyers to ensure that everything is properly written down, for both the seller and the buyer”.
However Greijmans admits that the experience is exciting. As it offers the company the opportunity to see how it can work.
Purchasing of property with bitcoin is not a common practice anywhere in the world. With the NVM real estate association stating that no trend has been seen yet.
Marc van der Lee of NVM believes the volatility in price of bitcoin makes it difficult to determine an exact sale amount for property when usingbitcoin. He states “This is almost impossible with the current system”.
Furthermore, van der Lee believes that if two parties are happy to proceed in a deal for bitcoin, then they are happy to assist. The lack of knowledge surrounding how to access and use bitcoin appears to be a stalling point.
Van der Lee admitted that he has no problem assisting with transactions in BTC. However, he does not believe that the use of bitcoin is at a point where it will become common use for purchases yet. Saying “I don’t think the market has reached that point yet. “ || Crypto price news – live: Bitcoin crash halted after Elon Musk says Tesla has ‘diamond hands’: Bitcoin has crashed in price by more than a third since April 2021 (AFP via Getty Images) Bitcoin has rebounded from one of the most severe price crashes in its history on Wednesday, helping to steady the wider crypto market. Ethereum (ether), Cardano (ada) and dogecoin have all remained relatively calm overnight, after Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would not be selling its substantial cryptocurrency holdings. Watch: Bitcoin price swings continue as Musk tweet sparks rebound The initial crash on Wednesday was prompted by an announcement from regulators in China that cryptocurrency payments would be banned, though individuals in the country will still be permitted to own cryptocurrencies. The news saw bitcoin fall below $31,000 – less than half the all-time high price that it reached in mid April – before recovering to around $40,000 on Thursday. Cryptocurrency experts and market analysts appear divided over whether this crash is similar in magnitude to the one seen in 2017/18, or simply a price correction on the way to new record highs in 2021. We’ll have all the latest updates, as well as a Q&A session where you have the chance to ask our experts anything . Watch: How to prevent getting into debt || Dollar climbs past four-month high as risk appetite wanes: By Jessica DiNapoli and Elizabeth Howcroft New York (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar climbed against a basket of major currencies again on Thursday, leaping over a four-moth high, as investors' pared their appetite for risk. The dollar index rose about .28% to 92.85 in afternoon trading. The greenback for the year is now up more than 3%. Yields on Treasuries climbed to their highest in the session after weak demand for the second month in a row at an auction on seven-year notes. The session high yield was 1.642%. On Thursday afternoon they yielded 1.630%. The rise again in the dollar indicated investors were shrugging off positive data showing fewer-than-expected Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, and commentary from U.S. President Joe Biden that the economy is gaining steam. "The dollar has been grinding higher over the last few days," said Mazen Issa, senior currency analyst at TD Securities. "The bias here is that the dollar ... remains elevated." U.S. stocks, rose late in the day on Thursday in a session marked by choppy trading. Concerns about extended lockdowns in Europe also weighed on markets. Leaders in Europe met to discuss how to ramp up supplies of COVID-19 vaccines after a slow start to inoculations. The euro was down 0.41% against the dollar, at $1.1767, with analysts forecasting it could embrace the $1.16 range, as Europe's economic recovery lags. The dollar was up .39% against the yen at 109.1500. The Australian and New Zealand dollars, which dropped in the previous two sessions, edged down slightly against the U.S. dollar. Bitcoin was roughly flat, down 1.43% at $52,360.51 . The cryptocurrency briefly topped $57,000 after Tesla Inc boss Elon Musk said on Wednesday customers can now buy the company's electric cars with the digital token. (Graphic: USD, https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/qmypmyjdxpr/USD.png) (Reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft Editing by Jane Merriman, Paul Simao and David Gregorio) || Coinbase Hits Historic Low as Bitcoin Price Drops Below $50,000: Coinbase stock has suffered through an entire week of losses and now, the crypto exchange has slid to a new record low. The record price comes less than two weeks after its first day of trading.
Since making its long-awaited debut in the market, Coinbase has been kind of a lame duck swimming in the red. The stock began itstrading life on the Nasdaqseven days ago and already has seen a drop off from $410 a share to below $290 on April 22.
The stock is still in its infancy and searching for a foothold in the market. Hedge fund executive at Arca, Jeff Dorman, thinks it’s too early to make any definitive statements about what this means. Dormansaid:
“I’m not surprised at all by the COIN price action, No major banks have written research on COIN yet. Plus, most investors will want to see another quarter of numbers to see if 1Q was a flash in the pan or not.”
Meanwhile, firms likeGalaxy Digital, Voyager, and Silvergate have watched their stock prices take a big hit in the last week.
Retail crypto broker Voyager saw its market cap drop from $3.3 billion the day before Coinbase’s debut to a low of $2.1 billion on April 20.Galaxy Digitaland Silvergate have experienced similar dips in market cap within the same period. It is worth noting that the aforementioned brokerswere growing at very high ratesahead of Coinbase’s listing.
Bitcoin’s price, as of Friday morning,dropped below $50,000. Overall, more than $1.5 billion in digital currency has been liquidated at the same time.
The price movement was a result of a few factors plaguing the digital currency sector lately. First,it’s speculatedthat as the world recovers from COVID-19, investors could be shifting away from risky cryptocurrencies toward more stable real estate ventures.
Additionally, U.S. President Joe Biden appears interested inraising the capital gainstax on wealthy Americans from 20% to 39.6%. This would nearly double how much the ultra-rich would be on the hook for. || Stock Market Today: Dow Leads in a Mixed May Start for Stocks: A list of stock tickers Getty Images The Dow Jones Industrial Average kicked off the month with a 0.7% gain to 34,113 on Monday that came despite a weaker-than-expected Institute of Supply Management manufacturing report. Supply bottlenecks resulted in an April reading of 60.7 – a slower rate of expansion than March's 64.7 reading indicated, but expansion nonetheless. SEE MORE Kiplinger Income 25 "Although the composite was a fair bit below expectations (Barclays 64.5; consensus 65.0), the decline comes off of a robust March reading that was the highest since 1983," says Barclays economist Jonathan Millar. "Indeed, components of the composite continue to point to very strong growth, which comes as no surprise, given highly favorable demand conditions amid fiscal stimulus, easing of social distancing restrictions, and ongoing progress in vaccinations." We're glad to see that at least some investors heeded our advice to ignore the urge to "sell in May and go away." But stocks weren't exactly up across the board. The Nasdaq Composite (-0.5% to 13,895) struggled, thanks to weakness in mega-cap tech and tech-esque names such as Tesla ( TSLA , -3.5%), Amazon.com ( AMZN , -2.3%) and Salesforce.com ( CRM , -2.9%). "For the first time in a while there is a clear value/cyclical bias while growth/tech is under pressure," says Michael Reinking, senior market strategist for the New York Stock Exchange. "Tech wobbled last week despite blowout numbers from the mega-cap stocks. This is especially concerning as the rate environment remains in check." Sign up for Kiplinger's FREE Closing Bell e-letter: Our daily look at the stock market's moves, and what moves investors should make Other action in the stock market today: The S&P 500 gained 0.3% to 4,192. The small-cap Russell 2000 also finished in the black, up 0.5% to 2,277. Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK.B, +1.7%) held its 2021 annual shareholder meeting this weekend. Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and Executive Vice Chairman Charlie Munger addressed a number of topics, including trimming Berkshire's stake in Apple ( AAPL ) in Q4 2020. "It was probably a mistake," said Buffett, adding that AAPL's stock price is a "huge, huge bargain" given how "indispensable" the company's products are to people. Also of note: Berkshire grew fourth-quarter operating income by 20%, to $5.9 billion, while cash grew 5% to $145.4 billion. Domino's Pizza ( DPZ , +2.6%) was a notable winner today. The pizza chain revealed an accelerated stock buyback program, saying in a regulatory filing that it will pay Barclays $1 billion in cash for roughly 2 million DPZ shares. U.S. crude oil futures jumped 1.4% to end at $64.49 per barrel. Gold futures snapped a four-day losing streak, adding 1.4% to settle at $1,791.80 an ounce. The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) declined 2.3% to 18.18. Bitcoin prices improved by 1.1% to $57,530.32. More impressive was the 18.6% improvement in Ethereum , to $3,300.64 (Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day; prices reported here are as of 4 p.m. each trading day.) Story continues stock chart for 050321 YCharts Another Big Week of Reports ... And Dividends What should investors be looking forward to this week? SEE MORE 10 Super-Safe Dividend Stocks to Buy Now On Thursday and Friday, we'll get the latest weekly unemployment filings and April jobs data, respectively, but throughout the week, another heaping helping of earnings reports , anchored by the likes of General Motors ( GM ), Pfizer ( PFE ), Under Armour ( UAA ) and PayPal ( PYPL ). And given that many companies tend to synchronize their dividend and buyback actions with their earnings reports, you also can expect plenty of news on the dividend-growth front. In some cases, those raises might be token upticks meant to secure current or future membership in the Dividend Aristocrats . But others are bound to compete with this year's most explosive payout hikes – improvements of 15%, 20% or even 30% that drastically change the income aspect of current shareholders' investments. Ideally, of course, investors want the best of both worlds: income longevity and generosity. These 10 dividend stocks just might fit the bill. This group of mostly blue-chip household names offer a strong history of payout increases, a sharp level of recent hikes compared to their peers, and the operational quality to continue affording these annual raises. Kyle Woodley was long AMZN, CRM, PYPL and Ethereum as of this writing. SEE MORE 35 Ways to Earn Up to 10% on Your Money || If You Invested $1,000 In Cronos Stock One Year Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Now: Investors who have owned stocks in the last year have generally experienced some big gains. In fact, the SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY ) total return over the last 12 months is 47.3%. But there is no question some big-name stocks performed better than others along the way. Cronos’ Disappointing Road: One company that has been a lackluster investment in the last year has been Canadian cannabis producer Cronos Group Inc (NASDAQ: CRON ). Cronos battled a difficult Canadian cannabis market throughout 2020. In February, the company reported an impressive 133% sales growth. Adjusted EBITDA losses in the company’s international business narrowed, while U.S. losses widened. Cronos also recently announced that it could launch lab-grown cannabis by the end of 2021. Assuming the quality is comparable to the existing product, lab-grown cannabis could potentially significantly reduce production costs for Cronos, helping improve the company’s bottom line. Cronos reported a $73 million net loss in 2020. Cronos has the financial backing of tobacco giant Altria Group Inc (NYSE: MO ), which owns nearly 50% of Cronos. Altria’s support has allowed Cronos to operate with one of the strongest balance sheets in the cannabis space. Learn more: How To Invest In Cannabis Stocks However, Cronos shares are also priced at a steep premium to many of its Canadian peers at more than 63 times sales. At the beginning of 2020, Cronos shares were trading at around $7.90. By the beginning of March, the stock was down to $5.89 after news of COVID-19 spreading in China prompted concerns about a U.S. pandemic. Cronos bottomed at $4 during the pandemic-driven March sell-off. Fortunately for Cronos investors, the sell-off didn’t last long. By June, Cronos shares made it back up to $8/13, but the rally stalled at that point until the November U.S. presidential election. Related Link: If You Invested ,000 In Tilray Stock One Year Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Now The victory of Joe Biden, a Democrat, and a surprise blue wave gave the party control of both the Senate and House, sending cannabis stocks soaring on optimism that U.S. cannabis legalization may be just around the corner. Story continues Cronos In 2021, Beyond: The stock ultimately peaked at $15.83 in February 2021 during a retail investor-fueled short squeeze before pulling back to around $8.25. Traders may be taking profits on Cronos’ big post-election run. Or they may simply see a lack of progress on U.S. legalization and more lackluster growth numbers from the Canadian market as reasons to be skeptical of the stock in the near term. Cronos investors who bought one year ago and held on through the volatility have still made a decent return. In fact, $1,000 in Cronos stock bought on April 14, 2020, would be worth about $1,378 today. Looking ahead, analysts are expecting only modest gains for Cronos in the next 12 months. The average price target among the 10 analysts covering the stock is $8.45, suggesting 12.7% upside from current levels. (Photo by Esteban Lopez on Unsplash ) See more from Benzinga Click here for options trades from Benzinga If You Invested ,000 In Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin And Other Cryptos 5 Years Ago, Here's How Much You'd Have Now 'Four Horsemen' Driving The Retail Trading Euphoria: SPACs, Stonks, Cryptos And NFTs © 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 37304.69, 37536.63, 34770.58, 38705.98, 38402.22, 39294.20, 38436.97, 35697.61, 34616.07, 35678.13
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2018-11-19]
BTC Price: 4871.49, BTC RSI: 12.49
Gold Price: 1223.10, Gold RSI: 54.12
Oil Price: 56.76, Oil RSI: 20.51
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Pablo Soria de Lachica Highlights Most Popular Trading Pairs for Ethereum’s Cryptocurrency: MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - With a market capitalization of close to $21 billion, Ethereum (ETH) is the second-largest cryptocurrency project, and comparisons with Bitcoin (BTC) are inevitable since the first virtual coin remains the benchmark for the entire market. However, those with in-depth knowledge of the underlying technology consistently point out that the two leading projects in the crypto space have quite different objectives. Bitcoin was designed as digital money, that is, a means of transacting and a store of value. Ether, as Ethereum’s cryptocurrency is called, belongs to the group known as tokens – digital units created to serve as payment for products and services provided by the issuing platform. As the Ethereum organization explains , “Ether is to be treated as "crypto-fuel," a token whose purpose is to pay for computation, and is not intended to be used as or considered a currency, asset, share, or anything else.” The project also acknowledges that Ethereum would not have existed without Bitcoin. With BTC and ETH bound in a strong relationship, it is not surprising this constitutes the most active trading pair for Ethereum’s digital asset, says prominent forex broker Pablo Soria de Lachica . With a circulating supply of just over 102 million units, ETH is listed on 400 cryptocurrency exchanges, according to data by Coinmarketcap. Trading in digital assets is extremely dynamic and the market is highly volatile, so prices and volumes can change in a matter of minutes. Based on CryptoCompare calculations for the past month, the pair with BTC accounted for just under 40% of ETH trading volumes. The most active platforms for ETH/BTC were BitZ, Binance, and HitBTC. The second most popular pairing for Ethereum’s token is with Tether (USDT), one of the so-called stablecoins and among the most talked-about digital assets of late. Its attraction stems from its being pegged to the US dollar, and as the project team claims , “every tether is always backed 1-to-1 by traditional currency held in our reserves.” Stablecoins have become extremely popular in recent months, with several new ones hitting the market, and even IBM has partnered with such a project. The combination with USDT made up about 32% of ETH’s total trading volume in the past month, with Binance, FCoin, and BitZ accounting for the majority of trades. Story continues Given the fluctuating price of digital coins and the limited opportunities for using them as a means of payment, traders are understandably drawn to the fiat option, primarily the US dollar, PabloSoria de Lachica notes. Over the past month, the ETH/USD pair accounted for 12.5% of Ether trading volumes, according to CryptoCompare. Hong Kong-based exchange Bitfinex led by a massive margin, representing almost 38% of ETH/USD volumes over the period. US-headquartered Coinbase, one of the oldest and most popular crypto trading platforms, ranked second with 14.6%, and Simex, another US-based digital assets exchange, came third with just under 12% of volumes. PabloSoria de Lachica , an MBA holder from the Universidad Tecnologico de Mexico (UNITEC), specialized in international trading after graduation and succeeded in becoming one of today’s most prominent forex experts. Drawing on his extensive experience, he helps clients maximize profits, providing them with both professional guidance and educational opportunities. Currently, he is working with Kartoshka - a company focused on delivering the latest technologies in sales, telemarketing, and customer support. Pablo Soria de Lachica - Foreign Exchange Specialist: http://PabloSoriaDeLachicaNews.com Pablo Soria de Lachica Explains the Difference between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4008862 Pablo Soria de Lachica Explains the Advantages of Ethereum-Based Smart Contracts: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pablo-soria-lachica-explains-advantages-205500267.html Contact Information: PabloSoriaDeLachicaNews.com http://PabloSoriaDeLachicaNews.com contact@pablosoriadelachicanews.com || NVIDIA's Prepping New Graphics Chips for Laptops: Sales of graphics processors to gamers form a substantial portion ofNVIDIA's(NASDAQ: NVDA)business. In fiscal 2018, those salescame in north of $4.5 billion, and the company's overall gaming revenue (inclusive of sales of chips that power the Switch game console) was up 68% year over year in the first quarter of its fiscal 2019 and up another 52% in the second quarter of fiscal 2019.
In late August, NVIDIA announced the first gaming-oriented graphics processing units (GPUs) based on its new Turing graphics architecture: GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 2080, and RTX 2070. These are add-in cards designed for the gaming desktop personal computer market.
Image source: NVIDIA.
Although the gaming desktop market represents a huge part of NVIDIA's overall gaming graphics business, the market for gaming-oriented laptops is growing fast and is an important contributor to NVIDIA's business, too. In fact, on the company's most recent earnings call, CFO Colette Kress said that "[n]otebooks were standout this quarter with strong demand for thin and light form factors based on our Max-Q technology."
NVIDIA's current notebook-oriented graphics processors are based on its older Pascal architecture, but it's only a matter of time before the company transitions to newerTuring-based products. According to a report fromWCCFTech, citing an unnamed source, NVIDIA is planning to begin launching Turing-based products for the gaming notebook later this year.
WCCFTech says that NVIDIA is planning to launch a top-to-bottom stack of notebook graphics processors with an RTX 2080 Max-Q Mobile part at the very top and an RTX 2050 Mobile part at the bottom (WCCFTech admits that it's not sure if the parts below the RTX 2070 in the stack will be prefixed with "RTX" or "GTX.")
The site also claims that the RTX 2070 and RTX 2070 Max-Q will launch "by [the] end of November," while the higher-end RTX 2080 Max-Q isn't set to launch until the first quarter of 2019.
Considering that NVIDIA has generally offered a broad, top-to-bottom notebook graphics processor stack in previous generations, it makes sense that the company would continue that practice with its upcoming Turing-based products.
NVIDIA's Pascal-based notebook products seem to be selling quite well, judging by the comments that Kress made on the company's last earnings call. When NVIDIA reports next on Nov. 15, we'll know if that momentum continued in its most recent quarter.
Although it might seem that the company isn't in any rush to get out its latest notebook graphics processors, it's important to keep in mind that with NVIDIA now promoting its 20-series products on the desktop, the company runs the risk of all of the gaming notebooks based on its 10-series products seeming outdated.
It'd make sense for both NVIDIA and its notebook partners to want to begin the rollout of notebooks powered by 20-series graphics processors as soon as they reasonably can.
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Ashraf Eassahas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Crypto Investors Are Trying to Save Their Funds Amid Bitcoin Crash: The safe harbor of cryptocurrency has eventually sunk under the volatility wave, which triggered a massive collapse of all crypto coins. During the peak of this decline, market capitalization has shrunk by $30 billion. During the last 24 hours, Bitcoin’s price has lost almost 13%, trading at around %5,500. On the morning of November 15, 2018, the second largest global Bitcoin wallet, which belongs to the Binance exchanged, moved out 109,234 BTC ( $600 million at the current exchange rate). Considering this huge sell-off in the past day, the news in regards to such a big move of almost all Bitcoins from a “cold” wallet may reinforce negative dynamics in the market. It is worth remembering the sharp reaction of the market, subsequent to the sale of BTC and BCH by the Mt.Gox bankruptcy trustee Kobayashi. The lever near $6,000 was defended by bulls for months and the decisive hit of this mark is a bad signal for the whole market. The altcoins suffered even more: Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) lost almost 13%. It is noteworthy to note that in the recent days, BCH has attracted consumer demand due to the hardfork prospects which can split the chain, as it was in the case with the original Bitcoin. However, the fierce confrontation between the two camps advocating a different future for the project frightened even the speculators. It is very unlikely that BCH sell-off had started before hardfork. According to technical analysis, the next important stop could be the area of the previous price consolidation: distant marks near $3,500. A well-known crypto investor, Barry Silbert, has the same opinion. He considers what is happening now as a “cryptocurrency capitulation” due to a deep disappointment in the prospects and falling interest from traders and users. At the same time, the ambiguous and often negative position of the American regulator is an additional pressure factor. One of the triggers for the collapse in the market could be the prospects for action by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in dozens of cases against crypto exchanges that may be accused of distributing unregistered securities. Story continues This article was written by FxPro This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: USD/CAD Daily Price Forecast – USD/CAD Trades Range Bound For Fourth Consecutive Trading Session Technical Checks For USD/CHF, EUR/CHF, GBP/CHF & CHF/JPY: 14.11.2018 UK Down On Brexit Woe, Pound Sinks, Asian Up On Brexit Hope, US Dollar Moves Higher EUR/USD Mid-Session Technical Analysis for November 15, 2018 Crypto Investors Are Trying to Save Their Funds Amid Bitcoin Crash USD/JPY Price Forecast – US dollar falls against yen || After the Fork: Here’s How Exchanges Are Dealing With Bitcoin Cash: The smoke is still clearing fromBitcoin Cash’s hard fork, but exchanges have already moved in to add support for the products of the skirmish.
On November 16, 2018, what was intended to be a routine hard fork upgrade of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain became a struggle for hashing power and chain dominance as Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision (SV), led by Craig S. Wright, attempted to wrestle control over the Bitcoin Cash blockchain from its original client, Bitcoin ABC.
Bitcoin ABC (thus far) has strong-armed Bitcoin SV with its mining power and held onto its position as the dominant chain, but yesterday's showdown still culminated in a coin split that left the network with two rival coins, which, for the purpose of this article, we’ll refer to as BCHABC and BCHSV.
And this split has left a mess of potential markets for exchanges to manage. In the aftermath, they’re stuck with either choosing to support both coins, default to the ABC chain as the real BCH or sit tight until they feel comfortable making a decision either way. Not every exchange is on the same page for what each coin’s ticker should be either, and some seem content to ignore the forks’ janus-faced by-products and carry on with their usual bitcoin cash trading.
A handful of exchanges have announced that they will be supporting both coins for the time being.
Some, like Poloniex, HitBTC and Bittrex got ahead of the game by offering futures trading between the two coins before the hard fork even took place.Announcedon November 7, Poloniex first featured futures in the run up to the fork and, since the coin split, it has integrated support for coins under the tickers BCHABC and BCHSV in the form of BTC and USDC trading pairs.
HitBTC revealed in ablog poston November 9 that it would open pre-fork trading for both BCHABC and BCHSV. On November 13, top-5 exchange Bitfinex also followed the trend, noting that it would roll out pre-fork trading for ABC and SV in the form of chain-split tokens (CST). These before-the-fact trading vehicles could be created by or redeemed for bitcoin cash at any point and, since the fork, they have been replaced with the actual forked coins under the tickers BAB (for ABC) and BSV (for SV) on Bitfinex and BCHABC and BCHSV on HitBTC.
Other top exchanges, like Binance and Bittrex, played the fork patiently, waiting to see if the Bitcoin Cash network would split before restructuring its bitcoin cash trading. Binance, for instance, waited for the conflict to die down beforebloggingthat it would open markets for BCHABC and BCHSV against BTC and USDT.
Unlike its peers, Bittrex is waiting a bit longer before it treats SV with the same gravity as its BCH predecessor. On November 7, the exchange publisheda blog postthat said it would default to ABC’s implementation as the main chain leading up to the fork, while also assuring customers that their accounts would be credited with the split BCHSV coins following the fork. So far, BCH remains as the only coin with trading support on the exchange, as it is waiting for further clarity before it decides to restructure its markets.
“The ‘BCH’ ticker will remain the Bitcoin ABC chain before the hard fork block. Bittrex will observe the Bitcoin Cash network for a period of 24 to 48 hours to determine if a chain split has occurred and the outcome,” the post reads.
Kraken took Bittrex’s (tentative) support of ABC as the main chain a bit further. Announcing in a November 10blog postthat, “[initially, it] will only supportBitcoin ABC.” Kraken went on to reveal that it would not automatically accommodate chain-split coins. Instead, users would have to claim these manually by moving their coins off the exchange.
“We will not support any alternative chains for funding or trading on the day of the fork. We will then monitor the situation in the weeks and months after the fork and evaluate whether or not any changes to our stance are warranted, including the possibility of supporting an alternative chain. However, we make no promise or guarantee that any alternative chain will be supported … If you want the option to preserve/claim tokens on alternative chains, you must withdraw your BCH from Kraken prior to funding being disabled on November 15th. By leaving your coins on Kraken through the upgrade, you are potentially forfeiting any coins on alternative chains that might otherwise be available to you,” the post reads.
In the same post, Kraken signaled that, above all else, it would err on the side of caution, writing, “After the fork we will not enable BCH funding until we think it is safe to do so, and we do not know in advance how long this may take.”
As Binance, Bitfinex and Poloniex’s actions suggest, in the comedown of the forking euphoria, some exchanges have surrendered to the reality of Bitcoin Cash’s network now housing two competing coins. Others, like Bittrex and Kraken, are biding their time to see how this continues to unfold — after all, the fork isn’t even 24-hours old yet.
Still other exchanges have also opted to wait to see how they should proceed, many of which have suspended deposits, withdrawals and trading for BCH until the dust settles. Coinbaseannouncedthat it will “ensure that customers have access to their funds on each chain” if they’ve left their BCH on Coinbase platforms.
This article will be updatedperiodicallyto include other exchange support news as the story develops.
Update, November 16:According to a tweet by Jack C. Liu, a handful of Chinese exchanges are referring to BCHABC as "Wu Bitcoin" and BCHSV as "Astralia Bitcoin."
Update, November 16:An unconfirmedposton the r/btc subreddit has begun compiling a list of exchanges that, thus far, have defaulted to assigning the BCH ticker to the ABC fork's rule set. Among those allegedly acting in league with Bittrex and Kraken are Coinbase, Coinone, Bitstamp, Bithumb and Upbit.
Update, November 18:Huobi Global has announced in an official release that the team behind the ABC version of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has set up a checkpoint that will ensure that two-way replay protection is in place. Huobi Global also acknowledged that it will retain BCH ABC, the longer chain, for the designation of BCH, while it will designate the SV version of BCH as BSV.
Update, November 19:Indian exchange CoinDX tellsBitcoin Magazinethat it has exchanged all the BCH on its platform for the new coins. Users have since received an equal number of BCH ABC and BCH SV tokens for the BCH they held in their individual wallets.
Update, November 19: Kraken has announced that it will support BCHSV trading "under the designation Bitcoin SV (BSV)," while reaffirming that BACHABC will continue trading under the ticker BCH on the exchange. With the announcement, the exchange issued the following caveat:"Bitcoin SV does NOT meet Kraken’s usual listing requirements. It should be seen as an extremely high risk investment. There are many red flags that traders should be aware of."
This article originally appeared onBitcoin Magazine. || Fork Wars: Bitcoin Cash Dev. Warns that CoinGeek Will Attack ABC: During a largely celebratory live stream regarding the ability of Bitcoin ABC’s upgraded version of Bitcoin Cash to survive and thrive in a post-fork universe , Bitcoin ABC’s self-proclaimed “benevolent dictator,” Amaury Séchet, said that he believes, due to metrics that are publicly available, that BCH mining pool CoinGeek is presently preparing an attack against the ABC chain. He cited the fact that they did not appear to be using anywhere near their normal 2 exahash worth of mining power in the immediate aftermath of the fork. Bitcoin ABC Dev. Warns of CoinGeek Attack Several hours into the stream, Séchet joined the chat and said: “If you think you have a better plan, and I think with BCH we have a better plan than BTC, then you can compete on the open market, and either we’re right, and we end up winning, or we’re wrong and BTC ends up winning, and that’s all good and fine and that’s market competition. “What we are seeing right now, though – or rather, what we are not seeing right now, is CoinGeek and BMG’s hashrate. Right? It’s completely gone. It’s not winning, mining anywhere that we can see. What that tells me is, you know, they have not thrown like 2 exahash at this, right? So they are preparing some kind of attack. “And right now we are not in a situation where people compete in an open market. We’re in a situation where we have an adversary that, you know, that is planning an attack. And so we need to consider them an attacker at this point.” He went on to say that it’s fine if people want to fork, referring to the SV fork . He said he was “super-happy” with that and that he wishes them good luck. But then he said that if they are going to launch an attack against BCHABC, they will have to be treated as such. Chain Length Unimportant for Safety of ABC Chain amaury sechet bitcoin cash Séchet was then asked by another streamer in the CoinSpice channel how many blocks ahead Bitcoin ABC needed to be before it would be safe. He said it was not relevant to the question, because at this point the blockchains cannot reorganize back into each other. Story continues The threat, according to the lead developer, is from the hash that exists which can feasibly attack the Bitcoin ABC network. “The hashrate that is missing right now that we’re not seeing anywhere,” he specified. The question of where CoinGeek’s hash has gone is a good one. Potentially, it is mining regular BTC since it is no longer all required in order to mine Bitcoin SV, or it is mining Bitcoin ABC, which has seen a notable uptick in hashrate, but it is just as possible that it is preparing for a nefarious purpose as Séchet describes. Featured Image from Shutterstock The post Fork Wars: Bitcoin Cash Dev. Warns that CoinGeek Will Attack ABC appeared first on CCN . || Price of Gold Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Fundamentals Bearish, but Strong Silver Could Lead to Counter-Trend Rally: Gold futures finished lower last week as a stronger U.S. Dollar helped make the dollar-denominated asset a less-attractive investment. Several factors helped pressure gold and boost the dollar including expectations of higher interest rates, strong U.S. economic data and a weaker Euro. Gold hit a fresh six-week low late in the week, but a strong performance in silver, coupled with profit-taking in the U.S. Dollar ahead of the week-end, helped the market recover nearly half of the week’s loss. For the week, December Comex Gold futures settled at $1196.20, down $5.10 or -0.42%. U.S. Federal Reserve’s Influence Last week, the Fed played a role in driving the dollar higher and gold lower. The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to a range of 2%-2.25% last week. This move was widely expected and fully-priced into the gold market for weeks. However, Fed policymakers also strongly hinted that the central bank would raise rates again in December, three times in 2019 and once more in 2020. This news pressure gold. Fed Chair Jerome Powell also said the economy is strong enough that aggressive stimulus is no longer necessary. This confidence was shown by the Fed ending its description of its policy as “accommodative”. Powell also said the rate hike reflected the Fed’s confidence in the U.S. economy, describing it as a “particularly bright moment”. Powell also warned that a permanent shift to a “more protectionist world” would hurt the U.S. and global economies, but added that for now, he expects the overall economic impact to remain relatively modest. “We don’t see it in the numbers,” he said at a press conference in Washington after the meeting. Fed officials now expect the U.S. economy to grow by 3.1% this year, faster than the 2.8% forecast in March, according to the projections released after the meeting. Their predictions for inflation remained unchanged at around 2%. Story continues U.S. Economic Data Final US. GDP rose 4.2% during the second quarter. Core Durable Goods Orders came in at 0.1%. Durable Goods Orders rose 4.5%. The Core PCE Price Index was flat, but Personal Spending rose 0.3%. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence hit an 18-year high at 138.4. University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment, however, came in slightly below expectations at 100.1. Weak Euro equals Weak Gold Helping the U.S. Dollar climb to a two-week high against a basket of currencies was a weaker Euro. Concerns about the Italian budget weighed on the single currency. The EUR/USD fell below $1.16 for the first time in two weeks after Italy’s government agreed on a budget seen by some investors as defying Brussels. Political wrangling over the budget in heavily indebted Italy put a lid on the Euro’s recent rally. Forecast Although the direction of gold prices will be primarily influenced by the U.S. Dollar. Traders should also pay attention to the price action in the silver market. Silver futures surged to their highest level since August 30 on Friday. Its divergence from gold is making the metal an attractive asset. Gold, for example, hit its lowest level since August 17, while buyers were moving silver sharply higher. At this time, gold is being led higher by silver, which means the “tail is wagging the dog.” Silver is being supported because it is relatively cheap. Additionally, it could be attracting buyers due to inflationary expectations and industrial demand during the current economic expansion. As of Friday’s close, the gold-silver ratio is about 85:1. This makes it a more attractive asset relative to gold. This may be just enough to bring in the buyers. Now that the news is out there, look for heightened volatility. Economic news that could influence the U.S. Dollar and gold prices next week are U.S. ISM Manufacturing PMI, ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI, and the Balance of Trade. Additionally, investors will get the opportunity to react to the September Non-Farm Payrolls report. The headline number is expected to show the economy added 185K jobs last month. Average Hourly Earnings are expected to have risen 0.3% and the Unemployment Rate is expected to dip to 3.8%. The dollar will continue to be influenced by Treasury yields and worries over Italy. We’re going to approach the market early in the week as if a stronger dollar will make gold weak. However, we’ll quickly shift to an upside bias if another rally in silver takes control of the gold market and drags prices higher. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: AUD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – Sustained Move Under .7200 Will Pressure All Week Bitcoin – Bulls in Desperate Search of a Weekend Rally Natural Gas Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Suppressed Demand Likely to Keep Lid on Prices Silver Outshines Gold with Dramatic 2.80% Price Jump NZD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – Pivot at .6614 Will Set the Tone This Week The Week Ahead – Geo-politics, the RBA and Stats to Drive the Markets || Bitcoins No Longer Boring, Price Heading Towards $1.5K, Say Bloomberg Analysts: Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence predict that Bitcoin ( BTC ) has further to fall, Bloomberg reported Nov. 16. Bitcoins no longer boring declares Bloomberg, before stating that analysts predict the price could fall as low as the $1,500 point, a further 70 percent drop in the coins price. Bloomberg cites hedge fund founder Travis Kling saying that he didnt sleep well because of the potential turmoil in wider crypto markets due to the recent Bitcoin Cash hard fork : Theres a small chance that, its difficult to estimate, that something really bad could happen related to Bitcoin Cash that could then impact the entire crypto market. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone continued the argument, saying the recent market crash was sparked by the pump for the Bitcoin Cash hard fork. As Bloomberg reports, he explains that the pump that began a few weeks ago, got the market a bit too offsides with speculative longs playing for the good-old days. But this is an enduring bear market. The bear market in the cryptocurrency industry has evidently affected more than just prices. Major U.S.-based GPU manufacturer Nvidia recently reported a notable decrease in sales in the current quarter, citing fewer GPU sales specifically used for cryptocurrency mining. In a recent note to clients, Fundstrat Global Advisors analyst Rob Sluymer predicted that it will take weeks, if not months for Bitcoin to rebound from the technical damage caused by the recent price collapse. In a separate note this week, Fundstrat co-founder and Head of Research Tom Lee told clients that he was lowering his previous end-year target for Bitcoins price from $25,000 to $15,000. Related Articles: Ripple Continues to Rebound, While Most Major Cryptocurrencies See Mild Wave of Red Bitcoins Breakdown Will Take Weeks, If Not Months to Rebound, Says Fundstrat Analyst Markets See Massive Sell-Off, Bitcoin Dips Below $5,600 for the First Time in 2018 How Crypto Market Fall Influences Mining Hardware Sales and Producers Revenues || Crypto Market Recovers From Pullback But Bitcoin Momentum is Weak: bitcoin The cryptocurrency market has started to recover gradually from a major pullback, which occurred following a substantial 40 percent increase in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and a surge in the price of several other major cryptocurrencies. Over the last 24 hours, the valuation of the cryptocurrency market has increased from $211 billion to $213 billion, by less than one percent. Some cryptocurrencies including Ripple (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH) have started to demonstrate momentum, both recording around a 2 percent rise in value on the day. The volume of Bitcoin , which remained above the $4.5 billion mark earlier this week, has dropped to $3.8 billion, as the dominant cryptocurrency struggled to retain stability in the $6,500 region. On fiat-to-crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Bitstamp, the price of Bitcoin has fallen back to the $6,300 region. Weak Momentum of Bitcoin Throughout November 7 to 8, within that 48-hour period, Bitcoin showed strength in volume and momentum , initiating a rally to $6,550. But, at the time, technical analysts stated that BTC would have to comfortably breakout of the $6,600 resistance level and test the $6,800 resistance level to confirm a bullish short-term price action. “Resistance levels I’m looking at are horizontal red lines. $6,600 / $6,650 next. Levels should be fairly obvious and have previously acted as resistance, the more, the more meaningful. No point in being too precise, small increments represent noise,” technical analyst Alex Kruger said on Wednesday. Since then, BTC endured a pullback from $6,550 to $6,350, after recording significant sell volume on both Wednesday and Thursday. According to cryptocurrency trader Don Alt, until the weekly candle of BTC closes, the asset is not likely to engage in a major price action in the high region of $6,000. “Weak showing from BTC. Crashed through support & closed below the range low. I assume we won’t be getting too much action this weekend and am waiting for the weekly close. Hoping for a clear signal,” he said . Story continues With the volume of BTC down more than 15 percent within the past 72 hours and considering the fact that the volume of the cryptocurrency exchange market tends to dip during the weekend, BTC is highly unlikely to demonstrate any positive short-term price movement above the $6,500 mark at least in the next 48 hours. Decentraland and Pundi X Performing Pundi X (NPXS), a blockchain project that provides cryptocurrency payment solutions to merchants, recorded a daily gain of over 13.5 percent as the best performing digital asset of November 10. The short-term increase in the price of NPXS is speculated to have been triggered by the listing of NPXS by Upbit, the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the market. Decentraland (MANA) also demonstrated a daily price increase of over 6 percent, following several positive developments including the latest sale of a 126 land parcel estate on its virtual reality platform for over $216,000. New Decentraland record -> $215,000 paid for a 126 land parcel estate (via $MANA ) https://t.co/0SCHRiM5sM — Barry Silbert (@barrysilbert) November 5, 2018 Despite the concerns of analysts that the recent crackdown on EtherDelta for the distribution of unregistered securities could lead to a drop in the price of tokens, several projects have seen positive price action in the past 24 hours. Featured Image from Shutterstock. Charts from TradingView . The post Crypto Market Recovers From Pullback But Bitcoin Momentum is Weak appeared first on CCN . || Markets See Massive Sell-Off, Bitcoin Dips Below $5,600 for the First Time in 2018: Nov. 14: Crypto markets have suffered sharp losses over the past several hours. The major market drop off took place between 10:30 a.m. (UTC -5) and 12:00 p.m., with some of the top 20 cryptocurrencies dropping by as much as 18 percent at press time, according to data from CoinMarketCap . Market visualization from Coin360 Market visualization from Coin360 According to data from Bitcointicker , after 11:00 a.m. (UTC -5) Bitcoin dropped below the $5,600 price point for the first time in 2018, sinking further to as low as $5,506 at around 2:00PM. Bitcoin is now down around 11 percent on the day, trading at $5,612 at press time. Bitcoin price chart Bitcoin price chart. Source: Bitcointicker Ethereum ( ETH ) the second cryptocurrency by market cap, has plunged below the $200 threshold, and is down 13.4 percent over the day. The altcoin is trading around $179 as of press time, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Ethereum 24-hour price chart Ethereum 24-hour price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap The fourth top cryptocurrency, Bitcoin Cash ( BCH ), is seeing the biggest losses across the top 20 tokens by market cap. The coin, which is scheduled for an update that will likely result in a hard fork tomorrow, Nov. 15, is down more than 16 percent, and is trading at $433 at press time, according to CoinMarketCap . Total market capitalization has dipped to as low as $187 billion today, which represents the lowest point since early November, 2017, according to CoinMarketCap. As of press time, total market cap has slightly rebounded to $190 billion. Total market capitalization annual chart Total market capitalization annual chart. Source: CoinMarketCap While the markets have seen an immense sell-off, Bitcoin has experienced some growth in terms of market share. According to CoinMarketCap, Bitcoin’s dominance rate has increased to 54 percent, while in the beginning of the day it amounted to 51 percent. At press time, Bitcoin’s accounts for 53 percent of market share. Percentage of total market cap (dominance) 24-hour chart Percentage of total market cap (dominance) 24-hour chart. Source: CoinMarketCap The recent movement of the market was predicted by a number of industry experts, who also suggest that the bear market would last beyond this year. Technical expert Willy Woo, founder of data webstie Woobull, has recently predicted that the bear market end may end “around Q2 2019,” based on “putting together the blockchain view:” “After that we start the true accumulation band, only after that, do we start a long grind upwards.” Earlier this year, crypto investor and founder of Galaxy Investment Partners Mike Novogratz predicted that Bitcoin will not manage to break $10,000 by the end of 2018, claiming that reverse of the trend will take place by Q2 in 2019, when the industry will get more institutional involvement. Story continues Related Articles: After Yesterday’s Bloodbath, Losses Continue for Major Cryptos, XRP Overtakes Ethereum Crypto Markets See Mixed Signals After Recent Downturn Crypto Markets See Mixed Signals While BCH and XLM Grow Significantly Bitcoin Sees Volatility as Prices Hit Three-Month Lows and Altcoins Fall View comments || Brazilian Bitcoin Exchange Wins Standoff as Bank Reopens Account to Avoid Fines: brazil bitcoin exchange Bitcoin Max, a Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange, has recently seen two banks in the country, Santander and Banco do Brasil, reopen its accounts following preliminary decisions made by Brazils Federal District Court. They reportedly reopened the exchanges accounts to avoid paying fines. Banks Reopen Crypto Exchange Accounts According to local news outlet Portal do Bitcoin , failing to comply would have cost Santander up to $1,350 and Banco do Brasil up to $5,400. Speaking to the outlet, Bitcoin Maxs attorney Leonardo Ranna reportedly revealed its bank accounts have been restored, along with those of its partners. The ordeal may not yet be over, as the case against Banco Santander saw it comply because of a kind of injunction that determined the financial institution had to reopen the exchanges accounts within five days. The injunction had previously been denied by a judge, Portal do Bitcoin reports, which saw Bitcoin Maxs lawyers appeal to a Federal District Court Judge. The new decision came as the judge, Ana Catarino, considered the banks lack of communication about shuttering the exchanges account to be abusive conduct, prohibited by the countrys consumer protection laws. brazil bitcoin exchange banks Banco do Brasil reportedly even held $32,300 of the exchanges funds in limbo. A lawsuit against it was filed on Sept. 12. Initially, an injunction was denied, but judge Fátima Rafael, from the Federal District Court, later gave the financial institution a 24-hour period to reopen Bitcoin Maxs accounts or face a fine of about $540 per day. Per Portal do Bitcoin, the exchanges CEO, Adriano Zanella, claimed the banks didnt even reveal they were going to shut down its accounts. The report reads: Adriano Zanella, CEO of Bitcoin Max, said that in both situations there was no formal communication from the banks on the closure of accounts. In the case of Banco do Brasil, Zanella states that he learned of the blockage through the manager of his agency at which point he would carry out an electronic transfer through the bank.' Story continues This is notably not the first time a cryptocurrency exchange in the country sees the judicial system side with it against a financial institution. In August, Brazilian exchange Waltime won a court battle against Caixa Econômica Federal , a bank that had frozen its accounts with over $200,000 in them. Cryptocurrency Exchanges in Brazil See Scrutiny As CCN has reported, cryptocurrency exchanges in Brazil have been under scrutiny. Back in August, the government sent them a 14-point questionnaire to learn more about their businesses, and earlier this month the countrys antitrust watchdog, CADE, sent them another questionnaire they have to answer or face a fine that could reach $25,000 . Notably, these developments came at a time in which XP Investimentos, Brazils biggest investment firm, is launching its XDEX cryptocurrency exchange . However, the countrys biggest bitcoin exchange, Mercado Bitcoin, recently fired at least 20 employees . Investment funds in the country have also been given the green light to invest in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, although only indirectly. This means they cant buy bitcoin themselves but can acquire derivatives and foreign funds. Images from Shutterstock The post Brazilian Bitcoin Exchange Wins Standoff as Bank Reopens Account to Avoid Fines appeared first on CCN .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#cryptocurrency Price Analysis for #Bitsend #BSD :
Last Hour Change : 1.03 % || 21-09-2018 12:00
Price in #USD : 0.152169848 || Price in #EUR : 0.129177897
New Price in #Bitcoin #BTC : 0.00002266 || #Coin Rank 612 || Bitcoinビットコインを買うのに、どの取引所を利用すればいいのか? 会社の安定性と セキュリテーで選ぶなら、 Bitflyer ビットフライヤー ⇒ https://bitflyer.jp?bf=03a2igjnbitflyer.jp/?bf=03a2igjn || #BTCUSD Market #1H timeframe on November 6 at 11:00 (UTC) is #Bearish. #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #btc #crypto #trading #idea #report technical analysis || RSK (RBTC) has been listed on Huobi Global. RBTC/BTC and RBTC/ETH trading will be available from 15:00, November 12, 2018 (GMT+8). Details: https://t.co/hAAz0dCFDA @RSKsmart $RBTC https://t.co/l3N1cWI8Pg || 11/02 09:00 現在のビットコインの価格 BTC/JPY ask: 724,210 / bid: 707,109 || 最も高くBTC/JPYを売れるのは？(2018-10-27 03:00:02 現在)
coincheck 717078.00000
bitbank 717061.00000
Liquid 717059.80202
bitFlyer 716713.00000
Zaif 701820.00000 || Current price: $0.023478
Node count: 1277
Total accounts: 577321
Coins burned: 3,348,740.00 TRX
#tron #trx $trx $btc #btc || Shhhh transferring BTC now... || 2018/11/18 21:00
#Binance 格安コイン
1位 #HOT 0.00000014 BTC(0.09円)
2位 #NPXS 0.00000021 BTC(0.13円)
3位 #BCN 0.00000022 BTC(0.14円)
4位 #DENT 0.00000031 BTC(0.19円)
5位 #NCASH 0.00000062 BTC(0.39円)
#仮想通貨 #アルトコイン #草コイン || 最もBTC/JPYのスプレッドが狭いのは？(2018-11-07 05:00:02 現在)
Zaif 10.00
bitbank 88.00
Liquid 154.04
coincheck 367.00
bitFlyer 771.00
|
Trend: down || Prices: 4451.87, 4602.17, 4365.94, 4347.11, 3880.76, 4009.97, 3779.13, 3820.72, 4257.42, 4278.85
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2022-03-22]
BTC Price: 42358.81, BTC RSI: 56.57
Gold Price: 1920.70, Gold RSI: 49.77
Oil Price: 111.76, Oil RSI: 59.43
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Is Tesla a Good Stock to Buy in 2022? Yes, But Carefully.: Tesla(NASDAQ:TSLA), with arevenue of $53.8 billionand amarket capitalization of $900 billion, has often been seen as an overvalued stock by analysts. However, the sentiment seems to be changing as gas prices continue to rise. Naturally,Tesla sales have already started to soar, and I believe it is just the start.
Source: Shutterstock
With Russia, thecountry that produces the most crude oil(the primary ingredient for gasoline) at war, gas prices can be expected tostay elevated for a lot longerthan what was previously forecasted. Moreover, it is almost certain that many countries will be reducing their energy dependence on Russia. If that happens, gas prices will naturally go up as other suppliers have to cope with a sudden rise in demand.
Of course, Tesla cars are costly. However, gas costs also add up over time. Gas prices can be even more of a headache for those living in the rural U.S., where cars are almost a necessity.
InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
Without a decline in gas prices, consumers might find Tesla cars more economical in the long term.
TSLA is still overvalued, at least from a conventional viewpoint. However, there is more to a stock than just its earnings and market cap. TSLA has been fundamentally overvalued for almost a decade, but it has still gone up.
• 7 Stable Energy Stocks for Uncertain Times
For example, someone followingthis 2013 articlewould’ve missed out on the 2,100%-plus worth of gains TSLA has since had.
In a nutshell, traditional metrics don’t seem to work for TSLA. Furthermore, Tesla has continued to have exceptional revenue growth, and it is slowly bridging the gap between its market cap and revenue.
It is still worthwhile to remember that the market is very unpredictable. If the current world situation leads to a recession, there’s no doubt that TSLA would nosedive along with the rest of the market. A recession can also drag down gasoline prices,like it did in 2008 and 2020.
However, I still believe that even in the case of a recession, TSLA can recover in the long term. Tesla has been rapidly expanding, and in a world where countries are shifting more towards renewable energy, it would not be far-fetched to see TSLA valued more.
Tesla tookelectric vehiclesseriously early on, which gave it an edge over its competitors. Even now, Tesla still does not face any significant competition from its main competitors, and the company hasessentially dominated the EV industry. Moreover, Tesla has themost advanced self-driving featuresof any car andone of the lowest maintenance costs. They’re essentially doing to EVs whatApple(NASDAQ:AAPL) did with phones, offering user-friendliness at a premium.
Tesla’s competitors will undoubtedly catch up in the long run. However, Tesla will still command a significant portion of EV sales due to its popularity alone.
TSLA’s growth prospects also seem to be very promising. In 2021, Tesla producedover 930,000 cars. Moreover, it aims to reach20 million EV sales per year by 2030, and at Tesla’s current growth rate, it is definitely possible.
One should also note thatTesla is not just an EV company. It produces many energy products that add to its revenue, such as solar roofs and storage or charging solutions. They will also undoubtedly profit from the world’s transition to renewable energy. In short, I believe that TSLA is here to stay for the long term.
TSLA stock is still a risky buy in the short term due to the market’s uncertainty. However, I still believe that in the case of a market crash, Tesla will still inevitably recover. If a recession does not occur in the near future, the stock will likely reverse trends due to rising gas prices and soaring sales.
I do believe that in the long term, it can return a lot of profit. For the short term, making big moves in the current uncertain market is still very risky and should be avoided. Thus, I believe that anyone that seeks into invest in TSLA stock should not invest large amounts of capital. At least until the market shows more stability.
On the date of publication, Omor Ibne Ehsan did not have(either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. Theopinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to theInvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The postIs Tesla a Good Stock to Buy in 2022? Yes, But Carefully.appeared first onInvestorPlace. || Canada's Wealthsimple aims for real-world cryptocurrency use as it looks beyond trading: By Nichola Saminather TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian online brokerage Wealthsimple wants to chart a future enabling the real-world use of cryptocurrencies rather than simply facilitating trading, but is likely to face unexpected costs and uncertain regulatory terrain along the way. Launched in 2014 as a stock-trading platform, Wealthsimple currently has C$15 billion ($11.9 billion) in assets. It added cryptocurrency trading in August 2020 with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and has since added more coins, hosted wallets and inward transfer capabilities, and has said it intends to enable withdrawals. Wealthsimple's first-mover advantage in crypto has helped it to break into a narrow slice of Canada's financial industry not dominated by the 'Big Six' banks. "We understand that part of the appeal of this asset class (is) to use the asset, not simply invest in them or speculate on them, so we're going to support that," Wealthsimple's Chief Legal Officer Blair Wiley said in an interview. "We’re looking at ... how we can become more nimble, more connected to public blockchains as a key strategic priority." He declined to provide a timeframe for achieving this, or the investment needed to expand the crypto capabilities of Wealthsimple, 43% owned by Power Corp of Canada. Cryptocurrencies' uses include as alternatives to fiat currencies; for funds transfers without intermediaries or transfer fees; and the use of smart contracts, which self-execute when stated terms are met. Companies from Tesla Inc to PayPal Holdings have started accepting them, but speculation and trading remains by far their most popular use. Wealthsimple would have an edge when they eventually offer real-world use as "they already have a captured market of people interested in trading," said Anne Connelly, a lecturer at Boston University focused on cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Canada had four other cryptocurrency companies registered with securities regulators as of Jan. 11, all focused only on the digital assets, in contrast with Wealthsimple, which is familiar to users who trade other assets. Canada has focused on regulating cryptocurrencies primarily as securities. REGULATORY COMPLIANCE The recent downtrend in cryptocurrencies highlights the benefits of reducing reliance on trading, said Katrin Tinn, assistant finance professor at McGill University, adding that Wealthsimple's familiarity and ease of use is a big draw for new cryptocurrency users over other sites. But that could challenge the addition of more complex capabilities. Story continues For instance, "if the corporation is still holding on to (users') private keys for them or preventing them from sending their cryptocurrency anywhere else, then they're selling the vision of cryptocurrency without providing the true benefits," Connelly said. Wealthsimple's plan to enable cryptocurrency withdrawals gets it closer to its goal, said Andreas Park, finance professor and co-founder of the University of Toronto's blockchain research lab LedgerHub. But as regulations evolve, Wealthsimple will "have to continue to devote considerable resources to build up their cryptocurrency presence and to deal with regulatory compliance," said Matthew Burgoyne, cryptocurrency and blockchain-focused partner at McLeod Law. While institutions including Commonwealth Bank of Australia and Spain's BBVA, as well as trading platforms including U.S.-based Robinhood Markets Inc have embraced cryptocurrencies, Canadian banks have mostly prohibited the use of credit cards for cryptocurrency purchases and avoided dealing with related businesses. While this limits the use of cryptocurrencies, it allows Wealthsimple to gain a foothold. Clients registering for Wealthsimple's Trade product, which includes cryptocurrencies, tripled in 2021, according to company data. "The focus should be on what crypto/blockchain can do, not whether these tokens are good investments," Park said. That is a "much better, forward-looking strategy." ($1 = 1.2627 Canadian dollars) (Reporting By Nichola Saminather; Additional reporting by Tom Wilson in London; Editing by Denny Thomas and Nick Zieminski) View comments || FOREX-Dollar edges up after Putin's comment about progress in Ukraine talks: (Adds analyst comments, updates prices, changes dateline to New York from London) By John McCrank and Joice Alves New York, March 11 (Reuters) - The dollar edged higher on Friday while other safe-haven and commodity-linked currencies declined, after Russian President Vladimir Putin said there had been some progress in talks between Moscow and Ukraine. Putin said in a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko that there had been "certain positive shifts" in negotiations with Ukraine and that talks continued practically on a daily basis. Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special operation," has roiled markets, causing commodity prices to spike and threatening global economic growth prospects. "If perhaps there is optimism and positivity towards talks and there is any chance that there is a ceasefire or peace, that of course would get global growth momentum going again," said Juan Perez, head of trading at Tempus Inc. The dollar, which is seen as a safe-haven currency, initially declined on the news, but then gradually strengthened and was last up 0.399% against a basket of six global peers at 98.753. The greenback was near a five-year high against the safe-haven Japanese yen, which was down 0.7% at 116.935 yen . The dollar has also been supported by expectations the Federal Reserve will start raising interest rates at the end of its March 15-16 policy meeting, with inflation running hot. While the U.S. central bank is all but certain to hike rates from the COVID-19 pandemic low, the Bank of Japan, which also holds a policy meeting next week, is set to remain an outlier. The euro declined 0.29% to $1.0956 but was heading on Friday to its first weekly gain in five weeks. The single currency has fallen almost 2% against the U.S. dollar in March. After hitting its lowest level in almost two years on Monday amid rising stagflation worries arising from the Ukraine war, the euro found some support from the European Central Bank's announcement that it will phase out its stimulus, opening the door to an interest rate hike before the end of 2022. Story continues Commodity-linked currencies, including the Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar, and the Norwegian crown, were lower versus the greenback, with the Aussie down 0.48%, the kiwi down 0.38% and the crown down 0.29%. Bitcoin slid 1.13% to $39,000. It had surged this week after U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday requiring the government to assess the risks and benefits of creating a central bank digital dollar. (Reporting by John McCrank in New York and Joice Alves in London; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Alison Williams and Paul Simao) || Russian Crypto Miners Brace for Sanctions Fallout Amid Ukraine Conflict: Crypto miners in Russia have been unscathed so far by the war in Ukraine, but sanctions could soon indirectly squeeze their businesses.
Last August, Russia was the world’s third-biggest bitcoin (BTC) mining country after the U.S. and Kazakhstan, according to theCambridge Center for Alternative Finance’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. Mines are mostly located in remote parts of Siberia, some around 3,700 miles away from Kyiv, and so they haven’t seen any serious interruptions to their operations. By contrast, earlier this year in Kazakhstan, another former Soviet state, civil unrest led to internet shutdowns thatdisruptedthe operations of crypto mines for a few days.
Mining remains a “sustainable business” in Russia despite the conflict, said Sergey Arestov, co-founder of Russian mining hosting firm BitCluster. He pointed to the supply of relatively inexpensive energy and construction materials as well as to the weak ruble. As a result of thelocal currency’s fall, bitcoin is worth more in rubles, and so “mining has become even more profitable,” Arestov said.
Further, the ruble’s decline has made local energy cheaper by global standards, said Denis Rusinovich, co-founder of Berlin-based Cryptocurrency Mining Group (CMG) and Switzerland-based minerMaveric Group. Electricity tariffs in Russia dropped 25%-30% in U.S. dollar-denominated terms, he said, a few days into the conflict.
The global bitcoin hashrate, a measure of computing power on the network, has been unchanged three weeks into the war, which Russian President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation.”
On top of the conflict itself, however, Russia has become the world’smost sanctioned country, withbankingrestrictions,exportandimportbans and thefreezingof assets owned by some of Russia’s richest and most powerful people.
“We definitely will not see any investments in new sites or hosting for bitcoin mining in the region from anyone outside Russia,” Rusinovich said. That once again raises concern over the centralization of the network and the ever-diminishing range of options for geographic diversification of computing power, he said.
At least two Europe-based miners interviewed by CoinDesk have abandoned plans to expand operations in Russia. Rusinovich said he has given up onprojects in Russiain light of the current situation.
“We don’t plan to look for new sites in Russia, but we are developing more than 300 megawatts in the next six to eight months,” Roman Zabuga, a spokesman for BWC UG, a Germany-based mining hosting firm, told CoinDesk. BWC UG will likely host Chinese miners from Kazakhstan once the firm’s mines are complete, he said.
BitCluster, which also hosts mining rigs for other firms, will reorient itself from Western Europe and North America to the east when looking for investors and clients, Arestov said. The Middle East, Central Asia, India and Africa are huge markets, he said.
The decisions of some European and U.S. miners to pivot away from Russia won’t severely disrupt the crypto mining industry, said David Carlisle, director of policy and regulatory affairs at blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Switzerland-based BitRiver, which is one of the largest mining players in Russia, declined to comment for this story.
Those who stay in Russia “might face a shortage of spare parts and difficulties with logistics” because of the sanctions, Arestov said.
But specialized chips for crypto mining, known as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), can still be purchased from China, Carlisle said. The major manufacturers of ASICs remain in China, which hasn’t placed any sanctions on Russia.
Read more:Bitmain Says Its New Liquid Cooling Miner Is Its Most Power Efficient Model Efficient to Date
Rusinovich predicted a rise in tariffs for air shipments of hardware, now that Russian airline carriers have banned European airlines from flying into Russia.
The restrictions and logistics difficulties regarding equipment procurement will lead to a slight uptick in mining hardware demand inside Russia, as it could also be seen as an investment protected by soaring inflation, Rusinovich said.
Prior to the conflict, Russia was brewing what was likely to be its biggest regulatory step in crypto trading and mining yet.
About a week before the war started, the Russian Ministry of Financesubmitted a billthat would regulate crypto trading and mining to the parliament. The press release announcing the bill gave few details about how mining would be regulated, only mentioning that dedicated government agencies would be responsible for the industry.
There is uncertainty about how the new legislation will treat mining, as well as how Russia’s capital controls will be implemented on crypto.
The central bankorderedexporters to convert 80% of their foreign currency deposited to their bank accounts under cross-border traded contracts into rubles. A similar logic could be applied to bitcoin as it is a convertible digital hard currency, Rusinovich said.
One Russian miner said that he expects regulation to be introduced quickly to deal with the federal budget deficit and capital flight.
The regulation might turn out to be a ban on cryptocurrency activities, with higher electricity tariffs for miners (similar to whatChinahas done), instead of a tax rebate, as previously hoped, this miner said.
Read more:China's Zhejiang Province Implements Punitive Electricity Prices for Crypto Mining
By contrast, Elliptic’s Carslile thinks the Kremlin may suddenly see mining as a much-needed source of cash flow: “A key question is whether the Russian government may look to mining as a way to generate revenue in the face of sanctions – either by directly getting involved in mining, or by seeking to license and tax it,” he said.
Considering that sanctions are now specifically targeting Russia's oil and gas industries, it is “increasingly likely that Russia could turn to mining.” State-owned Russian natural gas giant Gazpromneft is among the firms that has been engaged in mining itself.
COMING NEXT WEEK:CoinDesk reporters across the globe visited cryptocurrency mining facilities, interviewed key players and crunched network data to shed light on a little-understood industry. Mining Week, a special series, kicks off March 21. || Macy’s Shares Jump After Earnings Blow Past Estimates and Company Raises Outlook: Macy’sshares jumped over 6% in pre-market trading on Tuesday after the fashion retailer generated higher earnings than expected in the holiday quarter and forecast better sales for this year.
The U.S.-based fashion retailers reported quarterly adjusted earnings of $2.45 per share in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 29, beating the market expectations of $2.00 per share. The company said its revenue surged more than 27% to $8.67 billion from a year earlier. That too topped the market expectations of $8.47 billion.
The New York-basedMacy’ssaid its digital sales rose 12% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 and jumped 36% versus the fourth quarter of 2019.
The company gross margin for the year was 38.9%, up from 29.2% in 2020 and up 70 basis points from 2019. The fashion retailers forecast sales in the range of $24.46 billion and $24.70 billion for 2022. That was above analysts’ estimates of $24.2 billion.
“The resolution of the co’s evaluation of an e-com spin (prompted by an activist in Nov-21), is to remain integrated. This isn’t a big surprise as the activist heat had cooled and the complexity & risk ratio was high. Post-eval,Macy’s (M)is doubling down on its strategy — “accelerating Polar is initiatives that span digital, brand partners, private label, marketing and loyalty,” noted Stephanie Wissink, equity analyst at Jefferies.
“Macy’s (M)also recommitted to its off-mall, small-format store rollout, and we look for an update on the mall-based dept stores marked for closure (paused in 2H21).”
Following this,Macy’sstock surged over 6% to $27.28 in pre-market trading on Tuesday. The stock fell nearly 2% so far this year after surging over 132% in 2021.
“Macy’scontinues to undergo core operating challenges, similar to peers in the department store space (eg. market share cessation to peers, falling store traffic, contracting margins, eCommerce disintermediation). Despite closing stores proactively, store-only comps remain negative and we forecast them to remain so in the future, eroding ROIC,” noted Kimberly Greenberger, Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley.
“Expense cuts (eg. headcount reduction), real estate monetization, and secondary growth initiatives are encouraging, but are unlikely to stimulate enough cash flow to reinstate its dividend while also covering upcoming debt maturities. We anticipate COVID related disruption accelerates market share loss to peers, especially to brands with owned eComm.”
Eight analysts who offered stock ratings forMacy’sin the last three months forecast the average price in 12 months of $36.63 with a high forecast of $50.00 and a low forecast of $25.00.
The average price target represents a 42.53% change from the last price of $25.70. Of those eight analysts, four rated “Buy”, three rated “Sell”, according to Tipranks.
Morgan Stanley gave the base target price of $23 with a high of $35 under a bull scenario and $15 under the worst-case scenario. The investment bank gave an “Underweight” rating on the department store chain company’s stock.
Several analysts have also updated their stock outlook. Deutsche Bank cut the target price to $32 from $35. Telsey Advisory lowered the price objective to $30 from $40. Citigroup slashed the price target to $25 from $29.
Technical analysis suggests it is good to hold as 100-day Moving Average and 100-200-day MACD Oscillator giving a mixed signal.
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• 49 Bitcoin Mining Rigs Detained by China Customs Over False Declaration || Forget a bitcoin winter — a crypto 'ice age' might be coming as the Fed ends the easy-money era: • A crypto "ice age" might be coming as the Fed slashes its support for markets and the economy.
• Crypto prices have slumped, with bitcoin tumbling to a six-month low below $38,000 on Friday.
• With the Fed hiking interest rates, and nagging questions about regulation and the technology, the outlook could be bleak.
Things are getting cold in crypto-land.Bitcoinis down dramatically from its November peak of close to $69,000, falling to a six-month low below $38,000 Friday. Trading volumeshave slumped.
Some investors are concerned that the market is going into a "crypto winter" — a period when prices fall sharply and fail to recover for more than a year — as the Federal Reserveabruptly tightens monetary policy.
But it could be worse than that. Crypto could in fact be heading for an "ice age," where prices stay low for years and many investors lose interest, Paul Jackson, Invesco's global head of asset allocation research, told Insider recently.
It's not just Fed policy. Many potential investors have niggling doubts about the robustness of cryptocurrency technology, and regulation that could stifle industry development.
The Fed could put crypto in the deep freeze
Early last year, "Bond King" Jeff Gundlach said he thought bitcoin was"the stimulus asset"boosted the most by the "torrent" of money from the Fed and US government during the coronavirus crisis.
But less than a year later, the Fed is turning off its faucet as it tackles soaring inflation. Markets are now expecting four interest rate hikes in 2022.
The resultant jump in bond yields has alreadywhacked unprofitable tech stocksand cryptocurrencies. The two speculative assets look a lot less attractive when returns on risk-free bonds are higher.
But more pain is likely, as bond yields have considerably further to rise, according to Invesco's Jackson.
"Central banks and governments have played a role in jacking up these markets, and as those policies reverse, then I think they will have a role in depressing them," he said.
Read more:A 21-year veteran trader breaks down an options trade designed to help investors 'sustain risks long enough to see the light of profitability' — and explains why bitcoin could continue to move in tandem with tech stocks
Even bulls such as Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz have said crypto islikely to stay under pressure.
"I think it could be an ice age," Jackson said. "I think if you take away those conditions that have been created by the Fed ... it does change the outlook."
Nagging questions about regulation and crypto technology
Of course, many cryptocurrency supporters disagree. Dan Morehead, CEO of investment firm Pantera, said in a note last week the sector should stay strong because the uses for crypto networks have ballooned.
He pointed in particular to the growth in decentralized finance, or DeFi, where financial activities such as trading can be carried out without the need for intermediaries, thanks to crypto technology.
But many investors are less convinced, with regulation a particular worry. The central bank of Russia, a crypto hub, this weekproposed an outright banof mining and transactions, adding to Friday's sell-off. European regulators could be about to toughen up their rules, andSpainandthe UKare cracking down on crypto adverts.
James Malcolm, head of foreign-exchange strategy at UBS, told Insider he thinks problems with crypto technology could be one of several factors, alongside stricter regulation, that could drag the crypto world into another winter.
Malcolm citeda blogby the founder of the Signal messaging app, which concluded that blockchain technology is clunky and far from decentralized. Meanwhile, users of the ethereum crypto network havebeen infuriatedby congestion and high transaction fees, which are proving very hard to fix.
"A lot of people in the technology space seem to be questioning whether or not [crypto tech] is that effective," Malcolm said. "It begs the question if it was so blatantly next-generation technology, then why aren't a lot of big tech companies all over it? Why isn't Google massively invested?"
Read the original article onBusiness Insider || It's not too late to invest in crypto, because adoption could only now be nearing a 'hyper-inflection point,' Wells Fargo says: • Cryptocurrencies are poised for an adoption "hyper-inflection point" soon, Wells Fargo said on Monday.
• You aren't too late to invest in crypto because it's still early days for the asset class, the bank said.
• Performance figures of cryptocurrencies are skewed because prices have risen from virtually zero, the team noted.
Investors who fear they may have missed out on the cryptocurrency boom might be wrong, according to new research fromWells Fargo.
In anotepublished Monday, the bank's global investment strategy team said cryptocurrencies might be hitting an "adoption inflection point," much like the internet did in the mid-to-late 1990s.
That means the bank expects a pronounced expansion in the pace of global crypto adoption.
Currently, only 221 million people in the world use cryptocurrencies, according to data fromCrypto.com. That equates to roughly 3% of global population. 2021 was an especially notable year for the space, with crypto users doubling in just four months between February to May — to 203 million from 106 million.
Wells Fargo said it acknowledges the "too late to invest" argument, but doesn't subscribe to it. Instead, the bank said it places itself in the "early, but not too early" bucket — based on swelling global crypto adoption rates.
"If this trend continues, cryptocurrencies could soon exit the early adoption phase and enter an inflection point of hyper-adoption, similar to other technologies," Wells Fargo said. "There is a point where adoption rates begin to rise and do not look back."
"Precise numbers aside, there is no doubt that global cryptocurrency adoption is rising, and could soon hit a hyper-inflection point."
Although cryptocurrencies remain in the nascent stages of investment evolution, Wells Fargo said it believes they make for viable investments today.
Still, the bank noted that "regulatory roadblocks" could be a major obstacle as this is the number one reason why high-net-worth investors are unwilling to invest in crypto.
Past performance of cryptocurrencies may not be a good indicator because prices have essentially risen from from virtually zero, the team said.
Wells Fargo usedbitcoinas an example, pointing out that the first real-world transaction made using the coin took place 16 months after its creation when it was valued at about $0.004. Bitcoin was launched in January 2009, but it didn't cross $1 a coin until February 2011.
Bitcoin was trading just above $43,000 a coin on Tuesday, down 0.65% on the day, but close to its highest in a month. It's down 8% so far this year, according to data fromCoinMarketCap.
Since a vast majority of digital tokens are under five years old, the bank described cryptocurrencies as a "relatively young investment space." They're also a unique investment product — owing to the complexity of the underlying technology — which makes it difficult to attract inflows or research coverage, the note said.
Multiple US corporateslike MicroStrategy, Tesla, and Block have bought cryptocurrency worth millions, showing how volatility in prices has unfazed large investors.
Moreover, US senators have spoken positively about leading crypto bitcoin. Last week, Senator Pat Toomey saidcrypto-assets are here to stayand should be included in a "thoroughly diversified portfolio." Separately, Senator Ted Cruz disclosed hebought bitcoin worth up to $50,000in January.
Wells Fargo itselfbegan offering crypto exposureto its wealthy clients last year. The bank said it recommends buying crypto via professionally-managed private placements.
Read more:A bitcoin bull and investing chief overseeing $1.7 billion lays out how to tackle a crypto winter that could last for at least a year — and 4 cheap projects that will thrive when the halving triggers the next bull cycle
Read the original article onBusiness Insider || ETF Areas to Consider for Investing in March Amid War Concerns: Wall Street is feeling the brunt of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. The Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.3% on Mar 3. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite also lost 0.5% and 1.6%, respectively, on the same day.
As the world has entered into the second week of the war, Moscow continues to attack Maripol and Kharkiv with heavy shelling. Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to strongly defend its capital, Kyiv. The second round of negotiation talks also could not result in any concrete conclusion. The United States, meanwhile, has imposed new sanctions on certain wealthy Russian nationals.
The piling economic sanctions on Russia might weigh on its economy. JPMorgan expects that Russia’s economic growth may be hurt by 35% at an annualized rate in the second quarter (as stated in a CNBC article).
In this regard, Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said that “The situation is very fluid on the ground in Ukraine. ... We don’t know where the ultimate bottom in the market may be, but we continue to believe the U.S. economy will have above-average growth this year,” per a CNBC article.
The Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has currently proposed a quarter-point hike in March to the Senate Banking Committee in order to control the red-hot inflation levels.
Let’s take a look at some ETF areas that investors will like to consider amid the war between Russia and Ukraine in March:
Investors are paying great attention to cybersecurity stocks as these have been rallying amid the rising panic of cyberattacks. Market experts have warned about the possibility of cyberattacks by Russia in retaliation to Western sanctions. The West has been continuing to isolate Moscow by imposing several sanctions on Russian banks, its sovereign debt along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Notably, cyberattacks can be part of Russia’s war strategy. Several Ukrainian entities were hacked last week. Also, the increasing adoption of revolutionary technologies is exposing businesses, governments and organizations to cyber risks.
Investors seeking to tap the boom in the cyber security market could consider the following ETFs:ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETFHACK,First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETFCIBR,Global X Cybersecurity ETF(BUG) andiShares Cybersecurity and Tech ETF(IHAK) (read: Why Cybersecurity ETFs are Rising amid Russia-Ukraine Crisis).
The world’s largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, has decoupled from traditional markets and risk-on assets amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This has particularly supported the idea of looking at the digital currency as the best safe-haven asset as well as a store of value. Crypto enthusiasts see the Russia-Ukraine war as a game-changer for cryptocurrencies. During the ongoing war times, cryptocurrencies have acted as a store of value as well as allowed to conduct rapid and cost-efficient digital transactions. These distressed times have highlighted the shortcomings of the traditional financial system and cryptocurrencies role as a remedy to them.
Against this backdrop, let’s take a look at some cryptocurrency ETFs that have been rallying since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine:ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETFBITO,VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETFXBTF andAmplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF(BLOK) (read: Cryptocurrency ETFs Rally Amid Russia-Ukraine War: Here's Why).
There is no denying that Russia and Ukraine hold important positions as producers in the global commodities market. Thus, the escalation in tensions has sparked a rally in a broad range of commodities.
The latest developments can also slow down production activities and impact the export of commodities and goods. This is true as the tensions have led to supply-disruption fears in an already-tight commodity market.
It is important to note that commodity ETFs mostly hold futures and there could be roll costs or yields involved. Therefore, these ETFs are more suitable for short-term trading or hedging activities.
Following are some commodity ETFs that investors can keep track of as the geopolitical crisis worsens:Teucrium Wheat FundWEAT,United States Commodity Index FundUSCI,WisdomTree Enhanced Commodity Strategy Fund(GCC),Invesco DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund(DBC) andInvesco DB Base Metals Fund(DBB) (read: Oil Rallies Amid Russia-Ukraine Crisis: ETFs to Bet on).
The Federal Reserve has already started tapering bond purchases, which it expects to complete by March this year. The Fed is expected to begin raising its benchmark interest rate in March. The shift toward a tighter monetary policy will push yields higher, thereby helping the financial sector. This is because rising rates will help in boosting profits for banks, insurance companies, discount brokerage firms and asset managers. The steepening of the yield curve (the difference between short and long-term interest rates) is likely to support banks’ net interest margins. As a result, net interest income, which constitutes a chunk of banks’ revenues, is likely to receive support from the steepening of the yield curve and a modest rise in loan demand. Notably, as the economy starts operating in full swing, the banking space will be able to generate more business.
Let’s take a look at some banking ETFs that can gain from the current environment:First Trust Nasdaq Bank ETFFTXO,Invesco KBW Bank ETFKBWB,Invesco KBW Regional Banking ETF(KBWR),iShares U.S. Regional Banks ETF(IAT) andSPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF(KRE) (read: Warren Buffett Wins in 2022: ETF Lessons to Learn From).
Insurance industry makes up a considerable size of the financial sector. A reduction in bond buying can push bond prices down. This may increase the yield to maturity of bonds. Higher bond yields might raise the market's risk-free returns. A hike in risk-free market interest rate can raise the cost of funds, enabling the financial companies to widen the spread between longer-term assets, such as loans, with shorter-term liabilities, thus boosting the financial sector’s profits margin.
Insurance providers are generally compelled to hold several long-term safe bonds to back the policies written. A higher interest rate will benefit insurance companies. The spread between the longer-term assets and shorter-term liabilities will increase the spread of insurers. Moreover, the insurance industry's profitability has risen historically during the period of rising interest rates.SPDR S&P Insurance ETFKIE andiShares U.S. Insurance ETFIAK are good options for investors to consider (read: Insurance ETFs to Rally on Solid Q4 Earnings).
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF (HACK): ETF Research ReportsInvesco KBW Bank ETF (KBWB): ETF Research ReportsFirst Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR): ETF Research ReportsiShares U.S. Insurance ETF (IAK): ETF Research ReportsSPDR S&P Insurance ETF (KIE): ETF Research ReportsTeucrium Wheat ETF (WEAT): ETF Research ReportsFirst Trust NASDAQ Bank ETF (FTXO): ETF Research ReportsUnited States Commodity ETF (USCI): ETF Research ReportsProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO): ETF Research ReportsVanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF (XBTF): ETF Research ReportsTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research || CS Global Partners: Bitcoin Heaven El Salvador Newest Nation to Consider Citizenship by Investment: CS Global Partners LONDON, Feb. 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele on Sunday said he will send Congress a proposal to grant citizenship to foreigners who invest in the Central American country, another step in the populist leaders plan to bolster the countrys economy by attracting non-traditional capital. Im sending 52 legal reforms to congress to remove red tape, reduce bureaucracy, create tax incentives, citizenship, in exchange for investments, new securities laws, stability contracts, etc., Bukele said on Twitter. Since September, El Salvador has attracted increasing international interest when it passed a law that made the cryptocurrency Bitcoin legal tender. Like the new package of El Salvador reforms, that law was first proposed by Bukele. If the new citizenship legal reform is passed, El Salvador would become one of the few countries to offer a citizenship by investment programme, joining several other small countries, mainly in the Caribbean, according to the worlds leading government advisory and marketing firm CS Global Partners . CBI Programmes usually require a vetted applicant to make a minimum monetary contribution to a government fund or purchase real estate in the country to obtain citizenship. Greater crypto freedom with CBI An increasing number of crypto investors and tech entrepreneurs have started looking to second citizenship as a means of achieving greater freedom, says Micha Emmett, the CEO of CS Global Partners. She added that this growing demographic has combined assets like cryptocurrency with additional citizenships to unlock financial autonomy and wealth diversity. As crypto gained more traction in the last few years, weve started seeing an increase in interest for second citizenship from the tech community. This demographic, technologically, is already global, so it makes sense that they want their assets to reflect this mindset, she said. A second citizenship offers a level of safety and security that investors can rely on during political or economic turmoil. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has particularly triggered families to obtain second citizenship to better protect themselves and their financial assets whilst increasing their global mobility. Story continues The dual-island nation of St Kitts and Nevis has been a popular destination amongst the wealthy, mainly because of its CBI Programme . This initiative provides a trusted route to second citizenship once an applicant invests in the nation. Established in 1984, St Kitts and Nevis programme is internationally recognised as a Platinum Standard brand. Despite being the smallest sovereign state in the Western Hemisphere, St Kitts and Nevis is one of the most technologically advanced nations in the region regarding its crypto-friendly approach to banking. The islands recently passed a bill simplifying the trade of virtual assets and are also currently running a digital currency pilot programme known as DCash. St Kitts and Nevis also does not impose income, inheritance, or capital gains tax, allowing citizens to breathe a little freer as they focus on the investments that matter to them. More countries are considering the CBI route El Salvador is not the only country tossing with the idea of citizenship by investment to boost its economy. Just last month, Pakistans Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry said that the Government would offer Pakistani nationality to foreign investors, particularly as a way to recruit heavy investments from the wealthy individuals of neighbouring China and Pakistan. Jamaica's Government is also being pushed to consider adopting a citizenship by investment programme with the funds gained through the process used for various development projects. Julian Dixon, CEO and broker at Jamaica Sothebys International Realty, made the call in October 2021. She said funds gained from the project should be used to invest in the countrys infrastructure, real estate, job creation and business development. For a number of countries, especially in the Caribbean, there is no denying that CBI programmes offer a much-needed injection of foreign direct investment, often in a way that can make a significant developmental difference. These funds are channelled into reducing international aid and debt, developing the tourism sector, job growth as foreigners often employ locals when expanding offices or constructing properties, and sustainability initiatives, CS Global Partners Emmett commented. Dixon particularly pointed out that St Kitts and Nevis, which pioneered the citizenship by investment programme close to four decades ago and has invested upwards of US$300 million from the programme in modernising its infrastructure. She said Jamaica could do the same. A trusted product St Kitts and Nevis offers a trusted product that has been acclaimed globally by independent studies like the annual CBI Index published by the Financial Times PWM magazine. With an influx of citizenship programmes on the market, St Kitts and Nevis continues to be a powerhouse within the industry with one of the longest-standing programmes in operation. Those who become citizens gain a wealth of benefits , including increased global mobility to financial centres in Asia, Europe and Africa, alternative business prospects, and the ability to pass citizenship down, thus establishing a future legacy for ones family. Additionally, St Kitts and Nevis does not impose any personal income, gift or inheritance tax and has a currency pegged to the US dollar, making it a financially lucrative destination for savvy investors. The countrys CBI Unit, which processes all economic citizenship applications, usually issues approvals or denials within a period of three months. There are no interviews, language, education, or business requirements. Travel to the island is not obligatory, and no minimum residence stays apply either before or after Citizenship is obtained. Due diligence procedures remain among the industrys most robust, and the nation is strengthening them by focusing on enhancing fingerprinting and biometrics. For those looking to hedge against future risks, combining the dual-island nations crypto-friendly policies and second citizenship provides investors with the ultimate insurance policy during times of unpredictability. St Kitts and Nevis remains the best destination for securing your future with a thriving financial services sector and a growing crypto hub. Contact: pr@csglobalpartners.com , www.csglobalpartners.com / +447824029952 || Asia Pacific Gift Card and Incentive Card Market Report 2022: Market will Increase from $184,982.4 Million in 2021 to Reach $296,946.4 Million by 2026: Dublin, Feb. 10, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Asia Pacific Gift Card and Incentive Card Market Intelligence and Future Growth Dynamics (Databook) - Q1 2022 Update" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Historically, the gift card market in Asia Pacific has recorded a steady growth with a CAGR of 11.2% during 2016-2020. According to the Q4 2021 Global Gift Card Survey, gift card industry in the country is expected to reach US$205618.0 million in 2022. Gift card market in 2021 was driven a wide range of factors, which supported growth across retail and corporate segments. The primary factors included growth of ecommerce, increased adoption to incentivize employees working remotely, digital gifting, and initiatives undertaken by government, hospitality, and travel industries to revive growth. Though the gift card market was impacted due to COVID-19, the market is expected to bounce back in the coming quarters, especially in H1 2022. Gift card industry in Asia Pacific has done well to withstand the impact of economic slowdown along with negative business and consumer sentiment due to disruption caused by Covid-19 outbreak. Despite near-term challenges in 2022, medium to long term growth story of gift cards in Asia Pacific remains strong. The gift card industry in Asia Pacific is expected to grow steadily in H1 2022 and record a strong growth in H2 2022. The growth momentum is expected to continue to grow over the forecast period, recording a CAGR of 9.6% during 2022-2026. The gift card market will increase from US$184982.4 million in 2021 to reach US$296946.4 million by 2026. With the rising demand and favorable regulatory framework, the Asia-Pacific gift card market remained most attractive for global gift cards companies to expand their businesses in this region in 2021. Moreover, mergers and acquisitions along with fundraising activities increased in the gift card industry in the last four to six quarters. Global gift card players are launching their services in China to expand consumer base Story continues As the demand for gift cards continues to grow in China, global gift cards players are also considering to launch their services in the country and gaining market share for themselves in the largest internet economy. In October 2021, Prezzee, an Australia-based gift card firm, announced its expansion plan outside of Australia, the United States, and Europe, where it currently operates. The company is also planning a public issue in Australia and considering broadening its growth plan. According to the company, it intends to launch the company's services in China and other Asian countries. In Australia, the firm is projected to process more than AUD$1 billion in corporate and retail cards in its 2022 fiscal year. The publisher expects the entry of global players such as Prezzee to further intensify competition and growth of the gift card market in China over the next four to eight quarters. Government owned-businesses are launching gift card programs to expand their market share in India The gifting industry in India is one the biggest globally, with billions of dollars being spent each year on physical gifts in the country. Consequently, to promote cashless ways of gifting and to expand the gift card market, Government-owned businesses are launching gift card programs in India. In June 2021, LIC Card Services entered into a strategic partnership with IDBI Bank to launch a contactless prepaid gift card Shagun for consumers in India. Through the launch of this prepaid gift card solution, LIC Card Services is foraying into the high-growth Indian digital gift card market. Being launched on the RuPay platform, the prepaid gift card can be used at millions of merchants and e-commerce websites in the country. Therefore, helping the firm to diversify the consumer spending options on the card. Gift card providers are focusing on launching digital platforms and merchant acquisition to gain market share in Singapore With more and more consumers are adopting digital channels in the country, the majority of the gift card players are launching a fully digital platform to gain market share in Singapore. Several players, including Giftano and Mooments, have launched an online digital gifting platform, which allows both individuals as well as corporates in the country to buy gift cards seamlessly. Notably, this is helping gift card providers to reach more consumers efficiently, thereby increasing their market share. Some of the other strategies that are being pursued by gift card providers to increase their market share are having an extensive merchant network and market expansion. For instance, both Giftano and Mooments offer gift cards for well-known brands such as Lazada, Grab, and Zalora, among several others. The ability to buy cryptocurrencies using gift cards is boosting the market growth in Japan Another trend that is supporting the gift card market growth in Japan is the ability to buy cryptocurrencies through gift cards. Over the last few quarters, the popularity of cryptocurrencies has surged globally, and Japan is no different. This has led to the growing investment in digital coins, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. With gift cards making it easier for consumers and investors to buy cryptocurrencies, the use of gift cards has also surged significantly over the last few quarters. Some of the platforms that allow consumers to buy cryptocurrencies using gift cards include Paxful and localbitcoins.com. Apart from the ability to buy cryptocurrencies, payment firms are also allowing consumers to complete their purchases using cryptocurrencies through gift cards. For instance, Bitrefill is one such platform that allows consumers in Japan to convert their cryptocurrencies into gift cards at the point-of-sale transaction. Scope: This bundled offering provides the following detailed gift card market opportunity at country level Total Spend on Gifts By Consumer Segment (Retail and Corporate) By Product Categories (13 Segments) By Retail Sectors (7 Segments) Gift Card Market Size by KPIs across Consumer Segments Gross Load Value Transaction Value Unused Value Average Value Per Transaction Transaction Volume Average Value of Card Purchased Number of Cards Gift Card Market Size by Consumer Segment Retail Consumer Corporate Consumer (Small Scale, Mid-Tier, Large Enterprise) Digital Gift Card Market Size By Retail Consumer By Retail Purchase Occasion By Corporate Consumer By Corporate Purchase Occasion By Company Size Gift Card Market Size by Retail Consumer By Functional Attribute By Occasion1. Festivals & Special Celebration Days 2. Milestone Celebration 3. Self-Use 4. Other Value by Purchase Channel Gift Card Spend by Consumer Behavior and Demographics Consumer Purchase Behaviour Gift Card Buyer by Age Group Gift Card Buyer by Income Level Gift Card Buyer by Gender Gift Card Market Size by Corporate Consumer By Functional Attribute By Occasion1. Employee Incentive 2. Sales Incentive 3. Consumer Incentive By Scale of Business Gift Spend by Product Categories (Split by Retail and Corporate Consumers) Food & Beverage Health, Wellness & Beauty Apparel, Footwear & Accessories Books & Media Products Consumer Electronics Restaurants & Bars Toys, Kids, and Babies Jewelry Sporting Goods Home & Kitchen Accessories & Appliances Travel Entertainment & Gaming Other Gift Card Spend by Retail Sector (Split by Retail and Corporate Consumers) Ecommerce & Department Stores Restaurants & Bars Supermarket, Hypermarket, Convenience Store Entertainment & Gaming Specialty Stores Health & Wellness Travel Gift Card Spend by Distribution Channel (Split by Retail and Corporate Consumers) Gift Card Online Sales Gift Card Offline Sales 1st Party Sales 3rd Party Sales Sales Uplift Closed Loop Gift Card Market Share by Key Retailers. Key Retailers Covered Include: Wesfarmers Ltd Woolworths Ltd (Australia) Metcash Ltd Aldi Group Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd JB Hi-Fi Ltd Apple Inc SM Retail Inc Puregold Price Club Inc Rustan Group of Cos Seven & I Holdings Co Ltd Hutchison Whampoa Ltd Metro AG San Miguel Corp Salim Group Trans Retail Indonesia PT Matahari Putra Prima Tbk PT Sumber Alfaria Trijaya Tbk PT Delhaize Group Sa Kompas Gramedia Group Ace Hardware Corp NTUC FairPrice Co-operative Pte Ltd Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd Shen Siong Supermarket Pte Ltd Takashimaya Co Ltd Mustafa Holdings Pte Ltd Courts Asia Ltd Al Futtaim Group LLC Yamada Denki Co Ltd Tesco Plc Central Retail Corp Home Product Center PCL Mall Group Co Ltd, The Charoen Pokphand Group Alibaba Group Holding Ltd JD.com Inc Auchan Group SA Wal-Mart Stores Inc Bailian Group Co Ltd Yonghui Superstores Group Flipkart Online Services Pvt Ltd Tata Group Future Group Reliance Group Amazon.com Inc Aditya Birla Group K Raheja Corp AEON Group Lawson Inc FamilyMart Co Ltd Rakuten Inc Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings Ltd Lotte Group Shinsegae Co Ltd Hyundai Department Store Co Ltd GS Holdings Corp SK Planet Co Ltd BGF Retail Co Ltd Costco Wholesale Corp For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/yq8j6n CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 42892.96, 43960.93, 44348.73, 44500.83, 46820.49, 47128.00, 47465.73, 47062.66, 45538.68, 46281.64
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2021-06-04]
BTC Price: 36894.41, BTC RSI: 39.74
Gold Price: 1889.80, Gold RSI: 62.25
Oil Price: 69.62, Oil RSI: 66.63
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
‘A Crazy Success Story’: Trevor Jones’ NFT Gamble Pays Off: During the past year and a half, Trevor Jones has shattered multiple crypto art records. He has topped the highest bids on non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, including SuperRare , Nifty Gateway and MakersPlace . In February, his Bitcoin Angel set a record for the “ most expensive open-edition NFT artwork ” when it raked in $3.2 million. Jones, 51, didn’t go to college until his thirties and worked three to four jobs after graduating to support his painting career. Today, he still leads a relatively quiet life with his wife outside Edinburgh, Scotland. To him, his journey in the NFT art world has been “a crazy success story.” “It started with being depressed at 30 and deciding to do an art degree,” he says, “to [becoming] an overnight sensation.” His rise is emblematic of the transformative effect the recent NFT boom has had on artists’ lives. Far from an abstract internet phenomenon, NFTs are responsible for some becoming millionaires – in the exclusive art world no less, where it’s not easy to get rich. Related: Bitcoin Options Market Eyes $4.2B Expiry on Friday Since his foray into “crypto art” in 2018 – when he used augmented reality to transform paintings at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery into crypto bigwigs – Jones has become one of the most important artists minting NFTs. Everybody in the sector knows his name. He’s collaborated with Pak, whose work recently sold for $16.8 million at Sotheby’s . And when Beeple, who famously auctioned an NFT at Christie’s for $69.3 million in March , first hit him up for advice on how to make drops on Nifty Gateway last summer, Jones was too busy to respond (they later discussed collaborating). His next collaboration is with the rapper and filmmaker Ice Cube. As the hype around NFTs has grown, Jones still stands out as a classically trained artist in a digital world. Though many of his works include tech components (like animation, AR and of course, NFTs), his primary medium remains oil on canvas. Meanwhile, he’s watched the crypto art world evolve in a very short period of time. In a way, it’s come to look like the traditional art world he came up in. Story continues See also: Whale Shark’s NFT Collectors Playbook “In the early days …there really were only a handful of [crypto] artists. We all spoke to each other daily and got excited about who’s doing what,” he says. “In the last six or so months, it’s really blown up…It mirrors the art world in general, with money, egos, and personalities, and everybody wanting a piece of the pie.” Related: Young Koreans Turning to Crypto as Alternative for Creating Wealth Growing up in a “small logging community” in Western Canada, Jones always excelled in art class, but his dream was to become a rock star. When that went “horribly wrong,” he says, he started backpacking around the world, and found himself “at a crossroads” in his early thirties while living in Edinburgh. “It’s all very cliché,” he says, speaking from an unadorned spot in his home over Zoom in April. “I decided that I needed to become an artist to save myself and find redemption.” Several years later, at 38, he graduated from Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art. He immediately landed a director job at the nonprofit Art in Healthcare. It was a competitive position, says Margaret Hurcombe, who hired him in 2008, but Jones stood out for his “practical skill set” – he had business sense in addition to artistic talent. At the time, Jones also taught art classes and rented out spare rooms in his apartment to make ends meet while working toward solo exhibitions. See also: ‘I’m Obsessed’: Paris Hilton on NFTs, Empowering Female Creators and the Future of Art He learned quickly that solo shows alone wouldn’t pay the bills. With galleries’ 50% commissions, and artists paying for their overhead costs like framing, he was left with about £9,000 from a show that took a year to produce. To collectors, Jones’s work is worth holding onto “I started looking at this objectively and rationally,” Jones says. In his early forties, he needed to find a niche that would distinguish him from other artists. So he started looking to technology, first painting QR codes in 2012 and venturing into AR in 2013. At the 2013 Edinburgh Art Fair, its founder and contemporary art dealer Andy McDougall remembers Jones showing up with “traditional looking” paintings of landscapes and animals. “We were all a little perplexed by this sudden change in style,” McDougall says, until Jones brought out his iPad and scanned it across his paintings, which began to move, play music and offer information about its subjects. “He could bring the paintings to life,” McDougall says. Jones used AR similarly in a “world leaders” portrait series from 2016, blending paint with garbage to portray the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. One buyer bought all ten paintings. “For the first time, I had a bit of money in the bank,” Jones says, “and I could look at investing.” His timing was fateful. Around 2017, bitcoin ( BTC ) and ether ( ETH ) prices had begun to rise dramatically. Jones got caught up in trading. “I found out I’m a bit of a gambler,” he says. His “investing” efforts didn’t end well. But they did introduce him to new subject matter – the crypto sector, which hadn’t yet been explored by traditional artists. He painted portraits of Vitalik Buterin and John McAfee (who re-tweeted his work), and created his stealth AR exhibit at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Again, Jones had gambled, by spending so much time on works in this uncharted territory. This time, the gamble paid off. More and more people began following Jones on Twitter, where he has no qualms about self-promotion, and interest in his work pervaded the crypto market. By 2019, he was painting portraits for this publication’s “ Most Influential ” series. “That kind of solidified my reputation in the space as the go-to traditional painter,” he says. Though NFTs had been around for some time, Jones didn’t learn about them until April 2019, when the CEO of digital art marketplace KnownOrigin, David Moore, approached him at CoinFest in Manchester. “He was telling me about NFTs,” Jones says, “and I could not get my head around it at all.” A couple months later, Jones started seeing artists selling their work on KnownOrigin. “I thought, okay, I can’t ignore this anymore,” he says. So he messaged his friend Alotta Money , a French artist who had been selling his NFTs for hundreds of dollars. “All the NFT world wanted Trevor to get in,” says Alotta Money. “He asked me if I could help him.” Inspired by Picasso’s Girl with Mandolin (1910), their collaboration EthGirl features an animated girl in the shape of the Ethereum symbol, which separates to reveal Picasso’s pixelated eye. It broke SuperRare’s sale record when it sold for 72.1 ETH in December 2019. Jones’s description of the piece on SuperRare reads, “Watch this space. This is just the beginning.” He was right. The following year saw the launch of NFT art marketplaces like Nifty Gateway, which expanded the audience for NFTs by letting buyers pay with fiat. Jones sold his Picasso’s Bull there in July for $55,555, again breaking a platform record. Then 2021 ushered in multi-million NFT auctions by both Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Azealia Banks sold an NFT of her audio sex tape for $17,240, Grimes made an NFT artwork that sold for $5.8 million, and the “Leave Britney Alone” video creator, Chris Crocker, sold an NFT of that video for more than $44,000. See also: Noelle Acheson – What NFT ‘Markets for Emotion’ Say About Tech Business Models Many who got into NFTs since last summer “reference Picasso’s Bull NFT as the one that got them into the space,” says Jones. By the end of 2020, Jones had gone on to release his second collaboration with Alotta Money, which sold for about $140,000 . His collaboration with Pak went for $1.4 million (Jones still doesn’t know Pak’s identity). To collectors, Jones’s work is worth holding onto. Colborn Bell, an NFT collector who owns Jones’ Putin portrait and Cubist Satoshi , says he wouldn’t sell a Jones – unless “some Russian oligarch showed up and was like, I need this Trevor Jones President Putin piece…and offered me an absurd amount of money.” With his background in the legacy art world, Jones could see the NFT market blowing up before it happened. “I knew there was going to be a Beeple who would come in and completely open things up,” he says. “I just didn’t know it was going to happen so quickly.” The acceleration of the market, Jones says, is both “good and bad.” There’s more money and attention available for emerging artists, who can make more from their work because NFT platforms take smaller cuts than traditional galleries and offer royalties for re-sales. But it also makes it harder for those emerging or lesser-known artists to get seen. Jones likes to help artists entering the market. As Aisha Arif, community manager at MakersPlace, a marketplace for digital art, puts it, “Trevor [is a] role model… On Twitter, he is constantly…offering valuable insights to help artists.” But these days, he gets flooded with messages. He can’t keep up with the inquiries, and plans to hire an assistant soon. The success, say friends and colleagues, hasn’t changed Jones – he has remained humble, gracious and a good friend. If anything, it’s made him more guarded. The negativity that can permeate the crypto sector reaches sensitive artists, and there were times in the past year when Jones has been tempted to “completely step away,” he says. Instead, he focuses on his work. After all, aspects of blockchain technology excite him from an artistic perspective, and will “completely shift the way art is consumed,” he says – like the Metaverse, where artists can show their NFT work in virtual worlds. See also: Brady Dale – NFTs Aren’t Art? OK, Boomer In spite of his major success in the past year, Jones’s sudden wealth remains “a number on a screen” (well, several numbers—he holds bitcoin, ether and fiat). He still shops at the cheapest grocery store and doesn’t own a car, but he and his wife are looking at moving to southern Germany next year. He loves Edinburgh, but says that “the weather sucks.” In Germany, he will probably buy a Tesla. In the meantime, he’s using artificial intelligence in a hush-hush project and starting research for his latest collaboration – with Ice Cube. “It’s going to be a very powerful work with a strong message and not a ‘celebrity cash-grab,’” Jones says. And he doesn’t think the NFT market is a bubble. Rather, it’s a fertile ground for the “future of ecommerce and art.” “When it comes down to money and art, there will always be one conclusion,” he says. “Is the money driving the space, or is art driving the space? And we’ll see. We’ll see what happens.” UPDATE (April 26, 15:20 UTC): Jones’ Bitcoin Angel is a solo work, not a collaboration with Jose Delbo. Related Stories ‘A Crazy Success Story’: Trevor Jones’ NFT Gamble Pays Off ‘A Crazy Success Story’: Trevor Jones’ NFT Gamble Pays Off || Coinbase listing marks latest step in crypto's march to the mainstream: By Tom Wilson and Anna Irrera LONDON (Reuters) -Coinbase Global Inc, the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, will list on the Nasdaq on Wednesday, marking a milestone in the journey of virtual currencies from niche technology to mainstream asset. The listing is by far the biggest yet of a cryptocurrency company, with the San Francisco-based firm saying last month that private market transactions had valued the company at around $68 billion this year, versus $5.8 billion in September. It represents the latest breakthrough for acceptance of cryptocurrencies, an asset class that only a few years ago had been shunned by mainstream finance, according to interviews with investors, analysts and executives. "The listing is significant in that it marks the growth of the industry and its acceptance into mainstream business," said William Cong, an associate professor of finance at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business. Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency, hit a record of over $63,000 on Tuesday. It has more than doubled this year as large investors, banks from Goldman Sachs to Morgan Stanley and household name companies such as Tesla Inc warm to the emerging asset. Coinbase's direct listing - which means it has not sold any shares ahead of its market debut - is likely to accelerate that process, those interviewed by Reuters said, by boosting awareness of digital assets among investors. "This is a very positive thing for bitcoin in itself, as it proves the bridge that has been built from an esoteric, left-of-field arena, full of cowboys, to mainstream finance," said Charles Hayter of data firm CryptoCompare. Still, some institutional investors voiced caution over long-term prospects for Coinbase and the crypto sector. Swiss asset manager Unigestion said it was wary of the hype around cryptocurrencies, and as a result would not be buying Coinbase stock. "We think there is a lot of frenzy and exuberance in everything that looks like crypto," said Olivier Marciot, a portfolio manager at Unigestion, which oversees assets worth $22.6 billion. Story continues "Hedge funds and retail will probably be the early birds in these new stocks - probably buying into them pretty heavily - which shouldn't be a clear indication of how they will be in the longer term." BEHOLDEN TO BITCOIN? Others experts said risks included Coinbase's exposure to a highly volatile asset that is still subject to patchy regulation. Founded in 2012, Coinbase boasts 56 million users globally and an estimated $223 billion assets on its platform, accounting for 11.3% crypto asset market share, according to regulatory filings. The company's most recent financial results underscore how revenues have surged in lock-step with the rally in bitcoin trading volumes and price. In the first quarter of the year, as bitcoin more than doubled in price, Coinbase estimated revenue of over $1.8 billion and net income between $730 million to $800 million, versus revenue of $1.3 billion for the entire 2020. "The correlation to bitcoin will be very high after the stock stabilizes after listing," said Larry Cermak, director of research at crypto website The Block. "When price of bitcoin goes down, it's inevitable that Coinbase's revenue and inherently price of the stock will decline as well." Regulatory risks also loom, others said, as Coinbase increases the number of digital assets users can trade on its platform. Coinbase last year suspended trading in major digital currency XRP after U.S. regulators charged associated blockchain firm Ripple with an $1.3 billion unregistered securities offering. Ripple has denied the charges. "Given the expansion of assets covered by Coinbase it's almost inevitable that other listings will come into question," said Colin Platt, chief operating officer of crypto platform Unifty. Coinbase declined to comment. (Reporting by Tom Wilson and Anna IrreraEditing by Nick Zieminski) || ServiceNow (NOW) Partners With Microsoft to Tackle Cyber Threat: At Knowledge 2021, ServiceNow NOW announced its partnership with Microsoft MSFT to bolster security for business enterprises. The company added that it integrated Microsoft’s offerings like Microsoft Azure Sentinel, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Threat & Vulnerability Management, and Microsoft SharePoint with its ServiceNow Security Operations Solution Suite. Further, ServiceNow stated that it anticipates Azure Sentinel and Microsoft Threat & Vulnerability Management integrations to be available from June 2021. However, beginning June 2021, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint integrations will have limited availability. The company is planning to make Microsoft Teams and SharePoint integrations to be fully available in the upcoming months of 2021. ServiceNow, Inc. Price and Consensus ServiceNow, Inc. Price and Consensus ServiceNow, Inc. price-consensus-chart | ServiceNow, Inc. Quote Detailed Look at Integrations By integrating Microsoft Threat & Vulnerability Management integration with ServiceNow Vulnerability Response will help in prioritization of vulnerabilities leveraging asset and business context. This will help business enterprises to create remediation workflows by utilizing “pre-populated solution details” for highest security threats, noted ServiceNow. Combining Microsoft Azure Sentinel with ServiceNow’s Security Incident Response solution will enable creation of central platforms to detect and thwart security incidents. It will also help lower errors by “automating and orchestrating end-to-end incident response workflows” further added ServiceNow. Also, combining ServiceNow’s Major Security Incident Management with Microsoft’s SharePoint offering will aid in creating automated SharePoint folder structures for centralized storing of evidence obtained in the course of critical security breaches. ServiceNow’s Major Security Incident Management is a feature of the company’s broader Security Incident Response solution. The incorporation of Microsoft Teams with ServiceNow’s Major Security Incident Management solution will aid in creation of automated and dedicated Teams channel that will bolster cooperation on security incidents. Story continues Prospects Galore in Cybersecurity Space Increasing instances of sophisticated cyberattacks is boosting demand for robust security solutions. The attacks have substantially risen in the wake of COVID-19 crisis as hackers take advantage of accelerated migration of workloads to cloud by enterprises as well as dramatic shift to remote work and online learning set up. Higher adoption of bring-your-own device (BYOD) policy by enterprises amid continuation of work from home and hybrid work model set up has led to rise in number of network end-points. This raises the risk of cyber security threats. Per a Grandview Research report, the global cybersecurity market is anticipated to witness a CAGR of 10.9% between 2021 and 2028 and reach $372.04 billion. The projections bode well for ServiceNow’s Security Operations Solutions’ portfolio. By extending the availability of Microsoft’s security products, the company’s security solutions now offer IT teams of business enterprises with ability to prioritize threats and vulnerabilities as well as execute effective response measures. Nonetheless, intensifying competition in the cybersecurity space along with increasing operating expenses is a concern. Also, weakness in IT spending especially among small- and medium-sized businesses, owing to the pandemic, is likely to affect ServiceNow’s growth prospects at least in the near term. Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider Currently, ServiceNow carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector are NetApp NTAP and NVIDIA NVDA. Both the stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), at present. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. The long-term earnings growth rate for NetApp and NVIDIA is currently pegged at 8.8% and 15.2%, respectively. Bitcoin, Like the Internet Itself, Could Change Everything Blockchain and cryptocurrency have sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the “Internet of Money” and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree we’re still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities. Zacks has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly. See 3 crypto-related stocks now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) : Free Stock Analysis Report NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis Report NetApp, Inc. (NTAP) : Free Stock Analysis Report ServiceNow, Inc. (NOW) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research || How to Buy Coinbase Stock: Digital display of data Coinbase has taken cryptocurrency legitimate. At least, that’s the position of many in the cryptocurrency community who see the company’s IPO as proof that digital assets have arrived as mainstream investment products. Investors are excited about crypto, even if many don’t quite know what it is. Regulators haven’t made up their minds about how to treat this product, which creates both risks and opportunities. For investors who want to participate in this market, Coinbase has emerged as an option. Here’s what you need to know. Check with a financial advisor before diving into cryptocurrencies or related assets. What Is Coinbase? Coinbase is what’s known as a cryptocurrency exchange . In layman’s terms, this means that it’s an online marketplace where you can buy and sell cryptocurrency tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum . Like any other major marketplace, the company offers several services which facilitate this trading floor. It publishes realtime pricing information, operates digital storage for traders’ tokens, and acts as the third-party middleman to all trades that take place across its platform. In particular, by directly facilitating trades across its platform an exchange makes cryptocurrency trading far more viable than it would be otherwise. While not playing quite the same role as a clearinghouse in an equities market, a cryptocurrency exchange like Coinbase, one of the world’s largest such entities, holds funds in escrow during an exchange to make sure that each trader delivers their promised assets. This lets cryptocurrency investors trade with confidence, reduces the bid/ask spread on popular assets, and makes the exchange’s pricing information more accurate. How Can You Buy Coinbase Stock? In early April 2021, Coinbase launched its IPO. It launched at more than $328 per share, with a total valuation of $85.5 billion. This qualified it for the S&P 500 the day that it hit the stock exchange. You can buy Coinbase on the NASDAQ, where it has been listed since launch. It is traded under the stock symbol COIN. Mechanically, you can buy Coinbase stock by opening an account with any brokerage that allows you to trade stocks on the NASDAQ exchange . You should be able to make these trades on any mainstream trading platform, as NASDAQ is one of the standard markets in which U.S. brokerages operate. Should You Buy Coinbase Stock? Investor checking her Coinbase account There is no way to tell you whether Coinbase is a wise investment. However, there are a few things to consider. At time of writing Coinbase traded at approximately $224 per share. Like all high-value stocks this makes it somewhat more difficult to trade, as investors have to spend considerably more money or can afford to buy considerably fewer shares. However, that also suggests that investors strongly believe in this company’s long- and short-term value. Story continues Investors should consider how accurately Coinbase has been valued. This company had the seventh-largest debut listing in U.S. history and it boasts profits and revenues to support this valuation (with $1.8 billion in revenue during 2021’s first quarter alone). On the other hand, since its IPO the stock has fallen by roughly a third. The drop doesn’t mean that Coinbase is a bad investment. It might indicate a simple period of volatility , making now a good time to buy if Coinbase was originally fairly valued . On the other hand, it also might mean that the company debuted too aggressively. If so, Coinbase will likely continue to fall until it hits an equilibrium. Investing in Coinbase is a good way for you to side-invest in cryptocurrency as an asset class. The company’s profits will rise and fall with the cryptocurrency market as a whole, since its profits come from the commissions and fees that users pay on the Coinbase platform. However, it will come without the speculation that investing in a pure cryptocurrency brings. As a company, Coinbase will give you exposure to the market without quite the wild highs and lows of a Dogecoin or Bitcoin. This can be a good thing or a bad one, depending on your interest. Finally, investors should be careful about the regulatory status of cryptocurrency and the platforms that trade in it. In the long run, arguably nothing will affect a cryptocurrency investment (including one in Coinbase) more than how the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) decides to regulate this market. The SEC has been slow to act on the status of cryptocurrency. While the agency has been clear that it considers some crypto assets securities for the purpose of regulation, it has not created unambiguous categories, black line tests, nor even outlined specifically which major tokens are regulable products. In this silence the cryptocurrency market as a whole has continued to grow, booming to more than $2.5 trillion at time of writing. Rather than making a clear statement, SEC officials tend to refer investors back to the agency’s Howey Test for whether a product is a security subject to regulation. The Howey Test is a four-point legal test with 38 individual factors and several subheadings. It is also a “balancing test,” meaning you have to subjectively determine which factors outweigh which others. This makes it almost impossible for an industry to regulate itself, as a subjective test can at best provide guidance for how a regulator will rule. It cannot give a binding answer. Adding to the confusion is the likelihood that virtually all cryptocurrencies do meet the Howey standard. For lawyers and investors this has created significant uncertainty. While the SEC has chosen not to act, creating great freedom in the market, if the agency does choose to act there is good reason to believe that its regulation will be sweeping. The cryptocurrency industry is well aware of this danger, which drives its often-contradictory stance on the issue of whether cryptocurrency assets are financial products. When speaking to the market, cryptocurrency firms seek investors and speak in the language of initial coin offerings , returns and capital gains. When speaking to regulators these firms insist that crypto tokens are a technology product, no more worthy of SEC oversight than a Word document. The SEC has been unusually opaque on this issue. The closest that agency officials have come is the occasional non-binding public statement. Yet even Coinbase itself flagged this danger in its investment filings. The Bottom Line Man checks his investments on his mobile device Coinbase is one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It is traded on NASDAQ under ticker symbol “COIN” and has enjoyed a world-historic IPO. But keep this in mind, especially if you are a long-term, buy-and-hold investor: The regulatory status of the cryptocurrency industry is entirely unsettled right now. How the SEC chooses to classify digital assets going forward will define the value of these investments, and that is a very open question. Tips on Investing Before you buy cryptocurrency, take a step back and make sure that you understand exactly what this product is . Although blockchain is, in a nutshell, ultimately a just a data storage format, this market and the products it creates are far more complicated than that simple summary. Cryptocurrency is a wild ride and it very well might have a place in your portfolio, but proceed with caution. Like all speculative assets, cryptocurrency is very risky. Fortunately, SmartAsset’s matching tool can help you connect in minutes with a financial professional in your area to talk through risk management, asset allocation and just how many dogecoins you can afford to hold. If you’re ready, get started now . Photo credit: ©iStock.com/koto_feja, ©iStock.com/ferrantraite, ©iStock.com/Merlas The post How to Buy Coinbase Stock appeared first on SmartAsset Blog . View comments || During Bitcoin’s Latest Price Crash, ‘Tether Premium’ Shows Where Money Went: Tether (USDT), the oldest and most popular stablecoin, diverged significantly from its peg to the U.S. dollar during bitcoin’s (BTC) recent price drop.
But rather than seeing the move as a defect of the stablecoin, whose market cap stands at $52 billion, some analysts and exchange executives say the “tether premium” shows the token’s growing use as a safe-haven asset in almost-anything-can-happen-at-anytime cryptocurrency markets.
“During a crash, traders will race to sell their bitcoin in exchange for tether, which is similar to the U.S. dollar in that it is recognized as a temporary safe haven amidst extreme price volatility,” Kaiko, a blockchain data analytics firm, wrote in an April 19newsletter. “A sudden increase in buying pressure for tether often has the effect of causing positive drift from the stablecoin’s one-to-one peg.”
Related:Bitcoin News Roundup for April 21, 2021
The idea of tether as a safe haven might seem incongruous, given thenagging questionsover the stablecoin issuer’scredibility and financial backing. The company behind the stablecoin published an attestation in late March to verify its assets, after agreeing to an$18.5 million settlementwith prosecutors in New York state.
Yet tether’s market value has more than doubled from about $20 billion at the start of the year, a sign of traders’ growing embrace of the stablecoin’s convenience and efficiency as the de facto form of cash in cryptocurrency markets.
Tether’s price rose above $1.004 as bitcoin started falling early Sunday. That was tether’s highest level since March 2020, when the likely economic damaged from the coronavirus and related documentsfirst became apparent, triggeringa sell-offin a broad range of assets from stocks to cryptocurrencies.
Robbie Liu, market analyst at OKEx Insights, said tether’s price increase may also be the result of demand from cryptocurrency derivatives traders who scrambled to line up USDT as collateral to meet margin calls.
Related:Bitcoin Transactions Are More Expensive Than Ever
“First, the price of bitcoin dropped, and then the tether premium started to spike,” Liu said. “This market behavior is consistent with the previous flash crash, seen onFebruary 22.”
Read More: First Mover:Laser Eyes Can’t Stop Correction as Bitcoin Tumbles to $53K
Adding to the picture, tether’s price in Chinese yuan (CNY) was sold at a premium on crypto exchange Huobi’s over-the-counter (OTC) desk even before Sunday’s market correction.
Under normal market conditions, the price of tether expressed in yuan should match that of the U.S. dollar’s exchange rate with the Asian currency.
A spokesperson from Huobi told CoinDesk that the connection between the timeline of the “tether premium” on Huobi’s OTC desk and Sunday’s sell-off is not “strong.”
Instead, the price for the tether-CNY pair has traded at a significant premium recently. That price gap suggests there waselevated demand from Chinese traders and investors, who routinely use dollar-pegged stablecoins as an on-ramp to cryptocurrency markets. Fiat-to-crypto trading, or buying digital assets with government-issued cash, is banned in China.
Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi, told CoinDesk through a spokesperson that the USDT premium over the Chinese yuan happened as many traders were cashing out their crypto profits from the sharp price runup in many alternative cryptocurrencies that occurred in prior weeks.
The recent frenzy over dogecoin (DOGE) and other altcoins has attracted new investors to the crypto market from China, Du said, helping tocausethe “tether premium” as demand for stablecoins rose on the OTC desk.
The sudden rise of dogecoin’s value this month had pushed the total market capitalization of the dog-themed joke tokenabove that of xrp(XRP), historically one of the largest cryptocurrencies. At press time, dogecoin was the sixth-biggest cryptocurrency in the world, with a market capitalization of nearly $50 billion, according to Messari.
“There are many reasons for the appearance of the tether premium, but at the core, it is about the supply and demand,” Du said.
• During Bitcoin’s Latest Price Crash, ‘Tether Premium’ Shows Where Money Went
• During Bitcoin’s Latest Price Crash, ‘Tether Premium’ Shows Where Money Went || Bitcoin price crash live: Elon Musk clarifies Tesla tweets as BTC and dogecoin rebound: Bitcoin, cardano, dogecoin and ethereum have all hit record price highs in 2021 (Getty Images) The crypto market is facing a tough start to the week amid continuing concerns about the climate impact of cryptocurrency and further comments by Elon Musk . Mr Musk who has publicly become more sceptical about bitcoin in recent days initially suggested that Tesla could have sold its vast bitcoin holdings . He later denied it, which helped the price steady but not recover . It follows public statements from the Tesla chief executive that he was concerned about the climate impact of the cryptocurrency. He has also said that he is working to make it cleaner, including discussions with engineers working on dogecoin . The latest comments come amid a difficult time for the cryptocurrency market. Overall, it is down 8.23 per cent over the last day, according to tracking website CoinMarketCap, losing $2.1 trillion. That hit every major cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was down 8.5 per cent, ethereum down 9.3 per cent, and dogecoin continued to have trouble, having lost 5.5 per cent over the last day. Even Cardano which promotes itself as a sustainable coin, and so has weathered some of the losses that have hit others was down more than 9 per cent, though it has still gained almost 25 per cent over the last week. View comments || UPDATE 1-Bitcoin falls 1.8% to $50,270: (Adds background)
April 24 (Reuters) - Bitcoin dropped 1.77% to $50,269.9 on Saturday, losing $906.75 from its previous close.
Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, is down 22.5% from the year's high of $64,895.22 on April 14.
Ether, the coin linked to the ethereum blockchain network, dropped/dipped 4.91 % to $2,253.41 on Saturday, losing $116.36 from its previous close.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies suffered hefty losses on Friday amid fears that U.S. President Joe Biden's plan to raise capital gains taxes will curb investment in digital assets.
But while social media lit up with posts about the plan hurting cryptocurrencies, and individual investors complaining about losses, some traders and analysts said declines are likely to be temporary.
There has been growing retail and institutional investor acceptance of digital currencies as a legitimate asset class. That has coincided with a surge in online trading in stocks and crypto by retail investors, stuck at home with extra cash because of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis) || Belt Finance Victim of Flash Loan Attack in Latest Exploit of a BSC DeFi Protocol: Belt Finance, a platform that provides automated market making for decentralized finance (DeFi), was hacked Saturday in a flash loan attack that resulted in a profit of $6.23 million for the perpetrator and an overall $50 million loss for the platform. It’s the latest attack on a DeFi protocol built on Binance Smart Chain, one of the so-called Ethereum killers that’s built by centralized crypto exchange giant Binance. In a blog post , Belt Finance said the attacker created a smart contract that used PancakeSwap for flash loans and exploited its beltBUSD pool and its strategy protocols and then proceeded to execute the contract eight times for a total profit of 6.23 million BUSD (US $6.23 million). BeltBUSD vault users suffered a 21.36% loss of funds, while 4Belt pool users lost 5.51%, the protocol said. No other pools/vaults were affected. Overall, the attack cost the beltBUSD pool a combined loss of 50m BUSD (US $50 million) consisting of 43.8m in fees and the 6.23 million BUSD that the attacker withdrew as profit. The protocol said it paused withdrawals and deposits as soon as it were aware of the attack and that the vulnerability that allowed the attack to occur has been patched. In its blog post dated Sunday, Belt Finance said withdrawals and deposits would resume sometime in the next 24 to 48 hours and that it’s working on a “compensation plan” that will be released in next 48 hours. UPDATE (May 30, 23:14 UTC): Adds that beltBUSD pool’s loss was a total 50 million BUSD with the 43.8 million in fees added to the 6.23 million in profits taken by the attacker. Related Stories BurgerSwap Hit by Flash Loan Attack Netting Over $7M No One Can Shut Down Bitcoin, Says Binance CEO CZ Binance Smart Chain Adds CipherTrace for Tracking Illicit Transactions Binance Says ‘Rollback’ Not Possible After DeFi Exploits on Binance Smart Chain || Ethereum to reduce emissions as cryptos face climate scrutiny: Developers who work on ethereum's underlying infrastructure said in a blog post this week that the cryptocurrency would be transitioning to a new method of recording and validating transactions that will reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 99.95%. Photo: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images (NurPhoto via Getty Images) Ethereum ( ETH-USD ), the world's second biggest cryptocurrency, is set to get a software upgrade that will drastically reduce its carbon footprint. Developers who work on ethereum's underlying infrastructure said in a blog post this week that the cryptocurrency would be transitioning to a new method of recording and validating transactions that will reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 99.95%. The planned overhaul comes amid growing scrutiny of the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies. Last week Tesla ( TSLA ) boss Elon Musk said his business was abandoning plans to accept bitcoin as payment, citing environmental concerns. Read more: How bad is bitcoin for the environment? In a blog post this week, the Ethereum Foundation a non-profit that works to maintain the network underpinning the digital asset said it would soon shift ethereum to a new infrastructure that would "end the process of expending a countrys worth of energy on consensus." Developers plan to shift ethereum from a "proof of work" system to a "proof of stake" system. Watch: What are the risks of investing in cryptocurrency? Under a proof of work system, computers around the world complete cryptographic maths equations to validate and secure transactions on the network. Solving these equations uses up huge amounts of electricity in the form of computing power. The vast power required stops one individual or group from being able to target the network and overpower it, theoretically allowing an entity to write in transactions sending themselves cryptocurrency. Under a proof of stake system, participants in the network simply have to prove they hold ethereum to contribute to its underlying operations. Computers "stake" their ethereum and in return can validate and secure transactions on the network. A majority of participants in the network must validate transactions for them to go through, which acts as a check against fraud. Carl Beekhuizen, a developer at the Ethereum Foundation, said in a blog that while there was no "concrete statistics on energy consumption" for ethereum, his "ballpark" estimates suggested the change in the infrastructure would reduce its energy usage by around 99.95%. Read more: Bitcoin, ethereum and the blockchain technology behind decentralised finance "A Proof-of-Stake Ethereum therefore consumes something on the order of 2.62 megawatt," Beekhuizen wrote. "This is not on the scale of countries, provinces, or even cities, but that of a small town (around 2,100 American homes). Story continues "For reference, Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus on Ethereum currently consumes the energy equivalent of a medium-sized country." Analysts at Bank of America said in March that ethereum was estimated to be using the same amount of energy each year as Cuba. Beekhuizen said a proof of stake system would mean energy usage is uncorrelated with price. Under the current system, ethereum's energy usage rises and falls in line with its price. The planned transition comes as cryptocurrencies face heightened scrutiny of their environmental impact. Elon Musk was forced to abandon plans for Tesla to accept bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) as payment, following a backlash linked to the cryptocurrency's environmental impact. Bitcoin also uses a proof of work model. Its underlying network uses more energy per year than Ukraine. Analysts at Bank of America said earlier this year that investors had to "pay attention to the enormous environmental costs of Bitcoin". Read more: Tesla's bitcoin investment has carbon footprint of 1.8 million cars Beekhuizen said ethereum's new infrastructure means each transaction should use the same amount of electricity as "about 20 minutes of TV." "By contrast, Ethereum PoW uses the equivalent energy of a house for 2.8 days per transaction and Bitcoin consumes 38 house-days worth," he wrote. The changes will have major implications for the environmental impact of the broader cryptocurrency space. Ethereum is used as the infrastructure for many other cryptocurrency projects and so-called "decentralized finance" applications. Shifting ethereum from proof of work to proof of stake has been planned for years but the plan has been beset by political and technical problems. Beekhuizen said the infrastructure was now up and running and being tested. The foundation hopes to complete the shift in the "upcoming months". Bank of America analysts said earlier this year that the shift to proof of stake "could reduce Ether's carbon footprint" but warned it would "increase both the social and governance risks of this crypto-currency." News of the looming shift came as ethereum and other cryptocurrencies crashed to the lowest point in months. A broad sell-off hit the market on Wednesday, wiping out billions. Ethereum dropped as much as 40% on the day before recovering on Thursday. Watch: How to prevent getting into debt View comments || Caruso Properties to Accept Bitcoin for Rent, Allocates 1% of Treasury to Asset: California real estate stalwart Caruso properties will now acceptbitcoinfor rent on all its properties.
In a partnership with Gemini Exchange, Caruso will now let tenants of its retail and commercial properties pay their rent in bitcoin. This makes Caruso the largest real estate manager in the United States to accept the digital asset as a form of payment.
Additionally, Caruso has allocated roughly 1% of its treasury into bitcoin, according to theLA Times.
Related:China, the Convenient Foil
Caruso’s crypto ambitions may not end at bitcoin, though. A press release shared with CoinDesk signals interest in other aspects of the crypto economy as well, like the hottest segment of the market right now – NFTs.
“This partnership marks the beginning of a holistic, long-term relationship intended to bring cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and blockchain applications to Caruso properties as a way to engage the millions of visitors throughout their ecosystem,” the release reads.
Bitcoin continues to make its way onto the balance sheets of prominent firms in the U.S., a trend that MicroStrategy kicked off last year when itconverted most of its cash holdingsinto bitcoin.Since then, Square,Teslaandother publicly traded companieshave added bitcoin to their balance sheets, as well.
• Caruso Properties to Accept Bitcoin for Rent, Allocates 1% of Treasury to Asset
• Caruso Properties to Accept Bitcoin for Rent, Allocates 1% of Treasury to Asset
• Caruso Properties to Accept Bitcoin for Rent, Allocates 1% of Treasury to Asset
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 35551.96, 35862.38, 33560.71, 33472.63, 37345.12, 36702.60, 37334.40, 35552.52, 39097.86, 40218.48
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2017-06-19]
BTC Price: 2589.60, BTC RSI: 54.33
Gold Price: 1244.20, Gold RSI: 41.18
Oil Price: 44.20, Oil RSI: 32.70
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
How a security researcher miraculously and accidentally killed the ‘WannaCry’ ransomware: The massive ransomware hack targeting Windows machines across the globe was stopped dead in its tracks by a security expert who inadvertently activated a “kill switch” built into the malware’s code. The ransomware, dubbed “WannaCry”, made headlines on Friday after infecting computers in nearly 100 countries across the world, with Russia and England reportedly seeing the highest number of infections. The ransomware effectively locks users out of their machines, encrypts their files, and instructs them to send $300 worth of Bitcoin in order to reclaim them. The ransomware also states that the $300 payout will increase if a prompt payment isn’t made. Don't Miss : Apple’s iPhone 8 will be the most expensive iPhone the world has ever seen The exploit, which proliferates via email, was reportedly part of a vast treasure trove of NSA hacking tools leaked by a hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers last month. And though the exploit had since been patched by Microsoft, not everyone had updated their software accordingly. So how did the WannaCry campaign come to an end? Well, a young security researcher — known as malwaretechblog on Twitter — took a look at the ransomware’s code and noticed that it connected to an unregistered domain name consisting of a random string of characters. Out of curiosity, he registered the domain and inadvertently shut WannaCry down. The following photo via Kevin Beaumont is instructive: Detailing how the surprise discovery of the kill switch went down, The Guardian reports: The kill switch was hardcoded into the malware in case the creator wanted to stop it spreading. This involved a very long nonsensical domain name that the malware makes a request to – just as if it was looking up any website – and if the request comes back and shows that the domain is live, the kill switch takes effect and the malware stops spreading. The domain cost $10.69 and was immediately registering thousands of connections every second. MalwareTech explained that he bought the domain because his company tracks botnets, and by registering these domains they can get an insight into how the botnet is spreading. “The intent was to just monitor the spread and see if we could do anything about it later on. But we actually stopped the spread just by registering the domain,” he said. But the following hours were an “emotional rollercoaster”. For anyone curious about the nitty-gritty details surrounding malwaretechblog’s ransomware killing adventure, he posted an article detailing the experience on the National Cyber Security Centre website. It’s well worth a read. Story continues It’s worth adding that everyone shouldn’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet. It’s imperative that users should backup their important files, avoid clicking on suspicious emails, and make sure that their operating system software is up to date. Trending right now: Apple’s iPhone 8 will be the most expensive iPhone the world has ever seen New Google Pixel 2 leak shows raw power that comes with stock Android O T-Mobile’s latest smartphone deal is one of the best yet See the original version of this article on BGR.com View comments || Here's why FANG stocks will get stronger even in a slow growth economy, Goldman says: It doesn't seem to make sense. Why are tech high-flyers surging when economic growth expectations are faltering? Goldman Sachs chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin explained to CNBC why he expects the FANG stock rally to continue even in a sluggish economic environment. "A modest growth environment means that growth is still relatively scarce. So the growth stocks
[where] tech is a prominent area, are likely to continue to do well and outperform," Kostin said Tuesday on CNBC's " Squawk on the Street ." "Basically you want to be in tech and particularly where there is secular growth. And there is a group of stocks where you have revenue growth that is double digit, and that's still relatively rare." FANG stocks, an acronym created by CNBC's Jim Cramer, are crushing the market this year with Facebook ( FB ) up 33 percent, Amazon ( AMZN ) up 34 percent, Netflix ( NFLX ) up 33 percent and Google parent Alphabet ( GOOGL ) up 26 percent through Tuesday versus the S&P 500's ( ^GSPC ) 8.5 percent return. "You have a group of stocks that are going to grow 10, 15, 20 percent, in terms of revenues ... where they trade at 3, 4, 5 times enterprise value to sales. That's the sweet spot that we look for," the strategist said. FANG stocks "can continue to move higher." Slow economic growth, which leads to the growth scarcity situation boosting technology stocks may last awhile. The May jobs number came in sharply below expectations on Friday and U.S. economy grew at its slowest pace in three years during the first quarter. In addition, the time line for President Donald Trump's economic agenda keeps getting delayed . Kostin said he expects a modest growth environment during the rest of this year. And he predicted Trump's tax reform and infrastructure spending plans will likely be pushed out to 2018. Counterintuitively, the strategist said if economic growth does improve, it will be negative for technology growth stocks. "The big issue would be if you have economic growth accelerate, because in an economic acceleration environment, you want to be more value, more cyclicals as opposed to secular growth," he said. Kostin's investing playbook is similar to billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller's classic investment strategy of buying high-flying growth stocks during low growth economic environments. Druckenmiller is chief executive officer of the Duquesne Family Office and the former lead portfolio manager for George Soros. The billionaire's hedge fund has generated annualized returns of 30 percent during his investment career. "(I'm) long this high-beta, high-growth stuff, companies that are investing in their businesses. Stuff that I think will do very well with low nominal growth," Druckenmiller said at The New York Times DealBook conference in November 2015. He also clarified why stronger economies are bad for equities in a 1988 Barron's interview. "The best environment for stocks is a very dull, slow economy that the Federal Reserve is trying to get going," Druckenmiller said. "Once an economy reaches a certain level of acceleration, not only is the Fed no longer with you, but three bad things start to happen." The investor noted how in stronger growth economies the Federal Reserve takes liquidity out of the markets. In addition, he said companies build inventory for products and increase capital expenditures, which further diverts funds out of financial assets. More From CNBC Cramer Remix: What the rise in stocks, gold & Bitcoin means for your money Cramer counters Wall Street worries around markets rising in tandem Cramer says it's possible bitcoin could reach $1 million one day || CEO of US Gold Corp. Talks about Recent Update on Keystone Property and Why Geopolitical Factors Make this an exciting time for Gold Investors: POINT ROBERTS, WA and DELTA, BC --(Marketwired - June 08, 2017) - Investorideas.com, a global news source covering leading sectors including mining stocks releases an exclusive podcast interview with Edward Karr, the President, CEO and Chairman of US Gold Corp. ( DRAM ) following a recent update from the Company. Hear the full interview with Edward Karr, President, CEO and Chairman of US Gold Corp http://www.investorideas.com/Audio/Podcasts/060717-DRAM.mp3 US Gold Corp.'s recent press release detailing the exploration results of their Keystone property indicates exciting prospects for the site.( https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-gold-corp-provides-2016-162611086.html ) The Keystone project, which was acquired in its entirety by US Gold Corp. in May 2016, comprises 479 claims over an area of roughly 15 square miles. It is located on the Cortez Trend about 10 miles south of the "Pipeline" and "Cortez Hills" sites, which are two of the largest mines in North America boasting 20-25 million ounces of gold reserves and 15 million respectively. Edward Karr, the President, CEO and Chairman of US Gold Corp, ( DRAM ) said that the findings of the 2016 exploration team evidence strong geological similarities between Keystone and those other sites which have the company very excited for the future of the project. "Our entire team believe that the geology, the stratigraphy of the rocks on Keystone look to be very similar to Cortez Hills and Pipeline to the north," he said. "We think that this can be a very prospective property." According to Karr, a huge asset to the team is US Gold Corp. Vice President and Head of Exploration Dave Mathewson. Mathewson, a geologist and explorer, has over 35 years of exploration experience in Nevada alone. "Dave Mathewson is really one of the premier exploration geologists in Nevada and North America," he said. "He has a real methodology that he goes through for exploration success time and time again. He likes to identify these real grassroot opportunities and then he comes in with modern exploration techniques." Story continues In a quote from US Gold Corp.'s recent press release, Mathewson expressed confidence in the company's prospects at Keystone. "The best gold deposit districts in the world lie within north-northwest trending structural breaks, indicated by right lateral dislocations in the Sr. 706 line, along the flank of the Paleozoic continental margin in Nevada," Mathewson said. "US Gold Corp. controls one of the best gold projects in Nevada." Karr feels that the market for gold in general looks promising, with prices higher than they've been for some time, and the performance of cryptocurrencies possibly being a positive indication of the future of gold. "We are a stone's throw away from $1300 an ounce -- this is a seven month high," he said. "When I look and I see these cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum at all times highs, it's amazing the runs they've had. I think those are canaries in the coalmine for something to come in the precious metals sector." About US Gold Corp. US Gold Corp is a publicly traded U.S. focused gold exploration and development company. US Gold Corp has a portfolio of development and exploration properties. Copper King is located in South East Wyoming and has a historical Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) done by Mine Development Associates in 2012 for Strathmore Minerals Corporation. Keystone is an exploration property on the Cortez trend in Nevada, identified and consolidated by Dave Mathewson. For more information about US Gold Corp, please visit www.usgoldcorp.gold Dataram is an independent manufacturer of memory products and provider of performance solutions that increase the performance and extend the useful life of servers, workstations, desktops and laptops sold by leading manufacturers such as Dell, Cisco, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Lenovo and Oracle. Dataram's memory products and solutions are sold worldwide to OEMs, distributors, value-added resellers and end users. Additionally, Dataram manufactures and markets a line of Intel Approved memory products for sale to manufacturers and assemblers of embedded and original equipment. 70 Fortune 100 companies are powered by Dataram. Founded in 1967, the Company is a US based manufacturer, with presence in the United States, Europe and Asia. For more information about Dataram, visit www.dataram.com . US Gold Corp. ( DRAM ) is a featured mining stock on Investorideas.com Visit the company profile on Investorideas.com http://www.investorideas.com/CO/DRAM/ To hear more Investorideas.com podcasts visit: http://www.investorideas.com/Audio/ . Investorideas.com podcasts are also available on iTunes, Google Play Music, Stitcher and Tunein. Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investment involves risk and possible loss of investment. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Contact each company directly regarding content and press release questions. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. More disclaimer info: http://www.investorideas.com/About/Disclaimer.asp . Disclosure: US Gold Corp. ( DRAM ) is a paid PR, media and news client effective June 2 107 for 2 months || Your first trade for Wednesday, April 26: The "Fast Money" traders shared their first moves for the market open.
Tim Seymour was a buyer of the iShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF(NASDAQ: EUFN).
Brian Kelly was a buyer of Freeport-McMoRan(NYSE: FCX).
Steve Grasso was a buyer of Square(NYSE: SQ).
Guy Adami was a buyer of Juno Therapeutics(NASDAQ: JUNO).
Trader disclosure: On April 25, 2017, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Tim Seymour is long ABX, AAPL, APC, AVP, BAC, BBRY, C, CLF, CVX, DO, DVYE, EDC, EWN, EWZ, F, FB, FCX, FXI, GM, GOOGL, GE, INTC, LQD, MOS, MCD, MUR, OIH, PG, RACE, RAI, RH, RL, SINA, SQ,T, TWTR, VALE, VZ, XOM. short: EEM, SPY, XRT; Tim's firm is long ABX, BABA, BIDU, CBD, CLF, EEM, EWZ, F, KO, MCD, MPEL, NKE, PEP, PF, TCEHY, SAVE, SBUX, SINA, VALE, VIAB, WMT, WEN, X, YHOO, short EWG, HYG, IWM. Brian Kelly is long Bitcoin, FCX, GE, GDX, HLF, IWM, TLT, TSLA, WMT. Steve Grasso's firm is long stock AON, BX, CUBA, DIA, F, HES, ICE, KDUS, MAT, MFIN, MJNA, MSFT, NE, RIG, SNAP, SPY, SQBG, TITXF, UA, WDR, WPX, ZNGA. Grasso is long stock BABA, CHK, EEM, EVGN, GDX, KBH, MJNA, MO, MON, OLN, PHM, SQ, T, TWTR, VRX. Grasso's kids own EFA, EFG, EWJ, IJR, SPY. No Shorts. Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck.
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• Traders discuss strategy as US equities rally after French elections || TECH STOCKS FALL: Here's what you need to know: blue screen of death (Flickr/Alpha) US stocks and bonds fell on Thursday, a day after the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates and maintain its outlook for one more hike this year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq led declines among the major indexes. Here's the scoreboard: Dow: 21,359.90, -14.66, (-0.07%) S&P 500: 2,432.46, -5.46, (-0.22%) Nasdaq: 6,165.50, -29.39, (-0.47%) 10-year yield: 2.162%, +0.024 Snap sank to its initial offering price of $17 for the first time and closed exactly there. Many of the banks that underwrote the company's popular IPO have become bearish on the stock. Bitcoin had its biggest drop in more than two years . The cryptocurrency fell by as much as 12.9%, to $2,161 a coin, its lowest since the beginning of June. Nestle is thinking about selling its roughly $900 million-a-year US candy business . The world's largest packaged foods maker said on Thursday it would "explore strategic options," including a possible sale, amid a consumer shift towards healthier foods. Nike said it would cut 2% of its global workforce and discontinue a quarter of its shoe styles as competition mounts . Nike shares fell 3%. Alphabet fell after a rare downgrade . In a research note published Thursday, Canaccord said a lot of Alphabet's growth in mobile search and YouTube "will be hard to repeat." Initial jobless claims, which count people who applied for unemployment insurance for the first time, last week fell more than expected by 8,000 to 237,000, according to the Labor Department . Additionally: A predictor with a perfect track record on the American economy is moving closer to signaling a recession Don't expect the market's hottest stocks to cool down any time soon Super-rich millennials are defying the way their parents have been investing for decades Janet Yellen is starting to warm to a policy the Fed once regarded as radical The Fed's 4th rate hike could challenge a popular assumption investors make about stocks LARRY SUMMERS: 'The Fed is not credible with the markets' Story continues NOW WATCH: An economist explains the key issues that Trump needs to address to boost the economy More From Business Insider STOCKS RISE: Here's what you need to know TECH GETS WHACKED AGAIN: Here's what you need to know TECH GETS SLAMMED: Here's what you need to know || SinglePoint and First Bitcoin Capital Partner Up In An Effort To Solve Payment Problems in the Cannabis Industry Through Bitcoin and blockchain alternative payment technology: SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwired - Jun 6, 2017) - SinglePoint, Inc. (OTC:SING), an acquisition-based company with a focus on emerging markets, today announces its initiative to develop a bitcoin payments solution in partnership with First Bitcoin Capital Corp. (OTC:BITCF). The two companies signed a Joint Venture agreement to develop and distribute a viable payments solution using block chain technology. First Bitcoin Capital is an industry leading Bitcoin and blockchain technology provider and SinglePoint has a deep history in distribution. The two companies believe this partnership will enable each company to focus on their core strengths to build and supply the best Bitcoin solution available.
With the massive and widespread adoption of Bitcoin worldwide, the two companies will pursue opportunities to leverage their payment technology background and develop a proprietary solution specifically for high-risk payment verticals including the cannabis industry.
SinglePoints' representation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this year saw many solutions being utilized in other countries based on Bitcoin and other crypto currencies such as Ethereum. SinglePoint and First Bitcoin Capital believe they have found a way for the customer experience to go unchanged at the point of sale when paying with a credit or debit card at medical and recreational cannabis dispensaries.
Under this initiative, the companies will offer a best-in-class Bitcoin solution to fill the payments gap that currently exists.
As SinglePoint CEO Greg Lambrecht states, "InJanuary 2014SinglePoint announced and started working on a bitcoin payment solution, shortly after we recognized the issue of minimal user adoption of digital currency. The payments industry has rapidly changed since that time. There is now tremendous momentum and demand for bitcoin acceptance as an alternative form of payment. This Joint Venture with First Bitcoin Capital is perfect timing. Bitcoin payments are catching on and cannabis dispensaries need a solution fast."
SinglePoint has successfully completed technology integrations with companies such as Twilio, RedFynn, IATS, and all the major carriers ATT, T-Mobile, Sprint and Verizon. Which has enabled the company to provide its text message marketing and text based payment solutions. SinglePoint will now use its experience to work and integrate with First BitCoin Capital to provide an all-encompassing payment solution. First Bitcoin Capital and SinglePoint plan for this technology to be easily implemented into any Point of Sale machine through a simple download of the application.
Greg Rubin of First Bitcoin Capital stated, "We are optimistic that our partnership with SinglePoint will produce positive cash flow to our bottom line. Between the two of our companies, we will have the ability to develop a best in class solution and SinglePoint will be able to help in distribution. We look forward to providing cutting edge products and services to all states through the establishment of this new venture."
Projections by New Frontier put the cannabis industry at $24 billion by 2026. Cannabis is now legal in some form in 29 states and the District of Columbia. Increased need for payment options correlates with this industry growth, and bitcoin stands to be a promising solution. Based on prices from CoinMarketCap, bitcoin has provided annual returns of over 286%. As a testament, Japan recently recognized the currency as a legal payment method and projects that it will be accepted in 260,000 stores in the near future. Furthermore, bitcoin is an accepted form of payment for a number of large retailers, including Overstock.com.
As the cannabis industry continues to evolve, SinglePoint and First Bitcoin Capital are committed to initiatives to identify and develop solutions that enhance the success of the cannabis industry and participating businesses.
About SinglePoint, Inc.SinglePoint, Inc. (SING) has grown from a full-service mobile technology provider to a publicly traded holding company. Through diversification into horizontal markets, SinglePoint is building its portfolio by acquiring an interest in undervalued subsidiaries, thereby providing a rich, diversified holding base. Through its subsidiary companySingleSeedthe company is providing products and services to the cannabis industry.
Connect on social media at:www.facebook.com/SinglePointMobile,http://www.twitter.com/_SinglePoint_,www.linkedin.com/company/SinglePointandwww.youtube.com/user/SinglePointMobile
For more information visitwww.SinglePoint.comorwww.SingleSeed.com
Forward-Looking StatementsCertain statements in this news release may contain forward-looking information within the meaning of Rule 175 under the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and are subject to the safe harbor created by those rules. All statements, other than statements of fact, included in this release, including, without limitation, statements regarding potential future plans and objectives of the Company, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Technical complications, which may arise, could prevent the prompt implementation of any strategically significant plan(s) outlined above. The Company undertakes no duty to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this release. || Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein tweets the US needs to 'keep up' with China's infrastructure — the day after Trump kicks off infrastructure week: (Lloyd Blankfein.John Moore/Getty Images)
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to praise the infrastructure of China and suggest the US is falling behind in its maintenance of roads, bridges, and airports.
"Arrived in China, as always impressed by condition of airport, roads, cell service, etc. US needs to invest in infrastructure to keep up!" Blankfein tweeted.
The message is just the third tweet from the Goldman CEO. Blankfeinjoined Twitter on Thursday, criticizing President Donald Trump's decision to remove the US from the Paris climate change agreement.
Interestingly, Blankfein's tweet comes amidTrump's infrastructure push.The president announced a plan to privatize and modernize the US air traffic control system on Monday and will deliver a speech in Ohio highlighting his plans for a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure.
Trump frequently took aim at Goldman Sachs during his campaign, and Blankfein was even featured in an unflattering light in one of Trump's advertisements.
Since the election, Blankfein said he thinks some of Trump's policiescould be good for the US economy, but has alsotaken issue with the travel ban.
Blankfein also isn't the only major bank CEO to point out China's more updated infrastructure.In an interview with Business Insider in May, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon also made a similar point.
"Then there is infrastructure," Dimon said. "You might be shocked to find out, we haven't built a major airport for 20 years. China built 75 in the past 10 years. It takes 10 years to get all the permits to build a bridge today. Ten years? What happened to the good old can-do America?"
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• GOLDMAN SACHS: These 14 underappreciated stocks are set to take off || MORGAN STANLEY: Bitcoin isn't a currency: Bitcoin may have appreciated 300% in the last 12 months, but Morgan Stanley still isn't convinced the cryptocurrency will be a viable currency in the long run.
In new research published this week, analysts at the bank say that bitcoin (and its counterparts like ethereum) are still more like investment vehicles than fiat currency that you could spend on goods and services. In addition, it said there are few reasons to use bitcoin instead of a debit or credit card, as it represents a "marginally more inconvenient way to pay."
Here's Morgan Stanley:
Most regulators and investors view cryptocurrencies more as assets than actual currencies. Their values are too volatile and too hard to actually use for payment for most to consider them currencies. Our conversations with some merchants indicate that, while cryptocurrencies might actually be attractive for them to operate their businesses, they find that the cryptocurrencies are far too volatile to be used.
(The price of bitcoin has exploded in the past year.Markets Insider)
The huge rise in the price of bitcoin is perplexing to the bank, which says other factors should have brought bitcoin's value down. These include the SEC's rejection ofa bitcoin ETFproposed by the Winklevoss twins,declining trading volumes, and aChinese crackdownon bitcoin miners, without which "transaction time for Bitcoin could increase substantially," says Morgan Stanley.
"It is not clear why cryptocurrencies are appreciating so rapidly (apart from the appreciation itself drawing in more speculation against a potentially inefficient ability to sell)," the bank said in a note.
Still, Morgan Stanley has some guesses as to why bitcoin has seen such a catastrophic rise:
1. ICO's, or Initial Coin Offerings: Instead of traditional public offerings or funding rounds, a handful of companies have begun offering investors digital tokens in exchange for cash. In on high-profile case, a tech startup called Aragonraised $12.5 millionin less than 15 minutes in its ICO.
2. China: There are strict limits on currency outflows in the country, and Morgan Stanley assumes many people are using cryptocurrencies as a way to bypass the limits.
3. Korea and Japan: Bitcoin was just legalized by the Japanese government, so it makes sense that it would be gaining popularity in the country. "In Korea, however, there is not a clear explanation for the surge," the bank writes.
NOW WATCH:HENRY BLODGET: Bitcoin could go to $1 million (or fall to $0)
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• THE BLOCKCHAIN IN THE IoT REPORT: How distributed ledgers enhance the IoT through better visibility and create trust || Controversial Tanium CEO explains why he and his dad have total control of their $4 billion startup: Orion Tanium (Tanium cofounder CEO Orion HindawiCourtesy of Tanium) Don't ask Tanium CEO Orion Hindawi to apologize for the hard-edged internal company culture or his family's iron grip on the business, all of which have generated a slew of negative headlines recently. "Great things are not cuddly," Hindawi told Business Insider in an interview this week. Tanium's business of providing cyber-security services is a very "demanding, stressful thing," he said. And he refuses to pamper employees with the over-the-top perks that some of his Silicon Valley peers do. But those who don't like the way Orion Hindawi, and his father David Hindawi, who is the Tanium cofounder and Executive Chairman, run the business, will now have a way to get out. Tanium announced on Thursday that it will allow employees to cash out of $50 million worth of their stock to a suite of investors. The deal is part of a $100 million fund raising round. Tanium will use the money to buy employee shares. David Hindawi will also be cashing out $50 million dollars worth of stock in the deal, selling to the same group of investors. Business Insider caught up with Tanium cofounder CEO Orion Hindawi to discuss the deal, as well as the scathing exposé by Bloomberg that characterized the security startup as a stressful place to work, and Hindawi as a brutish leader. Hindawi talked openly with us about the culture of his company, the stock sale, the iron-clad hold over ownership he and his father have on the company, and the controversial accusations over why he was firing people. Tight grip Tanium is the second startup founded by this father-and-son team. The father-and-son team had worked for about 18 years at the previous company David Hindawi founded, BigFix, which sold to IBM in 2010 for a reported $400 million. While the deal is good for employees, investors are buying existing common stock, not preferred, so it does not change the founders' ironclad grip on the company, Hindawi tells us. Story continues "We want to let employees buy the houses, cars or whatever they've been dreaming about and not feel quite as much pressure on the IPO as we otherwise might," he said, adding that he still fully intends to take the company public at some point. Tanium has allowed employees to cash out of their stock in secondary sales before. They were, for instance, able to sell shares in March, 2015, as part of an overall $64 million investment into the firm that did include the company selling equity to investors , the company tells us. This round values the company at $3.75 billion. That's a slight increase from 2015, which was the last time the company offered a new stake to investors. Then, Tanium was valued at $3.71 billion, according to PitchBook, a database that tracks such info. It is one of most highly-valued security startups in the industry. Tanium has raised about $307 million total, not including this $100 million secondary offering. A-list VC Andreessen Horowitz put Tanium on the map in 2014 when it put $90 million into the company and another $52 million as part of a $120 million round in 2015, led by TPG Capital, T. Rowe Price and Institutional Venture Partners. Andreessen Horowitz's big stake was done at the urging of one of its advisers, former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky, who called Tanium's technology "magic." But the company didn't sell any equity to raise any operating funds for itself. Hindawi, the son, also said he's not cashing out any of his shares, nor is he buying more shares. "I own 25% of the company and I think that's more than enough for me. Between David and me, we are still above 50% of the company," he said. He refers to his dad by his first name at the office. On top of that, the company uses a "multi-class structure," for shares he said. That refers to dividing shares up into those that have more voting rights than others. It's an increasingly common move for startups, and sometimes even public tech companies (like Alphabet). This allows founders to retain control of the company, even if they don't control a majority of shares. Tanium CEO David Hindawi (Tanium's David HindawiTanium) And he's unabashed that he's locked down control away from investors, very much on purpose, thanks to lessons earned from their earlier startup. "One of the things that drove us to found this company was that at BigFix, our last company, we had a real challenge corralling the investors to do anything actually. They had the majority of the company so a lot of it was really difficult, frankly, Hindawi said. With control of Tanium firmly in the family, he says making decisions is far easier. Yes, I've fired people Hindawi just faced a slew of bad press when he was accused of firing people immediately before their options vested, according to that story by Bloomberg. The implication was that if too much stock wound up in the hands of employees, his controlling stake and authoritative power over the company would be diminished. Hindawi admitted he's fired people, but denied he was motivated by their stock options. He calls that accusation " very obviously, provably not true," he said and says that he had all sorts of reasons why there have been " a lot of people who left Tanium, not of their own volition." He said some people were asked to leave because they were hired when the company was smaller but as it grew to 550 employees, "they were not the right people for their roles." He said in other cases executives had "health issues" and "could not do the job anymore" and characterizes the way they left the company as "respectful." He says others were fired for "ethics issues." At the same time, he can understand why former employees might have lashed out. "When you've got executives or people that leave a company, sometimes they don't like it," he said. "Sometimes they don't think they were fairly treated. "They may be right in some cases," he added. "We could have done some things differently." As for accusations that he has mocked people or insulted them. "Very obviously I don't agree with the description," he told us. On the other hand, he also fully admits that the company's culture is rather hard-edged. "Our business is not easy," Hindawi said. "We're securing the biggest companies in the world, and it's a very big, demanding, stressful thing." He added: "I want to treat my people with respect and decency. But at the same time, I want them to be in an environment where they can achieve great things, and it turns out great things are not cuddly. They're not easy. It's a lot of hard work. He believes that part of the reason Tanium gets a bad rap is because it's not a perk-filled, employee-pampering Valley-style startup, he said. But with this new secondary offering, the implication is, those who want to cash-out and leave can do so. So can those who want to cash out and stay. NOW WATCH: HBO just released a new 'Game of Thrones' trailer — the dragons are back More From Business Insider Here's who would win if Russia, China, and America all went to war right now Bitcoin blew past its record and soared to $2,800 in just a few hours — and now it's plunging Here's why the US would have to be insane to attack North Korea || Your first trade for Thursday, May 18: The "Fast Money" traders gave their final trades of the day.
Tim Seymour is a buyer of Starbucks (SBUX(NASDAQ: SBUX)).
Brian Kelly is a buyer of the Utilities SPDR ETF (XLU(NYSE Arca: XLU)).
Karen Finerman is a seller of United Rentals (URI(NYSE: URI)).
Steve Grasso is a buyer of the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX(NYSE Arca: GDX)).
Trader disclosure: On May 17, 2017 the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders:
Tim Seymour is long ABX, AAPL, APC, AVP, BAC, BBRY, C, CLF, CVX, DO, DVYE, EDC, EWN, EWZ, F, FB, FCX, FXI, GM, GOOGL, GE, INTC, LQD, MAT, MOS, MCD, MUR, OIH, PG, RACE, RAI, RH, RL, SINA, SQ,T, TWTR, VALE, VRX, VZ, XOM. short: EEM, SPY, XRT;Tim's firm is long ABX, BABA, BIDU, CBD, CLF, EEM, EWZ, F, KO, MCD, MPEL, NKE, PEP, PF, TCEHY, SAVE, SBUX, SINA, VALE, VIAB, WMT, WEN, X, YHOO, short EWG, HYG, IWMKaren is long AAL, BAC, BAC short calls, C, DAL, EEM, EPI, EWW, DVYE, FB, FL, GLMP, GLNG, GOGO, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, LYV, KORS, KORS calls, KORS puts, MA, SEDG, SPY puts, TACO, WFM. Her firm is long ANTM, BAC calls, C, C calls, FB, GOOG, GOOGL, GLNG, GMLP, JPM, JPM calls, KORS, LYV, PLCE, SPY puts, SPY put spreads, WIFI, UAL, her firm is short IWM, MDY.
BK is long Bitcoin, GE, HLF, IWM, TSLA, WMT.
Steve Grasso's firm is long stock AON, BX, CTL, CUBA, DIA, F, HES, ICE, KDUS, KORS, MAT, MFIN, MJNA, MSFT, NE, RIG, SNAP, SPY, SQBG, TIME, TITXF, UA, VEON, WDR, WPX, ZNGA. Grasso is long stock BABA, CHK, EEM, EVGN, GDX, KBH, LEN, MJNA, MO, MON, OLN, PHM, SQ, T, TWTR, VRX. Grasso's kids own EFA, EFG, EWJ, IJR, SPY. NO SHORTS.
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$1359.38/$1362.91 #Bitstamp
$1307.61/$1309.59 #BTCe
⇢$-55.30/$-49.79
$1401.50/$1417.00 #Coinbase
⇢$38.59/$57.62 || Bitsquare will support UASF Bitcoin not BitMainCoin https://forum.bitsquare.io/t/bitsquare-will-support-uasf-bitcoin-not-bitmaincoin/2265 … || Current price of Bitcoin is $2420.17. || Bitcoin blockchain tech leaders according to Morgan Stanley http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-blockchain-tech-leaders-according-to-morgan-stanley-2017-6 … || hmmm?
BIP148 is a minority hard-fork done wrong (self.btc) https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6dzpd8/bip148_is_a_minority_hardfork_done_wrong/ … || Looks like a double bottom for btc too. Things could bounce from here || 日本でおすすめの取引所はココですね
coincheck
https://coincheck.com/?c=5av1oZPP5Nc pic.twitter.com/pRKyITkb1f || 買ってこい
宛先は↓↓↓ || #TEST#ビットコイン
#AI
#モデリング
19:00~20:00のBitcoin市場は上げ一服だったのかな。
直近の市場の平均Bitcoinの価格は177985.0円で
変化率は-0.297%です。
21:00までは反騰になる?
【AIコメントです:テスト中@パターンA】 || LIVE: Profit = $24,910.39 (7.49 %). BUY B251.43 @ $1,317.79 (#BTCe). SELL @ $1,412.00 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org
|
Trend: down || Prices: 2721.79, 2689.10, 2705.41, 2744.91, 2608.72, 2589.41, 2478.45, 2552.45, 2574.79, 2539.32
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Hedge Funder Accepting Bitcoin for his US$16 Million Manhattan Mansion: At current marketprices, about 2,500 bitcoins are all you need to secure a prestigious address at 40 Riverside Drive in Manhattan.
According toBloomberg, the president of New York hedge fund R.G. Nierderhoffer Capital Management, Inc, Roy Niederhoffer, is selling his Manhattan mansion consisting of six floors for bitcoin. The 10,720-square-foot house in Riverside Drive is listed for approximately US$15.9 million in cash which at the current market prices translates to nearly 2,500 bitcoins.
Cash will also be accepted but Niederhoffer, who has confessed to being a ‘big believer in Bitcoin’, will HODL the flagship cryptocurrency if the eventual buyer pays in the flagship digital asset:
“Whatever the obligations and brokers fees are, I would pay in cash and keep the Bitcoin.”
Completed in the late 19thcentury, the magnificent mansion on 40 Riverside Drive has a view of the Hudson River and a nearby park.
Real estate purchases using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have become more and more common in recent years. According to reality TV showShark Tankstar, Barbara Corcoran, who built her multimillion-dollar fortune largely in the real estate sector, cryptocurrencies are aperfect fit for buying propertysince they eliminate intermediaries and thus lower the costs.
“I’m being very optimistic because, as a long-term play, it’s perfectly suited for real estate transactions,” Corcoran was quoted as saying three months ago in an interview as CCN reported.
In Manhattan, Niederhoffer is not alone among hedge funders accepting bitcoin as a means of payment for real estate transactions. Six months ago, atownhouse owned by hedge fund manager Claudio Guazzon de Zanettwas put up for sale at a cash price of US$30 million or US$45 million in cryptocurrencies.
This premium, according to Zanett, was to cater for any likely volatility. Besides bitcoin, Zannett was also accepting Ripple and Ethereum.
Selling or buying real estate in cryptocurrencies is, however, not limited to the United States. Early last month, apalatial house in Maltawent up sale at a price US$3 million with the seller demanding to be paid only in bitcoin. The property which is over four centuries old was listed by CryptoHomes.io, a firm which is focused on accepting cryptocurrencies for the properties it lists.
According to one of the founders of CryptoHomes, Dennis Avorin, the goal of the startup is to prove that cryptocurrencies are not just used for speculative purposes but can be used to buy solid assets:
“We simply want to promote the use of crypto as a vehicle for solid investments and Malta is a great start with the incredibly strong real estate market that we have seen in the past few years.”
Featured image from Shutterstock.
The postHedge Funder Accepting Bitcoin for his US$16 Million Manhattan Mansionappeared first onCCN. || Bitcoin Bulls in Desperate Search of a Weekend Rally: Bitcoin fell by 0.65% on Saturday, following on from Fridays 0.9% decline, to end the day at $6,592.3. With Bitcoin in the red in 4 of the 5-days this week, Bitcoins down 1.75% for the current week, Monday through Saturday, Thursdays 3.69% not enough to raise the prospects of another weekly gain. A particularly bearish start to the day saw Bitcoin slide through the first major support level at $6,506.6 to an early morning intraday low $6,454.2 before steadying, with Bitcoin then joining the majors in a late morning rally. Recovering to $6,600 levels by late morning, upward momentum through the afternoon saw Bitcoin hit a late in the day intraday high $6,635.1 before easing back to sub-$6,600 levels, the days high coming up short of $6,700 levels and the first major resistance level at $6,791.1. The moves through the day saw Bitcoin, not only come up short of $6,700 levels that has become a key resistance level for Bitcoin, but also the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $6,757 that has caused numerous sell-offs on previous attempts at a breakout from its recent $6,300 $6,800 ranges. Gains elsewhere in the cryptomarket on Saturday led to Bitcoins dominance ease back further to 51.2%, while the crypto market cap recovered to $222bn levels in spite of Bitcoins 2 nd consecutive day in the red. Elsewhere, finding green through the first part of the weekend included Stellars Lumen and NEMs XEM, alongside Ripples XRP that looked to take another run at the number 2 spot by market cap, with Ripples XRP now just over $1bn behind Ethereum. Get Into Cryptocurrency Trading Today At the time of writing, Bitcoin was down 0.59% to $6,558.5, with a relatively choppy start to the day seeing Bitcoin recover from a start of a day dip to sub-$6,600 levels to a morning high $6,610.4 before hitting reverse and a morning low $6,556.8. The moves through the early morning left the major support and resistance levels untested, with Bitcoin struggling alongside the majors, Moneros XRM and Ripples XRP just a small number of cryptos managing to hold on to positive territory at the time of writing. Story continues For the day ahead, a move through $6,560 would bring $6,600 levels back into play, with any improvement in sentiment across the broader market likely to see Bitcoin test the days first major resistance level at $6,666.87 before any pullback, $6,700 levels and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $6,757 unlikely to be touched through the day. Failure to move through $6,560 to $6,600 levels could see Bitcoin struggle for direction through the second half of the day, with sub-$6,500 levels and the days first major support level at $6,485.97 very much in play through the day. Its been another bearish start to the day and for Bitcoin to make its move, the news wires will need to remain friendly through the day, Bitcoin unlikely to find itself bucking a broader market trend through the day. {alt} This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Price of Gold Fundamental Weekly Forecast Fundamentals Bearish, but Strong Silver Could Lead to Counter-Trend Rally USD/JPY Fundamental Daily Forecast Investors Chasing Higher-Yielding U.S. Dollar USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis Sustained Move Over 113.745 Targets 114.728 AUD/USD and NZD/USD Fundamental Daily Forecast Widening Interest Rate Differential Sending Investors into US Dollar Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast Anticipated Shortfall Expected to Continue to Drive Prices Higher Natural Gas Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast Suppressed Demand Likely to Keep Lid on Prices || Better Buy: Aphria Inc. vs. Constellation Brands, Inc.: We could refer to a matchup betweenAphria Inc.(NASDAQOTH: APHQF)andConstellation Brands, Inc.(NYSE: STZ)as marijuana player versus marijuana payer.
Aphria ranks as one of the top Canadian cannabis growers, a pure-play marijuana stock if there ever was one. Big alcoholic beverage maker Constellation Brands dipped its toes in the water of the cannabis industry last year, buying a 9.9% stake inCanopy Growth(NYSE: CGC). And Constellation plunged right on into the water in August with another$4 billion investment in Canopy.
But which of these two stocks is the better buy for long-term investors? Here's how Aphria and Constellation Brands stack up against each other.
Image source: Getty Images.
Why should investors consider Aphria? The global marijuana industry is growing like a weed. It's punny but true. And Aphria could be one of the primary beneficiaries of that growth.
Aphria claims all the ingredients for success you'd want for winning in the Canadian recreational marijuana market, which opens for business on Oct. 17. The company certainly has ample production capacity, with more on the way. Aphria expects to be able to produce 255,000 kilograms of cannabis annually by next year.
It also has the distribution channels needed to succeed. Aphria has secured supply agreements for the recreational marijuana market with all 10 of Canada's provinces plus the Yukon Territory to boot. The company selected Great North Distributors, a subsidiary of North America's largest wine and spirits distributor, Southern Glazer's, as its distribution partner for its recreational cannabis products.
The even bigger opportunity for Aphria, though, lies in international marijuana markets. Aphria'sacquisition earlier this year of Nuuveragives it a strong presence in several countries that have legalized medical marijuana. The company has expressed confidence about its prospects in these markets, especially in Germany, which claims the largest marijuana market outside of North America.
For now, Aphria can't expand into the biggest marijuana market of all -- the U.S. The company started to build operations in the U.S. last year but ran afoul of the Toronto Stock Exchange's listing requirements that prohibit cannabis producers from operating in markets where marijuana is illegal at the federal level. But it's possible that U.S. federal laws could be revised in a way that allows Aphria to expand into its southern neighbor's market.
There's also a real chance that Aphria could partner with a big company outside of the cannabis industry. Themost recent rumoris that tobacco giantAltria Groupis talking with Aphria about a potential deal. Aphria has also been viewed asa top candidate for a partnershipwith Guinness beermakerDiageo.
Meanwhile, Constellation Brands' revenue over the last 12 months was more than two times greater than Aphria's entire market cap. Even better, Constellation's revenue and earnings continue to grow.
The company reported 10% year-over-year revenue growth in the second quarter. Adjusted earnings per share jumped 16% higher than the prior-year period. Constellation continues to enjoy strong growth from its beer products, especially Corona and Modelo.
Constellation should see more strong results from its beer brands in the future. The launch of Corona Premier has been fantastic. It's the first major addition to the Corona lineup in nearly three decades and already ranks as the No. 10 brand in the U.S. premium imported beer category.
What about Constellation's big bet on marijuana? CEO Rob Sands stated inthe company's Q2 conference callthat "the emerging cannabis space presents as potentially one of the significant global growth opportunities of the next decade." Constellation's initial investment last year in Canopy Growth has already generated an enormous return.
If the cannabis market takes off like Constellation's management thinks it will, Canopy could become the next big growth driver for the giant alcoholic beverage maker. The two companies are planning to launch a variety of cannabis-infused beverages when Canada's regulations for such products are finalized, which is expected to be sometime next year.
In addition to its growth prospects, Constellation offers one more plus for investors. The company's dividend currently yields 1.33%. While that's not a super-high yield, it should boost Constellation's total return over the long run.
Aphria is one of my favorite Canadian marijuana stocks. I like the company's low-cost structure. I like its overall strategy. And while Aphria stock certainly isn't cheap, it's a better bargain than most of its peers.
But if I could own one of these two companies (and that's really what buying a stock is), it would be Constellation Brands. Aphria hopes to eventually generate billions of dollars in revenue and earnings. Constellation is already doing it.
I also think that Constellation's bet on Canopy Growth could pay off over the long run. It wouldn't surprise me if Constellation exercises its option to increase its stake in Canopy to over 50% at some point in the next few years.
For investors looking for a solid, established company that gives an opportunity to profit from the marijuana boom, Constellation Brands looks like a good pick, in my view. This marijuana payer could become a bona fide marijuana player.
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Keith Speightshas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Diageo. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Police: Dispute over Bitcoin Account Led to Connecticut Home Invasion: Two women have beenarrestedin connection with a March home invasion in Killingly, CT, where victims were not only robbed but also allegedly pistol-whipped and attacked with an electric cattle prod. The incident, police said, was the tragic culmination of a dispute involving a bitcoin account.
Apparently, the home invasion occurred because a female victim opened a bitcoin account for one of the alleged home invasion suspects, Monique Delannoy-Jodoin, 59, who police said is a resident of Manville, RI. Police also stated that Ms. Delannoy-Jodoin was already under investigation for narcotic sales and delivery through the postal system. The other suspect was Beatriz Viruet, 38, who is a resident of Providence, RI.
The female renter claimed to recognize two of the home invaders, who then pistol-whipped one occupant on the head, and utilized an electric cattle prod on another occupant. The female renter was able to escape to a neighbor’s house, but not one of the suspects was able to force entry into the bathroom, where the renter was hiding, using a hammer.
The suspects stole money, cell phones, and a television, according to local authorities. Allegedly, one of the suspects, told the other to “shoot the victims,” as well.
Many have criticized the fact that cryptocurrency can be used for money laundering, considering that it can often be harder to trace than fiat currency. The sector is often accused of fraud, and there are eveninternational task forcesorganized to target ICOs worldwide.
This is a still-rare-but-increasingly-more-common instance where there is a violent crime associated with cryptocurrency. Indeed, it is not the only violent incident that has happened in relation to bitcoin. Earlier this year, there was ashootingin downtown Miami in connection with a bitcoin deal gone awry.
According to police, Monique Delannoy-Jodoin wanted money and passwords related to her bitcoin account. She was ultimately charged with home invasion, risk of injury to a child, third-degree criminal mischief, second-degree assault with a weapon, second-degree breach of peace, criminal use of a weapon, and sixth-degree larceny, among other charges. Beatriz Viruet was charged with home invasion, first-degree robbery, and second-degree breach of peace.
Delannoy-Jodoin was held on a $250,000 bond, while Viruet was held on a $100,000 bond. The women are both are due to appear Monday in Danielson Superior Court.
Featured Image from Shutterstock
The postPolice: Dispute over Bitcoin Account Led to Connecticut Home Invasionappeared first onCCN. || Blockchain company Chain acquired by Stellar: Chain, one of the hottest blockchain startups, has sold to Lightyear, the commercial arm of the Stellar Development Foundation, which is the nonprofit behind the Stellar network and cryptocurrency stellar lumens.
That may sound like a mouthful. It may also look like a surprising move for a fast-growing company that counts Citigroup, Nasdaq, and Visa among its clients. As Chain CEO Adam Ludwin acknowledges about Lightyear, “We are being acquired by an entity that no one has ever really heard of.”
But in a candid interview with Yahoo Finance, Ludwin explained the strategy behind selling the company. (Read on for the interview, after some background on Chain and Stellar.)
Chainbuilds private blockchains for enterprise clients — internal ledgers that allow them to digitize assets faster and with less friction. Chain launched in 2014 and has raised $44 million in venture funding.
Stellar is a blockchain protocol for facilitating cross-border payments and digital asset exchanges, and lumens (XLM) is the network’s native cryptocurrency. (The price of XLM is down 65% so far this year amidst the largercrypto market rout.) Stellar was incubated at the payments startup Stripe, then spun out; IBM, Deloitte, andmessaging app Kikare some of the bigger namesusing Stellar.
In the race to get banks on blockchain, Stellar competes withRipple, among many others. And the same man created both Stellar and Ripple: Jed McCaleb, who also cofounded the infamous bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox.
Lightyear and Chain will combine and be called Interstellar; the Chain branding will go away. Interstellar will focus on helping companies build on top of the Stellar network. Ludwin will be CEO of Interstellar, McCaleb will be CTO, and all of Chain’s 30 employees are staying, totaling 60 Interstellar employees. The parties are not disclosing the terms of the deal, but Chain’s investors are all getting cashed out.
Chain CEO Adam Ludwin spoke to Yahoo Finance by phone before the announcement of the acquisition. What follows is an edited transcript.
Yahoo Finance:Are people going to be surprised that Chain, which is a hot company in the crypto and blockchain world, is selling to a company that isn’t really a household name?
Adam Ludwin:Lightyear is relevant because it was set up last year to be the commercial arm for the Stellar network. As more institutions have been interested in transacting in stellar, the foundation was not positioned to do that kind of work. So we aregoing all in on Stellar, and we will do that enterprise work, the hand-holding, the service providing.
How long has this been in the works? There have been reports and rumors of this acquisition for a few months.
We started talking as far back as January.We did our absolute best to prevent any information leaking, and it’s hard because it’s such a small community, and we have so many investors. There were some leaks, and some things published on the internet with wrong information, like people wrote that we were merging with the foundation.
How did it come about?
Jed McCaleb came to me and told me the idea, and his idea was to basically do what Chain has done but focus on Stellar. So basically Chain retools through Stellar.
He probably thought I would say no very quickly, but what he didn’t know at the time was that we had learned that what our customers ultimately need is for us to bring them to a network. We found that they wanted to just be told what network to join.
Any fellow tech types or mentors you went to for advice?
There were four or five folks that I consulted with that I often turn to for coaching, mentorship, strategic advice. Kevin Ryan [cofounder of Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, and MongoDB].Glenn Hutchins of [VC firm] Silver Lake. Jim Robinson of RRE Ventures, former CEO of American Express. And Keith Rabois [early investor in PayPal, Yelp, and Square].The four of them were extremely helpful.
Are you concerned that any of your existing clients, or potential new clients, will be turned off that you’re now tied to this lesser-known cryptocurrency, stellar lumens?
I did something kind of unusual in the M&A process, which is I went to existing customers and told them what we were considering.I basically said, ‘We think the answer for your needs is Stellar, and by the way, we’ve figured out a way to create an entity where Chain can do that.’ If people threw up all over Stellar, I wasn’t going to do it.
The only version of pushback I got were folks saying, ‘Does this mean we have to use Stellar?’ And the answer to that was no, because where Stellar ends, Chain software begins. Everything Chain built is a local ledger, and think of Stellar as a global ledger. So part of the merger was combining our software assets with theirs. The network can be acquiring future users without forcing them to participate in the stellar network on day one.
What would you say is the general perception of Stellar?
I think the perception is not far off from the reality, which is that this is one of the most technically advanced networks. The academic community knows Stellar and has a respect for Stellar because theprotocol was developed at Stanford,and people know the foundation came out of Stripe.
And I think if you look forward to what we think Stellar is best suited to accomplish, what has been the killer app on Ethereum? It’s a general, trustless cloud platform. But what people have chosen to do on it is issue tokens. That’s what Stellar is designed to do, that is its purpose.Tokenization is the biggest unrealized opportunity around crypto.
We are setting out to tokenize all the things, and to move from the scammy ICOs that we wouldn’t want to be associated with to finding partners to create tokens uniquely enabled by Stellar and which can be an important part of their business model. So it won’t be just about legacy products with financial institutions, it’ll also be about companies creating and enabling totally new assets where you can kind of squint and it might look similar to some other things, like a reward ticket or loyalty point or an API token or an in-game currency or a digital good, but they’re all fundamentally being reinvented in this era of crypto.
What would your retort be to any skeptics who still criticize this deal when the news comes out?
I don’t care. We never in the history of the company made any strategic moves based off our perception of what people will think. We’ve always made moves based on what we’ve learned. And if you go to the original business plan for Chain, the original motivation was: Bitcoin has set off this Cambrian explosion, and eventually every single financial instrument that exists will be in some sort of cryptographic medium. Whether that’s attached to bitcoin, whether that’s some other network, the motivating force was that we want to create a future where value can move over the internet as easily as data.
Warren Buffett has that expression he likes from Ben Graham, “Mr. Market.”[Note: Ben Graham introduced the Mr. Market anecdote in his book “The Intelligent Investor”; the idea is that the market behaves like an emotional business partner who offers every day to sell you his shares of the business or buy yours, at prices depending on his mood.]Crypto markets are like an extreme version of Mr. Market. In the short term, it’smeme-driven. So if you tried to make decisions on the basis of headlines, market perception, mood, crypto prices, you would just go nuts. And it doesn’t tell you what to build.
Our company has millions of dollars in revenue, we’ve raised tens of millions of dollars, and before doing this deal we had years of runway and still do. We in no way needed to sell, and we have received overtures from large tech brands over the years. And I think that would have been sad, if we just sold out to a big enterprise tech company and became a division, and didn’t have the ability to shape the future.
So even though this is technically an acquisition of Chain, in reality Jed and I are combining. Conceptually, it really is a merger, and it doesn’t feel like an exit, and it’s not designed to be an exit where I go and hang out for a year and then I go do something else.And I hope this announcement will encourage folks to take a longer look at Stellar.
—
Daniel Robertscovers cryptocurrency and blockchain at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @readDanwrite.
Read more:
Crypto market crash prompts people to post suicide hotline on Reddit
Exclusive: Former FBI director Louis Freeh talks Tether investigation
Bitcoin VC: ‘People are going to lose a lot of money’ on new coins
Beware: An ICO is not like an IPO
The 11 biggest names in crypto right now || E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM) Futures Analysis – Weekly Chart Indicates Weakness to 25584 if 26128 Fails as Support: September E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Averagefutures are showing limited reaction to the news of an additional 10% tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods. The tariff could climb to as much as 25% by the end of the year if the United States and China fail to reach a new trade agreement.
The main trend is up according to the weekly swing chart. A trade through 26237 will signal a resumption of the uptrend.
The minor trend is also up. A trade through 25764 will change the minor trend to down. This will also shift momentum to the downside.
The short-term range is 26672 to 23178. Its retracement zone at 25337 to 24925 is the first downside target and nearest support zone.
The main range is 22009 to 26672. Its retracement zone at 24341 to 23790 is longer-term support and the major downside target.
Based on last week’s close at 26158, the direction of the September E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average futures contract is likely to be determined by trader reaction to a long-term downtrending Gann angle at 26128.
A sustained move over 26128 will indicate the presence of buyers. Taking out last week’s high at 26237 will indicate the buying is getting stronger. This could trigger a further rally into the next downtrending Gann angle at 26400. This is the last potential resistance angle before the 26672 main top.
A sustained move under 26128 will signal the presence of sellers. The daily chart is wide open under this angle with the next targets a minor bottom at 25764 and a downtrending Gann angle at 25584.
Crossing to the weak side of the angle at 25584 will indicate the selling is getting stronger. This could trigger a further break into the short-term retracement zone at 25337 to 24925. Since the main trend is up, buyers could show up on the initial test of this zone.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• USD/JPY Fundamental Daily Forecast – Strengthens Over 112.022, Weakens Under 111.655 || Abra Supports SEPA Bank Transfers, Enabling Crypto Purchases With Fiat: Abra, the all-in-one digital wallet and cryptocurrency exchange,has announced its supportfor Single Euro Payment Area (SEPA) bank accounts. European users can now enable direct wire transfers from European banks to purchase any of Abra’s 28 available cryptocurrencies.
Founded in 2014, Abra is working toward providing users with maximum privacy and control. The application is non-custodial, and the wallet’s private keys arenever held by anyone otherthan the actual user. Abra employs no middlemen, ensuring customer funds are never touched, managed or viewed by outside parties. Past and present investors in Abra include American Express Ventures, First Round Capital, Arbor Ventures and RRE Ventures.
Bill Barhydt is the founder and CEO of Abra. Speaking withBitcoin Magazine, he explains, “Abra’s new European bank transfers will be available to people living in 34 countries if they have a SEPA-supported bank account. We get asked all the time by our users in Europe to try and find ways to make investing in cryptocurrencies easier.”
Abra wallets were initially funded using wire and bank transfers in the U.S. Customers could also purchase crypto using both credit or debit cards. The platform’s integration of SEPA will give several European Union nations the chance to deposit either national fiat currencies or euros into their Abra wallets to invest in cryptocurrencies. Among the countries now privy to this service are Poland, Romania, Cyprus, Austria, Germany and Italy.
Abra’s recent partnership with Coinify — a secure platform for buying and selling bitcoin — is what helps to connect SEPA bank accounts with the Abra app. Once users have deposited funds into their Abra wallets, Coinify transfers the money into BTC based on present exchange rates. Users can then use their bitcoins to purchase any of Abra’s other cryptocurrency offerings.
Furthermore, Abra says it isadding three more cryptocurrenciesto its trading system: Cardano (ADA), Basic Attention Token (BAT) and Tron (TRX). Abra also allows users to hold and trade bitcoin, ether, ethereum classic, bitcoin cash, dash and dogecoin among others.
Barhydt states, “We are constantly looking for new ways to help make investing in cryptocurrency more simple and secure. By adding bank deposit support in Europe, we enable millions of people who are just entering crypto [to] gain exposure to this new asset class. We are also working on adding funding support to more countries across the globe. We have a lot of big plans in the next few months that are aimed at reducing some of the barriers to entry for cryptocurrency investors. In addition to that, we are constantly vetting more cryptocurrencies to add to the app.”
This article originally appeared onBitcoin Magazine. || Brazils Biggest Brokerage Processes Bitcoin Trades, Govt Supportive: brazil bitcoin cryptocurrency Grupo XP, the largest independent brokerage in Brazil, has publicly released its plans to launch a Bitcoin and Ethereum trading platform by the end of 2018. Guilherme Benchimol, the chief executive officer of Grupo XP and XP Investimentos SA, stated that the business will integrate Bitcoin and Ethereum into the existing infrastructure of the brokerage, allowing more than three million investors in the country to invest in the asset class. Monumental Decision As CCN previously reported , on Sept. 20, the government of Brazil and its antitrust watchdog have launched a formal investigation into banks and major financial institutions in the country after receiving complaints that crypto exchanges received subpar financial services from local banks. Officials at the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) said: However, it does not seem reasonable for banks to apply such restrictive measures a priority on a straight-line basis to all cryptocurrency companies, without examining the level of compliance and the anti-fraud measures adopted by individual brokerage firms conferring unlawful treatment per se on businesses brokering cryptocurrencies. In an official announcement, Grupo XP CEO Benchimol emphasized that he personally is not a fan of cryptocurrencies as a store of value and consensus currency. But, he stated that the company feels obligated to start advancing in the market because ultimately, similar to banks, investment firms are required to meet the demands and needs of their clients. I must confess, this is a theme Id rather didnt exist, but it does. We felt obligated to start advancing in this market, Benchimol said . brazil The surprising decision of Grupo XP is particularly monumental for the South American cryptocurrency market because it comes at a time in which the government of Brazil has taken its first approach towards legitimizing the market with stable financial services and banking partners. With support from the government and the countrys largest investment firm involved, in the next few months the cryptocurrency market of Brazil will likely see an emergence of exchanges that are capable of providing services that were not available to the population less than nine months ago. It is entirely possible that the encouragement of the government to banks to provide financial services to local cryptocurrency exchanges could leave the market open to established exchanges that are eying international expansion. Already, in the past week, Binance and Upbit, the crypto markets two largest exchanges alongside OKEx and Huobi, have expanded to Singapore. Story continues Market Structure Since mid-2017, the US, Japan, and South Korea have seen the stabilization of their respective cryptocurrency exchange markets equipped with robust infrastructure and practical regulatory frameworks designed to protect investors and facilitate the growth of crypto-related businesses. For many years, South America and Europe have lagged behind Asia and the US due to regulatory uncertainty, but the forward-thinking approach of the Brazilian government and the encouraging trend of major financial institutions entering the crypto market could potentially lead to exponential growth of the crypto market of Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. Images from Shutterstock The post Brazils Biggest Brokerage Processes Bitcoin Trades, Govt Supportive appeared first on CCN . View comments || Turkey ETF Still Has a Lot of Work to Do: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. The iShares MSCI Turkey ETF ( TUR ) is up more than 4% this month, but that barely dents the exchange traded fund's year-to-date loss of more than 48%. Clearly, the only US-listed ETF focusing on controversial Turkish stocks has a lot of work ahead of it. The same is true of Turkey's economy, which is grappling with the effects of a slumping currency and rampant inflation. Earlier this month, the central bank there boosted interest rates by 625 basis points to 24% . “This rate increase was a welcome and necessary first step towards exiting the ongoing Turkish lira crisis,” said Markit in a recent note . “The immediate market reaction was one of relief, with bond spreads narrowing and the lira rallying against the US dollar and the euro. The degree to which the TCMB increased the repo rate was a positive surprise, a more aggressive action to get in front of annual inflation than IHS Markit and many observers had anticipated.” Turkey faced heavy pressure to raise rates as the lira has spiraled downward by more than 40% against the U.S. dollar. However, the latest efforts by the central bank appear to be steadying its value for the time being. Lingering Concerns Although Turkey's recent interest rate hike is substantial, more steps are needed to get the economy there on firmer footing and regain investors' confidence. “It is important to note that this interest rate increase is only a bare minimum, first step to exit the current crisis. There is a high probability that the lira will once again begin to depreciate rapidly after only a temporary rally, potentially forcing the Bank to raise interest rates even further at later policy meetings,” according to Markit. At the very least, Turkey's central bank must keep rates high over the near-term and perhaps unveil additional rate hikes to further stabilize the lira. “To rebuild financial-market stability, the Bank must, at a minimum, maintain these high interest rates for more than a month or two, while also taking other actions to maintain defensive monetary policy,” according to Markit. “Although President Erdoğan will continue to decry high interest rates, it will be important that he limits his opposition to rhetoric. Should these actions, or the resulting negative impact on domestic demand growth, trigger a more tangible push to find a scape goat by Erdoğan - perhaps an attempt to push out TCMB Governor Murat Çetinkaya or members of the Monetary Policy Committee or to impose penalties on the governor or the committee members - another currency crisis could develop as confidence in institutional integrity is once again undermined.” Story continues For more information on the developing economies, visit our emerging markets category . POPULAR ARTICLES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM Latest Round of Tariffs Impacting Homebuilder ETFs Leveraged ETF Hinging on Positive U.S.-Japan Trade Talks ETFs with General Electric Down as Company Struggles with Turbine Issues Dow Stumbles as U.S.-China Trade Talks Stall Bitcoin Will Lose 50% of Its Market Share to Ethereum in Five Years READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || General Electric: What Went Wrong and What Larry Culp Must Do Now: Now that General Electric Company (NYSE: GE) has replaced John Flannery with Larry Culp as chairman and CEO, and announced it will fall short of its previously indicated cash flow and earnings guidance, it's surely time for investors to pause and assess what's going on. The post-announcement surge in the share price is partly due to a sense of optimism now that former Danaher CEO Culp is in charge; his record at Danaher explains the respect he has earned in industrial circles . However, I think there's something more to the price move than simply optimism over Culp. Let's take a closer look. An unconvincing start In a nutshell, GE has done a terrible job of turning itself around and managing investor expectations, and the news that there's a clean sweep at the top is hopefully going to lead to a change in how the company manages its affairs. Although it's hard not to feel sympathy for Flannery -- he was dealt a rotten hand -- he was responsible for a large part of the mess. The skepticism over the commitment to a clean sweep was fueled right at the start of Flannery's tenure. In a move that can only be described as bizarre, the first thing GE did after appointing Flannery was to give then-CFO Jeff Bornstein a promotion to vice chairman. If that weren't strange enough, a few months later it was announced that Bornstein would be leaving . Flannery takes charge Flannery then appeared to take charge of events. He decided to ignore the calls to separate the healthcare business, but yielded to the inevitability of a dividend cut and reduced GE's dividend by half to $0.48. GE's turnaround strategy was then set in place in November 2017. Flannery intended to shore up the balance sheet by exiting $20 billion worth of assets, while relying on the earnings and cash flow from the aviation and healthcare segments to tide the company over while restructuring a power segment ailing from weakening end markets. EPS and free cash flow (FCF) guidance for 2018 were set at $1-$1.07, and $6 billion-$7 billion, respectively. Story continues GE's risky plan Flannery's plan might have sounded good, but it wasn't decisive enough. Worse, the plan was beset with risk from the start . For example, consider the new dividend of $0.48 per share. Paying the dividend would require roughly $4.2 billion in cash, but management was only forecasting $6 billion-$7 billion in FCF. Meanwhile, GE's substantial pension deficit needed funding, and based on GE's figures, it needed $2 billion in 2018 alone. In fact, GE borrowed $6 billion in order to pre-fund its pension for three years. And without the extra debt, the dividend would only barely (or possibly not) have been funded from FCF. Not to mention that the underlying available FCF (free cash flow minus pension funding and dividend) was going to be peanuts compared to what management needed to turn the power business around. Moreover, in terms of the dividend, the plan had little margin for safety and needed a combination of blemish-free execution and some stabilization in the power segment's end markets. GE got neither. Where it went wrong: A timeline for 2018 Fast-forward from the November 2017 reset, and January started with a $6.2 billion tax charge relating to its insurance portfolio . February saw CFO Jamie Miller lowering 2018 earnings expectations to the lower end of the $1-$1.07 range at an investor conference, due to weakening power markets. GE also progressively lowered expectations for gas turbine sales in 2018. The first-quarter results in April saw GE's management lower power-segment earnings guidance by a whopping $500 million (worth around $0.05 in EPS), but there was still no change to the official EPS and FCF guidance. The end of June brought the conclusion of Flannery's strategic review , and finally, the decision was made to create a stand-alone healthcare company while separating the remaining stake in Baker Hughes, a GE Company. It was a bid to shore up the balance sheet and reduce debt-to-earnings to commonly accepted levels. And still, no cut to the official guidance. July brought a disappointing set of second-quarter earnings, with Miller lowering 2018 FCF to $6 billion -- a figure at the bottom, but still within, the original guidance range. There was still no change to the EPS guidance, despite the fact that hardly any Wall Street analyst believed GE would hit even the low end of its EPS guidance range. Moreover, power-segment conditions continued to deteriorate, and GE's earnings guidance looked increasingly untenable , not least because its key rival, Siemens , was busy lowering earnings and margin expectations for its own power segment . An arrow made of dollars pointing upwards Larry Culp is charged with returning GE to former glories. Image source: Getty Images. What Culp must do now The optimism over Culp's executive abilities is well placed. His first act is likely to be restoration of confidence that GE's management has a handle on restructuring the company for the long term. That starts with being realistic with guidance and the sustainability of the dividend. In the end, Flannery ended his tenure as Jeff Immelt before him did: stubbornly clinging to guidance that was unlikely to be met, at a time when investors needed to be confident in the direction of the company. Culp just might be the man to turn things around on that front. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Lee Samaha has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
تقولها لمين ترا انت صرت بعالم ما يخاف ربه وكل همه نفسه والقوي يدعس الضعيف والغني يشوف نفسه ع المحتاج واللي الله ساتر حاله المفروض يقول الحمدلله ويساعد غيره بس للأسف ان حنا أمة محمد وين وصلنا || 現在の1ビットコインあたりの値段は730,532.6029円です。値段の取得日時はOct 16, 2018 10:58:00 UTCです #bitcoin #ビットコイン || October 22, 2018 12:00 AM EDT
Last 4 hours, BTC -0.01% ETH -0.05% LTC -0.31% XRP -0.29% BCH 0.14%
#cryptofinance #cryptocurrencies #BTC #ETH #LTC #XRP #BCH || Bitcoin (-0.06): $6,516.42
Ethereum (-0.72): $219.45
XRP (-0.26): $0.28
Bitcoin Cash (-0.56): $445.08
EOS (-0.1): $5.38
Stellar (-0.77): $0.20
Litecoin (-0.46): $56.08
Tether (0.29): $1.00
Monero (-0.13): $117.80
Cardano (-0.37): $0.07 || #Doviz
-------------------
#USD : 6.1078
#EUR : 7.1831
#GBP : 8.0536
--------------------------------------
#BTC
-------------------
#Gobaba : 40001.36
#BtcTurk : 40035.00
#Koinim : 39998.99
#Paribu : 40060.00
#Koineks : 40099.97 || If anyone knows their shit it's @CNBCFastMoney who showed you how to buy XRP at 3.00 and BTC at 19k lol. https://youtu.be/qaqa6_NzHEU || ‘Nothing At All’ Going on With Crypto Regulation, Says D.C. Insider
https://tribetica.com/nothing-at-all-going-on-with-crypto-regulation-says-d-c-insider/ …
http://reddit.com/r/tribetica
#newsoftheweek #Bitcoin #blockchain #cryptopic.twitter.com/Gtcpzjqlmg || I woke up to $ 6,800.00
#bitcoin || 2018/10/17 09:00
BTC 726986円
ETH 23158.6円
ETC 1072.1円
BCH 50539.7円
XRP 52.1円
XEM 10.6円
LSK 329.5円
MONA 135.6円
#仮想通貨 #ビットコイン #Bitcoin #bitFlyer #Coincheck || 現在の BTC/JPY の価格は 748034円です。前回比(0.25%)
|
Trend: down || Prices: 6419.66, 6461.01, 6530.14, 6453.72, 6385.62, 6409.22, 6411.27, 6371.27, 6359.49, 5738.35
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2019-06-11]
BTC Price: 7927.71, BTC RSI: 51.69
Gold Price: 1326.40, Gold RSI: 63.17
Oil Price: 53.27, Oil RSI: 32.05
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
USD/JPY Price Forecast – Dollar quiet during Memorial Day: The US dollar against the Japanese yen is always a volatile currency. However, lately we have seen this market a bit more sluggish than usual as the stock markets continue to go back and forth. Quite often, it will move in the same general direction as risk appetite, especially with the S&P 500. Remember, the Japanese yen is considered to be a safety currency, and while the US dollar is as well, it’s not as “safe” as the yen. USD/JPY Video 28.05.19 The market is currently trading just above the ¥109 level, an area that I have laid out as major support. As long as we can see above there, I think that buying dips will continue to work in this market as it is certainly in a medium term uptrend, and looks to be likely to favor the upside eventually. If we can break above the ¥110 level, then the market is free to go much higher. On the other side of the equation if we were to break down below the ¥109 level ideally close, then I think it opens up the door to the 108, something that would be more of a “risk off” move. Expect choppiness and volatility, but make sure you keep an eye on the stock markets around the world to see how this pair may trade. I would keep it down to short-term trades, because quite frankly it’s going to be very difficult to hang on to trade for any significant amount of time in this choppy market. Please let us know what you think in the comments below This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: All About Weather as Grains Jumps, Corn at Highs Since 2016 Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 29/05/19 Gold Price Prediction – Gold Drops as the Dollar Gains Traction AUD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – May 29, 2019 Forecast Forex Daily Recap – US Consumer Index Surprised Market Reporting 134.1 v/s 130 Forecasts GBP/USD Trend Line Break Provides Additional Momentum || Iran's Crypto Barometer — Regular Users Feeling the Heat: Iran’splan to battle international sanctions through the use of astate-sponsoredcryptocurrencyhas been brewing for over a year now.
It’s been a viable and exciting option for a country that had been cut off from the global economic community up until 2015 and again in 2017, following a short reprieve after agreeing to dial down its nuclear energy program.
Despite all of this, Iran is still grappling with international pressures, including a ban on theacquisitionof United States dollars in the country. American regulators are also looking toblock the useof cryptocurrency as an alternate means for trade in Iran.
Iran has slowly changed its attitude toward cryptocurrencies over the past few years for a number of reasons.
Up until the beginning of 2017 the trade and use of cryptocurrency was of little to no concern to the regulating authorities in the country. In fact, data fromMay 2018suggests that there has long been a voracious appetite for crypto trading in the country.
A major driving force for the adoption of crypto in the country was adecisionin January 2017 to stop using the U.S. dollar in Iran. Driven by fresh travel bans imposed by the U.S. administration, the Iranian government looked to leverage the use of other stable currencies to continue foreign trade.
It didn’t take long beforebitcoinand other cryptocurrencies began being talked about as viable alternatives for the country’s international trade. A fewmonths later, the Iranian government revealed plans to roll out the necessary infrastructure to nurture the use ofbitcoinin the country.
In the same breath, authorities hammered home the importance of imposing regulations to ensure that the use of cryptocurrencies remains above board inNovember 2017. The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and related departments were already hard at work making sure that the use and supply of crypto in the country was being supervised.
Just four months later, in February 2018, local pressreportedthat the CBI had made a U-turn in its crypto-friendly approach by announcing plans to control and prevent usage of cryptocurrencies in the country.
Less than a week later, news broke that the Iranian government wasexploring the creationof a state-backed cryptocurrency. With that slowly simmering in the background, the CBI banned local banks and financial institutions from buying, selling or trading cryptocurrency inApril 2018.
The explanation given for the ban was based on fears around the use of cryptocurrencies for money laundering and financing terrorism. While it seemed a crippling blow to the crypto community in the country, a government ministerrevealedthat a model for a domestic cryptocurrency had been developed at the end of April.
The use of cryptocurrency to bypass international sanctions became more evident as reports surfaced that Iran and Russia werelooking into the possibilityof facilitating bilateral trade with the use of cryptocurrencies. The countries had begun engaging with each other to explore using cryptocurrency transactions as an alternative to the SWIFT interbank payment system — which Iran has had little or no access to due to the international sanctions.
Foundations were laid over the following several months on the proposed state-run cryptocurrency, and the country announced that developmentwas completein August 2018. The plans were expected to be formally released once the CBI updated its stance on the industry.
Around the same time, the U.S.reinstatedsanctions on Iran, heightening the need for an alternative to facilitate trade with the global economic community.
A month later, Iranian government departments agreed torecognize cryptocurrencyminingas a legitimate industry, with a legislative framework still to be developed by the Iranian National Cyberspace Center.
InJanuary 2019, the CBI released a statement that cooled the fears of harsh sanctions toward the crypto sector in the country. The institution said it would consult crypto industry experts before finalizing new draft regulations for the sector.
Perhaps more exciting was the revelation that Iran was in talks with a number of countries around the possibility of conducting transactions using cryptocurrencies. The list included Switzerland, South Africa, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, Germany and Bosnia.
All of this wasrevealedduring the annual conference on Electronic Banking and Payment Systems in Tehran. Nevertheless, Iran still has yet to unveil the full details of its proposed state-run cryptocurrency.
While Iran’s state-run cryptocurrency still remains somewhat of a mystery, blockchain development has come to the fore in 2019. The CBI has begun work on anational blockchain projectthat promises to overhaul its banking and financial sector.
The Borna platform is being developed by the Iranian Informatics and Services Corporation and blockchain solutions provider Areatak. The Borna platform will be built on theHyperledger Fabric—IBM’sopen-source enterprise blockchain solution.
Unsurprisingly, parts of the international community have reacted negatively to Iran’s moves to explore and develop a state-run cryptocurrency. Exacerbating this point were reports ofsignificant crypto investmentsmade by Iranian’s in May last year.
In August 2018, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)called onthe global community to monitor the use of crypto in Iran as an illegitimate means of bypassing sanctions. In essence, FinCEN was advocating for the scrutiny of any and all crypto transactions coming from Iran using a variety of intelligence and surveillance tools.
Following that, U.S. lawmakers went as far asintroducing a billlooking to impart further sanctions on Iranian financial institutions as well as the development of its state-run cryptocurrency. The act would forbid transacting or dealing with any Iranian cryptocurrency, and sanctions would be imposed on any individual that does so.
This narrative and the proposed actions follow the aggressive financial sanctions coming out of America toward Iran over the past few decades.
As Iranians wait for clarity on the promised state-run cryptocurrency, local crypto users have been dealt another blow to their access to trading support. On May 24, popular cryptocurrencyexchangeLocalBitcoinsannounced a banon users in Iran.
The decision was primarily due to the exchange’s headquarters being located in Finland. In an effort to comply with financial regulations of the country, the exchange has had to cut off its user base in Iran.
Cointelegraph reached out to Iranian-based developer Arame Bandari, who previously worked as a researcher at Iran Blockchain Labs, for some insight on the current crypto climate in Iran.
Bandari explained that the last 18 months have been difficult for the Iranian economy due to the resumption of U.S. sanctions. As a result, the value of the rial, Iran’s national currency, has declined, and people have looked to secure their capital by investing in foreign currencies or alternatives like the cryptocurrencies.
This is why LocalBitcoins’ move to end customer support in Iran is a big blow to the sector. As Bandari explained, the exchange saw booming activity in recent months from its Iranian users:
“Localbitcoins is one of the most popular cryptocurrency trading platforms in Iran. According to Localbitcoins, in February during an eight week period of rapid growth, Iranians tripled their trade on its P2P platform. Nearly 34.56 billion IRR [$820,805] changed hands during the seven-day period, comprising the eighth strongest week on record when measured against fiat currency.”
The platform was highly successful in Iran because of the variety of payment methods it offered to users. Given that Iranian’s don’t have access to international payment platforms like Visa and Mastercard, LocalBitcoins provided easy access to a global trading platform.
According to Bandari, underground crypto trading became popular, but users had to trust buyers and sellers who they met through Telegram channels and the likes. LocalBitcoins provided a safer solution that reduced some of the risk.
Despite the exchange imposing a fresh ban on Iranian crypto traders, Bandari was optimistic that other exchanges would come forward to provide continued support:
“At this moment Iranians have access to LocalBitcoins throughVPN[virtual private networks] which is very common in Iran. But I think this kind of restriction will cause a significant migration of Iranian traders to other platforms. We have been witnessed such a migration when Bittrex and Binance banned Iranians. This will be a great opportunity for newcomer exchanges to grab the Iranian exiled traders community.”
With the support of LocalBitcoins coming to an end, Iranian crypto traders will have to find other cryptocurrency exchanges to service their needs.
According to Bandari, the process is slightly more complicated due to the difficulty of converting Iranian rials into cryptocurrency. A popular way to do this is buying tether tokens (USDT) for rials throughtether.land. From there, users can buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, then proceed to trade using Bittrex or Binance through the use of a VPN.
Another source from Iran highlighted two more popular platforms that have stepped up to fill the void left by LocalBitcoins.
Multisignaturepeer-to-peer (p2p) bitcoin exchangeHodl Hodlhas been identified as a preferred alternative. The website has even provided a translation of its page into Iran’s dominant language, Farsi, and is offering discounted exchange fees up until mid-June this year. The website has also set up a dedicated Telegram group to communicate with Iranian users.
Another p2p exchange,keepchange.io, also reached out directly to Iranian cryptocurrency users through a blogposton Medium. It is offering users its services, as well as the ability to migrate trading data from LocalBitcoins to the keepchange platforms. Users can also access a “lifetime” trade bonus for referring customers to the exchange.
There has been a “gold” lining for cryptocurrency adoption in Iran over the past few months, following a move to develop a gold-backed cryptocurrency in the country.
Four Iranian banks joined forces in February to spearhead thecreation of PayMon— as the new token will be called. The project involves the Parsian Bank, the Bank Pasargad, Bank Melli Iran and Bank Mellat. Over-the-counter cryptocurrency exchange Iran Fara Bourse will list the cryptocurrency. It’s understood that 1 billion tokens will be sold in the initial release, which has yet to be confirmed.
Amid the economic turmoil facing Iranians, the news is a welcome boon for cryptocurrency users in the country. Bandari told Cointelegraph that any viable and trustworthy blockchain-based cryptocurrency solution will provide much needed relief to Iran:
“In my opinion, at this stage national any kind of coin or token can help to deal with national payment system or economic problems. In fact cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can not be used as an alternative payment method for massive intergovernmental trades, but it can be used for small businesses or merchants to facilitate payments which foreign parties.”
Given that Iran has been facing harsh economic sanctions from the global community for some time, concerted efforts to nurture blockchain technology, coupled with a cautious approach to cryptocurrency regulation, are setting an interesting precedent.
While the everyday crypto user may face some tough times ahead when trying to go about daily trading, there seems to be a glimmer of hope that country will openly adopt and use blockchain technology.
• Australian Securities Regulator Releases Cryptocurrency, Mining, ICO Guidelines
• Hong Kong’s Securities Regulator Calls for Crypto Regulation to Confront Fraud
• World Economic Forum Forms Tech Policy Councils for Blockchain, AI, IoT
• Egypt: Central Bank’s Draft Law Requires Licenses for Crypto-Related Activities || Bitfinex Shareholder Says $1 Billion in Private Purchases Already Sealed for Upcoming IEO: Crypto exchangeBitfinexshareholder Zhao Dong has reportedly revealed that the exchange has sealed $1 billion in both hard and soft commitments for its initial native exchange token offering. The news wasreportedby crypto news outlet Coindesk on May 9.
As previously reported, plans to issue a native Bitfinex exchange token firstsurfacedin late April, with laterdetails revealedby Dong and a subsequentostensibly officialmarketing paper allegedly from iFinex, the company behind both Bitfinex and associated stablecoin issuerTether(USDT).
A white paper published by Bitfinex on May 8confirmedthat the exchange intends to issue up to $1 billion in native “LEO” utility tokens, each worth 1 tether, in a private sale ending May 11.
In his latest disclosure on Chinese messenger service WeChat, Zhao reportedly stated that “there’s a high possibility Bitfinex will not conduct a public sale,” given that it has already allegedly sealed sufficient hard and soft commitments to purchase its $1 billion allocation from private investors.
Soft commitments refer to cases where investors can still decide to cancel the deal upon their review of the LEO white paper. Zhao had previously outlined that investors are able to cement their soft commitment to a hard commitment by providing a 10% deposit.
The ostensible $1 billion in both types of commitments thus means that there remains a chance that some investors will yet withdraw, in which case Zhao reportedly stated the leftover tokens would be issued to others on a first come, first serve basis.
As reported, alongside his stake in Bitfinex, Zhao runs a major Chinese BTC over-the-counter trading desk and is thefounderof Singapore-based DFund.
Meanwhile, the New York Attorney General’s office has recentlyaccusedBitfinexof having lost $850 million in user deposits, and subsequently secretly covering up the shortfall using funds from Tether — the latter of which has itself come under renewed criticism for beingbackedonly 74% by USD reserves.
With Tether officiallyrebuffingthe allegations — and both companies heavily criticizing New York authorities for the manner in which they raised their complaint — parent company IFinex continues to contest the legal allegations in court, with a judge on Mondaypartly sidingwith theco-defendants.
• Joseph Lubin on Bitfinex: It Seems Like a Really Big Mess That Probably Won’t Get Better
• Bitfinex Confirms Initial Exchange Offering to Raise Up to $1 Billion in Tether
• Tether, Bitfinex Stay Afloat Amid Controversy
• New York Judge Criticizes Attorney General Claims Against Bitfinex, Tether || Reasons to invest in Ethereum: Many people now want to invest in Ethereum due to the benefits it provides. In this article, we will go through some of the reasons you might want to invest in this popular cryptocurrency. If you have any doubts as to whether it is a good idea to buy Ethereum, especially with the volatile crypto market, we might be able to help you out. History of Ethereum Before we explain the reasons why you should in invest in Ethereum, it is important to know the history of Ethereum and how it has got to where it is today. In 2013, developer Vitalik Buterin proposed the Ethereum network. In 2014, Vitalik and supporters conducted a crowd sale to fund the development costs. During the crowd sale, they offered 2000 Ether for each Bitcoin that was contributed. In July 2015, the Ethereum blockchain and network was launched. Ethereum is now the most well known decentralised smart contract platform, with around 100 million Ether on its network. Why invest in Ethereum? Growing in popularity As with Bitcoin, Ethereum has risen in popularity over the years as people have started to truly embrace cryptocurrencies. Ether has been publicly traded since 2016 and has established itself as one of the largest digital assets. Due to this popularity, exchanges and wallets have ensured they support Ethereum and all other ERC-20 tokens. Popular exchanges including Coinbase, Coinmama and Bitpanda are all known for being popular and well-trusted exchanges that sell Ethereum. Having these platforms available makes accessing the cryptocurrency much easier, which in turn continues to grow its popularity. Ethereum can also be bought through PayPal, credit and debit cards and through LocalEthereum. Again, having so many different platforms to choose from when purchasing Ethereum makes the currency in even more demand. There are currently over 100 million Ethereum tokens in circulation, with the cryptocurrency being used to incentivise its miners to run their mining hardware on the platform. The tokens can also be used for payments between users, similar to Bitcoin. With more and more places accepting cryptocurrency as a payment , is it time you invested in this popular cryptocurrency? Story continues The future Digital currencies such as Ethereum have the potential to revolutionise the future of all industries. We have seen already that Ethereum can changes sectors such as healthcare, finance and the government. Trust in traditional markets also continues to decrease in some parts of the world and they are turning to cryptocurrency as a result. Let’s look at the healthcare example. Ethereum’s blockchain allows patients’ documents to be safely shared with other GPs and hospitals. Using this technology will make processing patients information much more efficient. Ethereum’s smart contract platform can also eliminate the need for paperwork in other industries. It can significantly reduce costs and cut out the need for middlemen in many sectors. Without the need for brokers, banks or lawyers, individuals will be able to save a considerable amount of money and processes will become streamlined. Conclusion Ethereum will continue to grow in popularity, and as it does the price rise and the demand will grow. We have written about some of the different reasons you may want to invest in Ethereum but it is important to remember, no matter how popular Ethereum is, a crypto market is a volatile place. For this reason, it is advised to do the proper research on all cryptocurrencies before making your decision on which to invest in. The post Reasons to invest in Ethereum appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Report: Australians Lost Over $4 Million to Crypto Scams in 2018: Aussie scam report.jpg The latest edition of “ Targeting scams ,” an annual report released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) revealed that the country saw a 190 percent increase in cryptocurrency scams, with a total of $6.1 million AUD ($4.3 million USD) lost to crypto criminals. This marks a substantial rise from the $2.1 million AUD ($1.48 million) that was reportedly lost to scams in Australia back in 2017. The increase came even amid last year’s crypto winter, which saw virtually every digital asset in circulation lose a significant chunk of its value. Investment Scams Reign Supreme in Australia The report reveals that most of the victims of scams in Australia were targeted by fraudulent investment schemes. These schemes often compel investors to purchase one form of crypto or another, and, in some cases, the victims are convinced to make crypto-based payments for investment opportunities in forex, commodity trading and other trading schemes. The report notes: “To avoid the fraud and scam detection systems employed by banks, scammers are now increasingly asking for payment via unusual payment methods such as gift cards and cryptocurrencies.” Millennial Men: The Most Susceptible Victims The report also claims that out of all the 674 crypto scam cases that were reported in 2018, over half of the victims were men between the ages of 25 and 34. This number could actually be even higher, as the report suggests that some victims were likely too embarrassed to report the scams. This isn’t particularly surprising. Last year, a survey conducted by U.S.–based financial services firm Bankrate revealed that a more significant percentage of millennials (people between ages 18 and 37) believe that bitcoin (BTC) is the best way to store money that they won’t need for the next decade. Over 80 percent of the victims were also reported to have been contacted by scam perpetrators via some form of internet-based media (the most popular were online forums, social media and email) frequently used by millennials. Story continues Fiat Scams Are Even More Devastating However, while there has been a reported spike in the rate of crypto scams in Australia in 2018, the ACCC also reported that the amount lost in fiat currencies was much worse. A similar report published by the commission on April 29, 2019, stated that financial losses amounted to $489.7 million. With crypto scams amounting to just $4.3 million, fiat-based scams seem to remain the most popular modus operandi for scammers in the country. Delia Rickard, the deputy chair of the ACCC, said, “The total combined losses reported to Scamwatch and other government agencies exceeded $489 million — $149 million more than 2017. And these record losses are likely just the tip of the iceberg. We know that not everyone who suffers a loss to a scammer reports it to a government agency.” This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine . || Locked in a trillion-dollar market, CoinPOS is leading the new trend of blockchain securities: ROSTOV, RUSSIA / ACCESSWIRE / May 12, 2019 /Russia A security broker firm is a financial institution engaged in securities trading services. It is one of the basic components of the securities market. The main business activity is the communication between investors and issuers of securities. They provide transaction services between those two. Their job is to promote the efficient issuance, circulation of securities and maintaining the operation of the securities market.
In the old days, investors who want to invest in stocks have to go to certain business department to open stock account and capital account. The buying and selling orders also have to be operated by business department personnel. The whole investment process is not only extremely complicated, but also has a high risk of asset security. As customers become more and more mature as investors, they need more professional and high-quality services when the operational experience of investment products and the demand for investment services are increasing day by day.
Security broker companies become a communication bridge between investors and enterprises. They are able to simplify account opening process and optimize trading operation by means of entrustment guarantee. From the early telephone commission to the later Internet and mobile Internet brokerage platforms, they have promoted the progress and development of the financial industry and also created huge market value for themselves. JP Morgan Chase, for example, is one of the world's largest brokerage firms, with $2.5 trillion in assets, more than 5,000 publicly traded companies covered by equity research and more than $1.5 trillion under management.
The blockchain brought by Bitcoin has swept the world in recent years, with the total market value of global cryptocurrencies reaching $810 billion at one time. The hot market is sought after leading companies from many industries. However, we cannot deny that blockchain is still a new and brutal growing financial market. There are more than 16,000 exchanges in the world, according to CoinMarketCap. But their professional ability is uneven, the difference between service levels is huge. It's hard for investors to jump into cryptocurrency investments as quickly as it was for stock market investors from old days.
High user participation threshold, non-standard operation rules and poor user experience greatly hindered the development of crypto industry. Referring to the composition and structure of the traditional stock exchange market, we find that the blockchain industry needs professional "brokers" to promote the regulation and development of the industry.
CoinPOS (CPOS) is committed to building a global offline payment network platform with blockchain technology, creating the world's first professional intelligent terminal "broker" in the blockchain industry, and providing users with an overall solution from online to offline.
Like a large over-the-counter (OTC) network, CoinPOS is built on top of the CoinPOS protocol and is a point-to-point (P2P) financial marketplace that provides a direct bridge between cash and tokens.
For cryptocurrency issuers, they can raise the profile of their projects by displaying their tokens on CoinPOS platform, and this will allow users worldwide to buy their tokens with different legal fiat cash. The applicable scenarios of applying to brokerage services to blockchain must have the characteristics of multi-party collaboration, data credit investigation, data sharing and decentralization. All in a word, it increases efficiency with low cost, safe and credible.
CPOS PASS card is more convenient. We have global nodes partnerships where investors only need to buy or carry a CPOS PASS card, Letting the shopkeeper add up the corresponding cryptocurrency amount to complete the purchase process. As simple as using a commute card, it simplifies the complicated operation of account opening and real-name authentication. So that users can participate in the application of digital assets more easily, and it also meets the participation needs of users with difficulties in real-name authentication.
The goal of CoinPOS is to make every store connected to the blockchain system directly in the future, so that every cryptocurrency investor can enjoy the brokerage consulting services or provide them to others. CoinPOS aims to become a professional blockchain broker as great as JP Morgan Chase, sparing no effort to promote the progress and development of the blockchain industry.
Email:media@pressreleaseemail.com
SOURCE:CoinPOS
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/545081/Locked-in-a-trillion-dollar-market-CoinPOS-is-leading-the-new-trend-of-blockchain-securities || Indictments Issued for Two Individuals for Running “Shadow Banking” Operation: exchnagshadow.jpg U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York has charged two individuals for providing “shadow banking” services to crypto exchanges. According to a statement by Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, published on April 30, 2019, “Reginald Fowler and Ravid Yosef allegedly ran a shadow bank that processed hundreds of millions of dollars of unregulated transactions on behalf of numerous cryptocurrency exchanges.” The D.A. also claimed that both individuals ran an organization that managed to evade the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws that govern the operations of licensed financial institutions. The Department of Justice also released court documents , claiming that the two worked for various companies that provided currency banking services to crypto exchanges and then went on to establish and operate an unlicensed money service between February and October 2018. Prosecutors believe that during that period, the two of them created and used several bank accounts with different financial institutions. To get the banks to open these accounts, Fowler and Yousef were said to have made several misleading statements to the banks, claiming that their accounts would be used to conduct “real estate transactions,” while actually using them to transmit funds for a cryptocurrency-related money transmitting agency. To cover up the nature of their business, they allegedly went on to falsify electronic wire payment instructions as well. An investigation into the business, which was conducted by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the FBI, discovered that the suspects operated two bank accounts under the company name Global Trading Solutions LLC with HSBC Bank USA and HSBC Securities USA/Pershing LLC. This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine . || Dividend-Yielding Equities Can Offer Risk Management Features: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. The features of dividend-yielding equities are obvious with regard to the sustained income aspect, but more importantly, given the current market environment, they also possess risk management features that could mute the effects of volatility. "The potential benefits have been well-documented--dividends have been a large contributor to long-term stock returns over time, and with interest rates poised to remain low equity dividends are likely to be an important part of that story," wrote Victory Capital portfolio manager Dan Banaszak. "But perhaps even more important are the potential risk-managing attributes of higher dividend-paying stocks. This is illustrated by a substantially higher standard deviation of non-dividend paying stocks versus dividend payers. At the same time, the highest-yielding companies have outperformed those with zero dividend over the long term." Dividend-Yielding Equities Can Offer Risk Management Features 1 Banaszak presented two takeaways: Scratch below the surface: "Its not as simple as buying the highest-yielding company or finding those companies with the longest history of paying high dividends. After all, dividend yield is just a percentagea function of stock priceso a company encountering trouble and a stock declining in price might still sport a very attractive yield. A rigid methodology that ignores fundamentals could include companies with artificially high dividends or even those precariously poised to reduce dividends. High yield by itself is not a reliable marker for a quality company." Beware unintended consequences: "Building a portfolio of high-dividend stocks and weighting it based on market capitalization or dividend yield alone can lead to unintended consequences. Such strategies are likely to be concentrated in their top holdings or overweight in narrow swaths of the economy. Strategies that seek to limit extreme sector exposures and weight securities more evenly can be a more diversified way to access the potential benefits of a high-dividend approach." Story continues One ETF to consider is the VictoryShares Dividend Accelerator ETF ( VSDA ) , which offers exposure to large-cap U.S. stocks, that feature not only a history of increasing dividends, but which also possess the highest probability of future dividend growth. It seeks to provide exposure to dividend growth, rather than yielding, offering a potential diversification benefit to high dividend yielding alternatives, particularly in a rising rate environment. The fund provides investors with: potentially higher income through the sustainability of future dividend growth. a further layer of risk awareness by beginning with a broad investible universe and investing in high quality companies with stable earnings patterns. The fund's holdings as of March 31: Dividend-Yielding Equities Can Offer Risk Management Features 2 For more market trends, visit ETF Trends . POPULAR ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM SPY ETF Quote VOO ETF Quote QQQ ETF Quote VTI ETF Quote JNUG ETF Quote Top 34 Gold ETFs Top 34 Oil ETFs Top 57 Financials ETFs Bitcoin Tear Continues As BTC Breaches $8,000 New Bitcoin ETF Filed as BTC Price Eyes $8K Beyond Meat Up 5.25% Despite Sea of Red Crytocurrency Devotee Sees Bitcoin Tripling by 2021 Universal Basic Income Would Be a Social and Economic Disaster READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || EUR/USD Price Forecast – Euro finds support: The Euro initially fell during the trading session on Friday, but then turned around to show signs of support below the 1.1150 level. That doesn’t mean that we are ready to start buying, it is only a matter of time before the sellers get involved again would be my guess. That being the case, I believe that the 1.12 level will be significant resistance that is difficult to overcome, and therefore I’m looking for a selling opportunity. I probably won’t get it until Monday afternoon, but I am not willing to buy what looks to be a rather positive candle stick. EUR/USD Video 06.05.19 I think sometimes it’s simply a matter of being paid to wait on the right trade. The Euro shows this right now, and therefore simple signs of exhaustion might be the best way to deal with what looks to be a nice trade set up. The alternate scenario of course is that we break down below the bottom of the candle stick from the session, which would unwind the Euro even further. As far as buying the Euro is concerned, I would need to see the candle stick from the Wednesday session, a massive shooting star, broken to the upside in order to be convinced. Keep in mind that the liquidity on Friday is a bit low, so you can only read so much into the candlestick after the announcement. Patience will be needed to place the proper trade, and therefore as far as this market is concerned I will have headed into the weekend flat. Please let us know what you think in the comments below This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: USD/JPY Weekly Price Forecast – US dollar continues to grind Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Drop Despite Uptick in Demand Gold Weekly Price Forecast – Gold markets fall again for the week Forex Daily Recap – The Greenback was 0.57% Down Amid Downbeat USD Data Silver Price Forecast – Silver markets exploded to the upside on Friday Bitcoin hits 6-month Highs, Potentially Targeting levels Above $6’000 || A $100 Million Crypto Fund Opens With the Goal of Going Long: (Bloomberg) -- The crypto world might call it the Big Long. A new $100 million investment firm, Darma Capital, is opening to investors who want to bet that digital assets such as Ether are poised for a 10-year bull run. Of course, Ether saw one of the largest boom-and-bust cycles in crypto, rising an astounding 17,775% in 2017 only to see 94% of its gains erased by the end of last year. Darma’s founders, however, are counting on Ether’s long-term integral role in the Ethereum blockchain to counter such mania. “We want to acquire what we consider a new asset class,” Andrew Keys, a managing member in Darma, said in an interview. Keys, one of the first employees of ConsenSys, a Brooklyn-based Ethereum application developer, compared the state of crypto today with the early days of the internet’s popularization, when investors backed Google or Amazon, which operate atop the web’s architecture. The cryptocurrency Ether is the equivalent of the web -- it makes the Ethereum blockchain work -- but unlike with the internet, investors can buy Ether directly, Keys said. “We are 10 years long” on Ether, Keys said. His firm plans to create similar funds for Bitcoin and Filecoin in the future, he said. While scandals, fraud and regulatory actions are still seemingly weekly events in crypto, there are signs of well known corporations adopting Ethereum for real world uses. In April, Ernst & Young released its version of privacy-enhancing technology onto the public Ethereum blockchain. That same month, Societe Generale SA issued 100 million euro ($112 million) worth of covered bonds on the public Ethereum blockchain. The public chain is open for anyone to use, unlike private blockchains, which require permission to access. Predictions ‘Difficult’ “It’s very difficult to predict the success of any single-asset fund” because returns are closely tied to the underlying asset, Josh Gnaizda, chief executive officer of Crypto Fund Research in San Francisco, said in an email. “These type of crypto funds do, however, tend to be more volatile than arbitrage and other quantitative funds that have less of a directional bias.” Story continues The Darma funds are registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as both a commodity pool operator and a commodity trading adviser. Over the last few years, the strategy of the fund was to simply acquire as much Ether as possible. Keys said the fund sold near the top of the market in early 2018 to buy larger quantities of coins as prices fell, securing as much as 2,500 Ether last year for every 1,000 the fund started with. Managing the price swings is a major focus of the fund, he said. Larger questions loom for the Ethereum blockchain, such as whether it can boost the number of transactions processed. There are also concerns about privacy with Ethereum compared with transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. One early believer is Joe Lubin, founder of ConsenSys, who called Keys a “unifying force” in the Ethereum community, according to an emailed statement. The Brooklyn firm is Darma’s first corporate client and has invested some of its Ether with the fund for risk-management purposes, said Keys, who’s on the ConsenSys advisory board. (Updates with comment in seventh paragraph.) To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Leising in Los Angeles at mleising@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Daniel Taub, Dan Reichl For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com ©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
@Danrocky 😂 yeah, bitcoin 2.0 || @LuchaanBotha @lylebastian @raymondocnutz @vumazonkephotos @Antoniobotha1 || Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? For over ten years, researchers have tried to find the true identity of bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto. This is how close they have come.
https://t.co/z79tY6rses https://t.co/XydHU5ytUK || OKCoin’s customers can now trade with euro and participate in euro spot trading for BTC, ETH, and BCH
Start trading now at :: https://t.co/EW7lbDTjO5
To know more visit: https://t.co/AO1sM9Dqy0
#blockchain, #cbxe, #stock, #cryptobullsexchange, #cryptocurrency, #award https://t.co/g6hpzrL1x4 || @BitBitCrypto WHEN BTC BACK TO 20K SO WE BREAK EVEN???? || BitMEX $BTC Whale:
$2,000,000 worth of #Bitcoin bought at $8,316.39 09:45:24 2019/05/31
| 10% off fee's https://t.co/g8NYGcdIan | 💰💰💰💰💰 "Hey Hey Heyyyyyyyyy" || #Doviz
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#USD : 6.0561
#EUR : 6.7659
#GBP : 7.7241
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#BTC
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#Gobaba : 51981.10
#BtcTurk : 47290.00
#Koinim : 47200.01
#Paribu : 47019.00
#Koineks : 47399.99 || BTC
#エアドロップ #プレ企画 #仮想通貨 #プレゼント #無料 #貰える #プレゼント #イーサリアム #企画 #BTC || Binance KYC policy shows that above the withdrawal of 100 btc verification needs to be submitted and further more contact them..
This states what? Did Binance approve the withdrawal and not know about such a thing ? Gets me suspicious https://t.co/wMJM36WMJE || @abztrdr is the real purpose of $BTC a store of value?
|
Trend: up || Prices: 8145.86, 8230.92, 8693.83, 8838.38, 8994.49, 9320.35, 9081.76, 9273.52, 9527.16, 10144.56
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2022-03-24]
BTC Price: 43960.93, BTC RSI: 61.34
Gold Price: 1961.60, Gold RSI: 56.99
Oil Price: 112.34, Oil RSI: 58.78
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Fashion NFTs Are Here To Stay In 2022: You’ve most likely noticed the immense buzz around NFTs , or non-fungible tokens, since the beginning of 2021 and how they have permeated the digital space since. But what exactly are NFTs ? And what can they mean for the world of contemporary fashion? Non-fungible tokens are considered a form of cryptocurrency , just like Bitcoin. The key difference is that NFTs evidently don’t possess the fungible quality that Bitcoin does, which grants them more rarity and exclusivity. The term "fungible" refers to the ability of an asset to be exchanged for other goods that are of the same value. An example of trafficking fungible currency would be trading a $20 USD bill for two $10 USD bills -- one would receive the same amount, but in different denominations. In contrast, NFTs are one-of-one and cannot be exchanged or duplicated, only reacquired through purchasing from its current proprietor. Unlike Bitcoins, there's a bit more complexity to the anatomy of NFTs. They are tracked through an application called Blockchain , which analyzes and keeps track of the activity among all buyers and sellers of various NFTs. In other words, Blockchain logistically tracks the continuous movement of NFTs throughout the digital space. In terms of the interrelation between fashion and NFTs, there's certainly been much discussion, exploration and even implementation. Although clothing, accessories and footwear are usually utilized tangibly, fashion NFTs exist to ultimately go beyond the physical realm to provide a unique " phygital " experience for a fashion consumer. Fashion NFTs Metaverse Fashion Week Republiqe Virtual Digital Cyber Contactless Clothing Crypto Fashion Week , which took place for the first time in February last year, is a digital event where fashion enthusiasts can further educate themselves about NFTs and other digital trends. The inaugural edition featured a community of avant-garde designers and artists as guest speakers. One of them was multi-disciplinary creative KESH , who's well-known for her monochromatic and geometric artworks, as well as collaborations with brands such as Moschino . Returning this March, CFW presented a series of insightful panel discussions on Telegram and Twitter, including a conversation between Gala Marija Vrbanic, founder of high-end contactless fashion label Tribute Brand , and Lauren Kacher of ALTERRAGE , about augmented reality and wearables . Story continues Hot on the heels of CFW, virtual reality platform Decentraland will kick off its Metaverse Fashion Week on March 24, with brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Elie Saab set to virtually present their collections over a four-day period. The event will also see participation from a crop of innovative, digital-first brands, such as Republiqe , The Fabricant and Auroboros . Unlike traditional, invite-only Fashion Weeks, tickets aren't required for MVFW, meaning anyone can view the digital shows, or even purchase the cyber clothing items to dress their customizable avatar. Physical versions of certain designs will also be available to satisfy those seeking to acquire the same items for their IRL wardrobe. View this post on Instagram A post shared by RTFKT Studios (@rtfktstudios) The concept of "phygital" fashion products has been around for some time. In February last year, virtual sneaker brand RTFKT Studios produced more than $3 million USD in sales with a limited-edition drop, which included both a tangible pair of polychrome sneakers and an NFT that correlates with the shoe. The exclusive NFT, of course, possesses much more value than the sneaker itself. The Balmain x Barbie collaboration launched in January is another example of a "phygital" product. The NFT release debuted auction-style, with three different digital dolls adorned in monochromatic pink garments embellished with the French fashion house’s monogram print. The co-branded collection also featured a complete lineup of tangible pieces, including dresses, T-shirts, jackets and shoes that were available to shop offline. When the NFT craze emerged early last year, there was still much planning needed for implementing NFTs as digital fashion experiences. The user experience design of most existent fashion NFT platforms once lacked the ability to appeal to a demographic of luxury consumers, but in just one year, more digital creators have successfully employed this concept to entice shoppers to invest in NFTs. An archetypical example is the MetaBirkins NFT . The MetaBirkins NFT showcases a digital art gallery of luxe handbags reminiscent of the silhouette of a Birkin bag, decorated with furry florals, cow print, distorted smiley face motifs and other psychedelic patterns. Conceived by LA-based digital artist Mason Rothschild, the NFT was also part of an Art Basel Miami showcase last December. It's worth noting that Rothschild's project wasn't created in partnership with Hermès but rather independently, and that the French luxury house is actually suing the artist for trademark infringement . Fashion NFTs Metaverse Fashion Week Republiqe Virtual Digital Cyber Contactless Clothing Currently, there are companies working on offering more luxurious digital experiences to appeal to NFT-inclined consumers. Australia-based start-up Neuno is a digital platform where fashion enthusiasts are encouraged to buy, collect and digitally wear, sell and trade on the Flow BlockChain. The start-up is collaborating with luxury fashion labels on implementing NFTs. For example, the consumer of a designer blouse will be able to utilize their fashion NFT in a multitude of ways, including trying on the blouse virtually as well as dressing their gaming avatar in the same garment. The rise of NFTs gives fashion brands the opportunity to capitalize on a new generation of shoppers that is incredibly tech-savvy, enjoys creating and curating digital content, and desires to collect highly coveted digitized novelties that are one of a kind. Creative application of NFTs can also be beneficial for luxury brands looking to bolster their diffusion lines -- their more casual and affordable sub-brands -- by generating buzz. Even smaller brands can experiment with NFTs and sell them on digital shopping platforms such as Nifty Gateway , KnownOrigin and OpenSea . The discussion and utilization of NFTs are inevitable these days, and these ongoing digital projects prove that NFT fashion is certainly not going anywhere anytime soon. Tiffany Harrison is a multifaceted creative who is skilled in visual storytelling. She immerses herself in artful endeavors within photography, prop styling, product design and creative writing. Tiffany’s work is very conceptual and is inspired by contemporary art, which she is truly passionate about. You can connect with Tiffany on her website and Instagram . || Draper University Partners With VeChain to Train Web 3 Founders: Draper University, a training center for entrepreneurs founded by billionaire venture capitalist and early crypto adopter Tim Draper, has partnered with blockchain application platform VeChain to launch new programs for those interested in starting and scaling Web 3 businesses. The four-week VeChain Fellowship certificate program includes entrepreneurship and blockchain fundamentals to help attendees launch their own Web 3 startup powered by the VeChain Thor public blockchain. Draper University will then select about a dozen members of the fellowship program to continue on through the VeChain Web 3 Accelerator, where each participant will receive $100,000 in funding in exchange for a 5% equity stake in their startup. Draper University previously held similar programs in partnership with blockchain innovation lab Tezos Israel and finance-focused blockchain Algorand. The broader Draper Network of investment funds was an early backer of VeChain, which is a blockchain platform for supply chain and business process management. Draper University CEO Asra Nadeem told CoinDesk in an interview that the center’s support doesn’t end on graduation day. A demo day held at the end of the program allows graduates to raise additional funding from outside investors. The graduates are also put in front of the roughly 18 global funds in the Draper Network for potential investment. On the operational side, Draper University introduces graduates to potential customers through the Draper Network. The organization can also provide hiring assistance to connect graduate companies with technical, sales and marketing talent, said Nadeem. The application period for the programs is now open. VeChain Fellowship program will run from April 18 through May 13, while the Accelerator will operate from July 11 to Sept. 7. Read more: Tim Draper on Bitcoin and the Collapse of Fiat || Ocean Falls Blockchain Inks LOI With West Coast Marine Terminals: This arrangement would make OFB a global leader in clean energy-powered Bitcoin mining Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 7, 2022) - Ocean Falls Blockchain Corp. ("OFB" or the "Company") is pleased to announce a Letter of Intent signed with West Coast Marine Terminals (WCMT). This potential partnership would enable Ocean Falls to increase its mining capacity up to 80 megawatts (MW) by the end of 2024, starting with an initial phase one expansion at the start of next year. Ocean Falls is moving to acquire roughly 21,780 sq. ft. of outdoor container space fully powered by renewable energy resources. Ocean Falls purchased two prototype container units and have been running viability tests since January, in advance of any larger-scale expansion. "The initial results from the viability tests look great," said Oded Orgil, CEO at Ocean Falls Blockchain. "We are very excited for this partnership, it would mean a milestone achievement for Ocean Falls' pursuit of clean energy solutions to support the backbone of decentralized networks like Bitcoin." In the last couple of years, the balance of hashing power has slowly shifted toward North American miners. Hydroelectricity is a big part of this, according to Orgil, as it's an attractive source of energy for bitcoin miners in the face of today's environmental realities. Ocean Falls currently operates a 2 MW-plus, clean energy-powered cryptocurrency mining farm in historic Ocean Falls, B.C. "We believe this potential partnership is a pivotal opportunity for West Coast Terminals to bridge our strategic interests and access to infrastructure in Gold River with the growing Canadian blockchain technology sector," said Kent O'Neill, General Manager at WCMT. West Coast Terminal has 240 acres (100 hectares) of usable industrial zoned land, including storage facilities with over 350,000 sq. ft. (32,500 m2) of covered warehouse buildings. Story continues Visit oceanfalls.com for more information on OFB. About West Coast Marine Terminals West Coast Marine Terminals is a deep sea port that presents numerous opportunities to support established industry as well as pose as a significant resource to commercial activities. West Coast Marine Terminals is located in a protected inlet on the west coast of Vancouver Island in Nootka Sound and is central to both the Northwest and USA border. About Ocean Falls Blockchain Ocean Falls is a Canadian blockchain technology company that operates a 2MW-plus, clean energy-powered cryptocurrency mining farm in historic Ocean Falls, B.C. Ocean Falls is also creating a new sustainable solution for the captive insurance industry. Media Contact Oded Orgil, CEO (Ocean Falls Blockchain) oded@oceanfalls.com Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements contained herein that are not clearly historical in nature may constitute forward-looking statements. Such statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those implied by such statements. Although such statements are based on management's reasonable assumptions, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be correct. We assume no responsibility to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Additionally, there are known and unknown risk factors which could cause Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information contained herein. All forward-looking information herein is qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement, and the Company disclaims any obligation to revise or update any such forward-looking information or to publicly announce the result of any revisions to any of the forward-looking information contained herein to reflect future results, events or developments, except as required by law. ### To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/115572 || Waddell & Associates, Llc Buys BTC BlackRock Short Maturity Bond ETF, PowerShares QQQ Trust ...: Investment company Waddell & Associates, Llc ( Current Portfolio ) buys BTC BlackRock Short Maturity Bond ETF, PowerShares QQQ Trust Ser 1, Amazon.com Inc, II-VI Inc, Deere, sells Driven Brands Holdings Inc, WisdomTree Emerging Markets ex-State-Owned Enterpr, AT&T Inc, The Interpublic Group of Inc, Viatris Inc during the 3-months ended 2021Q4, according to the most recent filings of the investment company, Waddell & Associates, Llc. As of 2021Q4, Waddell & Associates, Llc owns 117 stocks with a total value of $631 million. These are the details of the buys and sells. New Purchases: NEAR, QQQ, IIVI, DE, DIA, JPST, F, LEG, AB, LOW, MCD, MU, SHYG, Added Positions: IXUS, VWO, DGS, VSS, MDY, IEFA, AMZN, PRFZ, AAPL, VTV, WMT, PFE, LLY, BRK.B, SPY, CSCO, SHM, DOC, FB, KMI, NFLX, MRK, HD, VOO, KO, TIP, IEMG, VYM, EMB, BKLN, ABBV, STAG, VZ, UNP, SPG, PG, PEP, GOOGL, GILD, NEE, BAC, ACC, Reduced Positions: DRVN, CAPE, XSOE, ACWI, T, GSIE, AVGO, TFI, ACWF, WFC, INTC, IBM, XOM, JPM, DFAC, GT, ABT, Sold Out: IPG, VTRS, KHC, AGR, EMLC, KD, Warning! GuruFocus has detected 2 Warning Sign with AMZN. Click here to check it out. AMZN 15-Year Financial Data The intrinsic value of AMZN Peter Lynch Chart of AMZN For the details of WADDELL & ASSOCIATES, LLC's stock buys and sells, go to https://www.gurufocus.com/guru/waddell+%26+associates%2C+llc/current-portfolio/portfolio These are the top 5 holdings of WADDELL & ASSOCIATES, LLC BTC iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF ( QUAL ) - 469,652 shares, 10.84% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 0.94% S&P MidCap 400 ETF ( MDY ) - 128,533 shares, 10.55% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 1.05% Vanguard Total World Stock ETF ( VT ) - 582,875 shares, 9.93% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 0.94% Barclays Bank PLC ZC SP ETN REDEEM 12/10/2022 USD (CAPE) - 2,438,621 shares, 8.80% of the total portfolio. Shares reduced by 3.34% iShares Core MSCI Total International Stock ETF (IXUS) - 781,373 shares, 8.79% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 2.47% Story continues New Purchase: BTC BlackRock Short Maturity Bond ETF (NEAR) Waddell & Associates, Llc initiated holding in BTC BlackRock Short Maturity Bond ETF. The purchase prices were between $49.92 and $50.04, with an estimated average price of $49.97. The stock is now traded at around $49.860000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.26%. The holding were 32,456 shares as of 2021-12-31. New Purchase: PowerShares QQQ Trust Ser 1 (QQQ) Waddell & Associates, Llc initiated holding in PowerShares QQQ Trust Ser 1. The purchase prices were between $352.17 and $403.48, with an estimated average price of $386.05. The stock is now traded at around $365.520000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.15%. The holding were 2,347 shares as of 2021-12-31. New Purchase: II-VI Inc (IIVI) Waddell & Associates, Llc initiated holding in II-VI Inc. The purchase prices were between $54.61 and $70.5, with an estimated average price of $63.04. The stock is now traded at around $63.660000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.08%. The holding were 7,150 shares as of 2021-12-31. New Purchase: SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA) Waddell & Associates, Llc initiated holding in SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF. The purchase prices were between $338.36 and $364.57, with an estimated average price of $354.28. The stock is now traded at around $353.940000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.06%. The holding were 1,078 shares as of 2021-12-31. New Purchase: Deere & Co (DE) Waddell & Associates, Llc initiated holding in Deere & Co. The purchase prices were between $329 and $367.86, with an estimated average price of $348.32. The stock is now traded at around $377.880000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.06%. The holding were 1,189 shares as of 2021-12-31. New Purchase: JPMorgan Ultra-Short Income ETF (JPST) Waddell & Associates, Llc initiated holding in JPMorgan Ultra-Short Income ETF. The purchase prices were between $50.45 and $50.59, with an estimated average price of $50.51. The stock is now traded at around $50.430000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.06%. The holding were 7,505 shares as of 2021-12-31. Added: Amazon.com Inc (AMZN) Waddell & Associates, Llc added to a holding in Amazon.com Inc by 35.91%. The purchase prices were between $3189.78 and $3696.06, with an estimated average price of $3427.48. The stock is now traded at around $3023.870000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.09%. The holding were 632 shares as of 2021-12-31. Added: Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI) Waddell & Associates, Llc added to a holding in Kinder Morgan Inc by 36.54%. The purchase prices were between $15.24 and $18.65, with an estimated average price of $16.62. The stock is now traded at around $17.410000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.01%. The holding were 19,189 shares as of 2021-12-31. Added: Physicians Realty Trust (DOC) Waddell & Associates, Llc added to a holding in Physicians Realty Trust by 30.49%. The purchase prices were between $17.52 and $19.23, with an estimated average price of $18.43. The stock is now traded at around $17.860000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.01%. The holding were 20,330 shares as of 2021-12-31. Sold Out: The Kraft Heinz Co (KHC) Waddell & Associates, Llc sold out a holding in The Kraft Heinz Co. The sale prices were between $32.88 and $37.84, with an estimated average price of $35.9. Sold Out: Viatris Inc (VTRS) Waddell & Associates, Llc sold out a holding in Viatris Inc. The sale prices were between $12.09 and $14.68, with an estimated average price of $13.35. Sold Out: Avangrid Inc (AGR) Waddell & Associates, Llc sold out a holding in Avangrid Inc. The sale prices were between $47.91 and $53.3, with an estimated average price of $50.71. Sold Out: VanEck J.P. Morgan EM Local Currency Bond ETF (EMLC) Waddell & Associates, Llc sold out a holding in VanEck J.P. Morgan EM Local Currency Bond ETF. The sale prices were between $28.03 and $29.6, with an estimated average price of $28.86. Sold Out: The Interpublic Group of Companies Inc (IPG) Waddell & Associates, Llc sold out a holding in The Interpublic Group of Companies Inc. The sale prices were between $33.06 and $38.26, with an estimated average price of $36.31. Sold Out: Kyndryl Holdings Inc (KD) Waddell & Associates, Llc sold out a holding in Kyndryl Holdings Inc. The sale prices were between $15.75 and $40.75, with an estimated average price of $21.45. Here is the complete portfolio of WADDELL & ASSOCIATES, LLC. Also check out: 1. WADDELL & ASSOCIATES, LLC's Undervalued Stocks 2. WADDELL & ASSOCIATES, LLC's Top Growth Companies, and 3. WADDELL & ASSOCIATES, LLC's High Yield stocks 4. Stocks that WADDELL & ASSOCIATES, LLC keeps buyingThis article first appeared on GuruFocus . || Dohj, Llc Buys iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF, iShares National Muni Bond ETF, iShares ...: Investment companyDohj, Llc(Current Portfolio) buys iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF, iShares National Muni Bond ETF, iShares MSCI USA ESG Optimized ETF, Vanguard Small Cap ETF, iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF, sells iShares iBoxx USD Investment Grade Corporate Bond , iShares iBoxx USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, iShares ESG USD Corporate Bond ETF, iShares ESG 1-5 Year USD Corporate Bond ETF, Autodesk Inc during the 3-months ended 2021Q4, according to the most recent filings of the investment company, Dohj, Llc. As of 2021Q4, Dohj, Llc owns 97 stocks with a total value of $224 million. These are the details of the buys and sells.
• New Purchases:IEF, ITOT,
• Added Positions:MUB, ESGU, IVV, VB, EFA, ESML, EEM, RWO, AMZN, IYH, IYW, TIP, ESGE, IYF, XOM, IXUS, SLV, JPM, DE, NEE, SPYG, MOAT, BNDX, AGNC, VXUS,
• Reduced Positions:LQD, VO, IEFA, USMV, IJR, TSLA, EFAV, QQQ, NVDA, ADSK, DGRO, SMLV, SPEM, IAU, INTC, UNH, GOOGL, AAPL, INTU, CSCO, EEMV, ADBE, TXN, KO, CTAS, WM, BRK.B, YUM, V, A, NKE, ALGN, COST, DIS, SPGI, SCZ, SBUX, CMCSA, VTEB, TRV, MET, CRM, PG, ESGD, JNJ, TGT, FAST, PLD, CMI, ICF, PYPL, PAYX, BKNG,
• Sold Out:HYG, SUSC, SUSB, EA,
• Warning! GuruFocus has detected 2 Warning Sign with AMZN. Click here to check it out.
• List of 52-Week Lows
• List of 3-Year Lows
• List of 5-Year Lows
For the details of DOHJ, LLC's stock buys and sells,go tohttps://www.gurufocus.com/guru/dohj%2C+llc/current-portfolio/portfolio
These are the top 5 holdings of DOHJ, LLC
1. iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF) - 148,783 shares, 7.65% of the total portfolio. New Position
2. iShares National Muni Bond ETF (MUB) - 133,331 shares, 6.93% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 27.06%
3. BTC iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF (IEFA) - 200,209 shares, 6.68% of the total portfolio. Shares reduced by 5.21%
4. iShares Russell Top 200 ETF (IWL) - 114,379 shares, 5.83% of the total portfolio. Shares reduced by 0.68%
5. Vanguard Mid-Cap ETF (VO) - 49,750 shares, 5.67% of the total portfolio. Shares reduced by 7.01%
New Purchase: iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEF)
Dohj, Llc initiated holding in iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF. The purchase prices were between $113.36 and $116.25, with an estimated average price of $114.77. The stock is now traded at around $112.540000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 7.65%. The holding were 148,783 shares as of 2021-12-31.
New Purchase: iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF (ITOT)
Dohj, Llc initiated holding in iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF. The purchase prices were between $97.9 and $107.61, with an estimated average price of $104.32. The stock is now traded at around $101.990000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.11%. The holding were 2,236 shares as of 2021-12-31.
Added: iShares National Muni Bond ETF (MUB)
Dohj, Llc added to a holding in iShares National Muni Bond ETF by 27.06%. The purchase prices were between $114.9 and $116.5, with an estimated average price of $115.82. The stock is now traded at around $113.840000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 1.48%. The holding were 133,331 shares as of 2021-12-31.
Added: iShares MSCI USA ESG Optimized ETF (ESGU)
Dohj, Llc added to a holding in iShares MSCI USA ESG Optimized ETF by 72.29%. The purchase prices were between $97.93 and $108.46, with an estimated average price of $104.78. The stock is now traded at around $102.790000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.44%. The holding were 21,524 shares as of 2021-12-31.
Added: Vanguard Small Cap ETF (VB)
Dohj, Llc added to a holding in Vanguard Small Cap ETF by 50.48%. The purchase prices were between $214.09 and $238.21, with an estimated average price of $226.3. The stock is now traded at around $209.930000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.15%. The holding were 4,546 shares as of 2021-12-31.
Added: iShares MSCI EAFE ETF (EFA)
Dohj, Llc added to a holding in iShares MSCI EAFE ETF by 21.23%. The purchase prices were between $74.94 and $80.27, with an estimated average price of $78. The stock is now traded at around $77.110000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.11%. The holding were 17,780 shares as of 2021-12-31.
Added: iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA Small-Cap ETF (ESML)
Dohj, Llc added to a holding in iShares ESG Aware MSCI USA Small-Cap ETF by 24.56%. The purchase prices were between $38.2 and $42.72, with an estimated average price of $40.43. The stock is now traded at around $37.450000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.06%. The holding were 16,344 shares as of 2021-12-31.
Added: iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM)
Dohj, Llc added to a holding in iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF by 26.62%. The purchase prices were between $47.41 and $51.73, with an estimated average price of $49.73. The stock is now traded at around $49.060000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.06%. The holding were 12,235 shares as of 2021-12-31.
Sold Out: iShares iBoxx USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG)
Dohj, Llc sold out a holding in iShares iBoxx USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF. The sale prices were between $84.9 and $87.25, with an estimated average price of $86.23.
Sold Out: iShares ESG USD Corporate Bond ETF (SUSC)
Dohj, Llc sold out a holding in iShares ESG USD Corporate Bond ETF. The sale prices were between $26.99 and $27.68, with an estimated average price of $27.32.
Sold Out: iShares ESG 1-5 Year USD Corporate Bond ETF (SUSB)
Dohj, Llc sold out a holding in iShares ESG 1-5 Year USD Corporate Bond ETF. The sale prices were between $25.55 and $25.87, with an estimated average price of $25.68.
Sold Out: Electronic Arts Inc (EA)
Dohj, Llc sold out a holding in Electronic Arts Inc. The sale prices were between $120.23 and $145.44, with an estimated average price of $134.21.
Here is the complete portfolio of DOHJ, LLC. Also check out:1. DOHJ, LLC's Undervalued Stocks2. DOHJ, LLC's Top Growth Companies, and3. DOHJ, LLC's High Yield stocks4. Stocks that DOHJ, LLC keeps buyingThis article first appeared onGuruFocus. || A crypto breakthrough? Western states consider taking digital currency: The dreams of crypto enthusiasts inched closer to reality in recent days as lawmakers in Wyoming and Arizona put forward proposals that would allow those states to accept tax payments in the form of digital currencies. The new proposals, and others like them around the United States, threaten to erode a key distinction upholding the supremacy of the U.S. dollar over its would-be digital competitors: Americans can use U.S. dollars, but not cryptocurrencies, to pay their taxes. Under the Arizona proposal, the state would recognize the most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, as legal tender. The Wyoming proposal, which is not limited to any specific cryptocurrency, would apply only to sales and use taxes. Both proposals face potential legal and political hurdles. But Wyoming has gone further than any other state in passing laws to accommodate cryptocurrency adoption, and backers of the proposal there believe it will be the first state to take a significant step in the realm of tax payments. The Wyoming effort also offers a window into some of the forces vying to shape the future of digital money: namely, big retailers and veterans of the commercial banking industry. “We are looking for alternative currencies to compete with the U.S. dollar,” said Zhou Xiaomeng of American CryptoFed, a group backing the Wyoming proposal. American CryptoFed, whose founders previously worked on mobile banking platforms, plans to issue a so-called algorithmic stablecoin — a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to the consumer price index — that can be collected for sales tax purposes. The Wyoming proposal is also backed by the Merchant Advisory Group , a trade group for retailers that counts Amazon, Walmart, and the Home Depot among its members . Merchant Advisory Group’s CEO, John Drechny, declined an interview request. For retailers, part of the appeal would be convenience, said Wyoming Rep. Ocean Andrew, the sponsor of the amendment, which would allow crypto tax payments to be made automatically via digital smart contracts. Andrew, a Republican who runs a restaurant business based in Laramie, said he wanted to reduce the paperwork burden of sales taxes. “It’s just an idea about how to make the process more seamless and automated,” he said. Story continues But some of the plan’s backers have grander designs. As American CryptoFed’s name suggests, the group aspires to compete with the Federal Reserve System, which regulates the dollar. If the Wyoming proposal succeeds, its real significance would be to help legitimize cryptocurrencies as alternatives to the greenback. “It’s the beginning of the end,” for central banking and the U.S. dollar, Zhou declared. Critics of privately issued and open-source cryptocurrencies argue that if they displace national currencies, they would undermine the ability of national governments and central banks to effectively regulate the economy. They also argue that Americans, in particular, benefit from the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But supporters of the incumbent banking system expressed skepticism that recent state-level proposals would do much to upset the current system, pointing to potential legal and practical hurdles. “I see this as much more of a stunt than genuine shakeup,” said Rohan Grey, who serves as research director of the Digital Fiat Currency Institute, a San Francisco-based trade group that represents government bodies and financial institutions. The group supports the issuance of digital currencies by central banks as a government-controlled alternative to privately issued or open-source cryptocurrencies. One potential obstacle to proposals like this in Arizona and Wyoming is Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution, which restricts the power of states to issue their own money. The Arizona bill , according to Grey, faces a greater risk of being deemed unconstitutional because it seeks to designate a cryptocurrency as “legal tender.” This has broader implications than the Wyoming proposal, which is limited to tax payments. He said it is unlikely that courts would actually strike down Wyoming’s proposal on constitutional grounds, in part because of precedent permitting privately issued money and in part because any such ruling would have implications for existing tax credit systems used by states. Instead, as the federal government gears up to more extensively regulate cryptocurrencies, Grey said Congress could simply pass a law banning the practice. Grey, who also works as a law professor at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, predicted that a bigger problem than regulation would be a lack of interest. Many cryptocurrencies have wildly fluctuating values, which undermines their practical value as forms of money. “The volatility of these instruments will do more damage than a legal response,” he said. While crypto supporters contend that some digital currencies are pegged to the U.S. dollar or to baskets of goods and services, limiting their volatility, early attempts to let taxpayers in the U.S. pony up in crypto have proven to be busts. In 2018, Ohio’s then-treasurer, Republican Josh Mandel, unveiled a program to let businesses pay some taxes in Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency. Soon after he left office, his successor shuttered the program, which the state’s attorney general concluded was not properly authorized. A spokesperson for the Ohio Treasurer’s office, Brittany Halpin, said that fewer than 10 businesses took advantage of the program during the 10 months it was active. Also in 2018, Seminole County, Florida’s then-tax collector, Republican Joel Greenberg, said he would take payment for some fees in Bitcoin. But Greenberg’s tenure was cut short by a federal indictment. He has since pleaded guilty to a raft of charges, including for embezzling county funds to purchase cryptocurrency. A spokesperson for the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office, Alan Byrd, said that the office no longer takes payments in cryptocurrencies and that no one had submitted any such payments when it did. Several other U.S. jurisdictions are investigating the possibility of taking such payments. Last year, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said he wants his state to be the first to accept taxes in crypto. The mayor of Jackson, Tennessee, has said the city is studying how it might take property tax payments in digital currencies, and Miami-Dade County is examining similar possibilities. While the race to implement the first successful program is on, it is shaping up to be more of a marathon than a sprint. In addition to the constitutional issues posed by the Arizona bill, its prospects are complicated by its sponsor, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers. Rogers, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, has been a vocal proponent of the false claim that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election and featured prominently in a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League on extremism in American politics. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Wyoming resolved law week to study the sales tax proposal rather than push ahead on it. Andrew said he plans to work with the state’s Department of Revenue and to introduce an updated proposal next year. He said he remained more focused on the nitty-gritty details of his sales tax proposal than any sweeping implications it might hold for the future of money. ”It’s a milestone,” he said, “but it’s a very niche use.” Ben Schreckinger covers tech, finance and politics for POLITICO; he is an investor in cryptocurrency. || Defi Protocols Agave and Hundred Finance Suffer Hack of $11M: • In a latest Defi exploit, over $11 million from Agave and Hundred Finance was wiped off.
• The attacker introduced a reentrancy bug and used a flash loan exploit to siphon funds.
• After the protocols announced the hack, their native tokens saw a dip.
Defiprotocols getting hacked have been synonymous withcryptomarkets as crypto crimes have risen over the years. Another Defi exploit came to light on Tuesday when an attacker siphoned over $11 million from Agave and Hundred Finance.
Over $11 million has been wiped off in what appears to be a flash loan reentrancy attack on both Defi protocols on the Gnosis chain. The hacker took the stolen funds inWrapped ETH,Wrapped BTC,Chainlink,USDC, Gnosis, and Wrapped XDAI.
Both the Defi platforms confirmed the hacks throughTwitterposts on Tuesday, stating that their contracts have been paused to avoid further damage. Agave also mentioned that their team is currently investigating the exploit on the Agave finance protocol.
The attacker exploited a reentrancy vulnerability in the two Defi protocols.
Reentrancy is a Solidity programming language vulnerability that lets an attacker trick a protocol’s contract into making an external call to an untrusted contract. After the call happens, the hacker can use this suspicious contract to make repeated calls to the protocol to wash away its funds.
For Agave and Hundred Finance, the hacker introduced a reentrancy bug on both protocols allowing for a flash loan exploit. The same allowed hackers to continue borrowing from the protocols.
Seemingly, the attacker was making repetitive calls to withdraw funds without putting up additional collateral. Notably, the address associated with the attacker has sent over 2,100ETH, worth over $5.5 million, to a crypto mixer to launder the stolen tokens.
Blockchain security researcher Mudit Gupta thinks that the hack was possible because the official bridged tokens on Gnosis are non-standard and have a hook that calls the token receiver on every transfer. The same enables reentrancy attacks.
The recent attack marks the second flash loan exploit on the same day after Deus Finance DAO lost $3 million in a similar attack. Agave is a fork of the lending protocol Aave.
Gupta, however, believes that the difference between Aave and Agave is that ‘Aave actively checks for reentrancy before listing tokens on the main net to avoid similar attacks.’
After the attack, both the protocols’ tokens saw a price decline. AGVE, the token of non-custodial money market and lending protocol Agave, lost over 25% price on Tuesday. Likewise, after announcing the exploit, Hundred Finances’ token HND was down 5.8%.
Notably,CreamFinance, another Defi lending protocol with a similar codebase toCompound, suffered a flash loan reentrancy attack last summer. The exploit led to a $19 million loss in crypto from the protocol.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Defi Protocols Agave and Hundred Finance Suffer Hack of $11M
• HSBC Partners with The Sandbox, Opening Doors Into the Metaverse || Cryptocurrency Investigator Training Launches for US Army Soldiers: BIGG Digital Assets Subsidiary Blockchain Intelligence Group and ERUdyne offer the Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator Course through the U.S. Army Credentialing Assistance Program
EL PASO, Texas, Jan. 25, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BIGG Digital Assets Inc. (“BIGG” or the “Company”) (CSE: BIGG, OTC: BBKCF, WKN: A2PS9W), owner ofBlockchain Intelligence Group, a cryptocurrency compliance and intelligence company, announces a partnership with ERUdyne, a training and consulting firm, to offer the Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator (CCI) course to U.S. Army personnel. The CCI credential is now listed in Army Credentialing Opportunities On-Line (COOL) and approved for funding through the U.S. Army Credentialing Assistance (CA) Program.
The CCI is an online training program, developed by a digital asset and dark web government investigator and an expert in financial compliance. The course is for law enforcement, intelligence analysts, legal, accounting, anti-money laundering specialists, and others combating financial crime through the illicit use of cryptocurrency. The CCI consists of five modules and includes topics on the basics of cryptocurrency, the origin of Bitcoin, the dark web, how criminals use cryptocurrency, and cryptocurrency forensics.
The training includes anti-money laundering techniques, federal law enforcement and regulatory efforts related to cryptocurrency, and how to combat illicit use The training, specifically developed for Army COOL, will also include hands-on training and practical exercises using best-in-class forensics software from Blockchain Intelligence Group:BitRank Verified®and QLUE™.BitRank Verified®gives banks and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) confidence in risk-mitigation and regulatory compliance through real-time transaction monitoring and risk scoring to quickly clear low-risk transactions and investigate high-risk ones. Blockchain Intelligence Group has developed a Blockchain-agnostic search and analytics engine, QLUE™, enabling law enforcement, regtech, regulators, and government agencies to visually track, trace, and monitor cryptocurrency transactions.
“Men and women in uniform from the Army, Army Reserve, and the National Guard, are on the front lines of protecting the U.S. from all threats, including threats to our financial system for illicit purposes,” said William Callahan, Director of Government and Strategic Affairs, Blockchain Intelligence Group. “I had the opportunity as a U.S. federal law enforcement officer to work alongside members of the military to gather intelligence to ‘follow the money,’ and combat international narcotics traffickers, narco-terrorist financiers, and money launderers. The new battlefield is cyber, and cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and Ethereum are the supply lines. This training will enhance the soldier’s knowledge about cryptocurrency and provide them with the tools they need to combat this threat.”
“We are pleased to partner with Block Intelligence Group to provide this training that supports the Certified Cryptocurrency Investigator credential in Army COOL," said Suzanne Novak, President, ERUdyne Inc. "This training enhances the soldier's skills while serving and will increase their overall employability upon separating from the Army in a new and growing field.”
Army personnel interested in the training may contact an ERUdyne associate atwww.erudyne.comfor more information.
On behalf of the BoardMark BinnsCEOir@biggdigitalassets.com
Investor RelationsVictoria RutherfordVictoria@adcap.caT: 1 480 625 5772
For Press RequestsMatt EckessRed Lorry Yellow Lorry for Blockchain Intelligence GroupBIG@RLYL.comT: +1 857 217 2925
About BIGG Digital Assets Inc.BIGG Digital Assets Inc. (BIGG) believes the future of crypto is a safe, compliant, and regulated environment. BIGG invests in products and companies to support this vision. BIGG owns two operating companies: Netcoins (netcoins.ca) and Blockchain Intelligence Group (blockchaingroup.io).
Blockchain Intelligence Groupbuilds technology to power compliance and intelligence for the crypto future. Banks and crypto companies depend on our technology to monitor risk from crypto transactions. Investigators and law enforcement quickly identify and track illicit activity. Blockchain Intelligence Group is trusted globally by banks, crypto companies, law enforcement, fintechs, regtechs and governments.
Netcoinsdevelops brokerage and exchange software to make the purchase and sale of cryptocurrency easily accessible to the mass consumer and investor with a focus on compliance and safety. Netcoins utilizes BitRank Verified®software at the heart of its platform and facilitates crypto trading via a self-serve crypto brokerage portal at Netcoins.app.
For more information and to register to BIGG’s mailing list, please visit our website athttps://www.biggdigitalassets.com. Or visit SEDAR atwww.sedar.com.
About ERUdyneERUdyne Inc, a small, woman-owned business, is a Department of Defense (DoD) Skillbridge-approved training and consulting firm that specializes in training and employing military service members in transition, military spouses, and veterans -- thus, bringing their skills and experience to the civilian workforce in business, non-profits, and state and local government. ERUdyne has established a UAS (Drone) Academy, a Crisis Management Certification program, and an Online/Virtual Training Center. ERUdyne has received approval by the Army Credentialing Assistance (CA) Program to offer online courses to Army service members, paid for by CA. ERUdyne is also a Virginia Values Veterans (V3) Certified Company, Skillbridge Approved in Virginia and is a SWaM (Small Woman and Minority) Certified in Virginia. ERUdyne is registered in Sam.gov.
For more information, please visit our website athttps://erudyne.com.
Forward-Looking StatementsCertain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which include completion of the search technology software and other matters. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as “may”, “expect”, “estimate”, “anticipate”, “intend”, “believe” and “continue” or the negative thereof or similar variations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are based will occur. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties, both general and specific that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur. These assumptions, risks and uncertainties include, among other things, the state of the economy in general and capital markets in particular, and other factors, many of which are beyond the control of BIGG. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking information because BIGG can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from BIGG’s expectations include, consumer sentiment towards BIGG’s products and Blockchain technology generally, technology failures, competition, and failure of counterparties to perform their contractual obligations.
The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, BIGG disclaims any intention and assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additionally, BIGG undertakes no obligation to comment on the expectations of, or statements made by, third parties in respect of the matters discussed above.
The CSE does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of the content of this Press Release. || Coinbase shares plunge as crypto crash wipes out $1.4 trillion in value since peak: The ongoing cryptocurrency collapse is severely hammeringCoinbase, the publicly listed exchange.
Coinbase's share price was down around 8% in pre-market trading Monday morning, following a 13% drop on Friday. The stock has now lost nearly a quarter of its value since Thursday, having already fallen below itsIPO priceof $250 a share (theNasdaqlisting took placelast April) three weeks ago.
The American company may be diversifying, with plans to launch anNFT marketplace, but it's a crypto exchange first and foremost, with its fortunes tied to those of the wider crypto scene. And that scene isugly right now.
Over $1.4 trillion has beenwipedfrom the aggregate crypto market's value since November's highs turned into deep sighs. In the last week alone, Bitcoin's value dropped 20% to a current price of $33,550—which is pretty much where it was a year ago—while Ethereum's token fell 30% to $2,270. (Dogecoin, for those keeping track, is down 27% on a week ago.)
The recent intensification of the crash appears to be partly the result of the Russian central bank last weekcalling for a banon the use and "mining" of cryptocurrencies in the country. This was a big deal, as Russia is a major hub for crypto mining, particularly since China's ban on the activity.
However, the slump also seems to be tracking broader market developments, in particular theNasdaq's slideinto correction territory last week. With the U.S. Federal Reserve tightening its policy in the face of inflation, many investors are dumping risky assets including the likes of Bitcoin.
All of which circles back on Coinbase, a company that is quiteopen about its dependenceon the health of the general cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin in particular. "What a week," the exchangetweetedlate Friday, after its share price plummeted. "Drop an emoji to show us how you're feeling."
Meanwhile, the meme-stock-trading sensation Robinhood—which also runs a limited crypto trading service and ispreparing to testits own crypto wallet—also saw its share price slide 15% in the last week. Robinhood's stock has lost 60% of its value since its July IPO, andForbesestimatesthat founder Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt are no longer billionaires.
Update: This article was updated on Jan. 24 to note that the crypto market's aggregated cap has dropped by $1.4 trillion since November.
This story was originally featured onFortune.com || Binance Takes Another Step into K-Pop: Despite a string of issues with regulators in recent months, Binance continues to widen its net. Last month,newsof Binance sponsoring the Argentine national soccer team drew plenty of interest.
Overnight, Barcelona FCrejectedsponsorship deals with crypto-related entities. A recent spate of regulatory issues may have scuppered Binance’s goal to become Barcelona FC’s sponsor.
According to reports, Barcelona FC cited a lack of confidence in the crypto sector and a lack of economic solidity as reasons for rejecting the crypto exchange offers.
In recent weeks, Binance has been particularly active within the NFT space. This month, Binancereportedlysigned a partnership for blockchain gaming and an NFT ecosystem. Netmarble and Binance are looking at launching an Initial Game Offering (IGO) via the Binance NFT marketplace to sell Netmarble game NFTs. The move is a strategic one as NFT interest continues to surge.
Beyond gaming, Binance has targeted other industries present in the NFT marketplace. The music industry has shown increased interest in NFTs this year. K-Pop has alsofound its placein the NFT marketplace and the Metaverse.
With K-Pop continuing to command a global presence, it was only a matter of time before Binance explored Kpop as a collaborator.
In late 2021, Binanceannouncedthe launch of “THE SHOW FanBox NFT Collection” withKStarLive. KStarLive delivers all Hallyu (K-Pop and KDrama) entertainment news and posts to more than 9 million subscribers globally.
THE SHOW FanBox NFT Collection was the first NFT drop of K-Pop performance NFTs on FEATURED. FEATURED is a non-custodial, on-chain NFT platform within the innovation arm of Binance. The platform enables brand partners to launch NFTs and provides a marketplace for minting and trading NFTs.
25,000 NFTs included ‘Legendary’ and ‘Epic’ level NFTs. 24 legendary NFT holders could redeem lifetime tickets to attend the shooting of THE SHOW twice yearly. 300 Epic NFT holders could redeem tickets to visit the shooting once a year.
Binance partnered with SBSMedianet to deliver the NFT collection.
Today, Binanceannounceda ‘strategic partnership with SM Brand Marketing.’
Binance and SM Brand Marketing plan to establish a global Play-to-Create (P2C) ecosystem. P2C will enable users to recreate content and products in the forms of games, music, dance, and goods, which are convertible into NFTs.
Binance’s global presence gives Kpop a platform for fan retention and engagement. Earlier this month, Binanceannounceda strategic partnership with YG Entertainment. Binance and YG Entertainment aim to develop Metaverse, NFT, and gaming opportunities.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
• More Than 4.7 Million BTC Are Held at a Loss
• Further Russian Conflict Escalation Could Pressure Ukraine Sovereign Credit Rating
• Silver Prices Dip as Russia-Ukraine Tensions Escalate
• Terra’s Luna Foundation Guard Raises $1 Billion in Private Token Sale
• Bitcoin (BTC) Finds Support Despite Russia Sanction News
• Solana (SOL) NFTs Now on Sale in NYC Vending Machine
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 44348.73, 44500.83, 46820.49, 47128.00, 47465.73, 47062.66, 45538.68, 46281.64, 45868.95, 46453.57
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2022-02-09]
BTC Price: 44338.80, BTC RSI: 64.59
Gold Price: 1835.20, Gold RSI: 57.33
Oil Price: 89.66, Oil RSI: 64.11
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
MicroStrategy owns more than 125,000 Bitcoin following latest purchase: MicroStrategy today announced it had purchased an additional 660 Bitcoin for an approximate $25m. Revealed today by CEO Michael Saylor on Twitter , the digital assets were purchased at an average approximate price of $37,865 per Bitcoin from a period between December 30 2021 and January 31. The business intelligence firm currently holds an incredible 125,051 Bitcoins, which are equivalent to $4.836 billion based on Bitcoin’s current price of $38,673 . MicroStrategy went on to reveal that its hefty holdings have an average purchase price of approximately $30,200 per BTC – with a total of $3.78 billion on the market-leading asset since its first buy. Michael Saylor, who has become an outspoken ‘leader’ in the Bitcoin space thanks to his positive and bullish outlooks on the asset, has maintained his strong stance on Bitcoin since his first $235m BTC purchase back in August 2020. Since then, MicroStrategy has continued to allocate capital into Bitcoin over the years via a series of purchases at the start of 2021 , which included a mammoth $1bn purchase in February, a further $177m in August and a June pledge to raise further capita l by offloading bonded debt. Despite Bitcoin’s recent decline from a November high of $69k, MicroStrategy has managed to stay afloat amid inflation and regulation woes – partly thanks El Salvador’s continued push for Bitcoin adoption and the asset becoming more accepted within legacy financial markets through ETF’s and funds . || Monstrous Earnings Ahead: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Tesla, Apple, Visa in Focus, Along With The Fed: Investors will focus on Q4 earnings for stocks that are economically sensitive, which should show better profits than technology stocks. Increasing Treasury yields and risk aversion could also hit the stock market hard next week, making the big tech earnings that much more critical. In addition, investors will closely monitor the latest news on the rapidly spread Omicron coronavirus variant in order to see how it impacts earnings in 2022. The following is a list of earnings slated for release January 24-28, along with a few previews. Monday (January 24) Tuesday (January 25) Wednesday (January 26) Thursday (January 27) Friday (January 28) Earnings Calendar For The Week Of January 24 Monday (January 24) IN THE SPOTLIGHT: IBM The Armonk, New York-based technology company, International Business Machines , is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings of $3.39 per share, which represents year-over-year growth of over 60% from $2.07 per share seen in the same period a year ago. The world’s largest computer firm’s revenue would decline over 21% to $1.96 billion from $20.37 billion a year earlier. It is worth noting that the technology company has beaten earnings in most of the quarters in the last two years, at least. “ International Business Machines (IBM) 4Q earnings will be focused on standalone model mechanics and whether Software revenue can re-accelerate while Consulting demand sustains. However, we believe the setup becomes more attractive in 2H21. We update our estimates to reflect IBM standalone post-KD spin,” noted Katy Huberty, equity analyst at Morgan Stanley. TAKE A LOOK AT OUR EARNINGS CALENDAR FOR THE FULL RELEASES FOR THE JANUARY 24 TICKER COMPANY EPS FORECAST BRO Brown & Brown $0.38 BOH Bank of Hawaii $1.39 BMRC Bank of Marin Bancorp $0.57 CR Crane $1.12 HAL Halliburton $0.34 HMST HomeStreet $1.3 IBM International Business Machines $3.39 PETS PetMed Express $0.3 SMBK SmartFinancial $0.48 STLD Steel Dynamics $5.66 TRST Trustco Bank $0.74 ZION Zions Bancorp $1.33 Story continues Tuesday (January 25) IN THE SPOTLIGHT: MICROSOFT The Redmond, Washington-based global technology giant, Microsoft , is expected to post its fiscal second-quarter earnings of $2.28 per share, which represents year-over-year growth of over 12% from $2.03 per share seen in the same period a year ago. The world’s largest software maker would post revenue growth of nearly 17% to around $50.3 billion. It is worth noting that with a track record of always beating earnings per share estimates in the last five years, Microsoft is one of the best FAANG stocks in terms of earnings surprises. “We model Azure growth of 45% cc & see 2-3% of upside, translating to steady growth vs. 48% last qtr. We see potential for strong M365 demand ahead of price hikes, as well as continued execution from LNKD, PowerApps & Dynamics ERP. Although tougher PC/Server dynamics, we expect strengthening trends for C22. Expect Mar Q guide slightly above Street,” noted Derrick Wood, equity analyst at Cowen. TAKE A LOOK AT OUR EARNINGS CALENDAR FOR THE FULL RELEASES FOR THE JANUARY 25 TICKER COMPANY EPS FORECAST MMM 3M $2.07 AGYS Agilysys $0.13 AXP American Express $1.75 ADM Archer Daniels Midland $1.19 BXP Boston Properties $1.51 CNI Canadian National Railway $1.25 COF Capital One Financial $5.15 FFIV F5 $1.97 GE General Electric $0.84 JNJ Johnson & Johnson $2.12 LMT Lockheed Martin $8.04 LOGI Logitech International $1.23 NAVI Navient $0.81 NEE NextEra Energy $0.41 VZ Verizon Communications $1.28 WSBC WesBanco $0.67 Wednesday (January 26) IN THE SPOTLIGHT: FOMC MEETING CONCLUDES, INTEL, TESLA Tuesday and Wednesday will mark the first meeting of the Fed’s policymaking arm in 2022. At around 7:30 pm GMT on Wednesday , Jerome Powell will conduct a press conference. This is expected to be the biggest market event since investors expect more details about the central bank’s plan to raise interest rates. INTEL : The California-based multinational corporation and technology company is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings of $0.9 per share, which represents a year-over-year decline of about 40% from $1.52 per share seen in the same period a year ago. The company’s revenue would fall nearly 8% to $18.39 billion. “ Intel remains controversial. Long-term skepticism remains and share losses will continue until products ramp on the Intel 4 node (old 7nm), but with a new CFO, improving PC and server market outlooks, cash inflows from the US Govt, Mobileye on the horizon, and a February analyst day now reconfirmed, we are cautiously optimistic sentiment can continue to gradually improve. Still LOTS to prove,” noted Matthew D. Ramsay, equity analyst at Cowen. TESLA : The California-based electric vehicle and clean energy company is expected to report its fourth-quarter earnings of $2.31 per share, which represents year-over-year growth of 180% from $0.80 per share seen in the same period a year ago. “Q4 results on 26 Jan are critical to validate (or not) the Q3 profit dynamics that could see Tesla 1) carve out meaningful share from legacy OEMs busy protecting their own share by ramping up BEVs and 2) claim a disproportionate share of the industry profit pool. We raise 2021-23 EBIT and FCF 10%, mostly on higher volume,” noted Philippe Houchois, equity analyst at Jefferies. The high-performance electric vehicle manufacturer would post revenue growth of over 50% to $16.65 billion. The electric vehicle producer has beaten earnings estimates only twice in the last four quarters. “ Tesla 4Q deliveries were 20% above our forecast, annualizing to over 1.2mm units, which is already above our prior FY22 forecast. We raise our forecasts and target to $1,300 on this ‘opening act’ and look for more in FY22,” noted Adam Jonas, equity analyst at Morgan Stanley. TAKE A LOOK AT OUR EARNINGS CALENDAR FOR THE FULL RELEASES FOR THE JANUARY 26 TICKER COMPANY EPS FORECAST ABT Abbott Laboratories $1.16 ANTM Anthem $5.11 AZPN Aspen Technology $1.41 T AT&T $0.76 KMB Kimberly-Clark $1.29 LRCX Lam Research $8.46 RJF Raymond James Financial $1.77 STX Seagate Technology $2.21 NOW ServiceNow $0.22 SIMO Silicon Motion Technology $1.56 SLG SL Green Realty $1.56 URI United Rentals $6.97 VRTX Vertex Pharmaceuticals $2.92 WHR Whirlpool $5.84 Thursday (January 27) IN THE SPOTLIGHT: APPLE, VISA APPLE : The consumer electronics giant would post its fiscal first-quarter earnings of $1.88 per share, which represents year-over-year growth of nearly 12% from $1.68 per share seen in the same period a year ago. The iPhone manufacturer would post revenue growth of 6% to $118.13 billion. It is worth noting that with a track record of always beating earnings per share estimates in the recent five years, Apple is the best FAANG stock in terms of earnings surprises. “ Apple is expected to report 1QFY22 earnings after market on Thursday, January 27th and host a call with investors at 5:00 PM ET. In our view, the recent strength in shares is a reflection of investors’ willingness to reward Apple for entering new markets, including electronic vehicles (EV) and the metaverse (with an augmented reality/virtual reality product). Now, we look for comments from management on its future product roadmap to justify the increase in share price,” noted Tom Forte, Senior Research Analyst at D.A. DAVIDSON. “We are reiterating our BUY rating for Apple (AAPL) and putting our price target of $175 under review ahead of the company reporting 1QFY22 earnings.” VISA : The world’s largest card payment company is expected to report its fiscal firth-quarter earnings of $1.70 per share, which represents a year-over-year decline of about 20% from $1.42 per share seen in the same period a year ago. The global technology payment company would post revenue growth of nearly 19% to $6.8 billion. It is worth noting that the company has beaten earnings in most of the quarters in the last two years, at least. “ Visa (V) is one of our preferred stocks, as it is a key beneficiary of resilient global consumer spend growth, the ongoing shift from cash to electronic payments, and broadening merchant acceptance. Global Personal Consumption Expenditure and secular growth drivers should support low double-digit revenue growth in the near-to-medium term,” noted James Faucette, equity analyst at Morgan Stanley. “While Covid-19 headwinds are likely to persist, we see upside opportunity from the faster-than-expected recovery of travel. Continued investment in longer-term initiatives (faster payments, P2P, B2B) and partnerships continue to increase its TAM and offer an opportunity for compounding double-digit earnings growth for the foreseeable future.” TAKE A LOOK AT OUR EARNINGS CALENDAR FOR THE FULL RELEASES FOR THE JANUARY 27 TICKER COMPANY EPS FORECAST AOS A.O. Smith $0.77 ALK Alaska Air Group $0.21 BX Blackstone $1.3 CNX CNX Resources $0.5 CMCSA Comcast $0.73 DOW Dow $2.16 EMN Eastman Chemical $1.88 HCA HCA Healthcare $4.57 IP International Paper $1.02 JBLU JetBlue Airways $-0.39 MA Mastercard $2.2 MCD McDonald’s $2.32 LUV Southwest Airlines $-0.39 X U.S. Steel $5.12 V Visa $1.7 Friday (January 28) TICKER COMPANY EPS FORECAST ALV Autoliv $1.18 BAH Booz Allen Hamilton $0.97 CAT Caterpillar $2.23 CHD Church & Dwight $0.59 CL Colgate-Palmolive $0.79 RDY Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories $0.64 GNTX Gentex $0.33 This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: The Weekly Wrap – Risk Aversion Swept the Markets, Delivering USD and JPY Support Bitcoin (BTC) Heads towards sub-$30,000 as the FED’s January Policy Decision Nears The ‘Black Friday’ Crypto Crash That Wiped Out $136B Was Caused By… The Polygon EIP-1559 Implementation Might Not Be Sufficient To Warrant A Higher MATIC Price Oil Sellers Driven by Bearish EIA Report, Risk-Off Sentiment Blackrock to Track Blockchain and Tech with new ETF || Payments Giant Block to Build Open-Source Bitcoin Mining System: Block, formerly known as payments company Square, is going ahead with its plan to build an open-source bitcoin mining system,according to a Tweetfrom Thomas Templeton, Block's general manager for hardware.
• “We want to make mining more distributed and efficient in every way, from buying, to set up, to maintenance, to mining,” Templeton tweeted.
• He also tweeted the company is open to making new ASICs (specialized bitcoin mining computers), and has started evaluating various IP blocks, open-source miner firmware and other system software offerings.
• Block has started hiring to build out a core engineering team.
• Previously, Block CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted on Oct. 15 that the company was planning to build a mining system based on custom silicon and open source for individuals and businesses worldwide.
• Dorsey has been an enthusiastic supporter of bitcoin, believing the cryptocurrencyhas great potential. || Silver Price Daily Forecast – Silver Remains Stuck Near $22.60: Silvercontinues its attempts to settle above the resistance level at $22.60 while U.S. dollar is under pressure against a broad basket of currencies. Meanwhile,iShares Silver Trustmade an attempt to get above the $21 level.
The U.S. Dollar Index has recently managed to settle below 96.50 and is trying to settle below the next support level at 96.25. In case this attempt is successful, the U.S. Dollar Index will move towards the next support level at 96 which will be bullish for silver and gold price today.
Goldremains stuck in a very tight range between $1785 and the resistance at the 50 EMA at $1795 whileSPDR Gold Trustis trying to get below the 20 EMA at $167.30. If gold declines below $1785, it will move towards the support level at $1775 which will be bearish for silver.
Gold/silver ratio settled below 79.50 and is trying to settle below the 20 EMA at 79.05. In case gold/silver ratio manages to settle below this level, it will gain additional downside momentum which will be bullish for silver.
Silver continues to test the major resistance level at $22.60. If silver manages to settle above this level, it will get to the test of the next resistance which is located at $22.75.
A move above the resistance at $22.75 will push silver towards the resistance level at $22.90. In case silver settles above this level, it will head towards the next resistance which is located near the 50 EMA at $23.20.
On the support side, silver needs to settle below the support level at $22.30 to have a chance to develop downside momentum in the near term. RSI remains in the moderate territory, so there is plenty of room to gain additional downside momentum in case the right catalysts emerge.
If silver gets below this level, it will head towards the support at $22.10. A successful test of the support at $22.10 will push silver towards the next support at $21.90.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Bitcoin Mining Profitability Falling with More Drops to Come, Says Arcane || Northwest Arkansas is offering $10K in Bitcoin and bike to relocate there: How about this as an incentive to relocate: $10K in crypto and a bike. Northwest Arkansas hopes to lure remote tech workers and entrepreneurs to the region by offering them $10,000 worth of Bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) and a bicycle. “Northwest Arkansas is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country, and we’re now seeing more explosive growth in our tech sector,” said Nelson Peacock, president and CEO of the Northwest Arkansas Council. “This expanded incentive offer — Bitcoin and a Bike — not only embraces the growing trend toward the use of cryptocurrency as a payment option by employers, but also helps increase our pipeline of talent to benefit tech employers, startups, cities, local businesses and the region overall.” Fayetteville is the third-largest city in Arkansas and county seat of Washington County. Fayetteville is on the outskirts of the Boston Mountains, deep within the Ozarks. (DenisTangneyJr via Getty Images) Northwest Arkansas has more than 10,000 job openings and a shortage of talent to fill available STEAM [science, technology, engineering, art or math] jobs, according to the Life Works Here initiative website, which is aimed at attracting professionals to the area. Remote workers with jobs or entrepreneurs who are self-employed can apply for either $10,000 in cash or Bitcoin. Recipients will also receive a street or mountain bicycle to explore the outdoors. Potential transplants must be able to relocate to Northwest Arkansas within six months of acceptance, sign a lease for local housing or purchase a house, be at least 24 years old, and have full-time remote employment. The Life Works Here initiatives launched in November 2020 have so far generated over 36,000 applications from more than 115 countries and 50 states. EV startup Canoo ( GOEV ) recently announced it is relocating its headquarters to Northwest Arkansas and establishing an R&D center in the area. Walmart ( WMT ) has its HQ in Bentonville, Arkansas. Tyson Foods ( TSN ) and JB Hunt ( JBHT ) are also located in the state. Ines is a markets reporter covering stocks from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Follow her on Twitter at @ines_ferre Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter , Instagram , YouTube , Facebook , Flipboard , and LinkedIn || Iris Energy Limited Announces Monthly Investor Update for December 2021: 14% increase in average operating hashrate to 748 PH/s
10% increase in Bitcoin mined
Mackenzie (1.5 EH/s, 50MW) and Prince George (2.4 EH/s, 85MW) construction remains on track
SYDNEY, Australia, Jan. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --Iris Energy Limited(NASDAQ:IREN) (“Iris Energy” or “the Company”), a leading sustainable Bitcoin miner with 15.2 EH/s of secured miners, today published a monthly investor update for December 2021, containing its results from operations as well as construction and development updates.
Key highlights
• Operations:748 PH/s average operating hashrate in December (+14% increase)124 Bitcoin mined (+10% increase), generating monthly operating revenue of US$6.2 millionOperations now 100%1renewable since inception following the purchase of renewable energy certificates (RECs)Minimal impact to operations at Canal Flats (0.7 EH/s) despite -30°C (-22°F) conditions (having also operated successfully through 40°C (104°F) heat in June 2021), again demonstrating the versatility of the Company's proprietary specialized data center design
• ConstructionMackenzie (BC, Canada) remains on track to deliver capacity of 1.5 EH/s (50MW) in 2022, with the first 0.3 EH/s (9MW) expected in Q2 2022 followed by full ramp up expected during Q3 2022Long-lead procurement is essentially complete at Prince George (BC, Canada), with construction on track to deliver 1.4 EH/s (50MW) in Q3 2022 and expansion to 2.4 EH/s (85MW) anticipated in 2023
• Development:Substantial progress made on prospective large-scale project sites in Texas, including design, planning and electrical connection studiesDevelopment works continued across a number of additional secured sites in Canada and other parts of the USA and Asia-Pacific, which are expected to support up to 1GW of aggregate power capacity and are expected to be capable of powering growth well beyond the Company's 15.2 EH/s2of secured miners (~530MW)
Corporate update
Having successfully completed a $232 million Nasdaq IPO in November 2021, Iris Energy has moved quickly to deploy its capital, with great progress being made in British Columbia, Canada and a number of other sites under development.
With the listing complete, the Company’s shareholder base provides a great foundation for future growth, with a strongly aligned Board and management team (~26% shareholding) supported by a deep pool of institutional investors (~38% shareholding)3.
With Iris Energy’s expanding footprint in North America and particularly its current operating base in Vancouver, plans are well advanced to open an office in Texas in early 2022. Several additional Australian executives are expected to relocate to North America in January and February this year.
Canal Flats update (0.7 EH/s, 30MW) – BC, Canada
Canal Flats (100%1renewable operations since inception) achieved monthly average operating hashrate of 748 PH/s in December 2021 (vs. 657 PH/s in November 2021), an increase of 14%. This enabled 124 Bitcoin to be mined during the month (+10% increase), generating monthly operating revenue of US$6.2 million.
The 14% increase in hashrate was driven by the installation of new latest generation hardware (1,666 Bitmain S19j Pro) to replace existing lower efficiency hardware.
There was minimal impact to operations despite -30°C (-22°F) conditions (having also operated successfully through 40°C (104°F) heat in June 2021), again demonstrating the versatility of the Company’s proprietary specialized data center design.
This unique ability of Iris Energy to optimize air cooling and reheating enhances the operating environment and life of the Company’s miners. Our unique airflow system and recirculation design takes advantage of the heat generated by the miners and also helps minimize our environmental footprint as no secondary heating or air conditioning is required.
See Canal Flats site tour video athttps://youtu.be/-tld2Hw0AqM.
Mackenzie update (1.5 EH/s, 50MW) – BC, Canada
Construction continues to advance at the 1.5 EH/s (50MW) site in Mackenzie, with the first data center building structurally complete and foundations for the substation well advanced.
The first 0.3 EH/s (9MW) remains on track for commissioning during Q2 2022 followed by full ramp up to 1.5 EH/s (50MW) expected during Q3 2022.
Upon completion, the specialized data centers are expected to power an additional ~15,000 Bitmain S19j Pro miners (already secured) generating 1.5 EH/s of incremental hashrate and adding approximately 15 direct full-time local jobs in Mackenzie.
Prince George update (2.4 EH/s, 85MW) – BC, Canada
Construction continued to progress at the Company’s 2.4 EH/s (85MW) site in Prince George, with the procurement of long-lead items essentially complete.
The first 1.4 EH/s (50MW) remains on track to be energized by the end of Q3 2022 with the additional 1.0 EH/s (35MW) anticipated to come online in 2023.
Upon completion, the specialized data centers are expected to power an additional ~25,000 Bitmain S19j Pro and S19j miners (already secured) generating 2.4 EH/s of incremental hashrate and adding approximately 20 direct full-time local jobs in Prince George.
Future development sites
Substantial progress was made on prospective large-scale project sites in Texas, including design, planning and electrical connection studies.
Development works continued across a number of additional secured sites in Canada and other parts of the USA and Asia-Pacific, which are expected to support up to 1GW of aggregate power capacity and are expected to be capable of powering growth well beyond the Company’s 15.2 EH/s2of secured miners (~530MW).
Further details will be provided in due course including as and when development sites transition to the construction phase.
Operating and Financial Results
Daily average operating hashrate chart
An infographic accompanying this release is available at:https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/08060f18-5a97-48cb-8f9c-88c5d7805d10
Technical commentary
The key highlight for the period was the 14% increase in average operating hashrate attributable to the installation of new latest generation hardware to replace existing lower efficiency hardware.
Pleasingly, there was minimal impact to operations at Canal Flats (0.7 EH/s) despite -30°C (-22°F) conditions (having also operated successfully through 40°C (104°F) heat in June 2021), again demonstrating the versatility of the Company’s proprietary specialized data center design.
Revenue decreased from November 2021 primarily due to macro factors, i.e., a decrease in the average Bitcoin price (from ~US$61k to ~US$50k) and an increase in the network difficulty (average implied global hashrate increased from 159 EH/s to 169 EH/s). These factors were partially offset by the 14% increase in the Company’s average operating hashrate.
[{"Operating*": "Operating renewable power usage (MW)", "Oct-21": "22", "Nov-21": "23", "Dec-21": "26"}, {"Operating*": "Avg operating hashrate (PH/s)", "Oct-21": "649", "Nov-21": "657", "Dec-21": "748"}]
* Reflects actual recorded operating power usage and hashrate (not nameplate).
[{"Financial (unaudited)": "Bitcoin mined*", "Oct-21": "127", "Nov-21": "113", "Dec-21": "124"}, {"Financial (unaudited)": "Mining revenue (US$'000)4", "Oct-21": "7,338", "Nov-21": "6,593", "Dec-21": "6,170"}, {"Financial (unaudited)": "Electricity costs (US$'000)4", "Oct-21": "852", "Nov-21": "822", "Dec-21": "945"}, {"Financial (unaudited)": "Revenue per Bitcoin (US$)", "Oct-21": "57,634", "Nov-21": "58,328", "Dec-21": "49,700"}, {"Financial (unaudited)": "Electricity costs per Bitcoin (US$)", "Oct-21": "6,695", "Nov-21": "7,275", "Dec-21": "7,612"}]
* Reflects Bitcoin mined post deduction of mining pool fees (currently 0.5% x total Bitcoin mined).
[{"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Operating (December 2021)", "Hardware": "S19j Pro / A12 / Other5", "Units": "8,362", "PH/s (shipments)": "748", "PH/s(cumulative)": "748"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Inventory \u2013 in transit", "Hardware": "S19j Pro / S19j", "Units": "4,971", "PH/s (shipments)": "485", "PH/s(cumulative)": "1,233"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Inventory \u2013 pending deployment", "Hardware": "S19j / Other6", "Units": "2,690", "PH/s (shipments)": "219", "PH/s(cumulative)": "1,452"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Q1 2022", "Hardware": "S19j Pro / S19j", "Units": "11,584", "PH/s (shipments)": "1,112", "PH/s(cumulative)": "2,564"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Q2 2022", "Hardware": "S19j Pro / S19j", "Units": "11,660", "PH/s (shipments)": "1,119", "PH/s(cumulative)": "3,683"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Q3 2022", "Hardware": "S19j Pro / S19j", "Units": "7,063", "PH/s (shipments)": "659", "PH/s(cumulative)": "4,342"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Q4 2022", "Hardware": "S19j Pro / S19j", "Units": "27,973", "PH/s (shipments)": "2,781", "PH/s(cumulative)": "7,123"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Q1 2023", "Hardware": "S19j Pro", "Units": "26,577", "PH/s (shipments)": "2,658", "PH/s(cumulative)": "9,781"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Q2 2023", "Hardware": "S19j Pro", "Units": "26,765", "PH/s (shipments)": "2,676", "PH/s(cumulative)": "12,457"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Q3 2023", "Hardware": "S19j Pro", "Units": "26,952", "PH/s (shipments)": "2,695", "PH/s(cumulative)": "15,152"}, {"Miner Shipping Schedule": "Total", "Hardware": "", "Units": "154,597", "PH/s (shipments)": "15,152", "PH/s(cumulative)": ""}]
[{"Site Overview": "Canal Flats", "Capacity (MW)": "30", "Capacity (EH/s)": "0.7", "Timing": "Complete", "Status": "Operating"}, {"Site Overview": "Mackenzie", "Capacity (MW)": "50", "Capacity (EH/s)": "1.5", "Timing": "Q2-Q3 2022", "Status": "Under construction"}, {"Site Overview": "Prince George", "Capacity (MW)": "85", "Capacity (EH/s)": "2.4", "Timing": "Q3 2022/2023", "Status": "Under construction"}, {"Site Overview": "Other secured sites", "Capacity (MW)": "365", "Capacity (EH/s)": "10.6", "Timing": "TBC", "Status": "Under development"}, {"Site Overview": "Total", "Capacity (MW)": "530", "Capacity (EH/s)": "15.2", "Timing": "", "Status": ""}]
About Iris Energy
Iris Energy is a sustainable Bitcoin mining company that supports local communities, as well as the decarbonization of energy markets and the global Bitcoin network.
• Focus on low-cost renewables: Iris Energy targets entry into regions where there are low-cost, abundant and attractive renewable energy sources, and where the Company can support local communities
• Long-term security over infrastructure, land and power supply: Iris Energy owns its electrical infrastructure and data centers, providing security and operational control over its assets. Iris Energy also focuses on grid-connected power access which helps to ensure it is able to utilize a reliable, long-term supply of power
• Seasoned management team: Iris Energy’s team has an impressive track record of success across energy, infrastructure, renewables, finance, digital assets and data centers
Forward Looking Statements
This investor update includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or Iris Energy’s future financial or operating performance. For example, forward-looking statements include but are not limited to scheduled shipments, status and anticipated production of construction sites in Mackenzie and Prince George; and future development of sites in Canada, USA and Asia Pacific. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “may,” “can,” “should,” “could,” “might,” “plan,” “possible,” “project,” “strive,” “budget,” “forecast,” “expect,” “intend,” “will,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “continue,” “scheduled” or the negatives of these terms or variations of them or similar terminology, but the absence of these words does not mean that statement is not forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. In addition, any statements or information that refer to expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, performance or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking.
These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause Iris Energy’s actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: Iris Energy’s limited operating history with operating losses; electricity outage, limitation of electricity supply or increase in electricity costs; long term outage or limitation of the internet connection at Iris Energy’s sites; Iris Energy’s evolving business model and strategy; Iris Energy’s ability to successfully manage its growth; Iris Energy’s ability to raise additional capital; competition; bitcoin prices; risks related to health pandemics including those of COVID-19; changes in regulation of digital assets; and other important factors discussed under the caption “Risk Factors” in Iris Energy’s final prospectus filed pursuant to Rule 424(b)(4) with the SEC on November 18, 2021, as such factors may be updated from time to time in its other filings with the SEC, accessible on the SEC’s website atwww.sec.govand the Investors Relations section of Iris Energy’s website athttps://investors.irisenergy.co.
These and other important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements made in this investor update. Any forward-looking statement that Iris Energy makes in this investor update speaks only as of the date of such statement. Except as required by law, Iris Energy disclaims any obligation to update or revise, or to publicly announce any update or revision to, any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
ContactsMediaJon SnowballDomestique+61 477 946 068
InvestorsBom ShinIris Energy+61 411 376 332bom.shin@irisenergy.co
To keep updated on Iris Energy’s news releases and SEC filings, please subscribe to email alerts athttps:// investors.irisenergy.co/ir-resources/email-alerts.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1Currently 98% from renewable energy sources; 2% from purchase of RECs.2In addition to 0.7 EH/s currently operating, 14.5 EH/s of aggregate nameplate hashrate capacity has been secured through binding contracts for future delivery of miners.3Estimated shareholdings as at time of Nasdaq listing in November 2021.4Monthly U.S. dollar values shown have been translated from Australian dollars (A$) at the noon buying rate of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on the last working day of each month. The rate applied for December 2021 is A$1 to US$0.7260.5Includes mix of lower efficiency hardware, which is estimated to represent less than 5% of the operating 748 PH/s.6Includes mix of lower efficiency hardware.
Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4941842f-be29-4e76-a1e2-5b92de06ce69
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0a21a554-398a-45aa-a75c-24f98b2d8eb0
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/2d6760e1-0cce-41f5-a215-7f846c9a19c0 || Silver Prices Consolidate as Yields Retreat: Silver prices remained in a range on Wednesday ahead of mounting inflation pressures. Despite the 10-year yield holding above 1.9%, US benchmark yields pulled back. Gold prices edged higher for the fourth consecutive trading session as the US dollar softened. The possibility of an ECB rate hike moved the Euro slightly higher. Fed officials speak today ahead of tomorrows key inflation report. The likelihood of a 50% bp hike has decreased to 30%, and no Fed official has endorsed the move. Technical Analysis On Wednesday, silver prices edged higher ahead of tomorrows CPI report. Support is now the former resistance level seen near the 50-day moving average at 22.81. Resistance is seen near the 200-day moving average at 24.44. Short-term momentum is positive but decelerating as the fast stochastic converges to a crossover sell signal. The fast stochastic is printing a reading of 46.42. Medium-term momentum turns positive as MACD (moving average convergence divergence) index moves toward a crossover buy signal. This scenario occurs when the MACD line (the 12-day moving average minus the 26-day moving average) crosses over the MACD signal line (the 9-day moving average of the MACD line). The MACD histogram prints in negative territory with an upward sloping trajectory. Negative momentum is decelerating, which points toward higher prices. Russias January Inflation Accelerates Ahead of Central Bank Tightening Annual inflation in Russia surged to 8.73% in January 2022, increasing from 8.39% in December 2021. Economists forecasted that the increase in inflation would be to 8.8%. The rate is the highest it has been since January 2016. The central banks target inflation rate is 4%. Food prices, non-food products, and services caused upward pressure. This acceleration is expected to generate a 100 bp rate hike when the central bank meets at the end of the week. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Report: Bitcoin Donations Aids Ukraines NGOs Activities Tennessee Lawmaker Proposes Bill to Allow Crytpo Investment How Does The US Government HODL More Bitcoin Than Tesla? Crypto.com Announced as Official Partner of Miami Formula 1 US Politician Claims Puerto Rico Is a Haven for Crypto Speculators Silver Prices Consolidate as Yields Retreat || Bitcoin crashes 10% to a six-month low below $38,000, as cryptocurrencies follow tech stocks lower: Bitcoin has fallen sharply over the last month. Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Bitcoin tumbled to a six-month low below $38,000 on Friday, as a broad crypto sell-off intensified. Investors have dumped both cryptocurrencies and tech stocks as they prepare for the Fed to hike interest rates in 2022. Ethereum fell below $3,000 while binance coin, cardano and solana were all deep in the red. Bitcoin plunged as much as 10% to a six-month low below $38,000 on Friday as cryptocurrencies dropped across the board, following tech stocks lower. Bitcoin was down 9% to $38,274 on the Coinbase exchange as of 9.05 a.m. ET. It had earlier fallen to $37,704, the lowest price since late July and early August 2021, before paring some of its losses. The biggest and oldest cryptocurrency has slumped more than 20% over the last month to stand far below November's record high of close to $69,000. Meanwhile, ethereum was down 12.4% to $2,788 Friday. It has fallen 30% over the last month, down sharply from a record high of close to $5,000 in November. Investors have been rapidly selling both cryptocurrencies and speculative technology stocks in anticipation of the Fed withdrawing its support for markets and the economy in 2022. Traders think the central bank will raise rates four times this year, an expectation that has rapidly pushed up bond yields . Higher bond yields have in turn made crypto and unprofitable tech companies look unattractive , given that neither offer yields of their own. Instead, investors have pivoted towards so-called value stocks in sectors such as energy and finance that are more closely linked to the health of the economy. "Bitcoin is getting pummeled, hit by another wave of risk aversion in the markets," said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at trading platform Oanda. "It doesn't look good for the cryptocurrency." Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at AvaTrade, said: "From the technical price perspective, the bitcoin price has violated the key support level of $40,000, which was already tested a few times before. Story continues "Now all eyes are on the next two important price levels: $35,000 and the most important one is $30,000." Read more: A 21-year veteran trader breaks down an options trade designed to help investors 'sustain risks long enough to see the light of profitability' and explains why bitcoin could continue to move in tandem with tech stocks Thursday's proposal by Russia's central bank to outlaw the mining and trading of cryptocurrencies was another factor weighing on prices, analysts said. The broad cryptocurrency complex was a sea of red Friday. Binance coin, the third-biggest token, was down 11%; cardano was 13% lower; and solana had dropped 15%. Even bitcoin bulls have become concerned about the impact of Fed policy and bond yields on the crypto market. Galaxy Digital founder and crypto billionaire Mike Novogratz said this week : "As long as rates go higher, we will see pressure on Nasdaq and crypto." SkyBridge Capital boss Anthony Scaramucci has said his investment firm is not buying the dip this time around, despite recommending it in the past. However, Aslam said investors are likely to buy into the weakness at some point, with many seeing digital assets as the currencies of the future. "Smart money and other institutions are certainly going to take advantage of the current price action, and they are likely to bag some great bargain." Read the original article on Business Insider || South Koreas Naver and Kakao Follow Binance Out of Singapore: Its not only regulatory chatter thats been on the rise in recent weeks. In spite of the holidays, regulators have been active at the turn of the year. For crypto investors, the regulatory risk remains a key downside risk. A number of moves against platforms suggest that greater oversight is on the horizon. What are Naver and Kakao To put it into perspective, South Koreas Kakaotalk, more commonly referred to as KaTalk, overshadows the likes of LINE, WhatsApp, and Tiktok at home. KaTalk forms part of Kakao, a South Korean internet company with more than 10,000 employees and reported revenue of KRW4.16tn for FY2020. Naver is no smaller. Launched in 1999, Naver was the first web portal with its own search engine. In South Korea, Naver sits ahead of the likes of Google as the search engine of choice. Significantly, Naver also sits behind the globally popular mobile messenger app LINE. In the world of decentralization, both have embraced blockchain technology, with goals to break down boundaries and expand globally. Regulatory Landscape Just last month, Binance withdrew its application to operate as a crypto exchange in Singapore. The withdrawal was reportedly due to falling short of the Monetary Authority of Singapores (MAS) AML and KYC requirements . With regulators globally taking a greater interest in the crypto space at the turn of the year, establishing in Singapore will likely prove to become more challenging, particularly for subsidiaries of foreign entities. It, therefore, comes as little surprise that Line Tech Plus and Klatyn fell short of MAS expectations. The two entities fall under Naver and Kakao respectively. Both entities reportedly saw their request to operate as digital payment token service entities denied this week . To put it into perspective, only 3 entities out of a reported 170 companies have received the MAS stamp of approval. Two are Singapore entities and one is Independent Reserve, an Australian crypto exchange. Story continues Interestingly, the news comes off the back of the South Korean governments plans to widen its reach on crypto holders ahead of 2023 income tax changes on crypto holdings . What lies ahead for both Kakao and Naver on the international blockchain stage remains to be seen. Attempts to arbitrage tight restrictions at home may be a tall order, however, as regulators look to unite to address AML and KYC issues and more. A call by the Bank of England for the need to form a global framework to regulate the crypto market may h ave found traction
Crypto Market Reaction Once more, the crypto market reaction to the latest regulatory news has been muted. While this is the case, however, theres been no breakout following the turn of the year pullback. At the time of writing, Bitcoin ( BTC ) was up by 1.23% to $47,022. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: USD/CAD Daily Forecast Canadian Dollar Gains Ground After OPEC+ Decision Natural Gas Price Forecast Natural Gas Markets Give Up Early Gains Silver Price Daily Forecast Resistance At $23.15 In Sight Why Ford Stock Is Up By 9% Today Gold Price Prediction Prices Rebound Following Robust Quit Rate Natural Gas Price Prediction Prices Slip on Warm Weather Forecast || Jordan Park Group LLC Buys Meta Platforms Inc, Invesco Senior Loan ETF, BTC iShares U.S. ...: Investment companyJordan Park Group LLC(Current Portfolio) buys Meta Platforms Inc, Invesco Senior Loan ETF, BTC iShares U.S. Treasury Bond ETF, iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF, VanEck High Yield Muni ETF, sells iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF, BTC iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF, SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF, iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF, Apple Inc during the 3-months ended 2021Q3, according to the most recent filings of the investment company, Jordan Park Group LLC. As of 2021Q3, Jordan Park Group LLC owns 40 stocks with a total value of $2 billion. These are the details of the buys and sells.
• New Purchases:BKLN, EMB, HYG, HEFA, DIDI, IWB, IWF, IWM, IVV, VT, ICF, IJH, SCHA, SPTM, VNQ,
• Added Positions:FB, GOVT, HYD, BAR, VOO, SPY, IEFA, EFA,
• Reduced Positions:IEMG, QUAL, BIL, VGIT, AGG, VWO, QQQ, VEA, IWN, SUB, ESGV, DBEF, IAU, VIG,
• Sold Out:AAPL, SMMD, MSFT, ARKG, ARKW, ARKK, ARKQ, ARKF, PEP, NEE, IPO, JNJ, CSCO, PFE,
• Warning! GuruFocus has detected 4 Warning Signs with FB. Click here to check it out.
• FB 15-Year Financial Data
• The intrinsic value of FB
• Peter Lynch Chart of FB
For the details of Jordan Park Group LLC's stock buys and sells,go tohttps://www.gurufocus.com/guru/jordan+park+group+llc/current-portfolio/portfolio
These are the top 5 holdings of Jordan Park Group LLC
1. Meta Platforms Inc (FB) - 1,000,176 shares, 16.64% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 4201.83%
2. iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG) - 5,219,894 shares, 15.81% of the total portfolio. Shares reduced by 22.92%
3. BTC iShares U.S. Treasury Bond ETF (GOVT) - 12,074,661 shares, 15.71% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 26.85%
4. GraniteShares Gold Shares (BAR) - 13,797,581 shares, 11.80% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 8.21%
5. S&P 500 ETF TRUST ETF (SPY) - 334,067 shares, 7.03% of the total portfolio. Shares added by 3.98%
New Purchase: Invesco Senior Loan ETF (BKLN)
Jordan Park Group LLC initiated holding in Invesco Senior Loan ETF. The purchase prices were between $21.89 and $22.17, with an estimated average price of $22.02. The stock is now traded at around $22.055000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 4.75%. The holding were 4,383,174 shares as of 2021-09-30.
New Purchase: iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF (EMB)
Jordan Park Group LLC initiated holding in iShares J.P. Morgan USD Emerging Markets Bond ETF. The purchase prices were between $109.64 and $113.19, with an estimated average price of $111.62. The stock is now traded at around $108.935000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 2.4%. The holding were 444,562 shares as of 2021-09-30.
New Purchase: iShares iBoxx USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG)
Jordan Park Group LLC initiated holding in iShares iBoxx USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF. The purchase prices were between $86.24 and $87.85, with an estimated average price of $87.15. The stock is now traded at around $87.115000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.5%. The holding were 115,906 shares as of 2021-09-30.
New Purchase: BTC iShares Currency Hedged MSCI EAFE ETF (HEFA)
Jordan Park Group LLC initiated holding in BTC iShares Currency Hedged MSCI EAFE ETF. The purchase prices were between $33.35 and $35.56, with an estimated average price of $34.71. The stock is now traded at around $35.590000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.39%. The holding were 232,859 shares as of 2021-09-30.
New Purchase: iShares Russell 1000 ETF (IWB)
Jordan Park Group LLC initiated holding in iShares Russell 1000 ETF. The purchase prices were between $238.52 and $254.57, with an estimated average price of $247.84. The stock is now traded at around $265.550000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.14%. The holding were 11,972 shares as of 2021-09-30.
New Purchase: DiDi Global Inc (DIDI)
Jordan Park Group LLC initiated holding in DiDi Global Inc. The purchase prices were between $7.2 and $16.4, with an estimated average price of $9.52. The stock is now traded at around $5.230000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.14%. The holding were 363,636 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Added: Meta Platforms Inc (FB)
Jordan Park Group LLC added to a holding in Meta Platforms Inc by 4201.83%. The purchase prices were between $336.95 and $382.18, with an estimated average price of $360.33. The stock is now traded at around $347.285000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 16.25%. The holding were 1,000,176 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Added: BTC iShares U.S. Treasury Bond ETF (GOVT)
Jordan Park Group LLC added to a holding in BTC iShares U.S. Treasury Bond ETF by 26.85%. The purchase prices were between $26.46 and $26.93, with an estimated average price of $26.74. The stock is now traded at around $26.475000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 3.32%. The holding were 12,074,661 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Added: VanEck High Yield Muni ETF (HYD)
Jordan Park Group LLC added to a holding in VanEck High Yield Muni ETF by 157.06%. The purchase prices were between $62.26 and $63.4, with an estimated average price of $63.08. The stock is now traded at around $62.565000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 2.2%. The holding were 1,174,664 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Added: BTC iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF (IEFA)
Jordan Park Group LLC added to a holding in BTC iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF by 35.85%. The purchase prices were between $72.98 and $78.2, with an estimated average price of $76.07. The stock is now traded at around $75.020000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.1%. The holding were 108,094 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Added: iShares MSCI EAFE ETF (EFA)
Jordan Park Group LLC added to a holding in iShares MSCI EAFE ETF by 38.68%. The purchase prices were between $76.9 and $82.13, with an estimated average price of $80.01. The stock is now traded at around $79.220000. The impact to a portfolio due to this purchase was 0.04%. The holding were 39,696 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Sold Out: Apple Inc (AAPL)
Jordan Park Group LLC sold out a holding in Apple Inc. The sale prices were between $137.27 and $156.69, with an estimated average price of $147.22.
Sold Out: iShares Russell 2500 ETF (SMMD)
Jordan Park Group LLC sold out a holding in iShares Russell 2500 ETF. The sale prices were between $61.58 and $66.89, with an estimated average price of $64.72.
Sold Out: Microsoft Corp (MSFT)
Jordan Park Group LLC sold out a holding in Microsoft Corp. The sale prices were between $271.6 and $305.22, with an estimated average price of $290.9.
Sold Out: ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW)
Jordan Park Group LLC sold out a holding in ARK Next Generation Internet ETF. The sale prices were between $137.41 and $154.33, with an estimated average price of $147.76.
Sold Out: ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK)
Jordan Park Group LLC sold out a holding in ARK Innovation ETF. The sale prices were between $109.72 and $129.16, with an estimated average price of $120.38.
Sold Out: ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG)
Jordan Park Group LLC sold out a holding in ARK Genomic Revolution ETF. The sale prices were between $73.87 and $92.86, with an estimated average price of $83.9.
Reduced: iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (IEMG)
Jordan Park Group LLC reduced to a holding in iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF by 22.92%. The sale prices were between $60.55 and $66.68, with an estimated average price of $63.66. The stock is now traded at around $59.680000. The impact to a portfolio due to this sale was -6.15%. Jordan Park Group LLC still held 5,219,894 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Reduced: BTC iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF (QUAL)
Jordan Park Group LLC reduced to a holding in BTC iShares MSCI USA Quality Factor ETF by 77.46%. The sale prices were between $131.73 and $141.35, with an estimated average price of $137.12. The stock is now traded at around $145.950000. The impact to a portfolio due to this sale was -4.45%. Jordan Park Group LLC still held 164,977 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Reduced: SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF (BIL)
Jordan Park Group LLC reduced to a holding in SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF by 99.01%. The sale prices were between $91.45 and $91.48, with an estimated average price of $91.46. The stock is now traded at around $91.425000. The impact to a portfolio due to this sale was -2.52%. Jordan Park Group LLC still held 4,654 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Reduced: iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG)
Jordan Park Group LLC reduced to a holding in iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF by 24.59%. The sale prices were between $114.59 and $116.23, with an estimated average price of $115.56. The stock is now traded at around $114.330100. The impact to a portfolio due to this sale was -0.47%. Jordan Park Group LLC still held 210,991 shares as of 2021-09-30.
Here is the complete portfolio of Jordan Park Group LLC. Also check out:1. Jordan Park Group LLC's Undervalued Stocks2. Jordan Park Group LLC's Top Growth Companies, and3. Jordan Park Group LLC's High Yield stocks4. Stocks that Jordan Park Group LLC keeps buyingThis article first appeared onGuruFocus.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 43565.11, 42407.94, 42244.47, 42197.52, 42586.92, 44575.20, 43961.86, 40538.01, 40030.98, 40122.16
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin's Creator Reveals Himself: More than seven years after the first bitcoin transaction, Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright has stepped forward to identify himself as “Satoshi Nakamoto,” the creator of Bitcoin.
Major players involved in the development of Bitcoin have confirmed that the proof that Wright has presented that he is Nakamoto is legitimate.
In a meeting withthe BBC, the Economist and GQ, Wright digitally signed messages using cryptographic keys created during the early days of Bitcoin development and linked to blocks of bitcoins mined by Nakamoto.
Wright says these blocks were used to make the first ever bitcoin transaction back in January of 2009.
Jon Matonis, Economist and founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation, verified Wright’s claims.
“During the London proof session, I had the opportunity to review the relevant data along three distinct lines: cryptographic, social and technical,” Matonis explained.
“It is my firm belief that Craig Wright satisfies all three categories.
Related Link:Poll: Analysts See More Upside For Gold, Silver
Other Bitcoin enthusiasts remain skeptical, but Wright plans to publicly release data to allow others to verify his identity.
Since Bitcoin’s inception, Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to have accumulated more than one million bitcoins. That would mean that Wright could potentially have generated about $450 million in profit to date.
TheBitcoin Investment Trust(OTC:GBTC) is up 12.7 percent in 2016.
Disclosure: the author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.
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© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || BTCS Provides Shareholder Update: ARLINGTON, VA--(Marketwired - May 25, 2016) - BTCS Inc. ( OTCQB : BTCS ) ("BTCS" or the "Company"), a blockchain technology focused company which secures the blockchain through its transaction verification services business, increased its Ethereum-mining hosting business to approximately 150 kilowatts ("kw"), up from approximately 50kw announced in March 2016. "We have gained valuable expertise since launching our Ethereum pilot program in March," stated Charles Allen, CEO of BTCS. "Ethereum has rocketed to nearly 20% of the market cap of Bitcoin in less than two years, led by rapid adoption and growing support from major players in tech and finance including Gemini and Coinbase (which just rebranded to GDAX). We believe our experience, in connection with additional capital, should allow us to further expand our Ethereum mining and hosting businesses, to diversify our exposure to bitcoin, and to use more of our available power capacity." Ethereum is a digital currency and blockchain platform focused on smart contract applications. Like bitcoin-based blockchain technologies, the decentralized network of Ethereum enables transactions without downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference. Year to date, the value of Ether, the digital token or fuel that powers the Ethereum network, in USD terms, has grown over 1,300% the total value of all Ether, or market cap of Ether, surpassing $1 billion. "With the year-to-date increase in the difficulty of mining Bitcoins, and the more attractive economics currently displayed by Ether, we've taken the opportunity to sell some of our early-generation ASIC ("application specific integrated circuit") servers," continued Allen. "We've also entered preliminary discussions with a designer of specialized Ether mining servers, and we're exploring the possibility of being the exclusive hardware assembler for that designer. Unlike ASIC servers, Ether mining servers utilize off the shelf computer hardware, custom software and can be made-to-order with limited capital investment. We have the space to operate the assembly business at our NC facility, and we are in talks to become the exclusive distributor. While we can provide no assurances that any partnership or relationship will materialize, we are currently hosting their first generation prototype servers. We plan to provide updates on this initiative as it develops." Story continues Allen concluded, "In regards to Spondoolies-Tech Ltd., we are actively exploring potential claims we may have from prior investments and we will pursue all options ahead of the July hearing." About BTCS: BTCS secures the blockchain through its transaction verification services business and plans to build a broader ecosystem to capitalize on opportunities in this fast growing industry. The blockchain is a decentralized public ledger and has the ability to fundamentally impact all industries on a global basis that rely on or utilize record keeping and require trust. BTCS continues to evaluate additional blockchain technology consumer solutions. BTCS also actively partners and integrates with strategic digital currency and blockchain technology companies who provide products or services that are complementary to its business strategy. For more information visit: www.btcs.com Forward-Looking Statements: Certain statements in this press release, including those related to an anticipated merger, constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Words such as "may," "might," "will," "should," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "continue," "predict," "forecast," "project," "plan," "intend" or similar expressions, or statements regarding intent, belief, or current expectations, are forward-looking statements. While the Company believes these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on any such forward-looking statements, which are based on information available to us on the date of this release. These forward-looking statements are based upon current estimates and assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including without limitation those set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, not limited to Risk Factors relating to its digital currency business contained therein. Thus, actual results could be materially different. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. || Australian says he created bitcoin, but some skeptical: By Byron Kaye and Jemima Kelly
SYDNEY/LONDON (Reuters) - Australian tech entrepreneur Craig Wright identified himself as the creator of controversial digital currency bitcoin on Monday but experts were divided over whether he really was the elusive person who has gone by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto until now.
Uncovering Nakamoto's real identity would solve a riddle dating back to the publication of the open source software behind the cryptocurrency in 2008, before its launch a year later.
Bitcoin has since become the world's most commonly used virtual currency, attracting the interest of banks, speculators, criminals and regulators.
Worth a total of $7 billion at current levels, it fell more than 3 percent on Monday -- a normal intraday move for the volatile currency -- after the news, to below $440 from around $455, before recovering slightly.
Some online commentators suggested bitcoin's creator could help resolve a bitter row among the currency's software developers that threatens its future.
But Wright made no reference to the row in a BBC interview identifying himself as Nakamoto, and as the protocol bitcoin runs on is open-source and cannot be controlled by any one person, it is unclear whether he would be able to influence the way it develops.
"I was the main part of it, other people helped me," Wright, who is now living in London, told the BBC. "Some people will believe, Some people won't, and to tell you the truth, I don't really care," he said.
Many bitcoiners said Wright had not done enough to definitively prove that he was Nakamoto, who maintained his anonymity throughout his involvement with bitcoin, which he stepped away from in 2011.
But Gavin Andresen, who Nakamoto chose to succeed him, published a blog post in which he described meeting Wright last month and said he is “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Australian is Nakamoto.
Jon Matonis, a founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation now works as a bitcoin consultant, wrote a blog post on Monday which, like Andresen’s, supported Wright’s claims.
“According to me, the proof is conclusive and I have no doubt that Craig Steven Wright is the person behind the Bitcoin technology, Nakamoto consensus, and the Satoshi Nakamoto name,” Matonis wrote. He and Andresen also confirmed they had been responsible for their respective blog posts to Reuters directly.
LEGACY
Nakamoto's biggest likely legacy lies well beyond his control. The blockchain technology that underpins the currency could transform the way banks settle transactions, the way that property rights and other vital data are recorded, and provide a way for central banks to issue their own digital currencies.
The BBC reported on Monday that Wright gave some technical proof demonstrating that he had access to blocks of bitcoins known to have been created by bitcoin's creator.
Researchers believe Nakamoto may be holding up to one million of the more than 15 million bitcoins currently in circulation, which would make the creator worth around $440 million.
In a blog post also dated Monday, Wright posted an example of a signature used by Nakamoto and an explanation of how bitcoin transactions are verified and thanked all those who had supported the project from its inception.
"This incredible community’s passion and intellect and perseverance have taken my small contribution and nurtured it, enhanced it, breathed life into it," he wrote.
However he did not state directly that he was Nakamoto. "Satoshi is dead," he said. "But this is only the beginning."
Bitcoin expert Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Coin Center, said a new message cryptographically signed using the private key associated with the so-called Genesis block, the first ever "mined" would have been more convincing.
The currency's "miners" are incentivized to process transactions every 10 minutes by a possible reward of bitcoins (25 currently), which is how new bitcoins are created.
Wright also spoke with The Economist, but declined requests from the magazine to provide further proof that he was Nakamoto. His representatives told Reuters he would not be taking part in more media interviews for the time being.
"Our conclusion is that Mr Wright could well be Mr Nakamoto, but that important questions remain," The Economist said. "Indeed, it may never be possible to establish beyond reasonable doubt who really created bitcoin.”
Hopes that bitcoin would become broadly used helped buoy its price to more than $1,000 in December 2013, when its market capitalization was $13 billion compared with today's $7 billion.
Wright told The Economist he would exchange bitcoin he owns slowly to avoid pushing down its price.
HOME RAIDED
In December, police raided Wright's Sydney home and office after Wired magazine named him as the probable creator of bitcoin and holder of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency. At the time he made no comment.
The treatment of bitcoins for tax purposes in Australia has been the subject of considerable debate. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) ruled in December 2014 that cryptocurrency should be considered an asset, rather than a currency, for capital gains tax purposes.
On Monday, the ATO said it had no comment while police were not immediately available for comment.
If Wright is Nakamoto he "is now the leader of a movement", said Roberto Capodieci, a Singapore-based entrepreneur working on the blockchain, the technology underlying the currency.
That movement ranges from libertarian enthusiasts to central banks experimenting with digital currencies, all of which pay homage in some way to Nakamoto's writings.
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore, Matt Siegel in Sydney and Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Nick Macfie, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Philippa Fletcher) || Banks, tech companies move on from bitcoin to blockchain: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - As a debate raged across the internet Monday over whether the mysterious founder of the bitcoin digital currency had finally been identified, executives at a major bitcoin conference in New York had a simple message: we've moved on. That's because bitcoin, the digital currency, has largely been supplanted by blockchain, the technology that underlies it, as the main interest of investors, technology companies and financial institutions. "If there is a 100 percent opportunity in the blockchain, bitcoin, or the currency, is only 1 percent of it," said Jerry Cuomo, vice president, Blockchain Technologies at International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N). "So there is a whole 99 percent that has broad applications across the broad industries." Over the past year numerous Wall Street firms, led by Goldman Sachs (GS.N), have declared their commitment to pursuing blockchain as a potential revolutionary technology for tracking and clearing financial transactions. The blockchain technology works by creating permanent, public "ledgers" of all transactions that could potentially replace complicated clearing and settlement systems with one simple ledger. Still, bitcoin is by far the largest implementation of blockchain technology and there is considerable debate as to whether one can truly develop without the other. "Bitcoin is still the only blockchain-enabled, cross-border large scale, provable application that's actually in production," said Joseph Guastella, a principal at Deloitte Consulting in New York. "Bitcoin as a currency may not be as relevant as it was in many ways, but it actually is relevant as a proof case for the blockchain technology." Bitcoins are created through a "mining" process, in which specialized computers solve complex math problems in exchange for bitcoins. One bitcoin (BTC=BTSP) is equivalent to $444.75 late on Monday and trade on various exchanges around the world. Story continues But bitcoin transaction volume has been in decline over the past six months amid a bitter split over technical changes in the protocol that are needed to increase the capacity of the system that produces them. Because the cryptocurrency has no formal governance, it relies on a core group of developers for direction - and they are sharply divided over the changes. But that debate was of relatively little concern to the Blockchain enthusiasts gathered in New York. Australian tech entrepreneur Craig Wright identified himself on Monday as the creator of controversial digital currency bitcoin. "It's irrelevant because his announcement doesn't solve a problem or resolve a conflict," said Bharat Solanki, managing director at Cambrian Consulting in New York. "It probably helps to determine the origins of bitcoin but only for recognition," Solanki said. For Naoki Taniguchi, a global innovation expert at The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd in San Francisco, he does not really care about who created bitcoin. "It's all about the blockchain," he said. || Australian says he created bitcoin, but some skeptical: By Byron Kaye and Jemima Kelly SYDNEY/LONDON (Reuters) - Australian tech entrepreneur Craig Wright identified himself as the creator of controversial digital currency bitcoin on Monday but experts were divided over whether he really was the elusive person who has gone by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto until now. Uncovering Nakamoto's real identity would solve a riddle dating back to the publication of the open source software behind the cryptocurrency in 2008, before its launch a year later. Bitcoin has since become the world's most commonly used virtual currency, attracting the interest of banks, speculators, criminals and regulators. Worth a total of $7 billion at current levels, it fell more than 3 percent on Monday -- a normal intraday move for the volatile currency -- after the news, to below $440 from around $455, before recovering slightly. Some online commentators suggested bitcoin's creator could help resolve a bitter row among the currency's software developers that threatens its future. But Wright made no reference to the row in a BBC interview identifying himself as Nakamoto, and as the protocol bitcoin runs on is open-source and cannot be controlled by any one person, it is unclear whether he would be able to influence the way it develops. "I was the main part of it, other people helped me," Wright, who is now living in London, told the BBC. "Some people will believe, Some people won't, and to tell you the truth, I don't really care," he said. Many bitcoiners said Wright had not done enough to definitively prove that he was Nakamoto, who maintained his anonymity throughout his involvement with bitcoin, which he stepped away from in 2011. But Gavin Andresen, who Nakamoto chose to succeed him, published a blog post in which he described meeting Wright last month and said he is convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the Australian is Nakamoto. Jon Matonis, a founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation now works as a bitcoin consultant, wrote a blog post on Monday which, like Andresens, supported Wrights claims. Story continues According to me, the proof is conclusive and I have no doubt that Craig Steven Wright is the person behind the Bitcoin technology, Nakamoto consensus, and the Satoshi Nakamoto name, Matonis wrote. He and Andresen also confirmed they had been responsible for their respective blog posts to Reuters directly. LEGACY Nakamoto's biggest likely legacy lies well beyond his control. The blockchain technology that underpins the currency could transform the way banks settle transactions, the way that property rights and other vital data are recorded, and provide a way for central banks to issue their own digital currencies. The BBC reported on Monday that Wright gave some technical proof demonstrating that he had access to blocks of bitcoins known to have been created by bitcoin's creator. Researchers believe Nakamoto may be holding up to one million of the more than 15 million bitcoins currently in circulation, which would make the creator worth around $440 million. In a blog post also dated Monday, Wright posted an example of a signature used by Nakamoto and an explanation of how bitcoin transactions are verified and thanked all those who had supported the project from its inception. "This incredible communitys passion and intellect and perseverance have taken my small contribution and nurtured it, enhanced it, breathed life into it," he wrote. However he did not state directly that he was Nakamoto. "Satoshi is dead," he said. "But this is only the beginning." Bitcoin expert Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Coin Center, said a new message cryptographically signed using the private key associated with the so-called Genesis block, the first ever "mined" would have been more convincing. The currency's "miners" are incentivized to process transactions every 10 minutes by a possible reward of bitcoins (25 currently), which is how new bitcoins are created. Wright also spoke with The Economist, but declined requests from the magazine to provide further proof that he was Nakamoto. His representatives told Reuters he would not be taking part in more media interviews for the time being. "Our conclusion is that Mr Wright could well be Mr Nakamoto, but that important questions remain," The Economist said. "Indeed, it may never be possible to establish beyond reasonable doubt who really created bitcoin. Hopes that bitcoin would become broadly used helped buoy its price to more than $1,000 in December 2013, when its market capitalization was $13 billion compared with today's $7 billion. Wright told The Economist he would exchange bitcoin he owns slowly to avoid pushing down its price. HOME RAIDED In December, police raided Wright's Sydney home and office after Wired magazine named him as the probable creator of bitcoin and holder of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency. At the time he made no comment. The treatment of bitcoins for tax purposes in Australia has been the subject of considerable debate. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) ruled in December 2014 that cryptocurrency should be considered an asset, rather than a currency, for capital gains tax purposes. On Monday, the ATO said it had no comment while police were not immediately available for comment. If Wright is Nakamoto he "is now the leader of a movement", said Roberto Capodieci, a Singapore-based entrepreneur working on the blockchain, the technology underlying the currency. That movement ranges from libertarian enthusiasts to central banks experimenting with digital currencies, all of which pay homage in some way to Nakamoto's writings. (Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore, Matt Siegel in Sydney and Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Nick Macfie, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Philippa Fletcher) || Bitcoin has a governance problem, no matter who created it: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - As one would-be father of bitcoin falls by the wayside, squabbling among the web-based currency's lead developers is exposing a fundamental flaw: it must evolve to meet growing demand, but may lack a governance structure to achieve this. The latest bickering erupted after Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright promised to prove he was the mysterious creator of bitcoin - which allows users to move money across the world quickly and anonymously - but then said on Thursday he could not provide further evidence to back this up. Wright stopped short of reneging on his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who launched the digital cryptocurrency in 2009. However, he apologised for damaging the reputations of bitcoin experts who had believed him. Many members of the bitcoin community reckon this is all a distraction and agree with Wright when he said that the identity of Nakamoto "doesn't, and shouldn't, matter". "Satoshi's biggest achievement was to create a system that doesn't require his participation to run," said Peter Todd, one of bitcoin's core software developers. "That's what makes all this stuff kind of funny. It's like searching for the creator of a system that's designed not to require a creator." While grey-suited central bankers print conventional currencies and commercial banks control transactions in them, no one person or entity is in charge of bitcoin. Instead it runs on a decentralised system of shared trust without any third-party verification of transactions - one reason why many people are attracted to it. Critics, however, say it needs a "benevolent dictator" or at least some "adults" to manage the expansion that it needs to cope with the increasing number of transactions. Someone, or some group, must decide how to meet users' requirements, they say. Trades are handled by thousands of "mining" computers around the world which validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. Story continues The first computer to solve the puzzle clears the transaction and is currently rewarded with 25 new bitcoins, now worth around $11,250.. This is how the computers' owners cover their costs - largely power bills - and make a profit. The system also ensures there is no single point in the system that might fail. CIVIL WAR In practice, there do appear to be people who can make decisions, but it is also possible to be excluded from this magic circle. One of the bitcoin experts who initially believed Wright's claim is Gavin Andresen. Nakamoto handed control of bitcoin's software to Andresen when he stepped aside in 2011, a transfer that kept the creator's identity a mystery as it was conducted in cyberspace without human contact. Andresen later shared that control with others. But when he stated publicly he believed Wright, sceptical developers responded by revoking his "commit access" to a shared repository of bitcoin rules. Initially, these developers justified their move on security grounds, saying his computer must have been hacked - something Andresen denied. When Reuters asked Todd whether Andresen's access would be reinstated, he responded: "Heck no", saying a belief in Wright amounted to "inexcusable incompetence". Andresen admitted to bewilderment over whether he still believed Wright's claims. "Ask me in six months; I don't trust my own judgement right now after all the drama," he said on Twitter. The squabbling is not new. One of the lead developers, Mike Hearn, stood down from bitcoin in January because of a power struggle nicknamed the "bitcoin civil war". Hearn and Andresen had proposed increasing the size of the blocks in which transactions are processed but the other developers opposed this. In quitting, Hearn said that "what was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked systemically important institutions" had now become "a system completely controlled by just a handful of people". Many investors and start-up firms remain optimistic about bitcoin and are making money from it. But Emin Gun Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said the appearance of internal conflict was undermining it. "For bitcoin to retain its value, it's important to have hope that there's good management in charge, that there are adults in charge," Sirer said. "When we see opportunistic moves, that's a problem." BENEVOLENT DICTATORS But Sirer also said that any open-source project such as bitcoin, which runs using software that anyone can access, change, and distribute, faces the challenge of governance. "Is it a pipe dream to expect to be able to build a currency system that is completely decentralized and free of any control whatsoever? The short answer to that is yes, but that's not what anyone should have expected anyway," he said. Sirer added that he was concerned that his brightest young students at Cornell were being deterred from getting involved with bitcoin because of the in-fighting and the appearance that developers were unable to agree on change. One other digital currency system which is attracting bright young minds is Ethereum, created in 2013 by Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin when he was just 19. It works with the "benevolent dictator model", as Sirer calls it, with Buterin holding the decision-making power. "Over the last couple of years it's become apparent that having a static protocol is just not a viable approach," Buterin told the Consensus bitcoin conference in New York earlier in the week. "Software has to evolve ... and there has to be some mechanism for agreeing on how software is going to upgrade." Most, however, reckon that even if Nakamoto were to be found, the other developers - many of whom have written more code than he ever did in the seven years since bitcoin was launched - would not accept his having ultimate power. "(Nakamoto) would be thanked for creating this amazing thing, but if there comes a time when there's a technical debate over whether we should go one way or the other, his opinions would only be persuasive, not controlling," said Jerry Brito, executive director of bitcoin advocacy group Coin Center. (Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; editing by David Stamp) || Richmond Fed Describes Its Role In Designing New $20 Bill: While by now many are aware Harriet Tubman's likenesswill replacethat of Andrew Jackson on the new $20 bill, however, what is less circulated is the role the Currency Technology Office (CTO) at the Richmond Fed will play in minting the new money.
The CTO is working closely with the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors to define machine-readable security features for the new notes.
The CTO, which is the technical arm of the Fed's Cash Product Office (CPO), assists in testing how new bills run on the Federal Reserve's high-speed currency processing environment, including effectiveness of reading security features that are visible and invisible to the naked eye.
Related Link:Insider: Federal Reserve Process Is Broken And Has Been For A While
Highly Sophisticated, Anti-Counterfeit Technology
According to Kiran Krishnamurthy, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond writer, "These high-speed machine inspections are one way the Federal Reserve inspects currency to detect counterfeit notes and helps ensure currency is fit for circulation."
"We have to determine what the public and private security features in the bills will do when they're on our machines," Richmond Fed Senior Vice President Roland Costa said in a press release.
Costa, who leads the CTO, cited an example, saying if a security feature is too shiny, it "could 'blind' the optical scanner on a high-speed currency processor."
In order to determine whether an individual note is still fit for circulation or should be destroyed, the machine evaluates "152 fitness characteristics in a mere 0.025 seconds or less and with a 0.35 percent rejection rate across all denominations."
Costa noted preparation and testing for new designs is likely to be more complex than in the past, "because the notes will include tactile features for the visually impaired for the first time."
What's Next?
In April, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the new $10 note is up next; he has instructed the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to work in tandem with the Federal Reserve to speed up the process for the $20 bill and the $5 bill.
"We anticipate that final concept designs for the new $20, $10, and $5 notes will all be unveiled in 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote," Costa added.
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© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bill Ackman, Atlantic City and Goldman Sachs: (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)FinanceInsider is Business Insider's midday summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours.
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Activist investor Bill Ackman says"of course" he regrets investing in Valeant.
"There's been a lot of brain damage in the last five weeks working with the board," he said in an interview with CNBC.
Atlantic City justaverted a massive disaster, and three banks just lost close to$100 million from the collapse of another megadeal.
Goldman Sachs isgoing down-market, and everyone is looking at Goldman's fixed income businesswhen they should be looking at the equities unit.
Morgan Stanley questioned the dominance of Bloomberg,and the response shows just how entrenched it is.
Business Insider is reporting from the Milken Institute conference. Economist Mohammed El-Erian painted a prettydepressing picture of the global economyon one panel early Monday.
The same panel agreed that there's a word for people whodon't know how to invest in emerging markets: "tourists."Check backhere for more coveragethrough the rest of the day.
Lastly, Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting took place over the weekend. Here'swhat you missed, and here isMyles Udland on what the meeting is really about.
Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday:
Craig Wright claims he created Bitcoin-The Australian IT executive who late last year was engulfed by rumors that he invented Bitcoin has claimed he really is behind the digital currency.
Forget millennials — these 2 groups are the real future of America's consumers-Everyone keeps talking about millennials and their shopping habits.
The biggest names in finance all want the government to do one thing, but it's not going to happen-It can be hard for people on Wall Street to agree on anything.
Tesla put a Model X in a giant plastic bubble to test Bioweapon Defense Mode-Tesla's Bioweapon Defense Mode is one of the company's most talked about, but least understood features.
China is carrying $1 trillion in bad debt-The amount of debt being carried in the Chinese economy — mostly by state-owned "zombie" companies — is now so high that it could lead to a financial crisis.
Meet the billionaires of 740 Park Avenue, one of New York's historic 'Towers of Power'-On a quiet, tree-lined block on the Upper East Side, 740 Park Avenue rises up: a legendary address, at one time considered (and, perhaps, still) the most important residential building in New York City.
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• Ackman, ExxonMobil and a $1 trillion bubble || Richmond Fed Describes Its Role In Designing New $20 Bill: While by now many are aware Harriet Tubman's likeness will replace that of Andrew Jackson on the new $20 bill, however, what is less circulated is the role the Currency Technology Office (CTO) at the Richmond Fed will play in minting the new money. The CTO is working closely with the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors to define machine-readable security features for the new notes. The CTO, which is the technical arm of the Fed's Cash Product Office (CPO), assists in testing how new bills run on the Federal Reserve's high-speed currency processing environment, including effectiveness of reading security features that are visible and invisible to the naked eye. Related Link: Insider: Federal Reserve Process Is Broken And Has Been For A While Highly Sophisticated, Anti-Counterfeit Technology According to Kiran Krishnamurthy, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond writer, "These high-speed machine inspections are one way the Federal Reserve inspects currency to detect counterfeit notes and helps ensure currency is fit for circulation." "We have to determine what the public and private security features in the bills will do when they're on our machines," Richmond Fed Senior Vice President Roland Costa said in a press release. Costa, who leads the CTO, cited an example, saying if a security feature is too shiny, it "could 'blind' the optical scanner on a high-speed currency processor." In order to determine whether an individual note is still fit for circulation or should be destroyed, the machine evaluates "152 fitness characteristics in a mere 0.025 seconds or less and with a 0.35 percent rejection rate across all denominations." Costa noted preparation and testing for new designs is likely to be more complex than in the past, "because the notes will include tactile features for the visually impaired for the first time." What's Next? In April, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said the new $10 note is up next; he has instructed the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to work in tandem with the Federal Reserve to speed up the process for the $20 bill and the $5 bill. "We anticipate that final concept designs for the new $20, $10, and $5 notes will all be unveiled in 2020 in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote," Costa added. See more from Benzinga Can Bitcoin Resolve Central Bank Woes? Feel The Bern Burn? Analyst Says Sanders Presidency Would Add Trillion To National Deficit Beyoncé Invests In Watermelon Water Company © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || Brave will pay you in Bitcoins for browsing the web (updated): Brendan Eich, the controversial former CEO of Mozilla, recently launched Brave , a privacy-focused browser that blocks ads and trackers. While that concept isn't new, Brave has a twist: You'll have to pay to completely block ads, and if you allow replacement ads (reportedly free of bloat, tracking and malware) you'll actually get paid yourself. Now, the company has revealed the Brave Ledger, a Bitcoin-based payment system for users and publishers. The specifications aren't final, but Brave is now fielding comments and discussion from advertisers and developers. Here's how it works: Previously, the company said it would allow users to either pay to block ads, or get paid to allow ad replacements from Brave's own network. Those ads, chosen by an ad-matching partner, are supposedly faster, safer and load after the publisher's content, not before it like regular third-party ads. For ad-free mode, you'll pay a monthly fee that will be distributed to publishers based on total traffic to each site. Brave's ad network would take a five percent cut of the total amount collected. How many publishers will go along with this, since many, like Engadget parent AOL, have their own ad networks? When users go for replacement ads, Brave will take a 15 percent cut, its ad-matching partner would take 15 percent and publishers would get the biggest chunk, 55 percent. The latter pot would be divvied up based on the same traffic measurements as the ad-free method. Users get 15 percent, but there are some caveats. First of all, you need to have a Brave Bitcoin wallet, and the default option will be to donate money to your preferred publisher. If you want to spend the money yourself, you'll need to verify your identity with a phone number and email address. Publishers will also need to be verified to a higher standard. All of this creates as many questions as it answers. How much will users get paid (and have to pay) to accept or decline ads, for instance? Since the ad-free method amounts to a subscription, how many users will pay to skip ads? (Not many, if torrent software providers like uTorrent are any indication.) Which publishers will go along with this, since many, like Engadget parent AOL, have their own ad networks ? These are tricky questions, and if the company doesn't have the right answers, its Brave browser model will be dead on arrival. Story continues Update : Since this article was published, Brave has updated the source blog post to say that paying for ad-blocking is "optional." In a previous version, it said "for ad-free mode, you pay a monthly fee in Bitcoin (BTC)." The article now states: "For sites in ad-free mode, you can optionally pay the site by drawing from your user wallet, funded by your revenue share from ad-replacement mode sites (see below) plus your own funds if you care to add any." A company spokesperson also confirmed that users do not have to pay to block ads. There's no word on whether users would opt in or out to pay, and how a free mode would affect publisher revenues. Engadget has reached out for more information, and Brave's comments, in part, are below. There is no subscription model. With Brave, a user can go ad-free if he wishes -- without paying. Of course we encourage users to support publishers and web sites, but we don't require users to pay to go ad-free.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price: 367.49€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2016-04-05 03:00:07 CEST || 1 KOBO =
0.00001600 BTC
0.00673748 USD
1.34210602 NGN
#Kobocoin #BTC #USD #NGN
2016-04-06 13:00 pic.twitter.com/7AzY5KRRHE || One Bitcoin now worth $448.80@bitstamp. High $451.00. Low $435.00. Market Cap $ 6.950 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/xaFpYHEe83 || Bittrex DOPE/BTC Vol.:$ 135(100.00 %) || $447.01 at 00:30 UTC [24h Range: $444.15 - $451.68 Volume: 3340 BTC] || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$436.53/$436.99 #Bitstamp
$429.39/$429.97 #BTCe
⇢$-7.60/$-6.56
$437.98/$438.00 #Coinbase
⇢$0.99/$1.47 || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 18 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $423.11 #bitcoin #btc || 1 MUE Price: Bittrex 0.00000051 BTC YoBit 0.00000052 BTC Bleutrade 0.00000051 BTC #MUE #MUEprice 2016-04-23 18:00 pic.twitter.com/QYp3s7GovW || #ByteCoin #BCN $ 0.000039 (-15.00 %) 0.00000009 BTC (-14.97 %) || One Bitcoin now worth $518.69@bitstamp. High $540.00. Low $485.00. Market Cap $8.093 Billion #bitcoin
|
Trend: up || Prices: 531.39, 536.92, 537.97, 569.19, 572.73, 574.98, 585.54, 576.60, 581.65, 574.63
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Your first trade for Thursday, June 2: The " Fast Money " traders shared which plays they'd make on Thursday. Pete Najarian was a buyer of Pandora (NYSE: P) . Karen Finerman was a buyer of Michael Kors (NYSE: KORS) . Brian Kelly was a seller of Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE: FCX) . Guy Adami was a buyer of Lululemon (NASDAQ: LULU) . Trader disclosure: On June 1, 2016, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck. Karen Finerman is long BAC, C, DRII, DRII calls, FB, FL, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, LYV, KORS, KORS, KORS puts, WIFI long call spreads, M, MA, SEDG, SPY puts, URI. Her firm is long ANTM, AAPL, BAC, C, C calls, DRII, DRII calls, FB, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, JPM calls, KORS, KORS puts, LYV, M, MOH, PLCE, SPY puts, URI, WIFI, her firm is short IWM, MDY. Karen Finerman is on the board of GrafTech International. Brian Kelly is long Bitcoin, US Dollar; he is short Australian Dollar, Euro, Hong Kong Dollar, Yuan Short. Pete Najarian is long AAPL, BAC, BMY, CSCO, DIS, DISCA, GE, KMI, KMI.A, KO, LUX, MRK, PEP, PFE, SAVE, VIAB, ZIOP Long Calls: AAL, ABBV, AKS, AMJ, C, CSX, EGO, EWZ, GLW, GS, GSAT, HAL, HBAN, KGC, LLY, MDLZ, MSFT, MT, MU, NLNK, P, POT, SLV, SVU, TMUS, UAL, X, YHOO Long Puts: BID, FCX, NAV, SCTY, VLO. Wolfe Research Sr. Oil & Gas Analyst Paul Sankey: No disclosures. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || Bitcoin has a governance problem, no matter who created it: (Repeats Friday item) * Bitcoin founder claims provoke fresh bitcoin bickering * System needs to evolve to handle rise in transactions * But lead developers squabble, freeze out one of their peers * System needs "adults" to make decisions - U.S. professor By Jemima Kelly LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) - As one would-be father of bitcoin falls by the wayside, squabbling among the web-based currency's lead developers is exposing a fundamental flaw: it must evolve to meet growing demand, but may lack a governance structure to achieve this. The latest bickering erupted after Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright promised to prove he was the mysterious creator of bitcoin - which allows users to move money across the world quickly and anonymously - but then said on Thursday he could not provide further evidence to back this up. Wright stopped short of reneging on his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who launched the digital cryptocurrency in 2009. However, he apologised for damaging the reputations of bitcoin experts who had believed him. Many members of the bitcoin community reckon this is all a distraction and agree with Wright when he said that the identity of Nakamoto "doesn't, and shouldn't, matter". "Satoshi's biggest achievement was to create a system that doesn't require his participation to run," said Peter Todd, one of bitcoin's core software developers. "That's what makes all this stuff kind of funny. It's like searching for the creator of a system that's designed not to require a creator." While grey-suited central bankers print conventional currencies and commercial banks control transactions in them, no one person or entity is in charge of bitcoin. Instead it runs on a decentralised system of shared trust without any third-party verification of transactions - one reason why many people are attracted to it. Critics, however, say it needs a "benevolent dictator" or at least some "adults" to manage the expansion that it needs to cope with the increasing number of transactions. Someone, or some group, must decide how to meet users' requirements, they say. Trades are handled by thousands of "mining" computers around the world which validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. The first computer to solve the puzzle clears the transaction and is currently rewarded with 25 new bitcoins, now worth around $11,250.. This is how the computers' owners cover their costs - largely power bills - and make a profit. The system also ensures there is no single point in the system that might fail. Story continues CIVIL WAR In practice, there do appear to be people who can make decisions, but it is also possible to be excluded from this magic circle. One of the bitcoin experts who initially believed Wright's claim is Gavin Andresen. Nakamoto handed control of bitcoin's software to Andresen when he stepped aside in 2011, a transfer that kept the creator's identity a mystery as it was conducted in cyberspace without human contact. Andresen later shared that control with others. But when he stated publicly he believed Wright, sceptical developers responded by revoking his "commit access" to a shared repository of bitcoin rules. Initially, these developers justified their move on security grounds, saying his computer must have been hacked - something Andresen denied. When Reuters asked Todd whether Andresen's access would be reinstated, he responded: "Heck no", saying a belief in Wright amounted to "inexcusable incompetence". Andresen admitted to bewilderment over whether he still believed Wright's claims. "Ask me in six months; I don't trust my own judgement right now after all the drama," he said on Twitter. The squabbling is not new. One of the lead developers, Mike Hearn, stood down from bitcoin in January because of a power struggle nicknamed the "bitcoin civil war". Hearn and Andresen had proposed increasing the size of the blocks in which transactions are processed but the other developers opposed this. In quitting, Hearn said that "what was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked systemically important institutions" had now become "a system completely controlled by just a handful of people". Many investors and start-up firms remain optimistic about bitcoin and are making money from it. But Emin Gun Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said the appearance of internal conflict was undermining it. "For bitcoin to retain its value, it's important to have hope that there's good management in charge, that there are adults in charge," Sirer said. "When we see opportunistic moves, that's a problem." BENEVOLENT DICTATORS But Sirer also said that any open-source project such as bitcoin, which runs using software that anyone can access, change, and distribute, faces the challenge of governance. "Is it a pipe dream to expect to be able to build a currency system that is completely decentralized and free of any control whatsoever? The short answer to that is yes, but that's not what anyone should have expected anyway," he said. Sirer added that he was concerned that his brightest young students at Cornell were being deterred from getting involved with bitcoin because of the in-fighting and the appearance that developers were unable to agree on change. One other digital currency system which is attracting bright young minds is Ethereum, created in 2013 by Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin when he was just 19. It works with the "benevolent dictator model", as Sirer calls it, with Buterin holding the decision-making power. "Over the last couple of years it's become apparent that having a static protocol is just not a viable approach," Buterin told the Consensus bitcoin conference in New York earlier in the week. "Software has to evolve ... and there has to be some mechanism for agreeing on how software is going to upgrade." Most, however, reckon that even if Nakamoto were to be found, the other developers - many of whom have written more code than he ever did in the seven years since bitcoin was launched - would not accept his having ultimate power. "(Nakamoto) would be thanked for creating this amazing thing, but if there comes a time when there's a technical debate over whether we should go one way or the other, his opinions would only be persuasive, not controlling," said Jerry Brito, executive director of bitcoin advocacy group Coin Center. (Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; editing by David Stamp) View comments || Why Shares of Fintech Lenders OnDeck and Lending Club Are Getting Crushed: OnDeck might not have been ready for the major leagues.
Shares of OnDeck Capital were down 34% on Tuesday, to $5.50. That caps a tumble that has left the stock off 70% since its IPO nearly a year-and-a-half ago. The source of the pain on Tuesday for the online lender was its first quarter earnings. On Monday afternoon, OnDeck said it lost nearly $13 million in Q1, up from a loss of just over $5 million a year ago. The loss was also larger than analysts were expecting.
The $13 million loss is far from life-threatening, though it is concerning. OnDeck blew through $28 million in cash in the first quarter, though it still has $170 million in the bank. The bigger concern is its business model.
OnDeck makes loans to small businesses. And lending has been going well. Loans rose by $100 million in the past year. Originally the thought was OnDeck and others were going to eat the lunch of the large banks which are lumbering and weighed down by regulations.
Historically it has sold many of those loans off to investors. Yet, in the first quarter the percentage of loans that OnDeck offloaded to investors fell to 26% from 40% a year ago. What’s more, the profits OnDeck got from selling the loans dropped.
The problem is that the fintech lenders are having more difficulty finding buyers for their loans. And investors seem to be nervous this is not just an OnDeck problem. Shares of Lending Club dropped 10% on Tuesday on fears that it will report the same problem when it discloses what it earned in the first quarter next week.
Other fintech lenders have been struggling with what to do about the fact that buyers for their loans--hedge funds and other investors--appear to be drying up. Another fintech lender SoFi has started a hedge fund with its own money to invest in the loans it is making. Putting the loans in a hedge fund makes the loans effectively disappear from their books, even though Sofi still owns the risk. The arrangementhas reminded some of the types of deals Bear Stearns and others set up in the run up to the financial crisis.
As long as the market and regulators treat OnDeck and its rivals as tech companies none of this might be a problem. But regulators have started to hint that they are going to take a closer look at fintech companies and whether they should be regulated like banks. If regulators decide they should be, then OnDeck and others will have to meet the same capital rules that banks do, which will put a ceiling on how much they can lend, if they can’t find genuine third-party investors willing to take a good deal of that risk off of their hands.
At the same time, investors no longer seem willing, like they do with other tech stocks, like say Amazon, to stick around while OnDeck continues to have losses. That doesn’t mean the stock is cheap. OnDeck’s shares, after Tuesday’s drop, have a price-to-book ratio of 1.20. J.P. Morgan Chase , by comparison, which has invested in OnDeck, has a P/B ratio of 1.05. OnDeck’s shares would drop to $4.80 if it traded at a similar multiple. But even that might be generous.
Bank of America’s P/B is 0.7. If OnDeck’s shares traded at that multiple, they would sink to $3.20. If OnDeck is going to be treated more like a bank, the problem is shares will likely trade like one too.
See original article on Fortune.com
More from Fortune.com
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• Slack Users Will Be Able to Pay One Another Using This Bot
• Japan Looks to Kickstart 'Fintech' Revolution || The Market In 5 Minutes: May, She Will Stay: Below is a tool used by the Benzinga News Desk each trading day -- it's a look at everything happening in the market, in five minutes. Apply for daily AM access by clicking here or email minutes@benzinga.com. Macro Focus Asian stocks were mostly lower , led by another selloff in Japanese equities. Japan's Nikkei index tumbled 3.11 percent, adding to Thursday's 3.61 percent loss (Japanese markets were closed on Friday for a national holiday), after the country's currency realized its largest two-day gain against the U.S. dollar since 2008. Oil prices were trading lower Monday morning. As a reminder, OPEC said on Friday its April export activity rose to 32.64 million barrels per day (from 32.47 million in March) - close to the highest level in recent history. Crude futures for June delivery were lower by 0.7 percent at $45.60 a barrel, while Brent crude for June delivery was lower by 1.1 percent at $46.84 a barrel. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced Puerto Rico's government won't make nearly $370 million in bond payments due Monday after a failure to restructure or find a political solution to the U.S. territory's spiraling public debt crisis. Nearly all the bonds are held by a variety of U.S. hedge funds and mutual funds. BZ News Desk Focus Upcoming earnings highlights include reports from two leading specialty retailers -- CVS Health (NYSE: CVS ) and Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFM ) -- as well as two major pharmaceutical companies -- Merck (NYSE: MRK ) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE ). Ford Motor (NYSE: F ) CFO Bob Shanks joined the PreMarket Prep broadcast this morning. Check back soon for updates from the call, such as Ford having the largest fleet of autonomous vehicles in the world. Find out what's going on in today's market and bring any questions you have to Benzinga's PreMarket Prep . Sell-Side Themes A handful of analysts weighed in on Seagate (NASDAQ: STX ) following its earnings miss and subsequent stock fall late last week. Brean even admitted it was wrong on the stock. Sell-Side's Most Noteworthy Calls Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL ) raised to Neutral at Goldman. Starz (NASDAQ: STRZA ) upgraded to Outperform from Underperform at CLSA. L-3 Communications (NYSE: LLL ) raised to Buy at Goldman. Vale (NYSE: VALE ) upgrade from Hold to Buy at BB&T. Seagate (NASDAQ: STX ) cut to Sector Perform at RBC Capital. Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN ) downgraded to Underperform at RBC Capital Markets. Time Warner (NYSE: TWX ) cut to Sector Weight at Pacific Crest. TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO ) downgraded to Hold at Topeka Capital. United Technologies (NYSE: UTX ) cut to Neutral at Goldman. Story continues Buy-Side Pernix Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTX ) shares rose 69.31 percent to $1.270 in pre-market trading following Friday's report of a 5.8 percent Stake by Point 72. Deal Talk Halliburton (NYSE: HAL ) and Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI ) announced over the weekend that the companies have terminated their proposed merger agreement, which was proposed back in November 2014. Halliburton proposed to acquire Baker Hughes in a transaction valued at $28 billion. However, regulatory and competitive concerns prompted antitrust officials to heavily scrutinize the deal. Apollo Education (NASDAQ: APOL ) says it's received a revised buyout offer of $10 per share from a consortium led by Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO ), notes it represents "an excellent outcome for shareholders." In The News Warren Buffett has some sage advice for youngsters who one day may invest in the stock market: "A lot of problems are caused by envy. You don't want to get envious. Follow your own course." Attention Twitter (NYSE: TWTR ) and it shareholders: Digital-video ad spending in the US is expected to grow 28.5 percent this year to $9.84 billion, according to eMarketer. "Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright has publicly identified himself as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. His admission ends years of speculation about who came up with the original ideas underlying the digital cash system," BBC reports. "Mr. Wright has provided technical proof to back up his claim using coins known to be owned by Bitcoin's creator. Prominent members of the Bitcoin community and its core development team have also confirmed Mr Wright's claim." Is another tech bubble bursting? Despite record amount of money flowing into venture capital, funding for startups is drying up. Blogosphere After a scary start to the year, bond investors holding the riskiest debt will have been relieved to have ended April 5.3 percent ahead. If history is any guide, returns were to be expected. Whether May will bring a similar result is a coin-toss, and Gadfly's Christopher Langner says there's one certainty: more volatility. Philosophical Economics: Does index investing make markets and economies more efficient? Trending NUGT ACAD PTX DUST GLD GDX APOL BHI BIDU VALE GOLD HAL JNUG OPWR JCP [StockTwits] In his final run as comedian-in-chief at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday, President Barack Obama closed his speech with "Obama out," and a mic drop before receiving a standing ovation from Washington's bigwigs and Hollywood. Meanwhile, featured comedian Larry Wilmore has received some mixed reactions for his part. See more from Benzinga The Market In 5 Minutes: You're Not Your Job The Market In 5 Minutes: Thumbs Up The Market In 5 Minutes: Sour Apples And Greek Goddesses © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || After hospital ransomware attack, time for some blunt talk about cybersecurity: Your standard medical drama is supposed to end with a “how it happened” scene, in which doctors explain what really went wrong with the patient and how they solved it. But it doesn’t look like the recent ransomware episode at MedStar Health will get that traditional resolution. We know from well-sourced reports that the mid-Atlantic hospital chain got hit with a strain of ransomware that locked up some of its files. (In such attacks, miscreants encrypt a victim’s files and demand payment — often in the form of Bitcoin — for the decryption key.) We know that containing the problem knocked many of the hospital’s computer systems offline and forced doctors and nurses to communicate via paper and fax . But we don’t know how the attack happened or what MedStar did to fix it. And the Columbia, Md., company doesn’t plan to tell us. “Based on the advice of IT, cybersecurity and law enforcement experts, MedStar will not be elaborating further on additional aspects of this malware event,” reads a statement posted on its site last week. “This is not only for the protection and security of MedStar Health, its patients and associates, but is also for the benefit of other healthcare organizations and companies.” The sound of cybersecurity silence MedStar’s case is not unique, and neither is its subsequent silence. In February, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles suffered its own ransomware attack . The hospital acknowledged that it was ransomware and even specified the sum demanded (40 bitcoin, or about $17,000). But it provided no hint as to how it got hacked or what it has done to thwart future attacks. Cybersecurity experts know this secure-it-and-shut-up routine well. “The industry status quo is not to reveal the cause of breaches,” emailed Katie Moussouris , a Washington-based security consultant. “Disclosure often only happens when action must be taken externally to apply the defense” — that is, somebody outside the organization has to change a password, patch a server, or take a system offline. Story continues “I can’t think of any company that’s been transparent about it,” said Ars Technica’s veteran security reporter Sean Gallagher in a Twitter direct message. It’s not that corporate leaders don’t realize the importance of working with their peers: They do, but still would rather not reveal the ugly details of attacks. A recent survey of 700-plus C-suite executives by IBM Security found that while 55 percent favored more industry collaboration, 68 percent were reluctant to share incident information outside their own firms. Meanwhile, attackers have fewer hang-ups about talking about their tactics. “The bad guys are always better at sharing than the good guys,” emailed Jeremy Epstein , a security scientist with SRI International. Different ways to disclose Other industries aren’t as opaque in documenting their mishaps. For a particularly dramatic contrast, you could look to commercial aviation. Any serious accident spurs an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, and even something as relatively minor as a flight attendant breaking a passenger’s foot with a beverage cart warrants an NTSB writeup. The idea is to publicly identify what went wrong so nobody ever does it again — and it’s made flying an incredibly safe way to travel. Epstein noted that this culture of safety owes something to government influence: “Airlines have more regulatory requirements to disclose.” In other business sectors, that influence is less pronounced. But, he added, airlines themselves can still clam up about cybersecurity issues that don’t directly affect flight safety. He cited a run of flight cancellations last year that were apparently the result of fake flight plans that pilots immediately flagged , but which airlines later vaguely labeled as “unanticipated technical problems.” Companies and organizations are supposed to be able to share confidential information, including details of unpatched vulnerabilities, in private forums such as industry-specific Information Sharing and Analysis Centers . For instance, airlines can team up at the Aviation ISAC , while medical facilities can collaborate privately at Healthcare Ready . So is MedStar at least documenting what went wrong in that health care forum? The hospital won’t even say that. Said spokeswoman Ann Nickels in a text message: “I have nothing further to add.” What silence really says The immediate benefit of disclosure — after you’ve patched your shop and helped peers with equally sensitive systems secure their own — is education for everybody else who might not be in the same line of work but who might be running software with the same vulnerability. “The best way to educate the public on how to not make the same mistakes is to publicly disclose the cause of a breach,” Moussouris said. But organizations don’t have much motivation to take that first step. And until more of them do, hopelessly vague cybersecurity storylines imply that hacks just happen — they don’t — and that we must blindly trust large corporations to fix these apparently inevitable problems. That leaves us not just unaware of security flaws that might be lurking on our own computers, but generally powerless in the entire cybersecurity debate. Moussouris, who has helped organize such collaborative vulnerability-research initiatives as the Defense Department’s “Hack the Pentagon” project , suggested it would take either regulation — “which can be more damaging than helpful in some cases” — or pressure from customers. But if I or somebody in my family needs urgent care, and the closest hospital is a MedStar facility, am I going to complain about their infosec? Absolutely not. So this problem isn’t going away anytime soon. Email Rob at rob@robpegoraro.com ; follow him on Twitter at @robpegoraro . || Benton Capital Acquires Lithium and Graphite Projects and Changes Name of Company: THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Apr 20, 2016) - Benton Capital Corp. (TSX VENTURE:BTC) ("Benton" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that the Board of Directors have unanimously agreed to refocus the Company's efforts toward a 100% green-energy exploration and development company. The main focus will be the acquisition and development of high quality Lithium and Graphite projects which the Company considers to be the necessary metals of the future as demand and growth continues worldwide driven by green technology. This includes lithium ion batteries used in electric cars, smart phones, tablets, and home and industrial power storage along with many other applications. Companies such as Tesla launched their home storage lithium-based Powerwall battery system which sold out in August 2015 and Tesla has said it will aim to source raw materials locally in North America where responsible mining laws are in effect which will reduce the environmental footprint. Pursuant to this new direction and subject to regulatory approval, Benton will subsequently change its name to Alset Energy Corp. and in is the process of applying for a new trading symbol. Given the Company's new focus it would also like to announce that it has acquired by staking a 100% interest in the Wisa Lake Lithium deposit located 80km east of Fort Frances, Ontario. The property is connected to Highway 11 (Trans Canada) located 65 kilometres north via an all weather paved road that crosses the centre of the project. The property is comprised of 2 claims totaling 30 units and covers the Wisa Lake deposit that is host to a historical resource of 330,000 tonnes grading 1.15% Li 2 O (Lexindin Gold Mines Ltd., Manager's Report, 1958; Ontario Geological Survey, Open File Report 6285, Report of Activities 2012). In 1956 Lexindin completed a total of 20 drill holes (packsack and AQ-sized core) over a strike length of 335m and to a depth of approximately 65m to outline the Wisa Lake lithium mineralization. The diamond drill log of the most easterly hole intersected 6.4m containing 20% of the lithium-bearing mineral spodumene suggesting the mineralization is open at depth and to the east. It should be noted that the historical resource estimate for the deposit was calculated prior to CIM National Instrument 43-101 guidelines and as such should only be considered from a historical point of view and not relied upon. A qualified person has not completed sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current mineral resources. Further diamond drill programs are required to bring the mineralization into a proper NI 43-101 compliant category. Story continues The Company has also agreed to acquire a 100% interest in the Champion Graphite project from Benton Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE:BEX) (a company related by common directorships) for a payment of 1 million shares to Benton Resources Inc. and subject to a 2% NSR. Benton Capital will have the option to buy back 1% of the NSR for $500,000. The Champion Graphite project represents a non-core asset of Benton Resources Inc. and the related party directors of each of the respective companies abstained from voting to approve the acquisition. The retained NSR provides Benton Resources Inc. with the opportunity to participate in any future success of the project. The Champion Graphite project is located north of Kenora, Ontario and consists of 29 units in 2 claims. The ground covers a large concentration of airborne electromagnetic anomalies hosted in metasediments. The airborne survey was conducted by Dighem Surveys & Processing Inc in 1989 on behalf of Champion Bear Resources Ltd. Dighem describes the anomalous area as consisting of numerous sub-parallel bedrock conductors of variable strength associated with a highly complex magnetic unit (MNDM assessment files). A year prior to the airborne geophysical survey, historical trenching was conducted by Bellwether Resources Ltd. in 1988. The trenching uncovered graphite occurrences where channel samples returned weighted average grades of up to 1.76% carbon over 25.0m (MNDM assessment files). Stephen Stares, Company President and CEO stated "we are excited to embark on this new strategic course aimed at providing shareholder value and growth. The importance of exploration and development of metals used in green technology cannot be understated and Benton looks forward to acquiring and developing quality assets in this space". All of the above transactions are subject to TSX.V and regulatory approvals. Benton Capital is well funded with approximately $1 million in cash. Clinton Barr (P.Geo.), V.P. Exploration for Benton Capital Corp., is the qualified person responsible for this release and has reviewed and approved all scientific and technical data and disclosures in this release. On behalf of the Board of Directors of Benton Capital Corp, Stephen Stares, President THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to gold price and other commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections. || It doesn't really matter to bitcoin who created bitcoin: Have you heard? We may at last know the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of the digital currency bitcoin and its underying blockchain technology. Satoshi is the 46-year-old Australian cybersecurity expert Dr. Craig Steven Wright... according to Dr. Craig Steven Wright. Of course, we've heard this story before. In 2011, the New Yorker suggested Satoshi was Michael Clear, a graduate student at Trinity College Dublin . Fast Company, the same year, listed three other Satoshi possibilities : Charles Bry, Neal King, or Vladimir Oksman, three inventors . In 2014, Newsweek announced it had unmasked Satoshi and splashed the big scoop on the cover of its print issue, reporting that it was a California man named Dorian Nakamoto. He denied it, and the story fell apart . A book by New York Times reporter Nathaniel Popper, "Digital Gold," suggested Satoshi was an American man named Nick Szabo . Szabo denied. Last year, both Wired and Gizmodo reported that Satoshi was two people: Wright and his friend Dave Kleiman, now deceased. The difference now is that the supposed Satoshi is outing himself, rather than denying it: In a blog post on Monday, Wright claims that he created bitcoin in 2009 with help from someone named Hal Finney. " I cannot summon the words to express the depth of my gratitude to those that have supported the bitcoin project from its inception," he writes. "Be assured, just as you have worked, I have not been idle during these many years. Since those early days, after distancing myself from the public persona that was Satoshi, I have poured every measure of myself into research." Wright also provided records to select media outlets of transactions made with the same digital signature as some of the very first blocks (bundles of bitcoin transactions) ever recorded on the bitcoin blockchainblocks mined by Satoshi, who is believed to own more than $400 million worth of the coin at its current USD market price. Story continues It doesn't matter: Many prominent people in the bitcoin community still don't believe Satoshi is Craig Wright. Security expert Dan Kaminsky, in an extensive post, did serious homework and appeared to cast doubt on Wright's supposed proof . " Yes, this is a scam," he concluded. "Not maybe. Not possibly. Wright is pretending he has Satoshis signature." Meanwhile, on a panel at Consensus, a major bitcoin conference in New York that happened to kick off the same morning, three of four bitcoin startup executives said firmly that they don't believe it is Wright. Is Craig Wright the real Satoshi? @ErikVoorhees : no. @ryaneshea : no. @starkness : no. @brianchoffman : "sure seems like it." #Consensus2016 Daniel Roberts (@readDanwrite) May 2, 2016 But here's why it really doesn't matter: The identity of bitcoin's creator is no longer of much relevance to bitcoin, apart from the appeal of a mystery and the amount of coin he or she still holds. Bitcoin is an open-source project. That means that anyone can suggest edits to the source code, and over the years since its launch in 2009, many have. The project has 366 people currently contributing to it, and they've made nearly 11,000 different modifications to the code. (You can view the bitcoin source code at Github no login or expertise required.) By most estimates, less than 20% of the current bitcoin source code is the code Satoshi wrote, which means the technology has truly become the product of a community, not of one creator. It is godless. Even Wright himself says in his blog post, "Satoshi is dead." (Of course, if Wright is Satoshi, then he is very much alive, but the point is well taken: The concept of Satoshi is dead and irrelevant.) In two separate informal Twitter polls, 65% of readers said they still don't believe Wright is Satoshi , and 70% said that Satoshi's identity doesn't matter anyway . (More than 200 people voted in each poll.) In an interview with Yahoo Finance on Monday, Sean Neville, co-founder of prominent bitcoin payment app Circle, offered his opinion. "It doesn't really matter who did create the system," he said. "But it is fascinating news." At 3:45 EST on Monday morning, shortly after the news broke of Craig Wright's claim, the price of bitcoin dropped steeply, from above $450 down to a low of $437. The price drop is another sign that the bitcoin community doesn't want to see Satoshi unmaskedmany feel he is better as an anonymous symbol. Craig Wright may come forward with more evidence that proves his claim, or he may stay mum, fueling the doubters. But whether it's him, or someone else living or dead, doesn't matter anymore. Reports about Satoshi's identity have merely become candy for the media and bitcoin devotees. The developers working on bitcoin-related innovations have moved on. To understand more about how the bitcoin blockchain works, check out this video. -- Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Read more: How big banks are paying lip service to the blockchain Heres how you can invest in the blockchain Bitcoin's biggest investor just bought its biggest news site Here's a sign that PayPal is embracing Bitcoin || This founder launched a $14,000 smartphone immediately after laying off employees at his other startup: (Mirage)Moshe Hogeg and team.
People in Israel's tight-knit startup community are talking about the reported death, and the odd life, of once high-flying startup Mobli.
Mobli raised $86 million in venture funds in six years, some from some big names.
Mobli's layoffs were first reported byIsraeli business Calcalistand confirmed by Business Insider.
Mobli's CEO, Moshe Hogeg, told us that the company has cut 15 employees this week and is closing its Israeli R&D center.
Sources are telling us that this represents all of Mobli's remaining Israeli employees, although Hogeg insists that the company is not being closed down entirely. He says that he's retaining an R&D team in Europe.
At its height, Mobli employed about 50 people, but now only a handful remain, sources tell us.
In Israel, the shock isn't so much that Mobli is struggling — people don't understand how the company has stayed alive as long as it has. It jumped from one failed product to the next.
Mobli sprang to life in 2010 as a photo-sharing social-media site backed by star angel investors like Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams, and Tobey Maguire. It later landed $60 million from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, it said, for a total of $86 million raised.
(Mobli.com)Lance Armstrong.
For instance, Armstrong used Mobli to share that famous photo of himself with hisTour de France jerseys after he was banned for life by the International Cycling Unionfor doping.
But then Instagram came along and Facebook bought it, and that pretty much killed Mobli as a photo-sharing social network.
The company pivoted to other apps. For instance, in 2015 it launched an app called EyeIn, a photo service for publishers that let them find pictures of events shared on social-media sites.
It shut EyeIn down just two months after it was launched when Instagram blocked the app from using Instagram photos.
"We had to shut down EyeIn two months after launch because Facebook/Instagram blocked us from their API, rendering our technology useless,"Hogeg confirmed to us.
Mobli then moved on to Slant, a news site based in New York for freelance articles. Writers got professional editing and Slant took a 30% cut of any advertising revenue their articles generated. Slant hit 4 million readers in a month and published 9,000 stories from 1,400 writers, but its editor, Amanda Gutterman, announced in her farewell letter in April that Slant was being shut down, asreported by Politico.
(www.galaxia.co)Mobli's Galaxia.
A former employee told us that much of this traffic was generated through paid-ad campaigns by services likeOutbrain.
Slant later told Politico that it was not closed for good but will be back once the company figures out a new business model. Meanwhile,Guttermanhas moved on to a new job at The Dose and the site is not functioning.
Mobli now has a new thing,a new social-network app called Galaxiathat launched in March, where people are encouraged to take on different "personas."
Mobli says that Galaxia's tech came from a startup it acquired called Pheed. The rumor was that it paid $40 million in cash for Pheed, butHogeg tells us that the true price was really "just a few million."
The people we talked to have marveled that Mobli says that it is still in business and can't understand how.
Hogeg says that Mobli has been clear where its money has come from: venture investors.
"We've always been very transparent about our funding. Amongst are investors: Carlos Slim, Leo DiCaprio, and Kenges Rakishev and all that info is readily available. We raised sufficient funds to allow us to stay in business thus far," he says.
Mobli was also famous for beingone of the first startups to use NASDAQ's private market, allowing early employees to cash out their shares in the company by selling them to other private investors.
In the meantime,Moshe Hogeg is focused on a new company,Sirin Labs, where he is president, investor, and cofounder, but not CEO. The CEO is Tal Cohen.
Right after letting staff go at Mobli, Sirin launched its product on Tuesday in London: a smartphone forabout $14,000, or9,500 pounds.
The phone is aimed at wealthy people who want a fast and stylish phone that also encrypts all their data.
Sirin says that it raised$72 million in funding and has 85 employees based in Switzerland, Sweden, England, and Israel.
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• Doubts about Domo? Insiders say the $2 billion startup that came out of nowhere is full of hype || How an early bitcoin leader is staying relevant in a blockchain frenzy: If you are interested in dipping a toe in the waters of the digital currency bitcoin, the easiest way is to buy some bitcoin, and arguably the best-known service for that is Coinbase.
The company launched four years ago today, and was one of the earliest bitcoin wallets—that is, simply, a place to buy and hold bitcoin. By being early to the craze, Coinbase became one of the most recognizable and respected brands in the bitcoin industry, it raised nearly $107 million in venture capital (by far the most raised by any bitcoin startupuntil 21 Inc. came along), and its co-founders, Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam, became influential names in the business.
Lately, the narrative about the bitcoin world has shifted toblockchain, the decentralized, peer-to-peer, open-source technologythat powers bitcoin. (For an explainer, check out this video.) The idea of blockchain came about side-by-side with bitcoin in 2009, but now major banks and financial institutions are gaga over the idea of using blockchains to speed up their transaction processing—closed, private blockchains without bitcoin.
Now some of the hottest startups that started out as “bitcoin companies” have subtly edged away from bitcoin in their marketing.Bitreserve, a cloud bank that allows you to hold funds in many different currencies, changed its name to Uphold;Circle, which started as a bitcoin payment app, added the ability to deposit funds in U.S. dollars, and no longer mention bitcoin on its home page. Many bitcoin companies are focusing on blockchain and working with new partners who, in many cases, have no interest in a volatile cryptocurrency.
But Coinbase and its leaders are more bullish on bitcoin than ever.
“I think the whole narrative of blockchain without bitcoin will amount to very little,” declares Fred Ehrsam. In an interview with Yahoo Finance duringthe big bitcoin conference Consensusthis month, Ehrsam compared the current craze over blockchain to corporations that rushed to create “intranets” in the early days of the Internet—they were closed networks, accessible only to one company’s employees. And while those still exist at some companies today, most people eventually realized that they didn’t need to create private corners of the Internet, because the large, open Internet is good enough.
It is a popular comparison among bitcoin believers at the moment. Many people on the banking side of things, in visits with Yahoo Finance, have been dismissive of that dismissiveness. They see potential in blockchain technology to reduce friction in payments overseas, and maybe even speed the settlement of stock purchases.
Ehrsam’s point is that the bitcoin blockchain can already do that. A former Goldman Sachs (GS) foreign exchange trader, Ehrsam brings financial chops to bitcoin, a world which many of the most fervent supporters got into because they are anti-banking and anti-government. Ehrsam has said he aims for Coinbase to be a Goldman Sachs of cryptocurrency. Some in bitcoin would say it’s already there.
Coinbase has grown far beyond a mere bitcoin wallet: It has more than 2 million users; it is now operable in 32 countries; it recently launched the ability for U.S. customers to buy bitcoin instantly using a debit card (previously you had to link up a bank account and wait a few days, which was a nice illustration of the sluggishness of traditional banking); and most significantly, last year it launched an entirely new business: a bitcoin exchange.
Coinbase has major competition among bitcoin exchanges. Many, many exchanges have sprung up in the past two years, includingone from the Winklevoss brothers, Gemini, which last year scored regulatory approvalfrom the New York Department of Financial Services to operate as a trust, and this month got new approval to add the ability for customers to trade Ether, a much-hyped alternative digital-currency to bitcoin. Coinbase, in contrast with Gemini, did not wait for regulatory approval in New York before launching. But a report just this week from Reuters suggeststhe NYDFS is set to grant Coinbase a BitLicenseanyway, which, if true, will certainly make Coinbase look like it was smart not to wait. After a little over one year in business, Coinbase says it has the most liquid bitcoin exchange in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Ehrsam and Armstrong have become key voices in a wonky internal debate in the bitcoin world over whether to increase the block-size limit of bitcoin’s blockchain. In simplest terms, transactions are recorded on the blockchain in bundles called blocks, but the blockchain has slowed down recently under the weight of larger transactions. Some in bitcoin want to raise the limit to allow for larger blocks, while others don’t want bitcoin mining to get to a point where a personal laptop can’t handle the data. Ehrsam and Armstrong are in the former camp, and Armstronghas written publicly on the block size debate.
To be sure, many titans of Wall Street are still certain that while blockchain technology is heating up, bitcoin, the currency, is on its way to the grave. JPMorgan (JPM) CEOJamie Dimon has called bitcoin "doomed."Nonetheless, Ehrsam is laser-focused on a business plan that depends on people like Dimon being very wrong. The value of bitcoin, by the way, is up 91% in the last year.
--
Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering technology and sports business.Follow him on Twitter at@readDanwrite.
Read more:
How big banks are paying lip service to the blockchain
Here’s how you can invest in the blockchain
Bitcoin's biggest investor just bought its biggest news site
Here's a sign that PayPal is embracing Bitcoin || Bitcoin has a governance problem, no matter who created it: * Bitcoin founder claims provoke fresh bitcoin bickering
* System needs to evolve to handle rise in transactions
* But lead developers squabble, freeze out one of their peers
* System needs "adults" to make decisions - U.S. professor
By Jemima Kelly
LONDON, May 6 (Reuters) - As one would-be father of bitcoin falls by the wayside, squabbling among the web-based currency's lead developers is exposing a fundamental flaw: it must evolve to meet growing demand, but may lack a governance structure to achieve this.
The latest bickering erupted after Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright promised to prove he was the mysterious creator of bitcoin - which allows users to move money across the world quickly and anonymously - but then said on Thursday he could not provide further evidence to back this up.
Wright stopped short of reneging on his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who launched the digital cryptocurrency in 2009. However, he apologised for damaging the reputations of bitcoin experts who had believed him.
Many members of the bitcoin community reckon this is all a distraction and agree with Wright when he said that the identity of Nakamoto "doesn't, and shouldn't, matter".
"Satoshi's biggest achievement was to create a system that doesn't require his participation to run," said Peter Todd, one of bitcoin's core software developers. "That's what makes all this stuff kind of funny. It's like searching for the creator of a system that's designed not to require a creator."
While grey-suited central bankers print conventional currencies and commercial banks control transactions in them, no one person or entity is in charge of bitcoin. Instead it runs on a decentralised system of shared trust without any third-party verification of transactions - one reason why many people are attracted to it.
Critics, however, say it needs a "benevolent dictator" or at least some "adults" to manage the expansion that it needs to cope with the increasing number of transactions. Someone, or some group, must decide how to meet users' requirements, they say.
Trades are handled by thousands of "mining" computers around the world which validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes.
The first computer to solve the puzzle clears the transaction and is currently rewarded with 25 new bitcoins, now worth around $11,250.. This is how the computers' owners cover their costs - largely power bills - and make a profit. The system also ensures there is no single point in the system that might fail.
CIVIL WAR
In practice, there do appear to be people who can make decisions, but it is also possible to be excluded from this magic circle.
One of the bitcoin experts who initially believed Wright's claim is Gavin Andresen. Nakamoto handed control of bitcoin's software to Andresen when he stepped aside in 2011, a transfer that kept the creator's identity a mystery as it was conducted in cyberspace without human contact.
Andresen later shared that control with others. But when he stated publicly he believed Wright, sceptical developers responded by revoking his "commit access" to a shared repository of bitcoin rules.
Initially, these developers justified their move on security grounds, saying his computer must have been hacked - something Andresen denied. When Reuters asked Todd whether Andresen's access would be reinstated, he responded: "Heck no", saying a belief in Wright amounted to "inexcusable incompetence".
Andresen admitted to bewilderment over whether he still believed Wright's claims. "Ask me in six months; I don't trust my own judgement right now after all the drama," he said on Twitter.
The squabbling is not new. One of the lead developers, Mike Hearn, stood down from bitcoin in January because of a power struggle nicknamed the "bitcoin civil war".
Hearn and Andresen had proposed increasing the size of the blocks in which transactions are processed but the other developers opposed this. In quitting, Hearn said that "what was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked systemically important institutions" had now become "a system completely controlled by just a handful of people".
Many investors and start-up firms remain optimistic about bitcoin and are making money from it. But Emin Gun Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said the appearance of internal conflict was undermining it.
"For bitcoin to retain its value, it's important to have hope that there's good management in charge, that there are adults in charge," Sirer said. "When we see opportunistic moves, that's a problem."
BENEVOLENT DICTATORS
But Sirer also said that any open-source project such as bitcoin, which runs using software that anyone can access, change, and distribute, faces the challenge of governance.
"Is it a pipe dream to expect to be able to build a currency system that is completely decentralized and free of any control whatsoever? The short answer to that is yes, but that's not what anyone should have expected anyway," he said.
Sirer added that he was concerned that his brightest young students at Cornell were being deterred from getting involved with bitcoin because of the in-fighting and the appearance that developers were unable to agree on change.
One other digital currency system which is attracting bright young minds is Ethereum, created in 2013 by Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin when he was just 19. It works with the "benevolent dictator model", as Sirer calls it, with Buterin holding the decision-making power.
"Over the last couple of years it's become apparent that having a static protocol is just not a viable approach," Buterin told the Consensus bitcoin conference in New York earlier in the week. "Software has to evolve ... and there has to be some mechanism for agreeing on how software is going to upgrade."
Most, however, reckon that even if Nakamoto were to be found, the other developers - many of whom have written more code than he ever did in the seven years since bitcoin was launched - would not accept his having ultimate power.
"(Nakamoto) would be thanked for creating this amazing thing, but if there comes a time when there's a technical debate over whether we should go one way or the other, his opinions would only be persuasive, not controlling," said Jerry Brito, executive director of bitcoin advocacy group Coin Center.
(Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; editing by David Stamp)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price: 300.28£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2016-04-12 13:00:13 BST || http://cubeminers.com SHA: 0.00 KH Scrypt: 96.75 MH x11: 2.89 MH #DigiCube #bitcoin #altcoinpic.twitter.com/G9EOsSvQVl || #TrinityCoin #TTY $ 0.000013 (-0.15 %) 0.00000003 BTC (-0.00 %) || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 10 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $750.44 #bitcoin #btc || 1 KOBO = 0.00000725 BTC
= 0.0034 USD
= 0.6769 NGN
= 0.0534 ZAR
= 0.3422 KES
#Kobocoin 2016-05-27 21:00 pic.twitter.com/VYe3cTlZT3 || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$455.00/$455.64 #Bitstamp
$446.57/$446.58 #BTCe
⇢$-9.07/$-8.42
$457.65/$457.81 #Coinbase
⇢$2.01/$2.81 || u/ tujuan Cikini start poibt BTC, jadwalnya 04.00 - 20.00 (per satu jam sekali) || Auto bitcoin software available sale only $50
Per hour $2.00 earn 13hAEA21jkPP5BZfCwXyAWG2sXVwpNiNaJ pic.twitter.com/TjqwUzCcOv || #bitcoin #miner NanoFury USB ASIC 2.4 Gh Bitcoin Miner $20.00 http://cur.lv/z2f0g
http://cur.lv/z2f0h || #UFOCoin #UFO $ 0.000018 (0.87 %) 0.00000004 BTC (-0.00 %)
|
Trend: up || Prices: 585.54, 576.60, 581.65, 574.63, 577.47, 606.73, 672.78, 704.38, 685.56, 694.47
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Ether sees record outflows in last week of June -CoinShares: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ether investment products and funds posted record outflows in the last week of June, bearing the brunt of negative sentiment on cryptocurrencies, according to data on Monday from digital asset manager CoinShares. Institutional investors took out $50 million from investment products and funds on ether, the token used for the Ethereum blockchain. Ether suffered outflows for a fourth consecutive week, data showed. For the month of June, ether has lost roughly 22% of its value against the dollar. On Monday, however, ether was up 5.4% at $2,091.96. Bitcoin products and funds, meanwhile, suffered a seventh straight week of outflows, totaling $1.3 million. For the year, bitcoin outflows hit about $490 million. The world's largest cryptocurrency was down 8.4% against the dollar so far in June. Since an all-time high of just under $65,000 hit in mid-April, bitcoin has plunged nearly 46%. "We expect bitcoin consolidation to continue for the next few weeks until a decisive move takes place," said Pankaj Balani, chief executive officer at crypto derivatives exchange Delta Exchange. "If the global macro environment deteriorates on account of the decreasing pace of global liquidity, it's expected that bitcoin may break the crucial level of $30,000 and challenge the highs of the previous cycle at $20,00. Until then, bitcoin is likely to be in this range and can set up a classic bull trap above $42,000." Overall, crypto investment products saw a fourth consecutive week of outflows, totaling $44 million. Since mid-May, as negative sentiment spread, net weekly outflows have hit $313 million, or 0.8% of total assets under management. Sentiment on cryptocurrencies has been crushed amid a crackdown on the sector by China, which banned bitcoin mining activities. In addition, British and Japanese regulators have independently issued warnings against Binance, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Britain's financial regulator over the weekend said Binance cannot conduct any regulated activity and issued a warning to consumers about the platform. Japan also issued a similar warning to Binance stating that it has been providing crypto exchange services to Japanese customers without registration. Crypto assets under management also declined in the latest week to about $38 billion. At the end of April, that AUM was at $65 billion. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Dan Grebler) View comments || Bitcoin Slips Below $40K; Support Around $34K: Bitcoin (BTC) buyers are taking profits after a rally toward $42,000 over the weekend. The cryptocurrency appears overbought and could find support around $34,000, which is the midpoint of a two-month range.
The intermediate-term uptrend is improving after a near 30% rally from the July 20 low around $29,000. Buyers could remain active at lower support levels given the loss of downside momentum over the past month.
Bitcoin was trading around $39,500 at press time and is down 4% over the past 24 hours.
• The relative strength index (RSI) on the four-hour chart registered a series of lower highs, which suggests the short-term uptrend is weakening.
• The RSI is not yet oversold and could encourage further profit taking towards initial support around $34,000.
• Bitcoin returned below the 100-day moving average after overbought signals appeared for the first time since April, which preceded a sell-off.
• The weekly chart is holding support and could signal a return of positive momentum this month.
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Underperforms Ether; Crypto Tax Ahead?
• What Does Last Week’s Steep Drop in Bitcoin’s Balance on Exchanges Really Mean?
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• Digital Asset Funds Suffered Outflows as Bitcoin Price Recovered || Bitcoin Price Prediction – Bulls Target $41,500 to Support a Breakout to $45,000: After relatively bullish day for the crypto majors on Tuesday, it was another bullish start to the day for the broader market.
At the time of writing,Bitcoin, BTC to USD, was up by 2.81%to $40,611.5.
A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin fall to an early morning low $38,933.0 before making a move.
Steering clear of the first major support level at $37,416, Bitcoin rallied to a late morning intraday high $40,900.0.
Bitcoin broke through the first major resistance level at $40,587 to test resistance at $41,000 before easing back.
In spite of easing back, Bitcoin avoided a fall back through the first major resistance level through the morning.
It has been another mixed morning for the broader crypto market.
At the time of writing, Polkadot was down by 0.92% to buck the trend through the morning.
It has been a bullish morning for the rest of the majors, however.
Through the morning,Ripple’s XRPwas up by 13.84% to lead the way.
Bitcoin Cash SV(+2.07%),Cardano’s ADA(+2.02%),Crypto.com Coin(+3.94%),Litecoin(+3.99%) also found strong support.
Binance Coin(+0.86%),Chainlink(+0.45%), andEthereum(+1.12%) trailed the front runners, however.
Through the early hours, the crypto total market fell to an early morning low $1,498bn before rising to a high $1,561bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $1,555bn.
Bitcoin’s dominance fell to an early low 48.70% before rising to a high 49.24%. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s dominance stood at 49.16%.
Bitcoin would need to avoid a fall back through the first major resistance level at $40,587 bring the 38.2% FIB of $41,592 into play.
Support from the broader market would be needed for Bitcoin to breakout from the morning high $40,900.0, however.
Barring an extended crypto rally, the 38.2% FIB and the second major resistance level at $41,673 would likely cap any upside.
In the event of another extended crypto rally, Bitcoin could target $45,000 levels. The third major resistance level sits at $44,844.
A fall back through the first major resistance level and a fall through the $38,502 pivot would bring the first major support level at $37,416 into play.
Barring an extended sell-off on the day, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$38,000 levels, however. The second major support level sits at $35,331.
Looking beyond the support and resistance levels, we saw the 50 EMA pull further away from the 100 and 200 EMAs this morning. This supported the morning gains and a run at $41,000 levels.
We also saw the 100 EMA pull further away from the 200 EMA, providing further support to Bitcoin and the crypto bulls.
A further widening of the 50 from 100 and 200 EMAs this afternoon would bring $42,000 levels into play.
Key going into the afternoon will be for Bitcoin to avoid a fall back through the first major resistance level to sub-$40,000 levels.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Why Boeing Stock Is Up By 6% Today? || Bukele’s Bitcoin Blunder for El Salvador: In the middle of the night of June 8, El Salvador passed a new law makingbitcoinlegal tender – actually,forced tender. The high priest of El Salvador’s bitcoin evangelicals is none other than President Nayib Bukele. One of hisfavorite sermonsis “The Beauty of Bitcoin.” The reverend claims that bitcoin will result in a dramatic reduction in the cost of transmitting remittances to El Salvadorans. If that’s not bad enough, Jack Mallers, one of Bukele’s deacons and the CEO of the mobile-payments app Strike, a company that will apparently be granted a monopoly franchise over El Salvador’s bitcoin remittance scheme,sermonizesthat, “If you send $50 to El Salvador, it will cost 25 bucks.” Are these sermons factually based?
Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Applied Economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Founder and Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise, where Nicholas Hanlon is the Chief of Staff.
El Salvador depends heavily on remittances. They make up 21% of El Salvador’s gross domestic product, the second highest of any country in the Western Hemisphere. Traditionally, remittances are sent and received via money-transfer services provided by private companies. According to the World Bank, in the first quarter, these companies (Western Union, MoneyGram, Ria and Remitly)chargedbetween 0%-4% fees for a $200 remittance, depending on the transfer method.
Related:Market Wrap: Bitcoin Nudges Up as Regulatory Risks Linger
The greenback is king
As it turns out, El Salvador benefits from some of the lowest remittance costs in the world. Indeed, it has the sixth-lowest remittance costs of the 104 countries monitored by the World Bank. Not surprisingly, El Salvador’s remittance costs are the lowest of any country in the Latin American-Caribbean region, with the average transaction fee for sending a remittance at 2.85%.
What about bitcoin remittances? Well, for one thing, most El Salvadorans are not interested in bitcoin. They don’t want to use it. They prefer the U.S. dollar, which has been El Salvador’s legal tender since 2001, when El Salvador mothballed the colón and put it in a museum. In what has been, in effect, a real-world pilot study of a bitcoin-based economy, El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach, peopledon’t usebitcoin for a variety of reasons (according to a Reuters report). Furthermore, 82.5% of more than 1,600 respondents to asurveyby El Salvador’s Chamber of Commerce said that they don’t want to receive remittances in bitcoin. Also, 93.5% said they don’t want to receive their salaries in bitcoin. In El Salvador, bitcoin is for the birds. The greenback is king.
One of the many reasons why El Salvadorans eschew bitcoin is, in fact, the high cost of dealing in bitcoin. At present, if Salvadorans without bank accounts (70% ofthe population) are sent bitcoin, but want dollars, they must exchange bitcoin for dollars at a bitcoin ATM. Unfortunately for El Salvadorans, there are currently only two bitcoin ATMs in the country, both located in the small, coastal area that has been dubbed “Bitcoin Beach.” Athena, the manufacturer of one of the two bitcoin ATMs in El Salvador,plansto bring more ATMs into the county. But exchanging bitcoin for dollars at an Athena ATMcostsa 5% minimum fee. And that 5% is just Athena’s cut – it does not include the “network fee” to execute the transaction, or the travel costs and inconvenience associated with going to an ATM, as well as the security and safety costs associated with using the ATM to obtain those greenbacks that Salvadorans prefer.
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The bitcoin evangelicals’ math just doesn’t add up. Remittances sent via traditional money-transfer services have a realized cost of only 2.85%. But, remittances sent via bitcoin will require Salvadorans to cough up much more than 5% to obtain the dollars they want. It’s clear that remittance costs are not the reason that Bukele is preaching from the bitcoin pulpit. We wonder who’s crafting his sermons?
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• Huobi’s Tighter Derivatives Rules Leave Chinese Traders Scrambling for Alternatives || Chip Shortages, Jobless Claims, ECB, Musk Lifts Bitcoin - What's Moving Markets: By Geoffrey Smith Investing.com Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) reports earnings against a backdrop of mounting speculation that the global chip shortage may be peaking. Jobless claims and existing home sales shed light on the economy's momentum, while the European Central Bank is expected to take a more aggressive approach to generating inflation as it starts implementing its new strategy. Earnings continue apace elsewhere with updates from AT&T (NYSE:T), Biogen (NASDAQ:BIIB) and Abbott Labs among many others. Bitcoin touched its highest in a week after Elon Musk again switched his opinion on it. Here's what you need to know in financial markets on Thursday, 22nd July. 1. Intel eyed after Texas Instruments casts doubt on chip sector outlook Intel will report quarterly earnings after the close, against a backdrop of mounting suspicion that the global chip shortage, which has scarred many manufacturers quarterly reports, may be about to start easing. Texas Instruments (NASDAQ:TXN) management on Wednesday conspicuously guided for revenue in the current quarter well below consensus forecasts and analysts on an earnings call were concerned by the conservatism of its outlook. Its only a week since Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing had said it expects chip shortages to ease significantly in the second half of the year. Texas Instruments stock fell 4% in premarket . For now, though, such shortages continue to hurt. Toyota (NYSE:TM) became the latest automotive company to announce fresh production stoppages due to component shortages from southeast Asia 2. Jobless claims and existing homes sales U.S. jobless claims are expected to have ground a little lower last week, despite signs that the U.S.s economic momentum may be slowing due to the renewed spread of Covid-19. Initial jobless claims , due at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT), are seen at 350,000, down only 10,000 from last weeks figure. Of more importance may be the overall number of people claiming some sort of government dole, which fell below 14 million for the first time in over a year last week. The broader figure will be scanned for evidence that the withdrawal of enhanced unemployment benefits by some states is succeeding in bringing people back into the labor market. Story continues At 10 AM ET, existing home sales may add further evidence that the housing market is cooling due to higher prices and borrowing costs. Homebuilder DR Horton (NYSE:DHI)s guidance and earnings will round out the picture further. The Kansas City Federal Reserves regional manufacturing survey is due at 11 AM ET. 3. Stocks set to grind higher as earnings continue to impress U.S. stocks are set to open higher later on continued optimism generated by what has largely been a strong earnings season albeit one helped by extremely weak year-earlier comparisons. By 6:15 AM ET, Dow Jones futures were up 74 points, or 0.2%, while S&P 500 futures were up 0.2% and Nasdaq 100 futures were up 0.1%. Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT), Biogen and Danaher (NYSE:DHR) lead the early roster of earnings releases and come after some extremely strong numbers from elsewhere in the healthcare and medical goods sector. AT&T's (NYSE:T) breakout of HBO numbers will add context to Netflixs disappointing subscriber data earlier this week, while Dow will shine a light on cyclical stocks momentum. 4. ECB to give new guidance as dollar pressures EMFX The European Central Bank is expected to shift to a more dovish forward guidance at its regular policy meeting, after adopting a new inflation strategy last week that allows it a slightly higher tolerance of inflation. Whether it can meet a target higher than the one its undershot for the last 10 years is another question. President Christine Lagarde's press conference begins at 8:30 AM ET (1230 GMT). Central banks elsewhere are also busy. Bank Indonesia declined to cut its key rates, despite having cut its growth forecasts earlier in the week due to spiraling Covid-19 cases. Ukraines National Bank, at embroiled in one of its periodic wars with the government over political interference, is also expected to keep rates unchanged at 7 AM ET. Emerging market central banks around the world are coming under pressure to tighten monetary policy as the dollars recent strength puts pressure on their currencies. 5. Bitcoin hits 1-week high after Musk's latest boost Bitcoin rose to its highest in a week after Elon Musk told a panel discussion that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) will most likely start accepting it as payment again. Musks latest flip-flop come some weeks after he suspended plans to allow customers to pay in Bitcoin amid criticism of the cryptocurrencys carbon footprint. By 6:15 AM ET, Bitcoin was off its overnight highs at $31,879, but still up 1.5% on the day. Other crypto assets, which sold off sharply in the risk-off move that spilled into the start of this week, were also higher, with Ethereum gaining 4.7% and DogeCoin 2.3%. Related Articles Chip Shortages, Jobless Claims, ECB, Musk Lifts Bitcoin - What's Moving Markets U.S. retailers scramble to stock shelves as kids head back to school 'Pingdemic' grips Britain as fears of food shortages grow || 4 Top Stock Trades for Tuesday: SPCE, COIN, PYPL, BA: We got a better-than-expected jobs report on Friday morning, which helped fuel another run to new all-time highs in theS&P 500andNasdaq.And with a long holiday weekend ahead of us, let’s look at a few top stock trades for Tuesday.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
Virgin Galactic(NYSE:SPCE) has had an insane last couple of days. Shares erupted higher last Friday on positive news, but have wobbled since. Shares then put in four-straight down days coming into this Friday, where SPCE stock again took off.
However, it’s now fading from the highs, as the 78.6% remains a hotly contested area between bulls and bears. We need clarity around this area.
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If it continues as resistance, the $46.43 gap-fill level remains vulnerable. Same can be said of the 10-day moving average. Below both measures as well as this week’s low at $43.08 could put the other gap-fill measure in play at $41.66. That’s along with the 21-day moving average.
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On the upside, though, I really want to see a close above the 78.6% retracement. That puts the recent high in play near $57.50, followed by the all-time high up at $62.80.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
Coinbase(NASDAQ:COIN) has a pretty interesting setup. It’s interesting because not many people would look at this chart and find the positives. Most would link it to the bear market inBitcoin(CCC:BTC-USD) and note the painful decline we’ve seen since Coinbase’s public debut.
To be fair, thatistrue. So is the fact that shares are being rejected by the 10-week and 50-day moving averages.
However, that doesn’t make the positive nonexistent. For instance, Coinbase has finally broken out of that nasty downtrend (blue line) it was in. Furthermore, after a nice rally, we’re getting a dip into the short-term moving averages.
From here, it’s important that these moving averages act as support. A break below the 21-day could put the $208 to $210 zone back on the table. On the upside, $261 is the level to watch.
A rotation over this mark not only puts Coinbase at new recent highs, but it also puts it over the 10-week and 50-day moving averages. That could open the door for a rally back to $300-plus.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
On Friday morning,PayPal(NASDAQ:PYPL) gave bulls a daily-up rotation after a nice reset back to its short-term moving averages. So far, though, the stock is having trouble maintaining its opening-drive momentum.
That doesn’t mean the setup is dead, but it means short-term bulls need to be aware that this one could fail to bounce.
Notice these two things: How PayPal has found the 10-day moving as support and how long it’s gone without a test of this measure. The stock hit it on Thursday and bounced, then momentarily gave bulls the rotation they were looking for on Friday.
If it doesn’t bounce from here, look for a break of Thursday’s low near $285. A close below likely puts the 21-day moving average and $277.50 area on the table.
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On the upside, a move above Friday’s high puts $295 to $296 in play, followed by $300-plus. Above $300 could put the highs near $306 to $308 on the table.
Click to Enlarge
Source: Chart courtesy ofTrendSpider
Boeing(NYSE:BA) had some negative news on Friday. While that hit the stock, it didn’t destroy it. Instead, shares are trying to bounce. Unfortunately, the charts just look sloppy.
Shares have been struggling to hold above the 10-day, 21-day and 50-day moving averages. If the stock can’t hold Friday’s low, we may need to see it test down into the $220 support area, as well as the 10-month moving average.
Below that, and the 200-day moving average will be forced into action.
On the upside, however, it’s really a battle against the short-term moving averages outlined above. If BA stock can rotate over these measures, it puts the $255 area in play. That’s been stiff resistance for a couple of months now.
In other words, look for further weakness down to the $220 to $225 area or a rotation over $245 that could put $255 on the table.
On the date of publication, Bret Kenwell held a long position in PYPL. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
Bret Kenwell is the manager and author ofFuture Blue Chipsand is on Twitter@BretKenwell.
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The post4 Top Stock Trades for Tuesday: SPCE, COIN, PYPL, BAappeared first onInvestorPlace. || Steve Wozniak launches his own token as he praises the potential of Bitcoin: Speaking at Talent Land Jalisco 2021, multi-millionaire American philanthropist and entrepreneur Steve Wozniak has become the latest prominent figure to throw his weight behind Bitcoin. In an interview with El Sol de Mexico (one of Latin America’s biggest media outlets), the tech visionary revealed that he believes in the future of BTC as a digital gold asset, labelling Bitcoin as a product of “mathematical genius”. Wozniak’s support for Bitcoin comes at a time of rising inflation rates due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and follows many institutional moves into cryptocurrency as a hedge on the debasement of the USD. The Apple Co-Founder highlighted the promise of Bitcoin over other traditional inflation hedges such as precious metals suggesting that, unlike BTC, “gold is limited and you have to look for it”. This comes at a time when understanding of BTC as a secure means of protecting savings is entering the mainstream, with calls for Americans to hold BTC for retirement from Senator Cynthia Lummis ( Wyoming – Republican). Bitcoin is digital gold Nevertheless, this isn’t the first time Wozniak has marvelled at the wonders of Bitcoin. In an interview in 2018 he argued: “Man makes up currencies, controls them, issues new US dollars every year; Bitcoin is immune to that.” “Yo como persona puedo tener recuerdos o visualizar eventos divertidos de mi vida, ya sea un carnaval, la playa, todos esos sentimientos que una computadora no tiene porque no ha vivido una vida humana”: #SteveWozniak en #TalentLand @talentrepublic_ pic.twitter.com/8GwcqaLYzp — Fanny Soriano (@Soriano_Fanny) July 8, 2021 And in another interview with CNBC he said “only Bitcoin is pure digital gold… and I totally buy into that”. Story continues However, when asked about whether he personally invested in BTC he revealed “I do not invest in Bitcoin, but I believe in it for the future”. In 2019, Wozniak reportedly sold all of his Bitcoin holdings (bought at $700 per BTC) amid a turbulent and volatile long-winter for the asset. Speaking at the Nordic Business Forum, Wozniak said: “I wanted to experiment with it…when it shot up high, I said I don’t want to be one of those people who watches and watches it and cares about the number. I don’t want that kind of care in my life. Part of my happiness is not to have worries, so I sold it all and just got rid of it.” $WOZX – Wozniak’s latest genius? While Wozniak might not personally hold BTC, this doesn’t mean that he isn’t a proponent, user, and visionary in the cryptocurrency space. The entrepreneur first teased the press with vague comments surrounding a blockchain project in 2018. Last year, he revealed the launch of his first new business since Apple in 1976 – Efforce – a new online platform empowered by blockchain technology that allows contributors to benefit from and trade the energy savings generated by energy efficiency projects worldwide in a tokenised fashion with $WOZX. Climate financing has been specifically highlighted as a key role blockchain can play in fighting climate change, in a recent report by the UN. According to Wozniak, energy consumption and CO 2 emissions worldwide have grown exponentially, leading to climate change and extreme consequences to the environment. “We can improve our energy footprint and lower our energy consumption without changing our habits,” he explained. “We can save the environment simply by making more energy improvements.” Following Wozniak’s crypto project announcement and the launch of the token in December, some on Twitter rushed to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao to request his exchange list the new $WOZX token. Efforce $WOZX #EnergyEfficiency pic.twitter.com/GnuSZwxll3 — dybi10 (@aanpw88) July 4, 2021 More crypto news and information If you want to find out more information about the environmental impact of cryptocurrency and other cryptocurrency news, then use the search box at the top of this page. Here’s an article to get you started. As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not. || Bitcoin’s ‘Puell Multiple’ Flashes Misleading Bullish Signal as China Bans Mining: While a keybitcoinindicator shows the currency is undervalued and ripe for a price bounce, the reading might be misleading, one observer says.
“The Puell Multiple is flashing a buy signal,” Ben Lilly, a crypto economist at Jarvis Labs, noted in aSubstack postpublished on Monday. The metric, however, is tied to miners and may be distorted by China’s mining ban, he said.
The multiple, the ratio of the daily issuance of bitcoin in U.S. dollar terms and the 365-day moving average of the daily issuance value, has dropped below 0.5. That indicates the value of the newly issued bitcoin daily is relatively low compared with historical standards.
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A sub-0.5 reading on the indicator created by analyst David Puell has marked miner capitulation and bear market bottoms in the past, according to data provided by lookintobitcoin.com.
Daily issuance refers to the number of new coins supplied to the ecosystem by miners, who receive them as rewards for mining blocks and approving transactions. Miners mainly operate on cash and sell coins almost daily.
The latest reading may raise hopes for a bull market resumption. Lilly says it should be taken “with a grain of salt.”
That’s because the ratio’s drop into the green zone follows a slide in the hash rate and the daily issuance caused by China’s mining ban. It doesn’t necessarily imply miner capitulation.
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China reiterated its long-held crypto mining ban in mid-May and stepped up its efforts this month,ordering minersbased in Sichuan and other mining hubs to shut down their operations.
As a result, the hash rate, a measure of the computational power working to secure the bitcoin blockchain network,declinedfrom 140 exahashes per second (EH/s) to a 14-month low of 94 EH/s.
With miners going offline, the 30-day average of the daily issuance – coins mined and supplied – has declined from more than 900 BTC to 760 BTC, according to Glassnode data. According to Lilly, the average daily issuance has nearly halved from 900 BTC. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency has traded mainly in the range of $30,000 to $40,000 this month.
The data confirm the Puell Multiple has entered the buy zone mainly because of China-based miners going offline – a move that’s like to be temporary asthere is evidenceof miners shifting bases to other countries like theU.S.and Kazakhstan.
“This is a one-off event, meaning most of this mining power will return, and before you know it, MORE than 900 coins per day will be mined since the hash rate will hit the network after the difficulty of each block decreases,” Lilly noted.
Bitcoin is currently trading near $35,600, a 3% gain on the day, according to CoinDesk 20 data. While there is evidence of dip-demand for the cryptocurrency, a sustained accumulation by large investors might be neededto restorethe battered market confidence and revive the bull run.
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• Bitcoin Gathers Upside Momentum, Faces Resistance Near $40K || Digatrade Acquires Exclusive 5-Year Technology Licencing Agreement for the United Kingdom From Securter Systems INC.: "Shareholder & Future Plans Update" VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 12, 2021 / DIGATRADE FINANCIAL CORP (OTC PINK:DIGAF), www.DigatradeFinancial.com , a financial technology services company, today announced that it has executed a 5-year exclusive territory sales and marketing agreement with Securter Systems Inc. ("SSI") for the United Kingdom. Digatrade is a major equity shareholder in SSI and now has acquired an exclusive five-year Licensing Agreement ("License") whereby Digatrade has acquired the sales and marketing rights to the United Kingdom ("Territory"). Terms of the agreement include: SSI has the option to Buy-Out ("Buy-Out") the License by paying Digatrade ("License Holder") three (3) times the Regions Net Profit in accordance with IFRS accounting standards. Should the License Holder expend a minimum of CDN$500,000.00 for sales & marketing activities in the region, then the Buy-Out shall be determined by the "Fair Market Value" as independently determined. United Kingdom "UK" Payments Market Expecting Major Growth; all figures based in GBP: Contactless debit and credit card payment volumes totalled $8.6 billion Cash payments decreased by 15% to $9.3b Faster Payments and other remote banking totalled just under $2.5 billion in 2020 Cheque volumes continued falling in 2020, accounting for less than 1% of payments made in the UK 72% of UK adults used online banking and 50% used mobile banking Banks Direct Credit volumes fell by 3% to $2b Direct Debit volumes rose 3% to $4.5b The value of Clearing House Automated Payment System "CHAPS" decreased slightly to $83.4 trillion $8,743 billion total value of payments in 2020 50% of adults now use mobile banking 40.0 billion total payments in 2020 Digatrade's access to this exciting technology for online payment processing presents numerous and vast opportunities, especially in the UK. As CNP ("Card Not Present") transactions explode, driven in part by the pandemic and adoption of global online commerce, so does the risk of fraud. This unique technology will improve the financial security and privacy of all CNP transactions processed by participating financial institutions and payment processors. The technology has the ability to reduce billions of dollars of losses annually that arise from fraudulent online transactions. The licensed technology has multiple elements by which to tackle mounting online losses in the online payment processing sector. Digatrade's acquisition of the sales & marketing license in the United Kingdom is anticipated to increase Digatrade's profile in the fintech sector due to the immense benefit that the SSI technology brings to major financial institutions and credit card users alike. Story continues Under the existing SSI revenue share model with its payment processing partners, Digatrade will benefit from a proportion of this revenue as it builds its sales and marketing efforts in the UK. The revenue sharing model has produced the fintech giants that operate in today's global payments system. Digatrade will thereby benefit financially from the existing payments infrastructure, and the relationships developed by SSI improving reliability, profitability, convenience, and security. Corporate Update Digatrade is also preparing a suite of new investor relations resources for shareholders that will inform them in greater detail of our goals in fintech as well as the company's progress in meeting these goals. Digatrade's information-portal will help DIGAF shareholders understand the business significance to them (and to the fintech industry). Digatrade holds three guiding principles for the company, for the benefit of its cryptocurrency interested shareholders. The first is to implement a business model that makes the company immune to downward fluctuations in Bitcoin, Ethereum and other altcoin valuations. The second is to solve actual problems and increase functionality of cryptocurrency transactions, not merely replicate payment methods and payment corridors that already exist. The third is to follow a multi-stakeholder model that goes beyond only addressing consumer experiences to include the perspective of vendors for two-sided transactional ease, non-commercial institutions whose interests may not be as remote as they imagine and governments who are not yet clear in their policies but may in fact become enormous beneficiaries across their vast operations. At the heart of Digatrade's innovation program is a focus on the huge untapped development and commercialization opportunities in the underlying blockchain technology ecosystem. Digatrade CEO, Brad Moynes, explains: "It's easy to get lost in the theory of what's possible. We are collaborating with industry leaders in this sector to mine the technology itself and deliver useful applications that are not already overdone in this space. An example is something as basic as being able to trade cryptocurrency easily, securely and in small quantities by credit card and to spend it just as easily and securely, by multiple methods. Proof of stake and Ethereum could boost growth in the PoS business to over $40b by 2025. Digatrade shareholder value is projected to grow due to aggregate transaction fee-sharing with SSI and their PSP partners. These fees accumulate from massive aggregate transaction value that is channeled through the international credit card processing system. Small individual transaction fees paid by cardholders and merchants become enormous in total because of the billions of transactions occurring annually around the world. Online purchases by consumers and businesses are growing faster than any other credit card transaction categories because of the unmatched convenience that the online experience provides to purchasers. This is an area of competitive advantage for Digatrade where its licensed patent pending transaction security technology originated. Digatrade's growing expertise in fintech innovations will also be applied where new cryptocurrency and credit card systems overlap. This is an area of fast-growing interest in the world's payments system because millions of credit card holders who also hold cryptocurrency want to choose the payment method that suits them best at the moment, varying from transaction to transaction. Credit cards remain a popular core payment modality, but safe and affordable multiplex systems are needed. To help Digatrade shareholders understand the direction of our strategy in coming months, management has now outlined further developments that Digatrade is targeting for the benefit of future DIGAF shareholder value. Each of the key areas of operation listed below will generate a related flow of events as DIGAF moves steadily toward the launch of its fintech. A supplementary PowerPoint has been added to the Digatrade Investor website under SEC Fair Disclosure Guidelines: Targeted Digatrade Developments in Q3 2021 and beyond in key licensed markets including South America and the United Kingdom. More key management/sales advisor appointments to provide Digatrade with world-class perspective, experience and expectations for successful partnership operations within the industry; Implementation of new in-store and online shopping incentive system(s) that will allow the start its commercial marketing and sales activities with consumers in mind. The purpose will be to engage with merchants and online shoppers for awareness-building and revenue with the licensed territory; Progress toward the development of policies for the engagement of governments (as users, funders and regulators); Presentation of an operational pilot program to significant additional PSP partner candidates who are senior in stature within the world's payments systems; Approval of/by international consulting organization(s) for service bridges between international groups and applied initiatives; Revealing collaboration-platform allies who will stimulate tech integrations; Identification and disclosure of the most suitable 3 rd party cryptocurrency exchange platforms for integration into Digatrade merchant services infrastructure. In addition, Digatrade is pleased to report that the Securter Crowdfunding campaign is progressing well and can be viewed here: https://vested.ca/projects/view/119/ One of the goals of the Securter crowdfunding is to obtain a minimum of 150 investors to meet the minimum distribution requirements for going public on a nationally recognized Canadian Stock Exchange. More information will be made available when it materializes. ABOUT DIGATRADE DIGATRADE is a Financial Technology "fintech" services company. Digatrade is developing various payment industry process improvements that are proprietary. They represent a next generation platform for security and convenience in a variety of modalities, including online credit card payment system in South America. Digatrade is targeting numerous fintech service licensing vehicles, also including blockchain derived applications. Digatrade Financial Corp. is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, and publicly listed on the OTC.PK under the trading symbol DIGAF. DIGAF is a reporting issuer in the Province of British Columbia, Canada with the British Columbia Securities Commission "BCSC" and in the United States with the Securities Exchange Commission "SEC". ABOUT SECURTER Securter Systems Inc. (https://securter.com) is a Canadian-based fintech company that is developing a ground-breaking payment processing technology that dramatically reduces the security risks associated with online purchases. The Securter Payment App allows consumers to use their credit or debit card directly without having to manually input their confidential card information. Securter's patent-pending process turns a consumer's mobile phone into their own payment terminal (personal card reader/POS), allowing them to tap or scan their credit/debt card on their own phone. Cards are now deemed present (CP) for the online transaction the same way they are when tapped or scanned in-person (in-store), allowing merchants to capture electronic data stored on the card and verify the transaction. CORPORATE CONTACT INFORMATION: Digatrade Financial Corp 1500 West Georgia Street, 1300 Vancouver, BC V6G 2Z6 Canada Tel: +1(604) 200-0071 Fax: +1(604) 200-0072 www.DigatradeFinancialInvestor.com www.DigatradeFinancial.com Forward-Looking Information This press release contains certain "forward-looking information". All statements, other than statements of historical fact, that address activities, events or development that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future constitute forward-looking information. This forward-looking information reflects the current expectations or beliefs of the company based on information currently available to the Company. Forward-looking information is subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking information, and even if such actual results are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on the Company. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to, the possibility of unanticipated costs and expenses. Any forward-looking information speaks only as of the date on which it is made and, except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking information are reasonable, forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such information due to the inherent uncertainty therein. SOURCE: Digatrade Financial Corp View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/655016/Digatrade-Acquires-Exclusive-5-Year-Technology-Licencing-Agreement-for-the-United-Kingdom-From-Securter-Systems-INC || Marathon Digital Holdings Purchases 30,000 S19j Pro Bitcoin Miners from Bitmain: Marathon’s Hash Rate Expected To Increase to Approximately 13.3 EH/s Once All Miners Are Fully Deployed LAS VEGAS, Aug. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Marathon Digital Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MARA ) ("Marathon" or "Company") , one of the largest enterprise Bitcoin mining companies in North America, has entered into a contract with Bitmain to purchase an additional 30,000 Antminer S19j Pro (100 TH/s) miners for $120.7 million. Based on current delivery schedules, Marathon anticipates all 30,000 newly purchased miners to ship from Bitmain between January 2022 and June 2022. As a result, the Company’s mining operations are expected to consist of more than 133,000 Bitcoin miners, producing approximately 13.3 EH/s once all miners are fully deployed and operational. If all of Marathon’s miners were deployed today, the Company’s hash rate would represent approximately 12% of the Bitcoin network’s total hash rate, which was approximately 109 EH/s as of August 1, 2021. “Increasing our percentage of the total network’s hash rate increases our probability of earning bitcoin, and given the uniquely favorable conditions in the current mining environment, we believe it is an opportune time to add new miners to our operations,” said Fred Thiel, Marathon’s CEO. “With this new order, we are growing our operations by 30% to approximately 133,000 miners, producing 13.3 EH/s. As a result, once all miners are fully deployed, our mining operations will be among the largest, not just in North America, but globally. We’d like to thank the team at Bitmain for expediting this order as we work to further scale our operations and establish Marathon as one of the leading Bitcoin miners in North America.” Antminer Sales Director of North, Central, and South America (NCSA) at Bitmain Irene Gao commented, “Marathon is a key customer of Bitmain’s, and we appreciate the opportunity to support their growth with another large order for 30,000 of the industry’s most powerful and efficient miners. We look forward to continuing to collaborate and build upon this mutually beneficial relationship.” Story continues Investor Notice Investing in our securities involves a high degree of risk. Before making an investment decision, you should carefully consider the risks, uncertainties and forward-looking statements described under "Risk Factors" in Item 1A of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020. If any of these risks were to occur, our business, financial condition or results of operations would likely suffer. In that event, the value of our securities could decline, and you could lose part or all of your investment. The risks and uncertainties we describe are not the only ones facing us. Additional risks not presently known to us or that we currently deem immaterial may also impair our business operations. In addition, our past financial performance may not be a reliable indicator of future performance, and historical trends should not be used to anticipate results in the future. Future changes in the network-wide mining difficulty rate or Bitcoin hash rate may also materially affect the future performance of Marathon's production of Bitcoin. Additionally, all discussions of financial metrics assume mining difficulty rates as of August 2021. See "Safe Harbor" below. Forward-Looking Statements Statements made in this press release include forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as “may,” “will,” “plan,” “should,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “continue,” or comparable terminology. Such forward-looking statements are inherently subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties, many of which the Company cannot predict with accuracy and some of which the Company might not even anticipate and involve factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or suggested. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements and are advised to consider the factors listed above together with the additional factors under the heading “Risk Factors” in the Company's Annual Reports on Form 10-K, as may be supplemented or amended by the Company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement forward-looking statements that become untrue because of subsequent events, new information or otherwise. About Marathon Digital Holdings Marathon is a digital asset technology company that mines cryptocurrencies with a focus on the blockchain ecosystem and the generation of digital assets. Marathon Digital Holdings Company Contact: Charlie Schumacher Telephone: 800-804-1690 Email: charlie@marathondh.com Jason Assad Telephone: 678-570-6791 Email: Jason@marathondh.com
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 46004.48, 44695.36, 44801.19, 46717.58, 49339.18, 48905.49, 49321.65, 49546.15, 47706.12, 48960.79
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2016-09-19]
BTC Price: 609.23, BTC RSI: 55.43
Gold Price: 1313.50, Gold RSI: 43.76
Oil Price: 43.30, Oil RSI: 43.09
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitfinex says expects 'socialized loss' for $72 million bitcoin hack: By Clare Baldwin HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong-based crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex, from which hackers stole about US$72 million worth of bitcoin this week, said on Friday that it expected to "socialize" the losses among bitcoin balances. In dollar terms, the theft of the 119,756 bitcoin revealed on Tuesday was the second-biggest security breach ever of a digital currency exchange. The theft accounted for about 0.75 percent of all bitcoins in circulation. "We are still working out the details," Bitfinex said on its website, "however, we are leaning towards a socialized loss scenario among bitcoin balances and active loans to BTCUSD positions." The exchange, which is known for its liquidity in the U.S. dollar/bitcoin currency pair, did not explain what that would entail. It has said previously it would settle accounts at an exchange rate of $604.06, the midpoint of the bid and ask on Aug. 2, 2016 at 18:00:00 UTC. The price of bitcoin plunged more than 23 percent on Tuesday when news of the hack became public, trading as low as $465.28 on the BitStamp platform BTC=BTSP. It was trading at $569.84 on Friday. (Reporting by Clare Baldwin; Editing by Will Waterman) || Traders move into homebuilders and home improvement stocks: The "Fast Money" traders said on Tuesday it might be time to move into the homebuilder stocks.
On Tuesday, the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF(NYSE Arca: XHB)gained about 1.8 percent after Toll Brothers(TOL)reported better-than-expected results on the back of higher home sales.
Trader Tim Seymour said that between recent economic data and Toll Brothers'(TOL)upbeat results, the homebuilders and home improvement stocks look attractive. In these sectors, he said he likes PulteGroup(PHM), D.R. Horton(DHI), Restoration Hardware(RH)and Sherwin-Williams(SHW).
Trader Steve Grasso said KB Home(KBH)may benefit from people buying lower-priced homes.
Trader Brian Kelly said he isn't as sold on the fundamentals of a rally in the homebuilder stocks. He said that if he had to pick a stock in the space, he would prefer home improvement companies like Lowe's(LOW).
Disclosures:
TIM SEYMOUR
Tim Seymour is long APC, AVP, BAC, BBRY, CLF, DAL, DO, DVYE, EDC, EWZ, F, FB, FCX, FXI, GM, GOOGL, GRMN, GE, INTC, LQD, M, MCD, MPEL, NKE, RACE, RAI, RH, RL, SINA, T, TWTR, UA, VALE, VZ, XOM and short: SPY, XRT. His firm is long ABX, BABA, BIDU, CBD, CLF, EWZ, F, HD, KO, MCD, MPEL, NKE, PEP, PF, SAVE, SBUX, SINA, VALE, VIAB, WMT, WEN, YHOO and short HYG, IWM.
DAVID SEABURG
Opinions expressed by David Seaburg are solely his own and do not reflect the views and opinions of Cowen Group, Inc. David Seaburg and Cowen have a financial interest in EDIT.
BRIAN KELLY
Brian Kelly is long Bitcoin, CME, DXJ, GDX, KBE, SLV, TLT, XLF, XOP, US Dollar UUP. He is short the euro and Japanese yen.
STEVE GRASSO
Steve Grasso is long BA, CC, EVGN, KBH, MJNA, MU, OLN, PFE, PHM, T, TWTR, GDX. Grasso's children own EFA, EFG, EWJ, IJR, SPY. No Shorts. Stuart Frankel & Co Inc. and some of its Partners have a financial interest in LDP, WDR, AVP, CVX, FCX, ICE, KDUS, KO, MAT, MCD, MJNA, NE, NEM, OLN, OXY, RIG, STAG, TAXI, TEX, TITXF, URI, VALE, WDR, WYNN, ZNGA, CUBA, HSPO, ICE, AMZN, MJNA, TITXF, NXTD, SPY, QQQ, DIA, XLI, BGCP, VIRT, JCP, GE, AIR, FP. || Leveraged Buyout Corporation Announces Intention to Commence a Tender Offer for Shares of Yasheng Group: VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 1, 2016 / Leveraged Buyout Corporation ("LBOC") announced today that it intends to commence a tender offer to the shareholders of YaSheng Group ("HERB") (OTC: HERB ) to purchase up to 81,000,000 shares of HERB's Common Stock at a purchase price of $11.00 per share. The offer will require that each shareholder deliver at least 51 of each 100 share owned. LBOC targets to own approximately 51% of the issued and outstanding shares of HERB Common Stock. The offer price of $11.00 per share represents an extraordinary premium over market value for 6 reasons: HERB is trading at a deep discount based on its earnings, and; Payment is in the form of corporate notes that will pay interest in OTCcoin (OTX) a new digital currency that rides on the rails of the Bitcoin blockchain, and; The notes will mature in 10 years with annual interest payable at the rate of 1 OTX per $1 face value. OTX is thinly trading on international cryptocurrency exchange C-CEX ( https://c-cex.com/?p=otx-btc ) Notes are to be backed by the shares tendered and held in safe keeping by HERB's transfer agent. LBOC is a newly formed entity. Important Information about the Tender Offer LBOC has not yet commenced the tender offer referred to in this press release. This press release does not constitute an offer to buy or solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. This press release is for informational purposes only. The offer to purchase the shares of HERB Common Stock from its shareholders and the solicitation of the shares will be made only pursuant to the offer to purchase and the related letter of transmittal, which are expected to be mailed to HERB shareholders shortly after commencement of the tender offer subject to the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission. About LBOC : LBOC is a subsidiary of a holding company whose principal holdings include digital currency and related assets. LBOC was formed to capitalize on companies whose market cap is deeply discounted in the markets from the tangible values. As its name reveals it seeks to buy out controlling interests on leverage utilizing cashless financing. About HERB: YaSheng Group is a U.S. holding company and conducts business operations in China. The Company, through its subsidiaries, operates in agriculture, livestock, and biotechnology. YaSheng specializes in developing, processing, marketing, and distributing a variety of food products grown in North West China. This press release contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The forward looking statements in this press release are also forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and involve substantial risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, those relating to the contemplated tender offer described in this press release, including uncertainty about the timing of the tender offer, that, if the tender offer is commenced, the conditions to closing the tender offer may not be satisfied, uncertainties as to the amount of shares that will be tendered in the tender offer and LBOC's ownership interest in YASHENG Group following the tender offer, risks relating to the continued listing of YASHENG Group's Common Stock on the OTC Markets Stock Exchange and the continued status of YASHENG Group as an SEC reporting company, and the risk that the expected benefits to LBOC from the tender offer may not be realized or maintained. LBOC cautions that the foregoing factors are not exclusive. Story continues CONTACT : info@LBOCorp.com SOURCE: Leveraged Buyout Corporation View comments || Does Tesla have enough juice?: Wall Street is in a bit of a funk. Stocks ( ^DJI , ^GSPC , ^IXIC ) started the day little changed as investors dissect the latest round of corporate results and keep close tabs on oil prices ( CL=F ). Meanwhile, private sector employment came in better than economists expected last month. Employers added 179,000 jobs in July. However, all the hiring was in the service sector, according to ADP and Moody’s Analytics. Time Warner invests in Hulu Time Warner ( TWX ) shares were sharply higher in early trading. The media giant is buying a 10% stake in Hulu and signed an agreement for all of its Turner networks to be carried on Hulu’s live-streaming services. The company also announced second-quarter earnings that beat expectations. However, revenue fell short of forecasts due to slow growth in its HBO and Warner Brothers businesses. Earnings watch list Tesla ( TSLA ) results are on tap after the market close. Analysts expect sales to be over $1.6 billion for the quarter. Tesla has dealt with a lot of bad news recently, including how the autopilot feature played a role in one fatal crash. Fitbit ( FIT ) shares soared in early trading. The maker of fitness-tracking wristbands delivered better than expected earnings and revenue for the second quarter. Sales soared nearly 47% from a year ago. Profit fell as operating expenses more than doubled with new investment on research and development of new products and marketing. Etsy ( ETSY ) got a nice pop this morning. The online crafts marketplace raised its outlook for the year after revenue topped estimates for the second quarter. Sales jumped 39% thanks to strong growth in seller services and users. Electronic Arts ( EA ), the video game publisher behind titles including “FIFA” and “Star Wars Battlefront,” swung to a profit last quarter. Revenue also beat estimates as players downloaded more digital versions of its games. However, the company’s revenue forecast for the current quarter was a tad less than what analysts were expecting. Story continues HP CEO backs Clinton Meg Whitman may be a Republican, but she’s backing Hillary Clinton. On LinkedIn, Whitman wrote, “Donald Trump’s demagoguery has undermined the fabric of our national character.” Meanwhile, the Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( HPE ) CEO praised Clinton for her temperament and global experience, which she says are major characteristics needed for a president. Bitcoin robbery Investigators are trying to find out who’s responsible for a major bitcoin heist. Almost 120,000 units of bitcoin were stolen from the Bitfinex exchange platform in Hong Kong. The Bitcoins are worth about $72 million. || Big Banks Team Up to Develop Blockchain Settlement System: Wall Street's increasing focus on digital currency technology has been affirmed yet again with the recent teaming up of a group of financial giants for the development of Utility Settlement Coin (USC). It is a digital cash model based on blockchain that aims to facilitate payment and settlement for global institutional financial markets. Swiss banking giant UBS Group AG UBS and London-based Clearmatics initiated USC last September to validate the potential benefits of USC for capital efficiency, settlement and systemic risk reduction in global financial markets. The successful conclusion of the first phase of this project led to the joining of Deutsche Bank AG DB, The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. BK, Banco Santander, S.A. SAN and brokerage ICAP to develop the concept further. The group also plans to undertake test in a real market environment. USC is a series of cash assets implemented on distributed ledger technology and is entirely backed by cash assets held at a central bank. With a version for each of the main currencies including USD, EUR, GBP and CHF, USC would be convertible at parity with a bank deposit in the related currency. According to a joint release, spending a USC will be equivalent to spending its real-world currency. The group of financial institutions will focus on the financial structuring of the USC and its implications in the broader market. Alongside they will remain engaged in discussions with central banks and regulators to ensure a regulation compliant and efficient framework within which the USC can be implemented. Hyder Jaffrey, Head of Strategic Investment & FinTech Innovation at UBS Investment Bank stated, "Digital cash is a core component of a future financial market fabric based on blockchain technologies. He further added, "There are several digital cash models being explored across the Street. The Utility Settlement Coin is focused on facilitating a new model for digital central bank cash." Paul Maley, Managing Director, Institutional Client Group, Deutsche Bank noted, "As today's settlement and clearing is a process involving many institutions, it's vital that we collaborate with our peers to develop viable alternatives to current models, creating new digital capabilities for the financial services industry. Blockchain Buzz Blockchain, the digital ledger or the underlying technology behind Bitcoin, has gained attraction for its significant potential to revamp the extensive and complex network of bank payments as well as settlements. While Bitcoin was one of the first cryptographic currencies that drew attention in 2009, several other cryptographic currencies are currently available including Novacoin, Namecoin and Dogecoin. Last December The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. GS filed a patent application with the US Patent & Trademark Office for a new cryptocurrency called SETLcoin. While Citigroup Inc. C is currently working on the development of its own digital currency Citicoin, JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM partnered with start-up firm Digital Asset Holdings earlier this year to launch a trial project that utilizes the blockchain technology. Bottom line The latest development tied with Blockchain platform crops up as banks are embracing technology and are continuously looking out for ways to restructure daily operations, update back-office functions and making huge investments for auto execution of transactions. While banks and regulators continue to explore prospects and benefits of digital currencies, concerns including security and impact on the broader financial system still lingers. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days . Click to get this free report >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report JPMORGAN CHASE (JPM): Free Stock Analysis Report BANK OF NY MELL (BK): Free Stock Analysis Report CITIGROUP INC (C): Free Stock Analysis Report UBS GROUP AG (UBS): Free Stock Analysis Report DEUTSCHE BK AG (DB): Free Stock Analysis Report BANCO SANTAN SA (SAN): Free Stock Analysis Report GOLDMAN SACHS (GS): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research || PowerBTC is Offering Higher Price for Bitcoin Sellers: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / August 1, 2016 / PowerBTC LLC ( www.PowerBTC.com ), a cryptocurrency trading company based in New York, today announces that the company has launched an attractive offer for Bitcoin sellers worldwide. https://youtu.be/h-cffzcrEI8 . The company is offering its clients the possibility to sell their Bitcoin for a price which is higher than the one offered by other cryptocurrency markets, depending on the amounts they intend to sell and the recurrence of their transactions with PowerBTC. Within this approach, the company keeps track of its clients and the amounts they sell by enlisting them within the company's secured data bases. All the information being saved is the clients' e-mail address and the amount of Bitcoin they have sold to PowerBTC. By filing this data, PowerBTC's operators are able to access the client's business history with the company and tailor special offers, encouraging the client to return for more and thus enabling a high retainment rate within the company's portfolio, while also developing the business in a sound and healthy manner. Such strategy aims to encourage both prospects and the existing clients of the company. Extracted from the company's transactions history, the price for Bitcoin on PowerBTC on July 29th was USD 734, while, on the same date, Blockchain's official price was USD 660. While the offer may appear to be a bit chaotic for the regular seller, the mechanism behind it is based not only on the company's appetite for Bitcoin purchase, but also on the outcome of the Bitcoin PowerBTC is reinvesting, together with a sophisticated calculus and certain principles common within any financial services business. Tom Clark, Founder and CEO of PowerBTC, expressed his confidence in the fact that the new strategy, together with the investment budget approved by the Board, has made just the right marketing combination in order to overcome the entire competition on the Bitcoin exchange market. Story continues PowerBTC LLC. is proud to offer not only very good business terms to its clients, but also excellent services and assistance throughout the entire transaction process. More information can be found on PowerBTC's official web-site: www.PowerBTC.com . CONTACT: Email : ads@powerbtc.com Phone : (917) 979-2728 SOURCE: PowerBTC LLC || Bitcoin worth $72 million stolen from Bitfinex exchange in Hong Kong: By Clare Baldwin HONG KONG (Reuters) - Nearly 120,000 units of digital currency bitcoin worth about US$72 million was stolen from the exchange platform Bitfinex in Hong Kong, rattling the global bitcoin community in the second-biggest security breach ever of such an exchange. Bitfinex is the world's largest dollar-based exchange for bitcoin, and is known in the digital currency community for having deep liquidity in the U.S. dollar/bitcoin currency pair. Zane Tackett, Director of Community & Product Development for Bitfinex, told Reuters on Wednesday that 119,756 bitcoin had been stolen from users' accounts and that the exchange had not yet decided how to address customer losses. "The bitcoin was stolen from users' segregated wallets," he said. The company said it had reported the theft to law enforcement and was cooperating with top blockchain analytic companies to track the stolen coins. Last year, Bitfinex announced a tie-up with Palo Alto-based BitGo, which uses multiple-signature security to store user deposits online, allowing for faster withdrawals. "Our investigation has found no evidence of a breach to any BitGo servers," BitGo said in a Tweet. "With users' funds secured using multi-signature technology in partnership with BitGo, a lot more is at stake for the backbone of the bitcoin industry, with its stalwarts and prided tech under fire," said Charles Hayter, chief executive and founder of digital currency website CryptoCompare. The security breach comes two months after Bitfinex was ordered to pay a $75,000 fine by the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission in part for offering illegal off-exchange financed commodity transactions in bitcoin and other digital currencies. BITCOIN SLUMP Tuesday's breach triggered a slump in bitcoin prices and was reminiscent of events that led to the 2014 collapse of Tokyo-based exchange Mt Gox, which said it had lost about $500 million worth of customers' Bitcoins in a hacking attack. Story continues Bitcoin plunged just over 23 percent on Tuesday after the news broke. On Wednesday it was up 1 percent at $545.20 on the BitStamp platform. Tackett added that the breach did not "expose any weaknesses in the security of a blockchain", the technology that generates and processes bitcoin, a web-based "cryptocurrency" that can move across the globe anonymously without the need for a central authority. A bitcoin expert said the scandal highlighted the risks of companies using cryptography for their ledgers. "The more you rely on its benefits, the greater the potential for damage when keys are stolen. We still have some way to go to create highly secure but convenient systems," said Singapore-based Antony Lewis. The volume of bitcoin stolen amounts to about 0.75 percent of all bitcoin in circulation. It is not yet clear whether the theft was an inside job or whether hackers were able to gain access to the system externally. On an online forum, Bitfinex's Tackett said he was "nearly 100 percent certain" it was no one in the company. Bitfinex suspended trading on Tuesday after it discovered the breach. It said on its website that it was investigating and cooperating with the authorities. The security breach is the latest scandal to hit Hong Kong's bitcoin market after MyCoin became embroiled in a scam last year that media estimated could have duped investors of up to $387 million. The bitcoin trading company closed after the scandal. The president of the Hong Kong Bitcoin Association said the only way to protect information is to disperse it in so many small pieces that the reward for hacking is too small. "For an attacker, the cost-benefit strategy is quite easy: How much is in the pot and how likely is it that I'm getting the pot?" said Leonhard Weese. (Additional reporting by Hera Poon in HONG KONG, Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE and Jemima Kelly in LONDON; Editing by Will Waterman) || Bitcoin worth $72 million stolen from Bitfinex exchange in Hong Kong: By Clare Baldwin HONG KONG (Reuters) - Nearly 120,000 units of digital currency bitcoin worth about US$72 million was stolen from the exchange platform Bitfinex in Hong Kong, rattling the global bitcoin community in the second-biggest security breach ever of such an exchange. Bitfinex is the world's largest dollar-based exchange for bitcoin, and is known in the digital currency community for having deep liquidity in the U.S. dollar/bitcoin currency pair. Zane Tackett, Director of Community & Product Development for Bitfinex, told Reuters on Wednesday that 119,756 bitcoin had been stolen from users' accounts and that the exchange had not yet decided how to address customer losses. "The bitcoin was stolen from users' segregated wallets," he said. The company said it had reported the theft to law enforcement and was cooperating with top blockchain analytic companies to track the stolen coins. Last year, Bitfinex announced a tie-up with Palo Alto-based BitGo, which uses multiple-signature security to store user deposits online, allowing for faster withdrawals. "Our investigation has found no evidence of a breach to any BitGo servers," BitGo said in a Tweet. "With users' funds secured using multi-signature technology in partnership with BitGo, a lot more is at stake for the backbone of the bitcoin industry, with its stalwarts and prided tech under fire," said Charles Hayter, chief executive and founder of digital currency website CryptoCompare. The security breach comes two months after Bitfinex was ordered to pay a $75,000 fine by the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission in part for offering illegal off-exchange financed commodity transactions in bitcoin and other digital currencies. BITCOIN SLUMP Tuesday's breach triggered a slump in bitcoin prices and was reminiscent of events that led to the 2014 collapse of Tokyo-based exchange Mt Gox, which said it had lost about $500 million worth of customers' Bitcoins in a hacking attack. Story continues Bitcoin plunged just over 23 percent on Tuesday after the news broke. On Wednesday it was up 1 percent at $545.20 on the BitStamp platform. Tackett added that the breach did not "expose any weaknesses in the security of a blockchain", the technology that generates and processes bitcoin, a web-based "cryptocurrency" that can move across the globe anonymously without the need for a central authority. A bitcoin expert said the scandal highlighted the risks of companies using cryptography for their ledgers. "The more you rely on its benefits, the greater the potential for damage when keys are stolen. We still have some way to go to create highly secure but convenient systems," said Singapore-based Antony Lewis. The volume of bitcoin stolen amounts to about 0.75 percent of all bitcoin in circulation. It is not yet clear whether the theft was an inside job or whether hackers were able to gain access to the system externally. On an online forum, Bitfinex's Tackett said he was "nearly 100 percent certain" it was no one in the company. Bitfinex suspended trading on Tuesday after it discovered the breach. It said on its website that it was investigating and cooperating with the authorities. The security breach is the latest scandal to hit Hong Kong's bitcoin market after MyCoin became embroiled in a scam last year that media estimated could have duped investors of up to $387 million. The bitcoin trading company closed after the scandal. The president of the Hong Kong Bitcoin Association said the only way to protect information is to disperse it in so many small pieces that the reward for hacking is too small. "For an attacker, the cost-benefit strategy is quite easy: How much is in the pot and how likely is it that I'm getting the pot?" said Leonhard Weese. (Additional reporting by Hera Poon in HONG KONG, Jeremy Wagstaff in SINGAPORE and Jemima Kelly in LONDON; Editing by Will Waterman) || Hacking group claims to offer cyber-weapons in online auction: By Joseph Menn (Reuters) - Hackers going by the name Shadow Brokers said on Monday they will auction stolen surveillance tools they say were used by a cyber group linked to the U.S. National Security Agency. To arouse interest in the auction, the hackers released samples of programs they said could break into popular firewall software made by companies including Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O), Juniper Networks Inc (JNPR.N) and Fortinet Inc (FTNT.O). The companies did not respond to request for comment, nor did the NSA. Writing in imperfect English, the Shadow Brokers promised in postings on a Tumblr blog that the auctioned material would contain cyber weapons developed by the Equation Group, a hacking group that cyber security experts widely believe to be an arm of the NSA. [ http://reut.rs/2aVA7LD] The Shadow Brokers said the programs they will auction will be better than Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm widely attributed to the United States and Israel that sabotaged Irans nuclear programme. Reuters could not contact the Shadow Brokers or verify their assertions. Some experts who looked at the samples posted on Tumblr said they included programs that had previously been described and therefore were unlikely to cause major damage. The data [released so far] appears to be relatively old; some of the programs have already been known for years, said researcher Claudio Guarnieri, and are unlikely to cause any significant operational damage. Still, they appeared to be genuine tools that might work if flaws have not been addressed. After examining the code released Monday, Matt Suiche, founder of UAE-based security startup Comae Technologies, concluded they looked like "could be used." Other security experts warned the posting could prove to be a hoax. The group said interested parties had to send funds in advance of winning the auction via Bitcoin currency and would not get their money back if they lost. The auction will end at an unspecified time, Shadow Brokers said, encouraging bidders to "keep bidding until we announce winner." (Editing by Cynthia Osterman) || FOREX-Dollar struggles near 6-week lows, labour market data eyed: * Unconvincing data dims U.S. rate hike prospects, hurts dollar
* ADP labour market data eyed
* Dollar/yen seen heading towards break of 100 yen threshold
* Bitcoin slides after Hong Kong exchange hack
By Jemima Kelly
LONDON, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The dollar struggled to break away from six-week lows against a basket of currencies on Wednesday, kept under pressure by the view that the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates later rather than sooner.
The greenback had been on its best run of weekly gains in 1-1/2 years until last week, when expectations that the Fed would clearly signal a near-term rate hike were disappointed, and U.S. growth data came in much weaker than expected.
The dollar index inched up 0.2 percent on Wednesday but at 95.284 remained close to Tuesday's low of 95.003 and was down 2 percent compared with a week ago, before the Fed's policy statement.
U.S. labour market data from ADP due at 1215 GMT will be watched by currency traders ahead of the all-important non-farm payrolls report on Friday.
"The ADP report today should indicate continued labour market strength, and ease concerns over the health of the U.S. economy," said Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UJF macro strategist Derek Halpenny, in London.
UBS Wealth Management currency strategist Geoffrey Yu said the dollar had been boosted by a risk-off mood in U.S. trading on Tuesday, when indexes suffered their worst day in a month on lower oil prices and lacklustre inflation data. But he said any gains on risk-aversion would be capped.
"We're caught in this kind of trap where every time we get nervous about something, the dollar rallies, but then the next thing to think about is: is the Fed going to react to that by pushing out their rate views?" Yu said. "And then you can't afford to be long dollars that aggressively any more. So that's why we have these turns, quite rapidly."
The dollar was up 0.2 percent at 101.08 yen. It slid 1.5 percent the previous day when it fell to a three-week trough of 100.680, amid some disappointment that a meeting between Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso and Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda did not result in steps to weaken the yen.
Junichi Ishikawa, currency analyst at IG Securities in Tokyo, said it was a matter of time before the dollar breaks below 100 yen. The dollar briefly slipped below the watershed level in the stormy markets that followed Britain's vote to leave the European Union in June, but it has managed to stay above ever since.
"The break below 100 yen after Brexit was an irregular move. But this time, the yen is gaining steadily on fundamental factors like Japan's improving current account balance and the fading impact of BOJ's multi-dimensional easing," Ishikawa said.
The Japanese central bank eased monetary policy on Friday by upping the amount of its exchange-traded fund purchases, but underwhelmed the markets by holding off from increasing the amount of government bonds its buys every month.
Bitcoin steadied at around $545 after sliding by as much as 25 percent in early trading on Wednesday after a Hong Kong digital currency exchange said it had suspended trading on its exchange after almost 120,000 bitcoin - worth almost $65 million at the current rate - was stolen.
For Reuters new Live Markets blog on European and UK stock markets see reuters://realtime/verb=Open/url=http://emea1.apps.cp.extranet.thomsonreuters.biz/cms/?pageId=livemarkets(Additional reporting by Shinichi Saoshiro in Tokyo; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price of Bitcoin is $622.00. || Bitfury Research Seeks to Shine Light on Bitcoin Mixing Methods: A new Bitfury white paper aims to advance th... http://bit.ly/2bCzb1n || Average Bitcoin market price is: USD 606.00, EUR 538.73 || One Bitcoin now worth $579.89@bitstamp. High $584.99. Low $576.00. Market Cap $9.181 Billion #bitcoin || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$580.98/$582.32 #Bitstamp
$581.24/$581.29 #BTCe
⇢$-1.08/$0.31
$581.32/$587.17 #Coinbase
⇢$-1.00/$6.19 || #CHEVROLET #Corsa Chulito 2004 UnicoDueño Contacto: 04262408251 #Bitcoin #asitelovendenpic.twitter.com/dOpWEmpS4u || #HamRadioCoin #HAM $0.000639 (0.09%) 0.00000105 BTC (0.00%) || Lomba Gigi Sehat | 14 Agustus 2016 | 09.00 WIB @ BTC Mall Bandung | Info: 085624002624 @my_mdc pic.twitter.com/ODvy60fJbl || #Bitcoin last trade
@bitfinex $576.50
@btcecom $575.00
Set #crypto #price #alerts at http://AlertCo.in || One Bitcoin now worth $572.00@bitstamp. High $573.92. Low $568.40. Market Cap $ 9.064 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/BIBnwL0TTU
|
Trend: no change || Prices: 608.31, 597.15, 596.30, 602.84, 602.62, 600.83, 608.04, 606.17, 604.73, 605.69
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2016-03-16]
BTC Price: 417.01, BTC RSI: 51.16
Gold Price: 1229.30, Gold RSI: 51.90
Oil Price: 38.46, Oil RSI: 62.93
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bank of America is going big on blockchain: Bank of America(NYSE: BAC)is trying to steal a march on the latest developments in the technology behind digital currency bitcoin(: BTC=)by loading up on blockchain-related patents.
Blockchain works like a huge, decentralized ledger for the digital currency bitcoin which records every transaction and stores this information on a global network so it cannot be tampered with.
Major financial institutions -- including theBank of England-- have released a number of notes over the last year on the potential of the technology and have created teams within their organizations to look into how to develop the cryptocurrency.
But Bank of America is going one step further by attempting to patent some of the use cases of the technology. The company has already filed for 15 blockchain-related patents and is currently in the process of drafting another 20 to be submitted to the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) later this month, a spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday.
"Blockchain's very intriguing and for us it's a balance between not wanting to be Neanderthal but not wanting to put something out in a commercial application where the commercial application is still very unclear as a technologist, the technology is fascinating," Catherine Bessant, the chief operations and technology office at Bank of America, said during a CNBC event at Davos last week.
"And we have tried to stay on the forefront, I think we have somewhere around 15 patents, most people would be surprised at Bank of America with patents in the blockchain or cryptocurrency space. (It's) very important in the intellectual property world to reserve our spot even before we know what the commercial application might be."
In December, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published 10 of Bank of America's applications. The USPTO publishes patent applications 18 months after they're filed. But the latest information shows that the number of patents Bank of America has filed for and is looking to apply for is much higher.
Bank of America patents published by the USPTO showed proposals for a "cryptocurrency risk detection system" and "suspicious user alert system" among others. These patents have not yet been granted.
The technology might be some years off before becoming mainstream for banks, but institutions are taking a collaborative approach to the technology, working with start-ups and even rival lenders. A consortium of more than 25 banks, led by fintech (financial technology) company R3, is currentlydeveloping a frameworkfor applying blockchain technology to markets.
Last year, Goldman Sachs released a note that saidblockchain could "change everything"while banks from Barclays to UBS explained how the technology could be used in areas from remittances to drawing up contracts.
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• Personal Finance || C&W Business Earns Fortinet Platinum Partner Recognition: MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Feb 22, 2016) - C&W Business, part of Cable & Wireless Communications , Plc (CWC), today announces it has been recognized as a Fortinet Platinum Partner. To receive Platinum status, C&W Business demonstrated that it had successfully achieved all Fortinet certification requirements and training programmes needed to deliver the highest levels of partnership, performance and commitment. As a certified Platinum partner, C&W Business are experts in delivering Fortinet's superior, next generation multi-threat security solutions to their customers across the Caribbean and Latin American region. C&W Business has a proven track record of delivering managed security services over a vast range of advanced security technologies, such as Web Application Firewall, Email Security, DDOS protection, Advanced Persistent Threat protection, among others. C&W Business offers unparalleled skills in the region, with local resources across 26 countries and experts with the highest certification levels across the board. C&W Business has successfully deployed complex security solutions, using Fortinet's technology, in large and medium companies from a number of different sectors -- including Banking, Retail, Government and BPO. "This recognition as a Platinum Partner highlights our dedication to be the most complete ICT Solutions provider in the Caribbean and Latin American region. Security is a topic that is high in CIO's minds and we take that very seriously," said Daniel Peiretti, SVP Product Development, C&W Business. "We have focused in hiring and certifying security experts and giving them the tools necessary to ensure our customers enjoy peace of mind with their network," added Peiretti. Security threats are on the rise so corporations and government agencies alike must do everything to protect their networks and their data. C&W Business employs security experts in their Security Operation Centers (SOC) throughout the region to monitor their network 24X7X365. Story continues "We are excited to recognize C&W Business as a Platinum Partner, based on their strong commitment to delivering innovative solutions that drive customer success," said Pedro Paixao, General Manager, Latin America, at Fortinet. "C&W Business plays an important role in transforming customers, across multiple industries, into more agile, connected and secure companies that can rest assured their most important assets and the assets of their end-users are protected." About Cable & Wireless Communications Plc Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) is a full service communications and entertainment provider, operating in Latin America and the Caribbean. With annual sales of over US$2.4 billion, it operates both mobile and fixed networks, supported by submarine and terrestrial optical fibre backhaul capacity. CWC delivers superior high-speed mobile data, broadband and video services. It has leading market positions in Mobile, Fixed Line, Broadband and Video consumer offers. Through its business division, CWC provides data centre hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customised IT service solutions, utilising cloud technology to serve business and government customers. The Group also operates a state-of-the-art subsea fibre optic cable network that spans more than 48,000 km -- the most extensive in the region -- as well as 38,000 km of terrestrial fibre providing wholesale and carrier backhaul capacity. CWC has more than 7,300 employees serving 6.4 million customers (Mobile 4.1m; Fixed Line 1.1m; Video 470k and Broadband 690k) across 42 countries. The Group's leading brands include; LIME and Flow in the Caribbean; BTC in The Bahamas; Mas Movil in Panama; C&W Business and C&W Networks. CWC is the market leader in most products offered and territories served. It is a major contributor to local communities through its corporate social responsibility programmes. Cable & Wireless Communications Plc's shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker CWC. The Group is headquartered in London with its operational hub located in Miami, within close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America. For more information visit: www.cwc.com . About Fortinet Fortinet ( NASDAQ : FTNT ) helps protect networks, users and data from continually evolving threats. As a global leader in high-performance network security, we enable businesses and governments to consolidate and integrate stand-alone technologies without suffering performance penalties. Unlike costly, inflexible and low-performance alternatives, Fortinet solutions empower customers to embrace new technologies and business opportunities while protecting essential systems and content. Learn more at www.fortinet.com , or follow Fortinet at the Fortinet Blog , Google+ , Linkedin or Twitter . Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2967158 || Blockchain Gets A Much-Needed Stamp Of Approval: Finance firmGoldman Sachs Group Inc(NYSE:GS) has become a pillar of the financial sector with traders looking to the bank's advice for everything from investing to saving. For that reason, Goldman Sachs Director Don Duet'spositive remarksregarding blockchain could be a catalyst for the technology's success.
Blockchain Potential
Bitcoin has had a rough ride over the past year, as many of the coin's users suffered losses due to volatile prices and exchange collapses.
However, the technology that bitcoin runs on – a ledger-like system called blockchain – has been gaining momentum. This is especially true in the financial sector, where banks say blockchain could improve their operations and make things like cross-border payments more streamlined.
Related Link:Blockchain Moves Forward In The Financial Industry
Using Blockchain
Earlier this month, Duet commented on blockchain, saying that he sees the technology as both exciting and groundbreaking. He said blockchain systems have the potential to revolutionize banking operations and the technology could help banks share information and conduct asset transfers more easily and securely.
A Single Truth
Duet said blockchain provides banks with a "single truth," meaning that it creates one constant system that all banks can use. One of the problems with the banking sector as it currently stands, he said, is that every bank is operating with different systems and protocols.
Because of this, banks have to spend a lot of time reconciling differences in order to conduct transactions. However, using blockchain could change all of that by providing banks with one single ledger updated with each transaction.
A Bright Future
While Duet's comments were general in nature, many saw his optimism regarding blockchain as a positive sign for the future. Banks like Goldman Sachs,Morgan Stanley(NYSE:MS) andCitigroup Inc(NYSE:C) have been exploring how blockchain might fit into their operations in recent months, and Duet's remarks suggest the outlook is promising.
See more from Benzinga
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• Banks' Earnings Tell A Tale Of Cost Cutting
• Is Bank Of America Ripe For A Turnaround?
© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin group scores funds from biggest names in industry: Bitcoin-related businesses raised more venture capital money in 2015 than in any year before: $485 million, according to industry news site CoinDesk . And yet, even as they court more VC interest, these companies continue to deal with skepticism from the general public and from top executives of big financial institutions, like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan ( JPM ). So they're turning to a non-profit advocacy group for help. Coin Center, a 501(c)(4) lobbying group founded in 2014, calls itself the "leading non-profit research and advocacy center" for public policy on "cryptocurrency technologies such as Bitcoin." Its supporters already included well-known venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz (Marc Andreessen is a vocal bitcoin believer), and some of the biggest companies in the industry, including Chain, Coinbase, and Xapo. Now Coin Center is about to get a lot louder: This month it has raised $1 million in new donations, Yahoo Finance has learned. In an industry where the hottest companies have had recent fundraising rounds of $116 million (21 Inc.), $50 million (Circle) and $30 million (Chain), $1 million may sound like small potatoesand it is, although Coin Center says it will help fund travel for its five staff members, who spend much of their time meeting with lawmakers to discuss policy. But as some big banks have joined a consortium to explore the possibilities of the blockchain (the public, open ledger on which all bitcoin transactions are logged), what is significant here is that Coin Center's extensive list of new supporters includes some of the most powerful people in the exploding fintech sector. Among those who donated are 21 Inc. (which last year released a small bitcoin-mining computer aimed at making it easier to develop bitcoin apps), BitStamp, Overstock.com ( OSTK ), which was one of the first major online retailers to accept bitcoin as payment, and Digital Currency Group. That last firm is key: Led by SecondMarket founder Barry Silbert, DCG has invested in 65 different bitcoin companies, and the companies in its portfolio have raised 70% of all the venture capital in the space. DCG is to the bitcoin industry what Anheuser-Busch InBev ( BUD ) is to the beer market, or what IAC ( IAC ) has been to online-dating companies. Story continues " Our mission is to accelerate the development of a better financial system," Silbert tells Yahoo Finance, "and the way we will do that is investing in great companies, starting companies, buying companies, and helping organizations like Coin Center." In other words: Silbert wants to have his hands in as many digital-currency entities as possible to ensure his influence, and he is quickly carrying out that strategy. It's why DCG bought outright the industry's leading news site, CoinDesk. "There are many ways lawmakers could stifle the bitcoin blockchain," Silbert says, "so providing awareness and education is a very important part of what will make this industry sustainable." In short: Coin Center is getting more influential, and now it has people backing it who have deep pockets and major interest in keeping regulators from interfering too much in what bitcoin companies are doing. Coin Center is not a trade associationnone of the companies in the bitcoin industry are members. But it certainly shares their interests. Jerry Brito, Coin Center's executive director, is a law professor who has testified before Congress about cryptocurrencies. He says Coin Center's primary audience is policy-makersand these people can often be confused about the industry. The fear of bitcoin businesses is that politicians will hastily regulate, or even shut down startups, before they understand the technology. (The tension is not unlike the battle raging in daily fantasy sports right now.) Coin Center can help, Brito says: "P olicy makers hear about these negative aspects, whether its ransoms, or drug sales, or the like, and they will often contact law enforcement and say, 'What's up with this?' This is a challenge just like all new technologies have been, from email to pagers, but we think that we can get a handle on this." To that end, Coin Center teamed with the Chamber of Digital Commerce in October to help create The Blockchain Alliance, a safe-space private forum in which law enforcement groups like the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice can pose questions to bitcoin startup executives and policy pundits. Think of the alliance like a Justice League for bitcoin. But it is unclear how frequently the forum is being used, since the media isn't allowed in. Last year, New York became the first state to release its own regulatory framework specifically devoted to digital currency businesses. Called the BitLicense, it was met with so much opposition from the bitcoin community that a slew of companies packed up and left New York, cutting off service to customers in the state. Other companies happily applied for a license, but bemoaned the high cost. Coin Center makes its stance on legislation clear. "If you look back, [former New York Department of Financial Services superintent] Ben Lawsky said he didn't want to interfere with innovation or hurt business. Ultimately, the BitLicense that we got did not succeed at that. It is not a good model for other states to follow," he says. " I think the only solution is a light touch approach. If you go heavy-handed, as a regulator, youll do two things: not meet your goals, typically, becasuse youll make it so difficult that people cant even comply with it, and not get the visibility that you want as a regulator." Those in the bitcoin business, of course, like that argument quite a lot. Marc Andreessen has been Coin Center's biggest donor since the beginning, giving the lion's share of help. But with Silbert flexing his muscle, Coin Center's role in advocating for digital currency will strengthen. (Brito says donors "can give input," but not dictate what Coin Center does.) Coin Center has received $2 million in donations to date, and it now plans to seek $1 million every year. It won't have much trouble getting it. -- Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Read more: Bitcoin industry consolidates: Why Kraken bought Coinsetter Bitcoin's biggest investor bought its biggest news site Here's a sign that PayPal is embracing Bitcoin Fantex, the 'athlete stock exchange,' signs first golfer || Bitcoin industry consolidates: Why Kraken bought Coinsetter: For the past two years, the most popular type of new bitcoin company has been exchanges, where investors can buy and trade bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Now two exchanges are already rolling up, in the first major bitcoin industry acquisition of 2016. Kraken, which is based in San Francisco but sees most of its trading activity in Euros, has bought Coinsetter, a smaller New York-based exchange, for an undisclosed amount. Coinsetter will shut down on Jan. 26 and its customers will be converted to Kraken. According to data from TradeBlock, the average daily transaction volume on Kraken last year was around $1.3 million. The deal comes amid a price collapse and high negativity around bitcoin's future. Mike Hearn, a prominent bitcoin developer, wrote a post on Medium last week announcing his opinion that the bitcoin "experiment" has failed. "I will no longer be taking part in bitcoin development and have sold all my coins," he wrote. "The network is on the brink of technical collapse. The mechanisms that should have prevented this outcome have broken down, and as a result theres no longer much reason to think Bitcoin can actually be better than the existing financial system." The core of Hearn's argument is that the speed of transactions has slown; a contentious issue in the bitcoin community right now is whether and when to raise the size limit on "blocks," the term for a bundle of bitcoin transactions. Every single transaction is recorded and processed as part of a block on the bitcoin blockchain, a public, decentralized ledger. If this all sounds like a foreign language to you, don't worry: All you need to understand is that the bad optics of a prominent bitcoin flag-waver leaving the industry in a huff was enough to send the price plummeting. After Hearn posted his piece on Jan. 14, the price of the digital currency fell from $430 down to a low of $358 two days later. It now hovers around $380, according to Winkdex. Story continues Viewed in this context, consolidation in the industry may look troubling. But Coinsetter CEO Jaron Lukasiewicz isn't concerned. "Im bullish on bitcoin right now and believe well see the price hit four-digits again," he tells Yahoo Finance. Perhaps that's easy for him to say: Coinsetter will shut down, and Lukasiewicz is moving on, likely following Hearn to the exit. ("For my next venture I am focused on starting or leading a team whose products are improving society... Im not tied to any particular industry beyond that," he says.) The sale comes less than a year after Coinsetter made its own acquisition of the Canadian-based bitcoin exchange Cavirtexa deal that likely helped make Coinsetter an acquisition target itself. Benefiting from volatility Kraken CEO Jesse Powell is less starry-eyed about the industry right now. "I think the market has not grown as fast as everyone anticipated," he says. "And the price has gone in the opposite direction of what people hoped. I think well continue to see market consolidation. When the price is going up, new people are coming in, more media is covering it, its good news all around. When the price is going down, the public perception is bad, and everyone says bitcoin is crashing. The price is important in that aspect." For a long time, many bitcoin believers insisted that the price isn't important. As long as it is relatively stable, they reasoned, startups can keep innovating and building useful applications on top of the blockchain. But for bitcoin exchanges, price matters: Most make their money from transaction fees, so they do best when theres either a lot of volatility, or the price is high. When the price is stable and low, exchanges suffer. Leaving New York Kraken, founded in 2011, is like a foreign exchange for digital currencies. Its customers are mostly professional traders executing margin trades and other advanced orders. It is not a site where beginners would go to casually dip a toe into the bitcoin market. Coinsetter, founded in 2012, offers Kraken the chance to instantly expand its customer base in Canada (from Cavirtex) and the U.S. Except in New York. Kraken was one of the companies to cut off service in the state last summer after the New York Department of Financial Services released the final version of the BitLicense, a regulatory framework for digital currency companies in New York that holds customers' funds. Many bitcoin entrepreneurs complained the framework was too strict and limiting, so rather than play ball, they left. Coinsetter didn't leave New York. But under new management, it will now. "Were going to shut down New York again right after the acquisition," says Powell. "So the Coinsetter New York clients will be out of an exchange there, unfortunately. Coinsetter did put in a BitLicense application, but when you have a change of control, the application is void, so we wont be serving New York and we have no plans to apply for a BitLicense in the future." In a sense, Powell is simply sticking to his guns, just like Hearnexcept that the latter believes bitcoin has already failed, while the former believes it risks failure if there is over-regulation. Indeed, apart from the debate over block size, the industry's bigger battle will be over regulation. Many in the business are anxiously waiting to see whether other states will follow New York's lead and create their own form of a BitLicense. And while some companies stayed in New York and applied for a BitLicense (at high cost: Lukasiewicz says Coinsetter spent $50,000 to apply for one), others stayed in New York but did not apply, and continue to operate in uncertainty. That concerns Powell. "Theres still not really regulatory clarity, and the banks still arent getting on board. Theyre all about the blockchain these days, but theyre still not giving bitcoin exchanges bank accounts. So there are huge challenges with getting new exchanges started." He's right about the blockchain being a buzzword for big financial institutions: Everyone from JPMorgan ( JPM ) to the Nasdaq have talked up their interest in the blockchain while distancing themselves from the cryptocurrency that fuels it. For now, Kraken gets bigger. It can compete more with the leading exchanges like BitInstant, Bitstamp, Coinbase and itBit, as well as brand new exchange platforms launched last year, including Abra, Align Commerce, and Gemini, an exchange launched by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, of Facebook fame. "The issue for everybody in bitcoin right now," Powell says, "is if you started out a few years ago, say, in 2011, you thought that five years from now, its going to be flying cars, bitcoin everywhere, fiat currency will cease to exist. Clearly that didnt happen, and bitcoin isnt $10,000 a coin. I think a lot of companies created a structure that depended on a high price of bitcoin. When the price went from $1,000 to $200, they could no longer afford to finance their operation." If the price drops further, expect to see more consolidation. And with so many different exchanges out there, it's inevitable more will roll up. -- Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Read more: Here's a sign that PayPal is embracing Bitcoin Fantex, the 'athlete stock exchange,' signs first golfer Why Apple, Uber are betting on Super Bowl sponsorship || Blockchain Gets A Much-Needed Stamp Of Approval: Finance firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE: GS ) has become a pillar of the financial sector with traders looking to the bank's advice for everything from investing to saving. For that reason, Goldman Sachs Director Don Duet's positive remarks regarding blockchain could be a catalyst for the technology's success. Blockchain Potential Bitcoin has had a rough ride over the past year, as many of the coin's users suffered losses due to volatile prices and exchange collapses. However, the technology that bitcoin runs on – a ledger-like system called blockchain – has been gaining momentum. This is especially true in the financial sector, where banks say blockchain could improve their operations and make things like cross-border payments more streamlined. Related Link: Blockchain Moves Forward In The Financial Industry Using Blockchain Earlier this month, Duet commented on blockchain, saying that he sees the technology as both exciting and groundbreaking. He said blockchain systems have the potential to revolutionize banking operations and the technology could help banks share information and conduct asset transfers more easily and securely. A Single Truth Duet said blockchain provides banks with a "single truth," meaning that it creates one constant system that all banks can use. One of the problems with the banking sector as it currently stands, he said, is that every bank is operating with different systems and protocols. Because of this, banks have to spend a lot of time reconciling differences in order to conduct transactions. However, using blockchain could change all of that by providing banks with one single ledger updated with each transaction. A Bright Future While Duet's comments were general in nature, many saw his optimism regarding blockchain as a positive sign for the future. Banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS ) and Citigroup Inc (NYSE: C ) have been exploring how blockchain might fit into their operations in recent months, and Duet's remarks suggest the outlook is promising. See more from Benzinga Can Bank Stocks Recover? Banks' Earnings Tell A Tale Of Cost Cutting Is Bank Of America Ripe For A Turnaround? © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || 5 trades to watch after wild month: U.S. stocks rallied on Friday, capping a choppy, losing month for markets. With a cloudy outlook ahead, "Fast Money" traders outlined their best ideas moving forward. Major averages rose more than 2 percent each after the Bank of Japan adopted a negative interest rate policy. The promising day put an end to a rough month in which the S&P 500 (INDEX: .SPX) fell about 5 percent. Traders noted that the up-and-down sessions may continue. In the current environment, "you want to buy anything with a yield," said trader Brian Kelly. He believes the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NYSE Arca: TLT) has room to climb if investors seek safer bets. Demand for the U.S. 10-year Treasury note (U.S.: US10Y) has already sent its yield 15 percent lower this year, and it lingered near 1.9 percent on Friday. Trader Dan Nathan also stressed that yield is crucial currently. He previously had long trades in Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (NYSE Arca: XLU) , which he sold after the prices of both rose this year. The Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (NYSE Arca: GDX) has also beaten markets this year, rising 3.6 percent. In that period, the price of gold futures has climbed more than 5 percent. "Something's going on with gold miners to the upside," trader Guy Adami said. Trader Tim Seymour would sell emerging market stocks on strength. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSE Arca: EEM) rose more than 3 percent Friday, but Seymour sees "major structural problems" in emerging economies and said he would sell out of the fund. Disclosures: Tim Seymour Tim Seymour is long AAPL, BAC, DO, FCX, INTC, IWM, NKE, T, XOM. Tim's firm is long BABA, BIDU, IWM, PEP, SAVE, SBUX, VALE, WMT. Dan Nathan Dan is long WMT Feb put spread, long PFE buy-write, long TWTR, long TLT Apr risk reversal, long XLP put spread. Brian Kelly Brian Kelly is long BBRY, Bitcoin, GDX, GLD, SLV, TLT, US Dollar; he is short Aussie Dollar, British Pound, CS, DB, EWH, Hong Kong Dollar, UBS, SPY, Yuan. Story continues Guy Adami Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || CoinDesk's 2016 Report Suggests Bitcoin Isn't Dead Yet: While much of the press about bitcoin has been relatively negative over the past year,CoinDesk's "State of Bitcoin and Blockchain 2016" report shows that the cryptocurrency may not be as beaten down as many believed. The report, published on January 28, showed that despite a negative image in the media, bitcoin was gaining new users and the technology has a lot of potential in the coming year.
New Users
While the majority of the public remains cautious about using bitcoin, the cryptocurrency has seen a marked increase in users. The number of bitcoin wallets created over the past year has doubled, and daily bitcoin transactions have risen by 50 percent. The figures don't suggest that the cryptocurrency is going to reach widespread adoption imminently, but they are a promising sign that the currency is making slow and steady progress.
Related Link:New Study Shows Bitcoin Has A Long Way To Go
Mining Pools Consolidate
CoinDesk's report also showed that bitcoin miners had begun to consolidate, leaving only a few pools to do the majority of the processing to uncover new bitcoins. This development has been troublesome to some bitcoin supporters who say that the cryptocurrency's decentralized nature is threatened by consolidation in the mining industry as it puts the power into large firms' hands.
Blockchain Troubles Ahead
As bitcoin is growing in popularity, there has been a debate among supporters as to how to move forward with the growing number of transactions. Blockchain can only process between three and seven transactions per second, something that will need to change if the currency is ever to reach widespread adoption.
However, the bitcoin community has struggled with how to solve this problem with some calling for increased block sizes and others saying it would be better to optimize the coin itself. In any case, many expect 2016 to be a big year in which the two sides come to a final recommendation that the entire industry can abide by.
Image Credit:Public Domain
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© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Soda and cigarettes? Momentum trades: Amid a wild year for stocks, "Fast Money" traders debated the merits of two names that have ticked higher despite volatility.
Shares of Philip Morris International(NYSE: PM)and Coca-Cola(NYSE: KO)have climbed more than 3 and 1 percent on the year, respectively. The gains compare to a loss of nearly 6 percent for the S&P 500(INDEX: .SPX).
Investors are "starved for yield" during a down year, and Coke may look appealing to some because of its dividend, trader Tim Seymour argued. He noted that awider strategy changemay also drive momentum for the stock.
Coke shares ticked slightly higher Wednesday, closing at $43.49. If the stock breaks above $45 per share, it would make a stronger trade than at its current level, contended trader Guy Adami.
For investors seeking dividends, Philip Morris also offers appeal, argued trader Brian Kelly. He said the company's dividend appears "safe," and the stock "held up very well" amid a downturn this year.
Disclosures:
Tim Seymour
Tim Seymour is long AAPL, BAC, DO, F, FCX, GM, GOOGL, INTC, JCP, NKE, SINA, T, TWTR, VZ, XOM. Tim's firm is long BABA, BIDU, KO, MCD, PEP, SAVE, SBUX, VALE, WMT,YHOO, short HYG, IWM.
Brian Kelly
Brian Kelly is long BBRY, Bitcoin, GLD, SLV, TLT, US Dollar; he is short Aussie Dollar, British Pound, CS, DB, Euro, EWH, Hong Kong Dollar, UBS, SPY, Yuan.
Karen Finerman
Karen is long BAC, C, FL, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, LYV, KORS, M, SEDG, SPY calls, URI, she is short SPY. Her firm is long ANTM, AAPL, BAC, C, C calls, FINL, FL, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, KORS, LYV, M, MOH, NRF, PLCE, URI, her firm is short IWM, MDY, SPY. Karen Finerman is on the board of GrafTech International.
Guy Adami
Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck.
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• Personal Finance || University of California Berkeley notifies 80,000 of cyber attack: SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Officials at the University of California Berkeley said on Friday that they were alerting 80,000 people, including current and former students, faculty and vendors of a cyber attack on a system that stores social security and bank account numbers. The news comes just more than a week after a Southern California hospital paid hackers $17,000 in the digital currency Bitcoin to regain control of their computer systems after a so-called "ransomware" attack. The San Francisco Bay Area university said there was no evidence that attackers actually took any personal information, but that it was still alerting the 80,000 individuals to be on the lookout for misuse of their information. The school said a hacker or hackers gained access to its financial management software in late December due to a security flaw present when the system is updating. Officials have notified law enforcement, including the FBI, and hired a private computer investigation company. The university said among the potentially affected are 57,000 current and former students; about 18,800 former and current employees; and 10,300 vendors who work with the school. Those figures come out to about half of the school's current students and two-thirds of its active employees. Large, high-profile organizations and businesses routinely come under cyber attack, and the school said it frequently identifies similar hacking attempts. "The security and privacy of the personal information provided to the university is of great importance to us," Paul Rivers, UC Berkeley's chief information security officer, said in a statement. "We regret that this occurred and have taken additional measures to better safeguard that information." The school said it was providing credit protection service free of charge to those potentially impacted. (Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Sharon Bernstein)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#RDD / #BTC on the exchanges:
Cryptsy: Error
Bittrex: 0.00000006
Average $2.6E-5 per #reddcoin
09:00:00 || Could bitcoin allow for strangers to split the cost of subscription to a website/web service? http://ift.tt/1QbRNm5 || Liquid Bitcoin || BTCTurk 1196.3 TL BTCe 395.16 $ CampBx $ BitStamp 393.48 $ Cavirtex $ CEXIO 397.00 $ Bitcoin.de 362.72 € #Bitcoin #btc || Why the Banks See Bitcoin as their Number One Enemy. http://www.bitcointalkradio.com/why-the-banks-see-bitcoin-as-their-number-one-enemy/ … #bitcoin #competition #bankingpic.twitter.com/hutpnOrhyi || Liquid Bitcoin || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges:
Cryptsy: Error
Bittrex: 0.00000006
Average $2.6E-5 per #reddcoin
05:00:00 || Lightning’s Balancing Act: Challenges Face Bitcoin’s Scalability Savior » http://buff.ly/21squwm #bitcoin || Liquid Bitcoin || Bitstamp: $375.00/BTC - last trade of USD/BTC at https://www.bitstamp.net/ (high: 388.98, low: 371.35) #bitcoin #BTC http://bitcoinautotrade.com
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Trend: no change || Prices: 420.62, 409.55, 410.44, 413.76, 413.31, 418.09, 418.04, 416.39, 417.18, 417.95
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2017-04-03]
BTC Price: 1143.81, BTC RSI: 56.44
Gold Price: 1250.80, Gold RSI: 61.16
Oil Price: 50.24, Oil RSI: 51.74
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Digital Currencies Went Crazy in the Wake of the SEC’s Bitcoin Ruling: Something strange is happening in the world of digital currency. When the Securities and Exchange Commission passed aharsh judgmentlast week on bitcoin, many expected the entire asset class to crumble.
Instead, the opposite has happened.
The SEC ruling, if you missed it, came down on Friday afternoon. The long-awaited decision, citing the possibility of fraud and market manipulation, rejected a proposal to create an exchange traded fund (ETF) for bitcoin, and threw cold water onhopes institutional investors would use the ETFto stock up on the currency. The market quicklypunished bitcoin, driving its price down to around $1,050--a more than 15% drop from its highs earlier that day.
But when it came to other digital currencies, investors didn’t bail on them. They started gobbling them up. These other currencies such as Ethereum and Ripple (there are dozens) aren’t as famous as bitcoin but have been around for a while, and some people treat them as a proxy asset for bitcoin. Since the SEC decision, they’ve all shot up, some of them dramatically.
Here is a chart that shows how the prices have changed. The data is compiled from each currency’s lowest price on March 10 (the day of the ruling) through Tuesday morning:
As you can see,Ethereumhas made spectacular gains. The currency, which is tied to a popular new form of blockchain technology, is up around 60%. Dash, a less well-known bitcoin rival, is up about 59%.
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The other surprise in chart is how nicely bitcoin has recovered from the SEC’s punch last Friday. Here’s a closer look, courtesy ofCoindesk, of how its price has moved since Friday:
As you can see, bitcoin is nudging back towards its near all-time high of $1,300, which came amid a frenzy of speculation that a positive SEC ruling would send the price soaring.
For now, there is no clear explanation of why bitcoin recovered so quickly, or why the so-called “alt-currencies” like Dash initially rose when bitcoin fell. Some commentators have suggested the recent boom comes from new digital currency converts who learned about the assets as a result of the publicity surrounding the ETF decision. Others say the recent prices simply reflect the fact that digital currencies are a far more sturdy asset than they were two years ago, and their values can no longer be derailed by a bit of negative news.
It’s also worth noting the SEC jolt from last week has brought about a change in the makeup of the overall market cap for digital currency. Note below how bitcoin’s share of the pie has dropped about 10% since the news:
The upshot of this is that while bitcoin still clearly dominates the digital currency world, other assets--particularly Ethereum--may now be emerging as more than also-rans.
See original article on Fortune.com
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• Here's Why National Napping Day Is Actually a Serious Matter || How Hedge Funds Use ETFs: Eric Balchunas is a senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, where he has more than a decade of experience working with ETF data, designing new functions and writing ETF research for the Bloomberg terminal. He also writes articles, feature stories and blog posts on ETFs for Bloomberg.com and appears each week on Bloomberg TV and Radio to discuss ETFs. ETF.com recently caught up with him to discuss how hedge funds are using ETFs.
ETF.com: You've recently talked a lot about how hedge funds use ETFs, so I wanted to pick your brain about that. I found it interesting that you said hedge funds have more short positions than long positions in ETFs. Why is that?
Eric Balchunas:Correct; they have $104 billion in short positions compared to $30 billion in long positions.A lot of people think hedge funds are out there trying to swing for the fences and return 100% every year. But most of them are looking to isolate certain things in the market, whether they're using merger arbitrage, event-driven or long/short strategies. To do the short side of those trades, they’ll use ETFs so they can cancel out the beta of the market and isolate their positions.
Yes, some of the shorting is just straight-up betting against the market. But most of it is this use of the ETFs as a hedging vehicle. It's interesting that the $104 billion worth of short positions is over half of the total short interest in ETFs, so it’s significant.
ETF.com: Which ETFs are they shorting?
Balchunas:Goldman Sachs lists the short positions, and it's exactly what you would think. It's the old-school products like the Sector SPDRs, thePowerShares QQQ Trust (QQQ)and theSPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)―all the most liquid ones. They've also started to use theiShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (HYG)now that it's gotten more liquid.
None of the names on the most-shorted list are surprising, but I was surprised a little by the funds that they are long.
ETF.com: Which ones were those?
Balchunas:VWO is a good example. That's the ETF with the most net long among hedge funds.
ETF.com: You noted Vanguard is the only issuer where hedge funds are net long. That's an interesting pairing, because Vanguard ETFs have a reputation for being buy-and-hold types of investments, while hedge funds have a reputation for being relatively active.
Balchunas:That number is really fascinating to me and it speaks to, in my opinion, Vanguard's wide appeal. Who doesn't like cheap? That's just so universal.
Also, Vanguard may be the only one net-long, because iShares and SPDR have so many really liquid products that hedge funds love to short. On the other hand, Vanguard's products are usually the second- or third-most-liquid in a category, but rarely are they the first.
It says a little bit about the cost-consciousness of hedge funds, but it also says a little bit about how Vanguard still has yet to really break through that liquidity barrier where they become the most liquid of a category.They're getting there. Vanguard ETFs have tripled in daily volume over the last five years. This is a big development, because if Vanguard starts to get that mass liquidity, it gets bigger fish attracted to it, and that just beefs up the liquidity exponentially.
ETF.com: What ETF is owned by the largest number of hedge funds?
Balchunas:SPY; it's owned by 154 hedge funds. TheSPDR Gold Trust (GLD)is No. 2, at 112. GLD is punching above its weight, because it's not the second-biggest in assets or volume. It speaks to the convenience factor of ETFs. You can go get physical gold, but you have to store it and insure it. It's kind of a pain. The ETF comes along, and even a hedge fund would say that it's just easier and cheaper to own GLD.
ETF.com: We talk about hedge funds as a monolith, but they each have very different investment philosophies. Some have claimed that ETFs are dangerous and they wouldn't touch them. Can you tell us about that?
Balchunas:They usually have two complaints. One is on the high-yield debt stuff. They ask, "How can something be liquid when the holdings aren't as liquid?" The other complaint is on the general rise of passive investing creating inefficiencies.
But on the flip side, as we discussed, hundreds of hedge funds use the products, including HYG. Carl Icahn, who's the king of the hedge funds, says, and I'll quote him here, "There is no liquidity"—this is about HYG—"That's what's going to blow this up."
Now, you have 50 hedge funds that hold HYG. So either they don't listen to him, or he has another motivation. Bill Ackman, another big hedge fund manager, also expressed some complaints about ETFs, but that was after a rough year for his hedge fund. You might want to factor that in.
Either way, the hedge fund relationship with ETFs is a layered one. They use them in certain cases; they complain about them in other cases. The term I use is "frenemies."
ETF.com: Do some of them feel threatened by ETFs, with all the alternative ETFs and smart-beta ETFs coming out?Balchunas:I don't think they feel threatened. Liquid alts—which are hedge fund strategies in passive structures like ETFs—just haven't done much. There are two reasons for this.
One is that when you're doing sophisticated strategies that involve shorting―especially since shorting can be costly, and you have to time it―putting that into a rules-based index might not be the most efficient way to exercise that.
And No. 2 is, when you buy a hedge fund, you're kind of buying the brain of the manager. Where smart beta has really made a threat to active is in the factors. CalPERS is a high-profile example: They fired their hedge funds and employed a factor strategy in-house. That didn't involve ETFs, but it tells you it's possible you could swap out some hedge fund strategies and use factor ETFs in their place.
Smart beta assets are $500 billion. That's real money. So if anything was a threat to hedge funds, it would probably be in the factor area―not the liquid alts. I just don't see the merger arb ETF taking any assets from a real merger arb hedge fund.
Contact Sumit Roy atsroy@etf.com.
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Permalink| © Copyright 2017ETF.com.All rights reserved || Bitcoin hits record high above $1,200 on talk of ETF approval: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Digital currency bitcoin jumped to a record high above $1,200 on Friday, as investors speculated the first bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) to be issued in the United States is set to receive regulatory approval. Traditional financial players have largely shunned the web-based "crytpocurrency", viewing it as too volatile, complicated and risky, and doubting its inherent value. But bitcoin, invented in 2008, performed better than any other currency in every year since 2010 apart from 2014, when it was the worst-performing currency, and has added almost a quarter to its value so far this year. It soared to as high as $1,200 per bitcoin in early Asian trading on Europe's Bitstamp exchange, before easing to about $1,190. That put the total value of all bitcoins in circulation -- or the digital currency's "market cap", as it is known -- at close to $20 billion, around the same size as Iceland's economy. Some analysts say regulatory approval of a bitcoin ETF would make the currency relatively attractive to the often more cautious institutional investor market. But despite potentially high returns, low correlations with other currencies and assets, falling volatility and increasing liquidity, there is scant evidence so far that most major players are considering investing in the digital currency. "Bitcoin is just not liquid enough for us to even think about," said Paul Lambert, fund manager and head of currency investment at Insight, in London. "We manage billions and billions of dollars – we'd need to be able to go into that market and trade in hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, and my sense is it's not like that." Three ETFs that track the value of bitcoin have been filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for approval. The SEC will decide by March 11 whether to approve one filed almost four years ago by investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. If approved, it would be the first bitcoin ETF issued and regulated by a U.S. entity. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly, graphic by Nigl Stephenson) || Logitech Is Ready To Show It Is Bigger Than Just Computer Mouses: Logitech International SA (USA) (NASDAQ: LOGI ) is ready to prove to the world it is more than just a maker of computer mouses. Moving Beyond The Mouse According to a Bloomberg report , Logitech's stock has quadrupled over the past four years as the company maintained its reputation of providing quality products and accessories for PC and other technologies. But now under the direction of its CEO Bracken Darrell, the company is ready to take itself to the next level. Darrell took over Logitech four years ago, and his goal is to establish the company as a technology company that can tie together TVs, appliances and voice controlled devices. The executive believes his company is better positioned to win in the growing market over the dominant names in tech like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL ) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN ). He told Bloomberg that these tech giants don't want to be "in every little puddle around their operating systems," which leaves a void in the market for a company Logitech. See Also: Logitech Breaks Company Record With Nine iF DESIGN AWARDS in 2017 Logitech's Uphill Battle Logitech does face an uphill battle, as it devotes less than $150 million annually to fund its research and development. By comparison, Amazon's R&D spend totals $16 billion. Nevertheless, Darrell wants to leverage the profits Logitech earns from the PC mouse and keyboard business to finance an entry into areas such as voice-controlled devices, video collaboration and augmented-reality games. Investors may get a sneak peak at the company's plans in April when management hosts a meeting with investors on Tuesday. Image Credit: By Coolcaesar at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons See more from Benzinga One Of The Top Ranked Financial Advisers Thinks Stocks Can Rise 50% - But Don't Call It A 'Trump Rally' For The First Time Ever, One Bitcoin Is More Valuable Than One Ounce Of Gold Snap's Unproven Monetization Potential Doesn't Deserve To Trade At A Premium To Facebook © 2017 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || Bitcoin is taking off: Bitcoinis up 2.1% at $1,062 a coin, as of 8:02 a.m. ET, extending its winning streak to a second day. The two-day advance has tacked on 11% as traders ready for the upcoming US Securities and Exchange Commision ruling on another bitcoin ETF, on or before March 30.
TheSolidX Bitcoin ETF is expected to suffer the same fate as theWiklevoss twins' bitcoin ETF, which was rejected by the SEC on March 10. At the time, the SEC said it was rejecting the Winkleovss ETF becauseit did not "find the proposal to be consistent with Section 6(b)(5) of the Exchange Act, which requires, among other things, that the rules of a national securities exchange be designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices and to protect investors and the public interest."
Bitcoin has had a volaile 2017. It gained 20% in the first week of the year before crashing 35% on news that China was going to crack down on trading. The cryptocurrency then rallied another 75%, putting in an all-time high of $1,327.19 the morning of the SEC's ruling on the Winklevoss ETF before tumbling to a low of $939 on Monday amid fears developers were threatening to set up a "hard fork" that would split bitcoin in two.
Bitcoin has been the top-performing currency every year since 2010, except for 2014. It gained 120% last year.
(Investing.com)
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• Bitcoin is roaring back || Now I Get It: Bitcoin: Man, if anything needs the “now I get it” treatment, it’sBitcoin. You hear about it all the time infinancial and technical circles—but most people really don’t grasp it.
Bitcoin is an alternative kind of currency. It’s entirely digital—there’s no paper money, there’s no coins, nothing physical, not even a plastic card for your wallet. Your bitcoins are stored on your computer or your phone. If your hard drive crashes without a backup, you lose your bitcoins.
This arrangement has some stunning advantages over traditional currency or credit cards:
• Between buyer and seller, there’s no bank or credit-card company involved, no middleman who can charge fees. The entire Bitcoin banking system is a global peer-to-peer network, running Bitcoin software.
• When you buy something from someone in another country, there’s no waiting to convert currencies—and again, no fees.
• All transactions areessentiallyanonymous, which is super convenient if you’re a drug dealer or arms dealer.
There’s a whole lot of really cool, really complicated math involved in Bitcoin, designed to keep it secure and to prevent Bitcoin inflation.
For example: the complete record of all Bitcoin transactions—a massive digital ledger called theblockchain—is stored on all Bitcoin users’ computers, rather than being held by a central authority.
Bitcoin was born in 2009, the proposal of an anonymously written white paper. There’s no government to decide when to print new money in this case, so new bitcoins are “mined”—created—through a complex scheme you can read abouthere. In essence, anyone can create new bitcoins, but don’t think you’ll get rich that way. The job requires massive, expensive, high-horsepower computers that must slog through gigantic calculations to “mine” new money. The complexity of the math involved is adjusted so that it’s just barely profitable to mine bitcoins, and so that only a few bitcoins come into existence every 10 minutes.
This production will stop when there are 21 million bitcoins on earth, which is supposed tohappen around 2140. After that—that’s all the bitcoins there’ll ever be.
So how do you get bitcoins? Same way you get euros or yen or pesos: You buy it with traditional currency like dollars. You can use online exchanges likeBitstampandCoinbase. At this writing, one bitcoin costs about $1,078.
When you get a Bitcoin address—something like an email address—you also get a complex password known as a private key, which you need to access your stash.
At that point, you can transfer money to other people by sending it to their Bitcoin addresses.
You can also pay for goods and services at some merchants, like Subway and Xbox; they’re delighted when that happens, because they don’t lose 3% of the transaction in credit-card fees. But in the big picture,the list of places that accept Bitcoinis fairly small. Andyoudon’t get any particular benefit by paying for something this way.
The good news is that since Bitcoin’s creation eight years ago, its value has gone up by quite a bit—from well under a penny to over $1,000 per bitcoin today.
The bad news is that its value is incredibly volatile. Remember this past January,when it dropped by a fifthin a day? Good times.
So: Bitcoin is fascinating, but it’s not very useful, at least not to most people. Some people love it, for sure, like investors with a taste for risk, tech-savvy early adopters, technically-minded libertarians, and criminals.
But keep in mind that there are lots of exciting ways to lose all your bitcoins. Like if your hard drive crashes without a backup, and you lose your private key. Or if you get a Bitcoin virus, of whichthere are now many. Or if your Bitcoin exchange goes out of business, which has happened plenty; in fact,18 of the first 40 exchanges had gone underas of 2013, taking all their clients’ money with them.
Remember, this whole thing is largely unregulated. If you buy something with a credit card and you get ripped off, you can call an 800 number and the credit-card company will get your money back. But if you get ripped off with a Bitcoin transaction … sorry! You voted for no middleman, remember?
In the meantime, for most people, Bitcoin is a fascinating development that’s a worthy topic of study—just not for ownership.
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David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the web, he’sdavidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s@pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You canread all his articles here, or you can sign up toget his columns by email. || This New Tactic Might Finally Lure Big Investors to Bitcoin: Bitcoin believers argue the famous crypto-currency would be more stable--and more valuable--if only hedge funds and other institutional investors would get with the program and buy some. But so far, many big fish have stayed away--in part because bitcoin doesn’t provide the financial products and regulatory compliance they require. This could start to change, however, as more companies shape their services for traditional investors that want exposure to bitcoin and other digital currencies. The latest examples comes from San Francisco-based Coinbase, whose GDAX exchange--a trading platform backed by the New York Stock Exchange, venture capitalists like Andreesen Horowitz and others--announced on Monday the launch of margin trading . The new feature, which lets investors leverage their bets on bitcoin by a factor of three, is significant because the ability to trade on margin is widely used when trading traditional assets, and it is something institutional investors expect, according to Coinbase vice president Adam White. A few other U.S. digital currency exchanges, including Kraken, offer margin trading. But White, in an interview with Fortune , says Coinbase’s GDAX (for Global Digital Asset Exchange) is different because it has the state licenses that asset managers want to see before they lay down clients’ money. GDAX expects its combination of margin trading and regulatory compliance will attract hedge funds, high net worth individuals, and market makers like Cantor Fitzgerald. Down the road, White thinks digital currency will also attract investment bank “whales,” and that the likes of and will set up dedicated trading desks for bitcoin like the ones they have for oil, gold, and other types of foreign exchange. “It will be hard to get the first big one. It’s a matter of waiting for the first mover, then the fast followers will come,” White says. Here’s a GIF showing the trading platform in action: Bring on the short sellers? White also says GDAX’s new margin offering is significant because it provides an easy way to short bitcoin, meaning funds will have a way to hedge their positions. (The ability to short sell arises because GDAX supplies the margin purchase in bitcoin, which the investor can immediately sell for dollars and then later repay at a profit if the price drops). Story continues It’s unclear, though, if this will be enough to draw in a new class of traditional investors at a time when bitcoin virtual currencies are still considered by many as exotic assets with a reputation for volatility and scams. The SEC this month dealt a blow to the digital currency industry when it flatly refused to approve a new ETF, which would have let investors buy and sell bitcoin like ordinary shares. Get Data Sheet , Fortune's technology newsletter White, though, downplays the impact decision and points to a surge in trading volumes since the ruling came out on March 13. He says the average worldwide trading volume has jumped 33% across the world, and that GDAX’s daily average has jumped 67%. “I believe the SEC’s decision will increase demand for GDAX and our margin trading feature precisely because the SEC has highlighted the risk of offshore, risky exchanges. GDAX has established itself as a trusted, U.S. based exchange that operates within regulatory requirements and that is why our average daily trading volume has grown 2x relative to the rest of the industry,” White says. Despite his optimism, bitcoin also faces a series of fresh headwinds that include a major IRS investigation , tighter regulation in China, and a squabble among bitcoin developers that could create two versions of the currency. Meanwhile, the latest controversies over bitcoin have proved a boon to competing virtual currencies like Ethereum and Dash, whose share of the digital currency market cap has jumped in recent weeks. The bottom line is bitcoin and other virtual currencies are unlikely to lose their reputation anytime soon as an exciting but unpredictable investment. See original article on Fortune.com More from Fortune.com Why AMD Shares Jumped 7% Software Maker MuleSoft Shares Jump on Public Debut Why Stocks Are Better Than Leprechaun Gold on St. Patrick's Day Snap Inc. Shares Fell Below $20 for the First Time Twitter Will Showcase New Original Content and Streaming Video Soon || U.S. regulators reject Bitcoin ETF, digital currency plunges: By Trevor Hunnicutt and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday denied a request to list what would have been the first U.S. exchange-traded fund built to track bitcoin, the digital currency. Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been trying for more than three years to convince the SEC to let it bring the Bitcoin ETF to market. CBOE Holdings Inc's (CBOE.O) Bats exchange had applied to list the ETF. The digital currency's price plunged (BTC=BTSP), falling as much as 18 percent in trading immediately after the decision before rebounding slightly. It last traded down 7.8 percent to $1,098. Bitcoin had scaled to a record of nearly $1,300 this month, higher than the price of an ounce of gold, as investors speculated that an ETF holding the digital currency could woo more people into buying the asset. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world quickly and with relative anonymity, without the need for a central authority, such as a bank or government. Yet bitcoin presents a new set of risks to investors given its limited adoption, a number of massive cybersecurity breaches affecting bitcoin owners and the lack of consistent treatment of the assets by governments. "Based on the record before it, the Commission believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated," the SEC said in a statement. "The commission notes that bitcoin is still in the relatively early stages of its development and that, over time, regulated bitcoin-related markets of significant size may develop." The regulators have questions and concerns about how the funds would work and whether they could be priced and trade effectively, according to a financial industry source familiar with the SEC's thinking. "We began this journey almost four years ago, and are determined to see it through," said Tyler Winklevoss, CFO of Digital Asset Services LLC. "We agree with the SEC that regulation and oversight are important to the health of any marketplace and the safety of all investors." Story continues The Winklevoss twins are best known for their feud with Facebook Inc (FB.O) founder Mark Zuckerberg over whether he stole the idea for what became the world's most popular social networking website from them. The former Olympic rowers ultimately settled their legal dispute, which was dramatized in the 2010 film "The Social Network." Since then they have become major investors in the digital currency, which relies on "mining" computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles. The first to solve the puzzle and clear the transaction is rewarded with new bitcoins. Solutions to the puzzle come roughly every 10 minutes. Advocates of the currency and the technology it relies on to document transactions, blockchain, were dismayed by the ruling. "How do we develop well-capitalized and regulated markets in the U.S. and Europe if financial innovators aren't allowed to bring products to market that grow domestic demand for digital currencies like bitcoin?" asked Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, an advocacy group. Spencer Bogart, head of research at Blockchain Capital, said bitcoin's price could fall as much as 20 percent but that its long-term adoption will continue. A Bats spokeswoman said the exchange is reviewing the SEC's statement and would have no further comment. There are two other bitcoin ETF applications awaiting a verdict from the SEC. Grayscale Investments LLC's Bitcoin Investment Trust, backed by early bitcoin advocate Barry Silbert and his Digital Currency Group, filed an application last year. SolidX Partners Inc, a U.S. technology company that provides blockchain services, also filed its ETF application last year. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and John McCrank in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jennifer Ablan) || Bitcoin soars above $1,100: (A Bitcoin sign is seen in a window in Toronto.Reuters/Mark Blinch)
Bitcoin has broken out to its best levels since the beginning of the year as overnight buying has the cryptocurrency higher by 4% at $1,101.70 per coin.
Tuesday's advance marks bitcoin's eighth straight gain and has run action above the $1,100 mark for the first time since January 5. A move above $1,161.85 will have bitcoin trading at its best level since November 2013.
The eight-day winning streak comes amid investor speculation the Securities and Exchange Commission will approve at least one of thethree proposed bitcoin-focused exchange-traded fundsdespite analyst concerns that none will be approved.
Bitcoin has had a wild start to 2017.
It rallied more than 20% in the opening week of the year, propelled by speculative buying in China. It then proceeded to crash 35%, bottoming out below $800, amid concerns China was going to crackdown on trading.
After shrugging off concerns that Chinese exchanges were going to charge aflat fee of 0.2% per transaction, buyers re-emerged and ran bitcoin above $1,050 before two of China's largest exchanges said they wereblocking withdrawals.
(Markets Insider)
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• Trump doubles down on baffling Sweden claims || SEC denies a second application to list bitcoin product: By Trevor Hunnicutt NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday denied for the second time this month a request to bring to market a first-of-its-kind product tracking bitcoin, the digital currency. The SEC announced in a filing its decision denying Intercontinental Exchange Inc's NYSE Arca exchange the ability to list and trade the SolidX Bitcoin Trust, an exchange-traded product (ETP) that would trade like a stock and track the digital asset's price. Previously, the regulatory agency said it had concerns with a similar proposal by investors Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. "The Commission believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated," the SEC said in its filing, echoing language from its decision earlier this month on the application by CBOE Holdings Inc's Bats exchange to list The Bitcoin ETF proposed by the Winklevoss brothers. On Friday, Bats asked the SEC to review its decision not to allow that fund to trade. "We are reviewing the SEC's order and evaluating our next steps," said Daniel H. Gallancy, chief executive officer of SolidX Partners Inc, a U.S. technology company that provides blockchain services. NYSE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Bitcoin had scaled to a record of more than $1,300 this month, higher than the price of an ounce of gold, as investors speculated that an ETF holding the digital currency could woo more people into buying the asset. But after denial of the Winklevoss-proposed ETF, the digital currency's price plunged as much as 18 percent. It has rebounded partially since then and was at $1,041 on Tuesday, roughly unchanged from the previous day. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world quickly and with relative anonymity, without the need for a central authority, such as a bank or government. Yet bitcoin presents a new set of risks to investors given its limited adoption, a number of massive cybersecurity breaches affecting bitcoin owners and the lack of consistent treatment of the assets by governments. There is one remaining bitcoin ETP proposal awaiting a verdict from the SEC. Grayscale Investments LLC's Bitcoin Investment Trust, backed by early bitcoin advocate Barry Silbert and his Digital Currency Group, filed an application last year. (Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
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https://www.Coinmama.com/?ref=Pesamob pic.twitter.com/S6PCDESYUv || One Bitcoin now worth $1066.12@bitstamp. High $1081.00. Low $1035.00. Market Cap $17.320 Billion #bitcoin || Is Bitcoin Forming a New Price Floor at $1,000? - Are bitcoin prices forming a new support floor as we speak? O... http://ow.ly/tcMH509BzEm || 1 BTC Price: BTC-e 1068.611 USD Bitstamp 1030.59 USD Coinbase 1030.75 USD #btc #bitcoin 2017-03-23 00:30 pic.twitter.com/UJob3CTstk || Is Bitcoin Forming a New Price Floor at $1,000? http://ift.tt/2lcBJXC #blockchain #bitcoin #fintech || Kanzlerin Merkels Rechtsbruch und das Bargeldverbot Thorsten Schulte im ...https://deutsch.rt.com/inland/46592-kanzlerin-merkels-rechtsbruch-und-bargeldverbot/ … || How Does BitCoin Work? https://youtu.be/LuA3xb-L8r8 via @YouTube
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Trend: up || Prices: 1133.25, 1124.78, 1182.68, 1176.90, 1175.95, 1187.87, 1187.13, 1205.01, 1200.37, 1169.28
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Who’s fueling the money race for Broward School Board? The top takeaways for the election: In the Broward School Board elections, a multimillionaire’s campaign chest is brimming with almost $122,000. An 18-year-old candidate — backed by an experienced consultant — has raised more than $19,000. And two School Board hopefuls promoting parental rights, an issue championed by conservatives across the country, have individually raised over $9,000 and $10,000. These are among the 21 candidates who are running to fill six School Board seats up for election this year. The candidates are spending anywhere from zero dollars to over $52,000 on their campaigns. Some candidates are mainly bankrolling themselves, pouring in up to $99,000 from their personal accounts. The campaign finance reports, reviewed by the South Florida Sun Sentinel, show who’s backing the candidates and where the money is going. Here’s what the records show. Conservatives draw support The contests for School Board have drawn bigger attention this year, as new state laws take effect, oriented around what students should and shouldn’t be taught in Florida’s schools. The School Board races are nonpartisan, meaning the party affiliations of candidates aren’t listed. Yet Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has endorsed some candidates in Florida who share his education agenda, including conservative policies on the discussion of sexual orientation and race in classrooms. The Republican Party of Broward County has endorsed three candidates for School Board: District 6 candidate Brenda Fam, District 7 candidate Merceydes Morassi, and District 8 candidate Mourice Hylton. Tom Powers, the group’s chairman, said they chose the candidates because they will reform the district to be more “responsive to the taxpayers and parents,” which he said isn’t just a “Republican interest, it is an outcry from the public.” “You’re seeing this across the country,” Powers said. “Parents are the ones that raise their children. Teachers are involved in the education of a child one year at a time. Parents are there from birth to forever, and they need to be consistent in that child’s life.” Story continues The open seats for the School Board represent Districts 1, 4, 5, 6, and 7, as well as District 8, an at-large seat that represents the entire county. For District 6, which includes Cooper City, Sunrise, Weston and Davie, candidate Brenda Fam has raised a little over $9,000. Her campaign donations include an in-kind donation of $600 for two tickets to a dinner hosted by the Republican Executive Committee in May. Fam, a registered Republican, says if elected, she’ll represent “parents and children” instead of any one party. Her campaign site mainly shares parental rights content, including articles that accuse Broward school district of indoctrinating students. In her most recent post, Fam criticized the school district for “withholding curriculum that promotes transgenderism to students.” Her campaign Instagram account follows Women for Trump Palm Beach County, the right-wing America First Policy Institute, and the Broward-based America First Patriots Club, which endorsed her. The Club aligns itself with Trump and DeSantis, and “welcomes all who oppose rising socialism, globalism and the annihilation of our culture and values,” according to its website. In an interview with the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, candidate Merceydes Morassi, a psychologist, also voiced unease over discussing gender identity in schools. Morassi has raised over $10,000 in her campaign for the District 7 seat, which includes the cities of Coconut Creek and Deerfield Beach. “I don’t think LGB has anything to do with T,” she said. She added, “For people in the psychology field, there is a close relationship between transgender and gender dysphoria, which is a psychiatric illness. I don’t think we should be normalizing and discussing psychiatric illnesses with kids unless we’re going to talk about all of them.” Morassi, who is hoping to unseat incumbent Nora Rupert, has received the endorsement of the Libertarian Party of Broward County and donations from members of the Broward chapter of Moms for Liberty, a parental rights group that has fought to remove certain books from public schools. Their two pages follow each other on Instagram. Moms for Liberty is dedicated to fighting “short-sighted and destructive policies directly hurt children and families” and trying to “unite parents who are ready to fight those that stand in the way of liberty,” according to its website. On July 15, DeSantis was the keynote speaker for a Moms for Liberty event in Tampa. In this election cycle, Morassi has received separate $25 donations from two board members in the Broward chapter of Moms for Liberty. This 18-year-old candidate has Democratic ties and loftier goals Raymond Adderly III, the youngest candidate at 18, is running for the District 8 at-large seat against incumbent Donna Korn, Allen Zeman, and Mourice Hylton. Adderly has raised over $19,000, and spent nearly $18,000 of it. The vast majority of that money — totaling over $9,000 — is going toward public relations and campaign consulting. Adderly has spent several thousand dollars on Progress for Florida LLC, a consulting firm whose founder, Millie Raphael, helped create a “path to victory” for him, Adderly said. The firm describes itself as “working to elect progressive Democrats in Florida at every rung of the ladder.” Adderly has also allocated $500 most months, totaling over $6,000, to Grossman PR, where he receives PR help from co-president Lou Grossman, a former lead adviser on senior outreach for Charlie Crist’s gubernatorial campaign. The two met while campaigning for Joe Biden during the 2020 election, Grossman said. He described Adderly as “the future of our party.” Adderly acknowledged that he has his sights set beyond the School Board. He said he hopes to make it to the statehouse, to Congress, or even governorship. “My boyhood dream was to be President of the United States,” he said. “It’s not a boyhood dream anymore. I definitely think it’s a feasible thing.” A stake in crypto In a sign of the times, cryptocurrency has popped up in candidates’ personal investments. In District 1, which includes Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, two candidates have disclosed a major stake in cryptocurrency, a market that has crashed in recent months. Both have used personal money on their own campaigns. District 1 candidate Paul Wiggins, a pastor, reported that he has placed all $10,000 of his investments in HyperVerse, a new cryptocurrency that doubles as a virtual reality, according to his qualifying documents. When asked why he was invested in the currency, Wiggins declined to comment, saying, “I’m not comfortable answering that.” Wiggins isn’t the only candidate with a fondness for the technology. One of his opponents, Rodney “Rod” Velez, a property manager, has over $203,000 invested in cryptocurrency, according his filings, which he said include Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Shiba Inu. Other investments are in properties, he said, as the stock market “is too crazy right now.” Former sheriff supports a District 6 candidate Opposing Brenda Fam and John Christopher Canter for the District 6 seat, Steven Julian has raised over $53,000 so far, now the most of the three candidates remaining in the race after Merick Lewin dropped out earlier this month. Julian, who works in property management, doesn’t have Fam’s conservative backing, but he has received support from a key player in Broward politics: Ken Jenne, a former Florida senator and Broward sheriff, who has donated $750 to Julian’s campaign. But Julian said that Jenne, who long ago served some prison time in a public corruption case, is not serving as an adviser for his campaign, though the two are acquainted. Jenne is a longtime friend of the family, Julian said. “He believes in what I’m doing,” he added. “He believes in my goal of fixing the school system. So that’s why I’m assuming he decided to donate to me.” Julian also has received thousands of dollars from local law firms. Both of his parents are attorneys, as well as several of his siblings. His mother, Joyce Julian, a former Broward county judge, has helped Julian gain a “knowledge base,” he said. “She understands the ins and outs of campaigning.” Companies donate the maximum to incumbents Local vendors who do business with Broward schools have spent thousands of dollars on incumbents and front-runners. Several charter school companies connected to the same individual have spent over $10,000 on four candidates. The limited liability companies Dash Education Solutions, Discovery Schools Inc., AP Properties 2019, Sunbit LLC, and SE Admin Enterprises LLC have each donated the maximum of $1,000 to District 8′s Donna Korn, contributing $5,000 of her current total of nearly $27,000. Several of those companies donated the maximum to Nora Rupert and Ruth Carter-Lynch as well, totaling another $5,000. Discovery Schools is the company behind Franklin Academy, a chain of six charter schools operating in Broward and Palm Beach counties. AP Properties 2019, Sunbit LLC, SE Admin Enterprises LLC, Discovery Schools Inc, and Dash Education Solutions all list the same Fort Lauderdale address and the same registered agent with the Florida Division of Corporations: a man by the name of Jon T. Rogers. Rogers couldn’t be reached for comment. Various combinations of the same companies have donated to school board members in past elections, such as Patricia Good in 2019. They have also donated to city and county commissioners, such as Vice Mayor Lamar Fisher, as well as Iris Siple, commissioner of Pembroke Pines. Smaller names join millionaires, incumbents and their heirs In District 1, Marie Murray Martin opposes Paul Wiggins and Rod Velez to fill the seat left open by her mother, Ann Murray, who decided not to run for reelection. Murray has donated $750 to her daughter’s campaign, which has raised a little over $9,000 so far. But Marie Murray Martin wants to distinguish herself from her mother. “I’m not Ann Murray, I’m Marie Murray Martin,” she said. “We are not the same person.” Meanwhile, in the race for District 4, which includes Parkland, Coral Springs, and Tamarac, incumbent Lori Alhadeff is facing off against Kimberly D. Coward, an attorney. Alhadeff has raised nearly $104,000, while Coward has raised nearly $22,000. District 5, which includes Lauderhill and Lauderdale Lakes, has by far the most competition. Seven candidates are vying for a spot: Antonio Burgess, Ruth Carter-Lynch, Clifford Coach Sr., Jeff Holness, Gloria Lewis, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Nathalie Lynch-Walsh. So far, Carter-Lynch has raised the most, with over $22,000. For District 6, Brenda Fam and Steven Julian are accompanied by John Christopher Canter, who has only raised around $2,000, $1,900 of which he donated to himself. Canter is employed by the School District of Palm Beach County, but lives in Davie, according to his qualifying documents. The District 8 race has seen the most variance when it comes to finances, but also some striking similarities. Mourice Hylton has steep competition facing Zeman, Korn, and Adderly, who have all significantly outraised him. Hylton, a chess teacher, listed a net worth of $0, according to his qualifying documents, in contrast to Zeman, whose reported net worth is over $10 million. Hylton has raised $2,300, $1,900 of which he donated to himself. Meanwhile, Zeman has over $120,000, the most of all the candidates. However, a majority of Zeman’s campaign money, or $99,000, also comes from his own pockets. The Center for Human Capital Innovation, of which Zeman is CEO, also has given him $1,000. The primary election is Aug. 23, and early voting will be from Aug. 13 through Aug. 21. Mail-in ballots must be received by Aug. 23 at 7 p.m. to be eligible. || Coinbase Says Miners’ Sales of Newly Minted Bitcoins Don’t Add Significant Market Pressure: Don't miss CoinDesk'sConsensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.
A common concern during cyclical downturns in bitcoin (BTC) mining is the extent to which miners are selling their BTC holdings, crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) said in a research report last week.
In times of market upheaval and a falling bitcoin price, margins compress across the board and force more miners to become net sellers, the note said. Given the price drop and the resulting loss of profitability, the financing environment for the mining industry has “shifted materially” since late last year, and raising capital in the public markets has become very difficult, Coinbase said.
Still, even if all newly issued bitcoin were immediately sold onto the market each day, that would equate to only 900 BTC of selling pressure, which represents just 1%-1.5% of total daily volume, it added. A healthier bitcoin derivatives market should allow miners more options in terms of potential hedging strategies, the report added.
Read more:Crypto Miners Face Margin Calls, Defaults as Debt Comes Due in Bear Market
Mining companies that expanded aggressively in recent years and leveraged their balance sheet in the process are now being forced to restructure their operations, the note said. These conditions “should present opportunities for consolidation across the mining industry in the second half of the year as less prudent miners continue to face challenges.”
While the mining market may still be far from an equilibriumhashrate, miner selling and shuttering of activities in recent months has resulted in a falling network hashrate and ultimately mining difficulty, and once these trends flatten it could signal the start of a bottoming process, based on similar trends observed in the 2018crypto winter, the report said.
Read more:Bear Market Could See Some Crypto Miners Turning to M&A for Survival || $13 trillion wiped off markets in worst six months on record: traders at the new york stock exchange The global market rout has wiped $13 trillion off world stocks in the worst start to any year on record as business and consumer confidence collapses amid surging inflation. The MSCI World Equity Index has shed more than 20pc so far this year in the steepest first-half decline since its creation, led by a plunge in loss-making tech companies as investors panic over the end of ultra-low interest rates. In the UK, the FTSE 100 fell 1.96pc on Thursday to close out its worst month since the early days of the Covid pandemic. All but ten stocks closed in the red, reducing the value of blue chip companies by £50bn, amid fears the country will suffer the steepest recession in Europe. It came after official figures revealed that British families have suffered the longest fall in disposable income ever, with a decline of 1.3pc in the year to March 2022. Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said: “Although GDP and consumer spending won’t fall as far as real incomes, it’s pretty clear that the economy is going to be very weak for a while. A recession is a real risk.” Wall Street also suffered heavy losses on Thursday as fears of a slowdown were compounded by data showing that inflation-adjusted US consumer spending fell in May for the first time this year. The benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.9pc, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq slumped 1.3pc. The S&P 500 has shed 20pc so far this year, marking its worst first half of the year since 1970 and its worst performance over two quarters since the financial crisis in 2008. The Nasdaq posted its biggest ever declines over the same period, losing $5.4 trillion in value. Investor worries deepened this week as top central bankers reiterated their commitment to raise interest rates to tackle a surge in prices fuelled by Russia's war in Ukraine. Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England, warned that Britain faces a faster and steeper downturn than other rich countries, but still vowed to act “more forcefully” if high inflation – currently forecast to peak at 11pc in October – persists. Story continues Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, insisted he would not allow the US economy to slip into a “higher inflation regime”. Policymakers are expected to announce the second consecutive 0.75 percentage point interest rate rise next month. In a further sign of the strain on families, data released on Thursday showed UK household incomes fell for a fourth straight quarter at the start of the year. Adjusted for inflation, disposable incomes dropped 0.2pc in the first three months of the year, according to the Office for National Statistics, leaving incomes 1.3pc lower than a year earlier, even before the impact of a jump in energy bills and taxes in April. The ONS figures also confirmed that the economy grew 0.8pc in the first quarter. However, the Bank of England expects a contraction in the second quarter as inflation continues to rise and consumers cut spending. This gloom sent the FTSE 100 down more than 6pc in June, the biggest monthly slump since the first wave of coronavirus triggered a market crash in March 2020. Market chaos also spread to cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin racking up its biggest quarterly loss in more than a decade. The 58pc plunge in the world’s biggest digital coin is the largest since the third quarter of 2011, when Bitcoin was still in its infancy, according to Bloomberg data. The notoriously volatile sector has suffered a torrid period as interest rates rise and investors flee riskier assets, while a string of high-profile crashes and a looming regulatory crackdown have fuelled fears of a “crypto winter”. || Why DeFi Might Be Safer Than Traditional Finance: There are two questions of acute relevance I want to try to answer in the wake of the latest crypto market retreat. First, is decentralized finance more trustworthy and robust than conventional financial services? And second, are some DeFi systems more stable than others? Those questions became newly weighty as a wave of loan defaults and insolvencies in recent weeks hit centralized “lending platforms” like Celsius Network and Voyager Digital. Those entities sometimes leveraged DeFi rhetoric and, in Celsius’ case, deployed customer funds to DeFi systems with extremely mixed results . Three Arrows Capital, arguably the Typhoid Mary of this year’s crypto contagion, had major exposure to the luna (LUNA) token and terraUSD (UST) algorithmic stablecoin, a fatally flawed system based on some DeFi principles. (For a thorough description of these relationships, see my recent account of the Great Crypto Unwind .) At the same time, more reputable DeFi systems have held up better than centralized lenders in the downturn. While their volumes and yields have declined sharply, systems like the Uniswap exchange, Aave lending system and DAI stablecoin have continued to function smoothly . Most importantly, the systems haven’t been destabilized by huge losses from loan defaults or declining asset prices, which proved fatal for the centralized lenders. So why did centralized and human-monitored players like Celsius and Voyager prove so fragile compared to largely automated systems? And what separates DeFi systems that did fail, particularly LUNA, from those that held up? The answers are complex, but essentially boil down to specific financial and technical design decisions. Some of these, such as systemic transparency, overcollateralized lending and automated liquidation of borrowers, are inherent to DeFi. Other features, including “tokenomics” and governance, can vary dramatically between systems – and go a long way to explaining why not all DeFi is created equal. Story continues What is DeFi? First, a quick refresher. In theory, DeFi systems are to trading, lending and other financial services what bitcoin (BTC) is to currency. Because they’re run on distributed blockchains, these systems are meant to be uncensorable and transparent. They are built largely around “smart contracts,” on-chain functions that can be used by anyone with an internet connection and crypto in their wallet and which automatically execute without human supervision. Smart contract-based DeFi services include digital asset trading and lending. Some stablecoins, such as MakerDAO’s DAI, are also based on DeFi technology. A core concept for trading and lending services is “yield farming” or “liquidity mining,” which rewards users for “staking” funds to liquidity pools. Standing pools of staked assets eliminate the need to directly match buyers with sellers or lenders with borrowers. A further declared goal of DeFi is to dispense with centralized leadership and enable users to manage the systems, though that goal has been pursued inconsistently. For a deeper exploration, see CoinDesk’s full DeFi explainer . Transparency Arguably the defining characteristic of decentralized finance systems, the feature from which all others flow, is their almost complete transparency. Much as you can track bitcoin transactions by looking directly at blockchain records , DeFi systems allow near-complete visibility into loans and order books. This notably includes visibility into “liquidation points,” or asset prices at which the collateral for certain loans would be market-sold to cover losses. More on those in a moment. This transparency is a sharp contrast to services like Celsius, which take depositor funds and deploy them in a wide variety of ways to generate yield. Depositors have almost no visibility into, much less oversight of, how those funds are deployed. Those deployments can include over-the-counter trades which are nearly impossible to spot on-chain, or intentional obfuscation of DeFi activities. While that opacity can be a valid strategic choice for investment funds trying to outmaneuver competitors, it also means depositors in centralized systems are accepting a simply unknown amount of risk. The most dramatic illustration of this came with the revelation that a DeFi account known as 0Xb1 had been trading on behalf of Celsius , but did not disclose that connection – while apparently losing hundreds of millions of dollars . “That is definitely one of the biggest issues when it comes to these [centralized lending] providers,” says Eric Chen, founder of the DeFi protocol Injective. “They say they’re going to deploy DeFi strategies for you, and they can undertake a lot more or a lot less risk than what the consumer prefers.” Tight lending An even more important bit of transparency in DeFi comes from strict policies on loan collateral. One reason Three Arrows Capital blew up is that it was taking out an array of huge loans from funds that were seemingly unaware of Three Arrows’ overall debt levels. In at least one case, a huge loan was issued with no collateral at all , apparently based purely on faith in Three Arrows. But DeFi users face extremely conservative limits on borrowing, which help keep individual platforms stable. While Three Arrows (and traditional funds like Bill Hwang’s Archegos ) can leverage their reputation to harvest loans all over town, DeFi platforms require collateral for loans, and that collateral must be effectively “locked” within the systems. That prevents the pledging of the same collateral for multiple loans. Recycling collateral can be a form of fraud, but it’s hard to detect in traditional, centralized financial structures. “Centralized providers, a lot of them are very credit-based,” says Chen. “And you can use the same collateral multiple times.” The downside of DeFi collateralization standards, it should be noted, is relative inefficiency of capital. Because of that inefficiency, some question DeFi’s long-term value without something akin to a credit-rating system or other paths to undercollateralized lending . On the other hand, if DeFi’s capital inefficiency keeps leverage and risk from building up in the system, maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Transparent, automated liquidations Though specifics vary, most DeFi systems are set up to automatically liquidate loan collateral before the collateral falls below the value of the loan. That’s possible because collateral is locked into fully automated systems and forms a stark contrast to the frequently analog and interpersonal process by which centralized lenders issue margin calls for underwater borrowers. The speed of liquidations is key to keeping protocols solvent. In a traditional lending context, including loans from centralized crypto exchanges to funds like Three Arrows, margin calling a large borrower can be an analog, slow, interpersonal process taking hours or days. That creates the opportunity for much larger imbalances to open up between falling collateral and outstanding loans. And, of course, sometimes traditional loans don’t get repaid at all. Because its loans were off-chain, Three Arrows Capital was able to simply “ghost” creditors when it became clear it was insolvent. It appears Three Arrows may have on the order of $2 billion in uncovered debt outstanding, which has become an existential threat to counterparties including Voyager Digital . By contrast, Celsius, despite also appearing insolvent, has repaid several large loans from DeFi lending protocols including AAVE, Compound and Maker . In the case of the Maker loan, a final $41 million repayment in the DAI stablecoin unlocked nearly half a billion dollars’ worth of collateral in wrapped bitcoin (wBTC). In short, having collateral locked in a protocol seems to have a much greater disciplining effect than the legal agreements backing conventional loans. In fact, there remains some question of whether the protocols actually had legal primacy over other counterparties in the repayment stack, considering that Celsius entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection just days after those repayments. It’s hard to think of a clearer affirmation of the old saw that possession (of your collateral) is nine-tenths of the law. Hunting liquidation points That’s one of the main reasons DeFi lending systems like Aave have weathered the crypto downturn better than centralized lenders. But transparent and automated liquidation also introduces extremely novel market dynamics, and perhaps its own set of risks. Most notable is the visibility of borrowers’ “liquidation points.” Broadly, these are the price levels for particular assets at which a particular loan falls below required levels of collateralization. DeFi traders can identify specific price points that would trigger liquidations, and thus further major price drops. These liquidation points are not publicly known in traditional asset markets, and their visibility in DeFi sets up fierce battles between bulls and bears when a major liquidation level is close – so-called “liquidation hunting.” While this can create volatility, it also arguably makes things fairer. Because while they’re not publicly known, various liquidation points in traditional markets are visible to entities like lenders and exchanges. That information asymmetry could easily be exploited by those centralized players. That presents a bit of a philosophical quandary. Is it better for all players to know these liquidations points, creating a contentious but fair playing field? Or is it better that only a small number of people know, and the liquidation points don’t get widely hunted but trigger drops that are complete surprises to most in the market? Automated liquidations do have at least two clear downsides. First, while they protect individual platforms, they may increase broader risk for cascading liquidations of particular assets. A major liquidation of a big block of collateral risks driving down the collateral value for a tranche of other loans, which could in turn be liquidated, pushing the asset down further. Second, and perhaps more pernicious, automated liquidation can function as a backdoor method to obfuscate asset sales. For instance, the creator of a project may use an automated liquidation to indirectly dump its token in a way that’s not transparent to users. All DeFi is not created equal While some DeFi projects have weathered the downturn, others most certainly have not. Above all, that includes the Luna Foundation Guard, which administered the luna ecosystem and algorithmic “stablecoin” terraUSD that collapsed in May. The system operated transparently and on-chain, fulfilling the most basic criteria for being considered “DeFi.” But its example also highlights that DeFi can certainly be designed in unsustainable or high-risk ways. In particular, it is troubling to the idea of decentralization that the LUNA system was using external subsidies to pay yield to users who deposited funds – even if no one was taking loans at those rates. The Anchor protocol, Luna’s answer to a lending protocol like Aave, grew incredibly rapidly because it offered up to 20% interest on deposits. But that money came from a “yield fund” that periodically had to be refilled by Luna Foundation Guard administrators with funds from venture capitalists, rather than paying out yield generated from real loans. Those subsidized yields helped attract deposits, substantially broadening the harm when the system collapsed. But exogenous subsidies aren’t inherently against the ethos of DeFi. “At the beginning, you can devote some capital to building a liquidity pool,” says Maya Zehavi , an angel investor focused on DeFi. “I would call that active governance. [It’s] what investors are putting in as a value add.” Indeed, an initial round of “yield farming” offers helped protocols, including Uniswap, to bootstrap liquidity pools that have since become self-sustaining. But those offers are usually time-limited, and robust DeFi systems adjust their yield based on loan demand. The problem with Luna and Anchor was that there was no plan to sunset the inflated yield rates, or allow them to adjust to match loan demand. “What I see as natural DeFi is when you’ve developed a system that can generate its own fees,” says Zehavi, “And regenerate and be sustainable.” Another variable between DeFi protocols is their approach to governance. A truly decentralized system would have no key figures or leaders – but in practice, many DeFi systems are controlled by a small group of developers. ”There’s a key manager, there’s a multisig that has a lot of control over user funds,” says Eric Chen of Injective. “That almost feels custodial. Where user funds are lost, that’s usually when it’s something more centralized trying to disguise itself as being decentralized.” Many of these effectively centralized systems justify their founders’ control as a step along the route to full decentralization. And indeed, there is no consensus about the best way to let users participate in system governance, such as decisions about yield structures. “In the governance debate I’d take a nuanced view,” says Zehavi. “Some stuff should be governed off-chain … I think that direct democracy has proven again and again that it’s prone to manipulation.” Good DeFi, bad DeFi Experts seem to agree there’s no simple, straightforward way to separate robust DeFi structures from more fragile designs. “There’s not really a gold standard or a yardstick for it,” says Chen. “You can tell easily by looking at code and contracts and how it’s structured, but in terms of a general user that’s pretty hard. It’s honestly just something you learn over time.” For those who know what they’re looking for, Zehavi cites a long list of criteria for evaluating a platform. “I’m looking at how big the TVL [total value locked] is, what the [asset] concentration is, how big the pools are, where the yield is coming from, who the founders are. And I look for smart money.” If you don’t feel confident evaluating a platform on those points, the good news is there are simpler rubrics. First, the protocols that have made it through the current crisis have probably earned some long-term trust, barring major system changes. The second guideline is as simple as investing advice gets, and seemingly just as hard to follow: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. “A good general rule is, if [yield] returns are being advertised as risk-free, and they’re above the risk-free rate of the current market,” Chen warns, “It’s probably something a bit more on the concerning side.” || 3 EV Charging Stocks to Buy for Massive Gains: EV charging stocksare a tricky investment because, while they certainly have a future, where and what kind of future is complex.
Electric cars are becoming more popular. Hence, the demand for charging stations is also increasing. This has led to the rise of EV charging stocks. So let’s discuss the investment opportunities in EV charging stocks and why you need to allocate some capital to these rapidly growing enterprises.
The EV charging stations market size isexpected to grow to $123.12 billion by 2030, according to a report fromEmergen Research. And these stocks are a greatpick-and-shovel play, as the global demand for this technology is expected to increase exponentially in the coming years.
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As more people are selling or trading in their gas or diesel cars, they will be looking for companies to act as providers of charging stations. It opens up a host of great opportunities for aggressive investors.
[{"CHPT": "EVGO", "ChargePoint": "EVgo", "$13.13": "$7.55"}, {"CHPT": "WBX", "ChargePoint": "Wallbox", "$13.13": "$8.94"}]
Source: Michael Vi / Shutterstock.com
ChargePoint(NYSE:CHPT) is one of the leading companies the space.
ChargePoint has been able to create a solution forevery type of vehicle and every type of charger. They have made it possible for you to charge your car without worrying about finding parking or a power outlet.
Users can also go to ChargePoint locationsto powertheirTesla(NASDAQ:TSLA) vehicles. You just need a Tesla adapter.
Using the ChargePoint network, you can conveniently charge your electric car or other EVs whenever and wherever you go. You’ll never come up short with charging compatible with your vehicle,as over 30,000 charging stationsare operating across 14 countries.
Its most recent quarter saw Chargepoint’s revenuemore than doubleyear over year to $81.6 million and its diluted earnings loss per share of 27 cents was down from a loss of 83 cents YOY.
EV adoption is still relatively early. But ChargePoint technology is likely to be a huge success.
Source: Sundry Photography / Shutterstock.com
EVgo(NASDAQ:EVGO) is a leading provider of electric vehicle power stations. It is constantly expanding, most recently signing an agreement to put charging stations atFlyingJ and Pilot travel centers.
EVgocollects dataon how EV owners charge their cars. This information will help improve the network of charging stations through optimization strategies.
As a new company, EVgo still needs to create a lot more revenue opportunities. That will require significant investments. And it is showing on the bottom line.
Revenue was up by 86%in the latest quarter, and it saw a surge in adjusted gross margin. But the investments to grow revenues are pushing down earnings. EVgo’s EPS was a 21-cent loss. And the adjusted EBITDA was a loss of -$18.2 million, about double the previous year.
However, asInvestorPlace’sPatrick Sanders has said,the company is growing its charging stationsamid a wider government push to get more EV infrastructure online.
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Accumulating alliances with companies such asToyota(NYSE:TM) can build it up over time. Hence, remain patient with this investment.
Wallbox(NYSE:WBX) has been in the business of designing, manufacturing, and distributing EV chargers since 2015. It has a team of talented engineers to help design the best possible charging solutions for the public.
Wallbox is introducing a smart electric vehicle charging system that lets users power their vehicles more efficiently. It helps drivers charge their vehicles at home, providing an easy and convenient solution and avoiding the the hassle of visiting a public charging station.
The company is not a huge enterprise at this stage, but it is growing rapidly. In the last completed fiscal quarter, Wallbox recorded gross margins of 41.4%. It hassold more than 51,000 chargersover the last year, up more than 180% compared to Q1 2021.
On the publication date, Faizan Farooque did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to theInvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The post3 EV Charging Stocks to Buy for Massive Gainsappeared first onInvestorPlace. || Malaysian father who takes his baby everywhere as he delivers food gives netizens the feels: A Malaysian man has gone viral for showing what a dedicated father will go through to take care of his family. The unidentified man’s story was shared online by celebrity preacher Ebit Lew on Instagram and Facebook on June 16. According to the preacher, the man’s wife could not take care of their child because of her job at a clothing boutique. They were also having difficulties with their finances, so the man decided to become a food delivery rider using a motorcycle he borrowed from his in-laws. Since the man's wife is always at work, he decided to bring their baby with him during his deliveries. “ I felt sad when I saw a video of this brother carrying his child while working as a food delivery rider,” Lew said in his Facebook post . “They don't have enough money, he was crying when we met earlier today; I’m happy to be able to meet him.” More from NextShark: 'God has not blessed us': Indian boy’s response to a reporter about schools over temples goes viral Touched by the man’s story, Lew took the father out to buy him his own motorcycle. The preacher also said he would cover a monthly babysitter’s fee so that the man would no longer need to strap his child to his torso every day. “ At the point when we think we are struggling, others might have it worse,” Lew wrote. “When he was given a motorbike, we can see his tears and it makes us feel more grateful.” More from NextShark: Liev Schrieber and Naomi Watts' son perceived as 'too beautiful' by Japanese netizens View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ebit Lew (@ebitlew) More from NextShark: Elon Musk shares conspiracy theory about Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto in viral tweet Several social media users praised the Malaysian father for showing how much he loves his family. “ Fortunately for the baby, there is a father who is willing to fight hard to raise him and help the mother [sic]," one user wrote online. Story continues “ This is a father's love... he's willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to gain a bit of happiness for his family,” another user wrote. More from NextShark: Singaporean TikToker explains why sharing plane ticket photos on social media poses serious risks A Chinese father of two from Fuyang, Anhui Province, also went viral on Weibo last month for working two jobs to help fund seven additional children from struggling families. He has purportedly spent eight years sending each child to school with a new backpack and clothes. Every month, he also purportedly visits each family and provides them with basic necessities such as rice and cooking oil, as well as gifts on each child’s birthday. Featured Image via @ebitlew || Global Markets Dive After Data Shows US Inflation Hit 8.6% in May: Crypto markets plunged Friday morning after the release of federal data showing U.S inflation accelerated in May.
Consumer prices increased in every categorymeasured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, bringing year-over-year inflation to 8.6%, the largest 12-month increase in 41 years.
The CPI data was released at 8:30 a.m. ET – moments later, the price of the largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization plunged.
Bitcoin was trading at $30,150 at 8:29 a.m., according to data from CoinGecko. Two hours later, it stands at $29,308 – a 2.8% drop.
Ethereumwas just above $1,779 at 8:29 a.m. By 10:30 a.m., it had dropped 2.8% to $1,729.
Major altcoins likeCardano,BNB,XRPandSolanaalso fell by 5.4%, 0.2% 3.3% and 3.6% respectively.
The crypto sell-off mirroreddrops in the broader marketsas crypto continues to be highly correlated with equities.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Stock Market are each down between 2% and 3.5% Friday morning.
Curiously, Bitcoin is outperforming stocks this morning and has remained resilient in recent weeks as its share of the overall crypto market cap continues to rise.
Bitcoin dominance stands at 47%, a level last seen in October 2021.
Read the original post onThe Defiant || 7 Best Solar Stocks to Buy Now: The secular trends that favor solar energy are the same which existed for the last several years. Broadly speaking, concern for climate change continues to grow and demand for cleaner energy sources is increasing. A report from Deloitte highlights the fact that solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have declined85%in cost over the past decade. That makes them among the cheapest energy sources in the market. The cost model is there, but more development needs to occur.
The current administration has a vision to decarbonize the U.S. economy fully. That is a lofty goal, but it will move the needle whether a wholesale shift occurs or not. In short, solar energy investment remains worthwhile.
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Here are the seven best solar stocks to buy now:
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[{"Ticker": "SEDG", "Company": "SolarEdge Technologies, Inc.", "Price": "$319.88"}, {"Ticker": "DQ", "Company": "Daqo New Energy Corp.", "Price": "$63.55"}, {"Ticker": "CSIQ", "Company": "Canadian Solar Inc.", "Price": "$33.83"}, {"Ticker": "ENPH", "Company": "Enphase Energy, Inc.", "Price": "$249.51"}, {"Ticker": "TAN", "Company": "Invesco Solar ETF", "Price": "$75.81"}, {"Ticker": "FSLR", "Company": "First Solar, Inc.", "Price": "$76.40"}, {"Ticker": "SHLS", "Company": "Shoals Technologies Group, Inc.", "Price": "$18.67"}]
Source: rafapress / Shutterstock.com
SolarEdge Technologies(NASDAQ:SEDG) is an Israeli firm that produces solar inverters. Solar inverters transform the energy collected from PV cells into energy that can be used on a grid. Without them, a home, business, or solar farm has no way to utilize the energy collected and stored by PV cells and arrays.
SolarEdge is focused on marketing its inverters not only as transmission conduits, but also as smart energy management devices, which allow users to monitor and manage storage and use.
SolarEdge will provide earnings results in early August, which may or may not disappoint. Investors should focus on the broader picture here: SolarEdge is expected to make roughly$3.05 billionin sales this year. That number is expected to rise by 25.9% to $3.84 billion next year.That growth story means SEDG stock will remain relevant.
Source: Shutterstock
Daqo New Energy(NYSE:DQ) stock represents a Chinese company that produces the polysilicon that is sold to PV cell manufacturers. Its story is one of rapid growth, increasing production volumes, and price appreciation during a tumultuous 2022.
Let’s start with price appreciation first: DQ stock has gone from $42 in early 2022 to $63. That makes it something of an outlier in the current bear market. The stock is performing well because the company is performing well.Additionally, Revenues increased to $1.28 billion in the first quarter, up 400% from a year earlier. That rapid increase in sales allowed gross profits to rise from $118.9 million to $813.6 million in the same period.
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Daqo New Energy is expanding its sales base rapidly. The firm sold 23,616 metric tons of polysilicon in the fourth quarter of 2021. That figure reached 31,383 metric tons a quarter later. Daqo New Energy is a basic materials provider, making it a smart choice to take advantage of secular trends.
Source: Shutter B Photo / Shutterstock.com
Solar investors seeking product manufacturers would be wise to considerCanadian Solar(NASDAQ:CSIQ) stock. The Ontario firm manufactures PV modules and has roughly 34% upside based on its target price.
So, for investors who want to add a PV module manufacturing stock to their portfolio, CSIQ makes sense because it is increasingly attractive. Earnings per share (EPS) estimates sat at 21 cents three months ago. Those estimates have risen rapidly and now sit at48 cents.
Investors will be encouraged by the fact that Canadian Solar produced anet income of $9 millionin its most recent quarter. That was a strong result on a year-over-year basis.
However, high costs held the firm’s revenue and gross margin figures at the lower end of guidance. As costs normalize, the firm should be able to produce stronger results closer to the top end of guidance.
Source: IgorGolovniov / Shutterstock.com
Enphase Energy(NASDAQ:ENPH) stock is certainly volatile. A look at the price chart for the stock in 2022 reflects that. And that choppiness is evident in the1.36 betaENPH shares carry.
But while that volatility can seem scary at times, it’s the greater trends that make Enphase Energy a worthy investment. When all is said and done, Enphase Energy should record around $2 billion in revenues this year. Those revenues are expected to increase about 37% in 2023 to $2.75 billion.
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The argument against ENPH is that net income numbers were slightly lower during the most recent quarter on a sequential basis, despite record revenues. But as higher costs normalize, investors should begin to calm down. I’d argue that now is the time to strike because Enphase is doing remarkably well considering the overall environment.
Source: Shutterstock
The reason to invest in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is obvious: It is much easier to identify winning sectors than it is to separate the winners from the losers therein. That’s why theInvesco Solar ETF(NYSEARCA:TAN) makes sense as a stock pick.
Given that the Invesco Solar ETFtracks the MAC Global Solar Energy Index, investors are receiving significant exposure to secular trends in solar energy stocks. Those secular trends indicate that solar is entrenched as costs have come down drastically over the past decade.
TAN stock has provided average annual returns of17.85%over the past decade. Those returns significantly outpaced those of its peers within its exchange and would have turned $1,000 into more than $5,000 in that period.
That is precisely the kind of information that investors who want to set it and forget it like to hear.
Source: IgorGolovniov / Shutterstock.com
First Solar(NASDAQ:FSLR) is an Arizona-based firm producing solar power systems and modules. On top of that, the firm also constructs and operates PV power plants.
As reshoring efforts ramp up, First Solar will become an increasingly attractive choice in solar. The firm has the largest PV manufacturing footprint in the western hemisphere. It is set to expand that footprint in 2023.The company also proudly markets the fact that it does not rely on Chinese silicon for its manufacturing operations. That bolsters the notion that First Solar could rise in importance over the coming years as U.S.-China business relations remain tense and evolve.
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For investors who worry that materials of Chinese origin occupy too large a portion of our supply chain, FSLR makes sense. It is among the best choices from that perspective among solar stocks.
Source: chuyuss / Shutterstock.com
Shoals Technologies(NASDAQ:SHLS) stock is a strong choice for the solar investor who has a penchant for speculation and some risk. While the company has recorded two straight quarters in which EPS guidance fell short, it is growing rapidly.And while revenues increased by about 50% on a year-over-year basis in the most recent quarter, net income is arguably more impressive.
Shoals Technologies reported a net loss in first quarter 2021 thatapproached $8.3 million. A year later and that net loss became a $4.6 million net income. This is impressive.
Growth stocks are out because their fundamentals often include large losses. Shoals Technologies provides the best of both worlds in some sense: Rapid growth and net income.
On the date of publication, Alex Sirois did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The post7 Best Solar Stocks to Buy Nowappeared first onInvestorPlace. || The Global Non-fungible Token Market size is expected to reach $97.6 billion by 2028, rising at a market growth of 31.6% CAGR during the forecast period: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are blockchain-based cryptographic assets having unique metadata and identification codes that separate them from one another. They cannot be purchased or exchanged at face value, unlike cryptocurrencies.
New York, June 29, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Non-fungible Token Market Size, Share & Industry Trends Analysis Report By Type, By End Use, By Application, By Regional Outlook and Forecast, 2022 – 2028" -https://www.reportlinker.com/p06289275/?utm_source=GNWThis is in contrast to fungible tokens, such as bitcoins, which are all similar and hence can be used as a medium of exchange. Each NFT’s unique construction allows for a variety of applications. They are a great approach to digitally representing actual things, like real estate and artwork, for example. NFTs can also be utilized to eliminate intermediaries as well as link artists with audiences or for identity management asthey are based on blockchains. NFTs can eliminate intermediaries, streamline transactions, and open up new markets.NFTs, like Bitcoin, include ownership information to facilitate identification as well as transfer between token holders. In NFTs, owners can additionally add metadata or aspects related to the asset. For example, Fairtrade tokens can be leveraged to represent coffee beans. Artists can also sign their digital artwork in the metadata with their own signature. The ERC-721 standard gave rise to NFTs. ERC-721 defines the basic interface, such as ownership details, security, and metadata, that are required for the distribution and exchange of gaming tokens. The ERC-1155 standard expands on this notion by lowering transaction and storage costs for non-fungible tokens and combining multiple varieties of non-fungible tokens into an individual contract.For example, Decentraland, an Ethereum-based virtual reality platform, has already implemented this notion. It may become possible to deploy the same concept of tokenized chunks of land (varying according to the value and location) in the physical world as NFTs get more complex and incorporated into the financial infrastructure. The most widely utilized token standard for NFTs is Ethereum. To construct NFTs, the ERC-1155 and ERC-721 token specifications are commonly employed. Blockchains, such as Flow, EOS, and Tezos, in addition to Ethereum, provide token specifications for constructing NFTs. Additionally, Ethereum’s imminent switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake is predicted to cut the blockchain’s energy consumption significantly. As a result, the utilization of Ethereum tokens for NFTs is projected to increase globally.COVID-19 ImpactThe COVID-19 pandemic caused a severe impact on the worldwide economy. Various businesses all over the world were demolished while others were significantly damaged due to the outbreak of the COVId-19 pandemic. In addition, governments all over the world were compelled to impose lockdown in their countries in order to regulate the diffusion of the COVID-19 infections. Due to the lockdown scenario, various companies all over the world were temporarily closed, which caused significant business and monetary losses to businesses. In addition, the travel restrictions that were imposed by the government caused a major disruption in the worldwide supply chain. These factors considerably slowed down the growth of the global economy.Market Growth FactorsGeneration of economic prospectsFor a very long period, the primary focus of NFT experts has been on their essential characteristics. In the modern era, NFTs have a wide range of applications in the field of digital content. The primary reason for the viability of NFTs in the field of digital content in the industry’s diversity. Content creators are frequently concerned about rival platforms sapping their income and earning potential. For example, a digital artist who publishes content on social media can monetize the site by selling ads to the artist’s audience. While the artist receives proper visibility, it does not assist the artist in earning any money in exchange for platform benefits.Allows building intellectual property with authenticityThe fundamental advantage of NFTs is that they allow people to own intellectual property. When intellectual property is included in a blockchain, it is easier to monitor ownership. It is also easy to ensure that the IP owner is not violating the IP of others. For example, a fashion designer can design a garment and then embed it in a blockchain smart contract. The blockchain can then store the one-of-a-kind design as well as the designer’s ownership of it. The designer then has the option of selling the design to a customer. The consumer will be able to use the blockchain to authenticate the design and confirm that it has not been replicated.Market Restraining FactorsThe threat of digital replica generationWhile a blockchain’s integrity is unassailable, NFTs can also be utilized to propagate fraud. There are various instances, in which, several artists have reported finding their work for sale as NFTs on online marketplaces without their permission. This clearly goes against the purpose of using NFTs to simplify the commercialization of paintings. An NFT’s value proposition is that it uses a unique token to verify a physical work of art, ensuring that the token owner also possesses the original work of art. If someone develops an electronic replica of the original work, links a token to it, and sells it on a virtual marketplace, there is a severe concern.Type OutlookBased on Type, the market is segmented into Digital Asset and Physical Asset. In 2021, the digital asset segment acquired the largest revenue share of the non-fungible token market. The rising growth of the segment is attributed to the increased usage of NFTs by artists around the world to secure ownership of their digital assets. Artists can benefit from their work by preserving ownership of it through NFTs and not having to provide it to other platforms for the promotion. Simultaneously, the increased usage of NFTs to sell digital real estate in both the actual and virtual worlds is likely to propel the market forward.End Use OutlookBased on End Use, the market is segmented into Personal and Commercial. In 2021, the commercial segment registered a significant revenue share of the non-fungible token market. The increasing usage of NFTs for business objectives, such as supply chain management and logistics innovation, is likely to propel the industry forward. Companies in the logistics industry are progressively incorporating blockchain technology into their operations, opening up new chances for the industry to expand.Application OutlookBased on Application, the market is segmented into Collectibles, Art, Gaming, Sport, Utilities, Metaverse, and Others. In 2021, the collectibles segment procured the largest revenue share of the non-fungible token market. NFT coins that can be minted in NFT exchanges are known as crypto-collectibles. The increased demand for crypto assets can be linked to advantages, such as asset independence and ease of use. Sports collectibles, for example, allow fans to interact directly with their heroes, gaming collectibles allow players to exchange and play, and artist collectibles allow them to connect with potential clients and sell their work.Regional OutlookBased on Regions, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, Middle East & Africa. In 2021, North America accounted for the largest revenue share of the non-fungible token market. Millennials in the region are increasingly adopting NFTs, which is fueling the regional market growth. At the same time, the increase in the number of artists generating digital artwork in nations like the United States and Canada is likely to fuel regional market growth. The presence of key players in the blockchain business in the region is also encouraging for the regional market.The market research report covers the analysis of key stake holders of the market. Key companies profiled in the report include Cloudflare, Inc., Gemini Trust Company, LLC, Ozone Networks, Inc., Dapper Labs, Inc., Semidot Infotech, and The Sandbox (BACASABLE Global Limited)Scope of the StudyMarket Segments covered in the Report:By Type• Digital Asset• Physical AssetBy End Use• Personal• CommercialBy Application• Collectibles• Art• Gaming• Sport• Utilities• Metaverse• OthersBy Geography• North Americao USo Canadao Mexicoo Rest of North America• Europeo Germanyo UKo Franceo Russiao Spaino Italyo Rest of Europe• Asia Pacifico Chinao Japano Indiao South Koreao Singaporeo Malaysiao Rest of Asia Pacific• LAMEAo Brazilo Argentinao UAEo Saudi Arabiao South Africao Nigeriao Rest of LAMEACompanies Profiled• Cloudflare, Inc.• Gemini Trust Company, LLC• Ozone Networks, Inc.• Dapper Labs, Inc.• Semidot Infotech• The Sandbox (BACASABLE Global Limited)Unique Offerings• Exhaustive coverage• Highest number of market tables and figures• Subscription based model available• Guaranteed best price• Assured post sales research support with 10% customization freeRead the full report:https://www.reportlinker.com/p06289275/?utm_source=GNWAboutReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.__________________________
CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 || Bitcoin and crypto remain 'durable assets' despite crash: BlackRock's Rieder: Crypto's June swoon has shaken the confidence of even the most ardent bulls. But many pros that watch and trade the sector aren't yet thinking about a longer-term demise for digital assets in the face of such stark price declines. "You are seeing a lot of the leverage that was built up around crypto come unglued quickly," Rick Rieder, BlackRock's chief investment officer of global fixed income told Yahoo Finance Live . "I still think Bitcoin and crypto are durable assets. It's a durable business, but there was so much excess built around it in cash." To be sure, it has been a wild week for the crypto faithful. Bitcoin prices fell below $21,000 this week in a broader flight to safety amid uncertainty on how fast the Federal Reserve will lift interest rates. The total value of the crypto market plummeted to as low as $908 billion on Thursday, down from roughly $3 trillion in late 2021. Crypto-exposed stocks such as Coinbase ( COIN ) , Robinhood ( HOOD ) and Microstrategy ( MSTR ) continue to be hammered, and short-sellers are reaping huge profits on this trade . This week, Coinbase froze hiring and announced the the crypto trading platform would cut 18% of its workforce . Robinhood, meanwhile, was hit by a series of Wall Street downgrades on market volatility concerns. The stock is now trading at about 17% below book value, reflecting in large part the pullback in crypto prices and weakening retail investing participation. This flushing of speculators calls into question a common rallying cry that bitcoin will hit $1,000,000 by 2030 — or even whether it's worth buying the current crash. Rieder says it's difficult to predict where prices go next for bitcoin, but cautioned that assets under this amount of pressure often overshoot to the downside before recovering. "My sense is in all these situations you overshoot, and my guess is you have probably got some downside to go from here," Rieder explained. "It's hard to say what fair value is. My sense is like a lot of assets, you look two to three years hence, they will be higher than today. But it could overshoot on the downside. This is hard to figure out, just like gold, because I can't figure out my free cash flow multiple and what my security is underneath it." Story continues — Brian Sozzi is an editor-at-large and anchor at Yahoo Finance . Follow Sozzi on Twitter @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn . Click here for the latest crypto news, updates, values, prices, and more related to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, DeFi and NFTs Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance Download the Yahoo Finance app for Apple or Android Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , Flipboard , LinkedIn , and YouTube
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
|
Trend: up || Prices: 23314.20, 22978.12, 22846.51, 22630.96, 23289.31, 22961.28, 23175.89, 23809.49, 23164.32, 23947.64
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2021-07-07]
BTC Price: 33855.33, BTC RSI: 45.30
Gold Price: 1801.50, Gold RSI: 46.83
Oil Price: 72.20, Oil RSI: 53.53
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law Effective September, E-Wallets to Get $30 Worth of Crypto: El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law, which is expected to make the crypto legal tender within the Central American nation, is set to come into effect on Sept. 7,Reuters reportedFriday.
• El Salvador President Nayib Bukele made the announcement during a national address on Thursday, per the report.
• The government will use the Chivo e-wallet, preloaded with US$30 of bitcoin for everyone who downloads it, elsalvador.comreported.
• The $30 in bitcoin will be sent to users’ wallets once they verify their identities via the app’s face recognition software, according to avideo of Bukelepresenting the feature on Friday.
• On June 9 the law passed by asupermajorityin El Salvador’s legislature, with 62 members voting in favor of the bill, 19 opposed and three abstained.
• The country’s Bitcoin Law would makebitcoinlegal tender, where merchants must accept it, alongside the U.S. dollar.
• Opposition has beenmountingagainst the country’s newly legislated law, with some arguing it violates El Salvador’s constitution.
See also:Deputy of El Salvador’s Opposition Party Sues Country Over Bitcoin Law
• El Salvador’s Bitcoin Fee Problem (and Solutions)
• Bitcoin Jumps 5% as El Salvador Braces for Crypto Law, $30 E-Wallet Airdrop
• Athena to Install 1,500 ATMs in El Salvador Following Bitcoin Law
• Article 7 and Bitcoin’s Latin American Coup || How IMcoin is revolutionizing cryptocurrency asset management: TALLINN, Estonia, May 24, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- There is a chance that at least one in five of the last articles you read is about cryptocurrency. The tremendous growth of cryptocurrencies has stunned the world. Statistica reports that there are 101 million cryptocurrency users in the third quarter of 2020, which is stunning because there were just 5 million cryptocurrency users in 2016. Holding cryptocurrency assets is a great way to store your wealth, but it can be damaging if you fail to protect your assets properly. You don’t need to worry because IMcoin is a company that is creating a powerful way for you to store and earn with your cryptocurrency assets. IMcoin provides stability with cryptocurrency assets The IMcoin team is implementing a completely new concept which is known as hybridcoin. In simple terms, a hybrid currency is the combination of a cryptocurrency asset and a stablecoin. The main advantage of the hybrid currency is that users can earn money in the cryptocurrency market that is booming. They will also have a stable currency that supports it through a reserve fund in case the market is not favorable. The truth is that cryptocurrencies are now used as a medium of exchange. Companies like Tesla that accept Bitcoin for cars are also adding cryptocurrencies to their portfolio, but there is currently a major problem affecting the cryptocurrency market. The challenge is stability; Many crypto enthusiasts know that their crypto assets are volatile as cryptocurrencies can lose ten percent of their value in an hour. The use of cryptocurrencies for payments is still scarce; This is why the IMcoin team is creating a product that will make cryptocurrencies safe for everyday use, like buying a cup of coffee. IMcoin reserve fund IMcoin has a public and audited reserve fund , each IMC is backed by the reserve fund. Unlike other stablecoins, the reserve fund works with different strategies to increase in value and thus cause the price of IMC to rise. This is where the Hybridcoin concept comes from, IMC users can have a currency that is backed and stable against volatility and in turn a currency that generates value over time. Story continues IMcoin improves globalization The word globalization in cryptocurrency terms means that individuals and businesses will use everyday transactions and cross-border transactions. The US dollar is currently the world's dominant currency; The US dollar represents approximately 60% of world trade. This dominance means that the United States has an unfair advantage in the commercial advantage; sometimes they impose sanctions on other countries because of the excessive power they wield. Blockchain is a solution to those unfair advantages; blockchain is decentralized, which means there is no central authority. Everyone on the network can operate in place of the main body, such as the federal reserve, that dictates its currency. Bitcoin and Ethereum would have been a perfect solution to enable fitness in global trading due to decentralization. Still, the problem with Bitcoin or Ethereum is volatile, and transactions are sometimes slow and expensive. That is why IMcoin is the perfect solution for cross-border transactions because the currency also works as a stable currency, which means that each IMC is backed by a reserve fund. Transactions on IMcoin are fast and transaction fees on IMcoin are very low. The network that IMcoin is building means that it will likely become one of the largest cryptocurrencies for crypto asset exchange in the future. IMcoin platform will allow users to trade their cryptocurrency assets IMcoin is a hybrid currency that helps users trade their cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrency trading is one of the largest markets in the industry. IMcoin understands that some users will only test HODL the coins, but some are traders who want to speculate on the coins for profit. IMcoin will provide a platform for users to exchange their coins. The user interface of its trading platform is friendly and interactive. IMcoin will also provide an artificial intelligence algorithm that allows merchants to share their trading results with other users. The authenticity of the commercial results of the users will be verified through the blockchain technology and the users will be able to create their own hybridcoins supporting them with their commercial results. IMcoin helps in lending The arrival of cryptocurrency has disrupted almost all the traditional industries, one of the major industries in the banking and finance industry. Banks are ineffective in giving out loans to their customers. It sometimes takes hours of paperwork to be filled until a user can get a loan, but with blockchain technology, users can get loans easily without banks. IMcoin enables users to get loans on the platform loans gotten IMcoin are without intermediaries, which means that users can apply for loans and get them within seconds on the platform. The loans on IMcoin are backed by encryption guarantees based on the security and transparency of blockchain technology. Users who get loans on the platform are also allowed to deposit multiple cryptocurrencies to stabilize their collaterals, and all accounts are also properly audited by the necessary bodies. IMcoin provides constant innovation One of the major reasons projects fail is that many project founders don’t invest their time and resources to improve the project. IMcoin project is different; they have developers who are constantly working to take the project to the next level. The users in the online community can report bugs in the codes, and those bugs will be fixed by our team of developers instantly. The developers will also add updates that are requested by the community. How to invest in IMcoin Users can learn more about this fantastic project by visiting the official website https://imcoinproject.com/es/ , and you can purchase the coin on Binance DEX through this link: https://www.binance.org/en/trade/mini/IMC-D5AM_BUSD-BD1 Ask questions and interact with the most friendly community in crypto by visiting this link: https://www.t.me/imcoinproject Media Contacts – IMcoin Project info@imcoinproject.com || Canadian Bitcoin ETF Provider Went on High Alert as Crypto Crash Halted Futures Trading: Two funds run by Horizons ETFs Canada were on “high alert” after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange haltedbitcoinfutures trading amid crashing crypto prices on Wednesday, the firm’s CEO said.
The exchange-traded funds had to send alerts that they would be unable to fulfill buy and sell orders if the futures price remained at its low level, the Financial TimesreportedFriday.Bitcointumbledas low as $30,200 at one point on Wednesday, triggering curbs designed to relieve panicked trading.That caused alarm for the two funds, whichlaunched in April, allowing investors to take long and short positions on bitcoin.“We were on high alert at 9 a.m.,” said CEO Steve Hawkins. “We had to put in place all the business continuity plans for these ETFs.”The situation eased as bitcoin’s price recovered, but Hawkins believes it “opened the eyes of the retail investing public to understanding how volatile this asset class is.”
See also:‘Long Bitcoin’ Is World’s Most ‘Crowded’ Trade: Bank of America Survey
• Som Seif: ‘Rational’ for SEC to Approve Crypto ETFs
• DeFi Liquidations Up 14-Fold in Broad Crypto Sell-Off
• Bitcoin Drops Below $31K Before Rebounding; $8B in Liquidations Triggered
• Why You Shouldn’t Look at Bitcoin Backwardation Like an Oil Trader || USD/INR: Rupee Falls for Second Straight Day: TheIndian rupeeslipped against the U.S. dollar for the second straight day on Wednesday amid weakness in domestic equity markets, which fell from record highs due to losses in energy and financial stocks.
TheUSD/INRrose to an intraday high of 73.0150 against the U.S. currency from Tuesday’s close of 72.95. The dollar index, a measurement of the dollar’s value relative to six foreign currencies, fell 0.09% to 89.99.
The Indian equity markets erased their early morning gains and settled lower on Wednesday, largely due to losses in Financial and Auto sector stocks. The benchmark BSE Sensex index fell 333.93 points or 0.64% to 51,941.64, while the Nifty-50 dipped 104.70 points 0.67% to 15,635.40.
On the other hand, the global oil benchmark Brent futures rose 0.51% to $72.59 per barrel. Foreign institutional investors were net buyers in the capital market on Tuesday as they purchased shares worth Rs 1,422.71 crore, as per exchange data.
“Indian Rupeeis expected to trade with negative bias on risk aversion in the domestic markets, strong dollar and surge in crude oil prices. Additionally, Reserve Bank of India kept its interest rates unchanged for the sixth consecutive monetary policies meet and downgraded its outlook on economy. Further, traders will remain cautious ahead of macroeconomic data, inflation data from US and outcome of Major Central Banks monetary policies around the globe,” noted analysts at Sharekhan.
“However, sharp downside inRupeemay be prevented as number ofCOVID-19cases in India continued to decline. India reported daily newCOVID-19cases below 1 lakh. In India number ofCOVID-19cases exceeded 2.9Cr and deaths more than 3.51L.USDINRspot expected to trade in a range between 72.75 on lower side to 73.25 on higher side with upward trend.”
TheIndian rupeewas one of Asia’s best performers, having risen 2.3% in May, but lost ground last week, its biggest decline in six weeks. TheUSD/INRis expected to rise about 2% to INR 74.00 against the U.S. dollar rate over the coming year, up from INR 72.00 seen on Monday.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
• GBP/USD Price Forecast – British Pound Continues to Pressure Ceiling
• Dogecoin Follows Bitcoin’s Lead, Flips Green
• GBP/JPY Price Forecast – British Pound Continues to Push to Upside
• USD/CAD Daily Forecast – Canadian Dollar Is Flat After BoC Interest Rate Decision
• Climate Activists and IEA’s LaLa-Land Approach to Push Oil Prices Significantly
• Gold Price Forecast – Gold Markets Continue to See Choppy Behavior || USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis – Trading on Strong Side of Short-Term Pivot at 108.632: The Dollar/Yen is inching higher early Monday with the Forex pair basically mirroring the price action in the September 10-year Treasury note futures contract. There are no major economic releases scheduled for Monday so traders are keeping their powder dry. At 12:05 GMT on Monday, BOJ Governor Kuroda is scheduled to speak, but his comments are not likely to move the needle much.
At 13:02 GMT, theUSD/JPYis trading 108.969, up 0.020 or +0.02%.
We could get some upward movement in the Dollar/Yen if volatility in the cryptocurrency and stock markets surges. This could trigger a flight-to-safety rally into the U.S. Dollar.
The main trend is down according to the daily swing chart. A trade through 109.785 will change the main trend to up. A move through 107.479 will signal a resumption of the downtrend.
The minor trend is up. A trade through 108.337 will change the minor trend to down and shift momentum to the downside.
The short-term range is 110.966 to 107.479. Its retracement zone at 109.223 to 109.634 is resistance. It’s also controlling the near-term direction of the USD/JPY.
The minor range is 107.479 to 109.785. Its 50% level at 108.632 is support.
The major support is the 108.230 to 107.154 retracement zone. The recent main bottom at 107.479 was formed inside this zone.
Last week’s price action suggests the direction of the USD/JPY will be determined by trader reaction to 108.632.
A sustained move over 108.632 will indicate the presence of buyers. If this move creates enough upside momentum then look for the rally to possibly extend into the short-term 50% level at 109.223. Sellers could come in on the first test of this level. Overtaking it will indicate the buying is getting stronger with the short-term Fibonacci level at 109.634 the next target.
A sustained move under 108.632 will signal the presence of sellers. Taking out 108.373 will indicate the selling is getting stronger with the next targets a minor bottom at 108.337 and the main Fibonacci level at 108.230.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Bitcoin Falls 8.9% to $34,156
• U.S. Dollar Index (DX) Futures Technical Analysis – Trade Through 90.155 Confirms Friday’s Reversal Bottom
• Is Buying Bitcoin Right Now a Smart Idea?
• USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis – Trading on Strong Side of Short-Term Pivot at 108.632 || The Node: Regulating Intermediaries in a DeFi World: Crypto is a spilled can of worms for regulators that should have been squished a decade ago. That was the message Jason Furman, a senior economist in the Obama administration, told the Washington Post this week. Its now a $2 trillion monster, he said. The pace of innovation in crypto is difficult for regulators to keep up with, especially considering that, until now, there hasnt been a proactive, cohesive, industry-wide attempt to manage the industry. Despite operating under a hodgepodge of rules, frameworks and recommendations, crypto has ballooned. And regulatory attention with it. This article is excerpted from The Node , CoinDesks daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here . Related: State of Crypto: What Regulators Said at Consensus 2021 The existing framework is simply inapplicable to a system predicated on the absence of intermediaries, Director of the Blockchain Association Kristin Smith said in an interview following her Consensus 2021 appearance. This is an important point: Decentralized tools exist as the antithesis of a financial system where trusted custodians are needed to manage ones money. Theres a strong argument that the technological advances in crypto fulfill the basic consumer, fraud and terrorist financing protections the old system was erected to perform. Current regulations are designed to regulate intermediaries, Marc Boiron, general counsel for DyDx, said during a Consensus panel. When there is no intermediary to custody your assets, make trades on your behalf or manage your personal information, theres no point, Boiron asked. The faults of the old system arent present in non-custodial, open information DeFi systems. But it seems regulators have had a difficult time coming around to that view. Related: Soulja Boy Tells ‘Em He Got Paid to Tweet Story continues Smith said regulators are working overtime to try to fill the gaps and integrate novel financial and technological products under existing rules. For instance, in the waning days of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Trump administrations Treasury Department floated rules that would extend surveillance over certain transactions and unhosted (or non-custodial) wallets. The new head of the agency, Michael Mosier, who joined the public sector from crypto-analytics firm Chainalysis, said , Nothings been decided there. Likewise, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said earlier this month that Congress ought to clarify cryptocurrency rules, without giving any specifics. The Treasury Department asked cryptocurrency companies to provide the Internal Revenue Service with more financial information. Separately, FinCEN wants to better understand how privacy tools like zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP) and homomorphic encryption popular among certain cryptocurrency protocols work in fintechs, regtechs, venture capital firms and financial institutions. In most of these examples, the respective agencies have opened a line of dialogue to industry participants. But its not always easy to know what the right course of action is, even for insiders. In a Consensus panel this morning, some of the top legal minds in decentralized finance (DeFi) discussed whether open systems should or should not be regulated under existing rules. They called it the new wine in an old wineskin problem. These lawyers often dont know when or how an existing rule applies to the protocols they represent. Aave general counsel Rebecca Rettig didnt have a clear answer, but said when confronted with a difficult puzzle she tries to think through what the rules were set up to accomplish. Is a rule designed for consumer protections? To eliminate information asymmetries? To mitigate risks? Often, shes found, the rules are made obsolete by the architecture of open protocols. Still, she always asks, what are the decisions you can make to show you care about compliance? Compounds Jake Chervinksy agreed. Just try to be one of the good guys, he said. None of the legal scholars recommended that watchdog policies be dismantled, but Chervinsky did note that particular policies could benefit from disintermediation in different ways. That is, self-regulating crypto protocols could benefit securities laws in different ways than commodities law. To comply with rules designed to regulate intermediaries, DeFi protocols would need to insert a code or human process to intermediate transactions, Boiron said. None of the panelists think re-centralization is a good idea. Under the Financial Action Task Forces (FATF) expanded travel rules recommendation, developers may end up responsible for malfeasance on the system, even if they do a Satoshi and walk away from what they build. Still, Boiron is level-headed. For as decentralized, well-intentioned or automated as many DeFi protocols are, there could be bad actors. [T]he developer of the protocol or any third-party developer around the protocol could lie about the protocol, leading people to believe things that are not true about the protocol. That is where consumer protection would make sense, he said. But to apply traditional consumer protections to a protocol is still misguided. Regulators and industry should work together to devise a new regulatory paradigm that leverages the many advantages inherent to decentralized finance in order to vindicate the core objectives that traditional regulatory frameworks seek to accomplish, Blockchain Associations Smith said. Despite the uncertainty, theres pressure to get this right. Consumers can get hurt. Terrorists might get financed. And industries might crumble. The existing framework will have to bend to fit new tech. If it does not bend, then development will move outside the U.S. Once protocols are created and released, especially without admin keys, there is no stopping them, Boiron added over email following his Consensus appearance. Related Stories See Tom Brady Speak at the Last Day of Consensus Consensus 2021: 7 Questions for Bitcoin Anarchist Eric Voskuil || Fashion Redefines Finance: The Logic of Digital Luxury: We’re not cool. That’s why we’re in finance.
But people want to be cool. As highly social and intelligent animals, we want and need to belong, differentiate against each other and negotiate for status. We createsignals and hierarchiesto create pockets of relational capital, which we then cash in for real world benefits.
Such mammalian realities are contrary to the economic rendering of thehomo economicus, the abstracted rational agent making choices in financial models. In 2021, our financial models are waking up and instantiating themselves, becoming decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), spun up by decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) industry insiders, and implemented into commercial actions on-chain. Behavioral finance finds edge cases where reason ends and our hormones take over. Then we can add (1) the democratization and commoditization of everything, and (2) technologically accelerated fashion and luxury.
Related:Didi’s Downfall and the Case for Web 3.0
One intuition is to sell things to as many people as possible and to make those things as cheap as possible. This is the intuition of an “attention economy,” created and warped by the last two decades of internet advertising and venture capital blitz-scaling logic.
This is also the complete opposite of what you want to do with a branded, luxury good.
Then, you want to sell as few things as possible, and foras much as possible. That means instead of having everyone running around with your product, making it commonplace, a select few will be the beneficiaries. When everyone else is excluded, the beneficiaries accrue cultural capital. They are admired for their “having,” and it is precisely the “lack of having” on the behalf of everyone else that makes the luxury thing valuable.
Related:CryptoKickers Is Bringing NFT Sneakers to the Hypebeasts of the Metaverse
Taken together with a brand narrative – a qualitative and consistent messaging about personal values that the brand represents – this creates intangible but highly valuablebrand equity. That brand equity is destroyed with actions like cutting price or making the luxury goods feel less exclusive to access. This negative is what is highly priced in the first place.
These days, it is no longer mere exclusivity and price that drive purchases. Instead, emerging luxury brands and goods have to connect to the “zeitgeist,” the cultural heart of the global conversation. That might mean being backed by the largest musician or sports influencers. See theneobankStep being backed byTikTok megastarCharli D’Amelio, or the green finance company Aspiration get fundingfrom Drake, or the cryptocurrency exchange FTX working withTom Brady.
Purchasing social clout from the right people, plugged into the right story, will turn whatever goods you make from commodities for consumption into emotional avatars for the owners. If your target audience is price-insensitive, then you should charge their maximum willingness to pay, as well as protect their purchase by pricing out people who are not like them. That is partly why some limited editions NFTs, CryptoPunks, have been accruing unbelievably value.
As practical finance people, some might be wagging their fingers right now at irresponsible investing practices. What kind of pixelated asset allocation is this, one might ask? But that is entirely the wrong question – one about money, financial planning and mathematical outcomes.
The right question is instead about the size of the luxury market. Knowing what we do about the preferences of the human animal, let’s measure how these preferences are commercialized today. Bain tells us that people are spending$1.2 trillion per yearon luxury goods, of which $34 billion is fine art and $550 billion is cars.
Within that, the luxury goods market is around €300 billion ($355 billion) per year, growing at nearly 8% annually. It is no surprise that such trends would make their way into our digital world, as the digital world reformats physical reality into themetaverse. There is nothing especially rational about people that find themselves on the internet – they are just as impulsive, tribal and mercenary as those in the physical world.
It’s a big opportunity, and there is one more attribute we want to highlight, which is the connection between luxury and fashion. Let’s review the microeconomics of exclusive goods:
• What do you do if the demand for a high-priced luxury good is not there? The right answer is not to discount and sell to the masses. Rather, it is to destroy the unsold inventory.
• What do you do if the demand for your high-priced luxury good is extremely high? Do you create more prints or permutations? Nope. You raise the price of access so that fewer people can afford the special status.
But it is hard to build a business with recurring revenue on such grounds. You do not know the state of demand, or how successful the brand’s positioning is going to be. Mistakes are irreversible. And there is no reason for engagement from the millions of losers (in the sense that they are not winners of some auction) if the exclusive thing is permanently defined and permanently owned by the elite.
Fashion makes thingspopular and then unpopular. It catalyzes consumption. That means that if you did not hit the right notes this season, there is always another season. Turnover creates hope for the masses and a constant need to re-invest by those with high status to keep their status. Therefore, revenue becomes recurring. The artistic or cultural value of the object from the prior season is no longer guaranteed as being in style in the following season. Further, there is a motion around a creative process, and an engagement around the unveiling of new creative outcomes. You can have an entire industry of stories, brand narratives and collaboration with non-exclusive participants.
And that is now exactly what we are seeing with digital objects.
NBA TopShot was extremely popular early in the year, and is materially slowing down. Axie Infinity, a blockchain insider collectibles game, is gaining some real steam. CryptoPunks have cemented their position as the premier luxury asset for crypto avatars, and their price is rising and falling with the rest of the markets. Demand for some projects, like Art Blocks, is rising organically. Other things are almost poisonous in how uncool they are, like some common CryptoKittys we hold.
All these sentiments are likely to flip, twist and change as the social hive processes new thoughts and positions on its own evolution. They are not market bubbles selling vapor to unsuspecting investors. Rather, they are art fashions, some of which may be everlasting Mondrians, while others are meaningless decorations that will fade over time.
As Silicon Valley’s ethos and technology permeated finance, one hypothesis was the fear of media companies becoming financial companies – seeGoogle. But something else is happening, too. Financial products and financial distributors are taking on media DNA. They are natively social and sentiment-oriented. They are massively retail, transactional andFOMOdriven.
All of this brings us back to DAOs (see this article byLinda Xieorour 2018 meditation on the topic). The early DAOs are almost entirely financial in nature, coordinating the running of DeFi protocols. New entrants resemble either investment syndicates,artistic communesor some beast in between. But they all have the glue of internet culture and memetic connection between them. Unlike regular organizations, they are born of technological utopia even ifsome day anchored in human law.
Because DAOs anchor to the blockchain world, which enforces digital scarcity, they must manage the concepts of luxury and scarcity that we’ve explored. Code and data have no cultural meaning, and thus that meaning must be manufactured by a social layer of people organized for the purpose.
Not everyone can afford to be a market maker. But lots of people can govern the protocol that allows market making, create stories around it and profit from keeping it fashionable. Not everyone can buy an NFT. But lots of people can pool together to do it, while also building a meta-influencer entity that signals the cultural relevance of the purchased object. With this alchemy, a DAO could turn seasonal financial fashion into timeless investment art.
• Axie Profiting From Booming NFT Economy as Bitcoin Struggles
• CryptoPunks Get Punked || Folder-Labs Announces: 'Folder Protocol' Launches Unified NFT MVP Platform: HONG KONG, July 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Recently, Folder-Labs announced that 'Folder Protocol', which is a decentralized storage project, launched its MVP platform so that users can create NFTs with digital data that is stored on Folder Protocol network.
The Folder Protocol is designed to be a layer-2 solution for decentralized storage protocols, an incentive layer on top of IPFS, the advanced version of IPFS ecosystem which can provide storage infrastructure for any data. It is especially useful for decentralizing data, building, and running distributed applications, and implementing data heavy smart contracts at enterprise scale and performance.
MVP platform allows users to rapidly create new digital experiences. Anyone can easily generate the digital data for minting and storing NFTs on Folder Protocol using Folder Protocol and IPFS methodology to ensure the data's ownership of digital data, and the persistence of NFTs. In addition, Folder Protocols' NFT platform will extend the range of contents, including VIP exclusive limited edition by providing influential IP portfolio.
Folder-Labs said, "We built our own Filecoin mining facility early this year," and "we plan to provide rewards for participants in staking service, which will be added in future, and introduce more complete versions with various features added."
Meanwhile, Folder Protocols (FOL) can be traded in the USDT and BTC markets of Bittrex, one of the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges, and also traded in a decentralized exchange, Uniswap.
Media Contact
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SOURCE:Folder-Labs || Why Guess? (GES) Stock Might be a Great Pick: One stock that might be an intriguing choice for investors right now is Guess?, Inc. GES. This is because this security in the Textile – Apparel space is seeing solid earnings estimate revision activity, and is in great company from a Zacks Industry Rank perspective. This is important because, often times, a rising tide will lift all boats in an industry, as there can be broad trends taking place in a segment that are boosting securities across the board. This is arguably taking place in the Textile – Apparel space as it currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 26 out of more than 250 industries, suggesting it is well-positioned from this perspective, especially when compared to other segments out there. Meanwhile, Guess? is actually looking pretty good on its own too. The firm has seen solid earnings estimate revision activity over the past month, suggesting analysts are becoming a bit more bullish on the firm’s prospects in both the short and long term. Guess?, Inc. Price and Consensus Guess, Inc. Price and Consensus Guess?, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Guess?, Inc. Quote In fact, over the past month, current quarter estimates have risen from 38 cents per share to 74 cents per share, while current year estimates have risen from $1.59 per share to $2.38 per share. This has helped GES to earn a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), further underscoring the company’s solid position. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here . So, if you are looking for a decent pick in a strong industry, consider Guess?. Not only is its industry currently in the top third, but it is seeing solid estimate revisions as of late, suggesting it could be a very interesting choice for investors seeking a name in this great industry segment. Bitcoin, Like the Internet Itself, Could Change Everything Blockchain and cryptocurrency has sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the “Internet of Money” and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree we’re still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities. Story continues Zacks’ has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly. See 3 crypto-related stocks now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Guess, Inc. (GES) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research || Vietnamese PM Calls on State Bank For CBDC Pilot: Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh has called on the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) to carry out a pilot project for a digital currency (CBDC).
The study to issue a digital currency utilizing blockchain technology is expected to take place between 2021-2023. The prime ministerhighlightedthis in his decision about e-Government development strategy towards a digital government.
Cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology are simply one among several core technologies Vietnam hopes to develop and master. Others include artificial intelligence (AI), big data, augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR). The prime minister said these could create significant breakthroughs, providing favorable conditions for building a digital government.
There have been conflicting definitions of cryptocurrencies and virtual assets in Vietnam. However, so far, there seems to be a general consensus from authorities. For many years, the SBV stressed that cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, have not legally been recognized inVietnam. The use of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment is also not legally recognized and protected. Finally, the central bank has not granted licenses for any cryptocurrency trading platforms to date.
Despite this skepticism at the governmental level, authorities are still intrigued by the potential of digital assets established on a blockchain. Last year, the Ministry of Finance set up a group to study virtual assets and cryptocurrencies, then to propose policies and management mechanisms.
Huynh Phuoc Nghia, deputy director of the Institute of Innovation under the University of Economics, Ho Chi Minh City, says that “digital money is an inevitable trend.” According to him, it’s time for the government to study and carry out pilot implementation for cryptocurrency.
Although somewhat skeptical about cryptocurrencies, Vietnamese authorities have already found a way to benefit from blockchain technology. Last year, the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnamuploadedits high school and university diplomas onto a blockchain.
The Vietnamese government is calling for further use ofblockchain, including its electronic identification (eKYC) system, though details are not yet forthcoming. If it continues at this pace, Vietnam could overtake Malta in the educational blockchain space.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
|
Trend: down || Prices: 32877.37, 33798.01, 33520.52, 34240.19, 33155.85, 32702.03, 32822.35, 31780.73, 31421.54, 31533.07
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin Holding Support at $60K; Could Face Resistance at $63K-$65K: Bitcoin (BTC) is stabilizing around the $60,000 support level after declining about 15% from an all-time high near $69,000.
The cryptocurrency is roughly flat over the past 24 hours and could see further upside toward the $63,000-$65,000 resistance zone.
Both the 50-day and 100-day moving averages are sloping upward, indicating a positive intermediate-term trend. This means buyers could remain active on pullbacks given strong price support above $53,000.
For now, the relative strength index (RSI) on the daily chart is below a neutral reading of 50, which means a period of consolidation could continue until a decisive breakout or breakdown is confirmed. || Overview of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) Cryptocurrency Fund 2021 Q3: Dublin, Dec. 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The"Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) Cryptocurrency Fund: Institutional Investment 2021 Q3"report has been added toResearchAndMarkets.com'soffering.
Investor interest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies surged in 2021. This report looks at institutional investment in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC).
In general, institutional investors do no hold Bitcoin directly, but invest indirectly through trusts and funds. Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is a popular cryptocurrency fund through which investors gain exposure to Bitcoin. Investment in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and other funds is an important measure of institutional interest and confidence in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Institutional investors are companies that invest money, either for themselves or on behalf of their clients. Institutional investors include investment banks, commercial banks, hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds, and insurance companies. Through the funds they control, institutional interest can exert a strong influence on market prices.
Key Topics Covered:
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC)
• What is Cryptocurrency ?
• Varieties of Cryptocurrency
• Cryptocurrency Exchanges
• 2021 Infrastructure Bill and Cryptocurrency
• Institutional Investors
• Cathie Wood and ARK Investment Management
• Where does the data come from?
• Institutional Investment
• Graph. Price of Bitcoin
• Graph. Price of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC)
• Graph. Holdings by Value
• Graph. Shares Held
• Graph. Number of Institutions
• Graph. New and Closed Positions
• Graph. Increased and Decreased Positions
• Graph. Concentration of Ownership
• Graph. Turnover Ratio
• Table. Current Holdings
• Table. New Positions
• Table. Closed Positions
• Table. Increased Continuing Positions
• Table. Decreased Continuing Positions
• Call Options
• Put Options
• Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Reports
• About Institutional Intelligence Reports
Companies Mentioned
• Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC)
• ARK Investment Management
For more information about this report visithttps://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/eujo1c
CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 || Powering Bitcoin Miners with Stranded Carbon: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
By Matthew Sigel, Head of Digital Assets Research — Van Eck Associates Corporation
"One day, he struck on an opportunity to buy some fuel oil. The situation was a microcosm of the inefficiencies of the Soviet system. An oil refinery in Ukraine was producing fuel oil to supply several power stations. When a mild winter came, the power stations used less, and so the refinery had excess supplies. With no other instructions on where to deliver it, the director of the refinery simply told his employees to dig holes in the nearby forest and pour the fuel oil into them. From a situation like that one, Tarasov soon found himself with meaningful quantities of Soviet fuel oil to sell." -The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders who Barter the Earth’s Resources, by Javier Blas & Jack Farchy
"Due to supply chain challenges and geopolitical factors, China is experiencing a coal shortage that has resulted in higher energy prices and government-mandated power restrictions against parts of the manufacturing sector. Given the majority of global polysilicon capacity is located in Mainland China, higher coal costs, mandated reductions in energy consumption and reduced operating capacity have further exacerbated the supply and demand imbalance in the polysilicon market, contributing to an ongoing increase in pricing for both polysilicon and solar modules. This, coupled with the challenging freight environment, has caused many Chinese-based manufacturers to prioritize availability of solar module supply to the local market where the major investors in utility-scale solar are the country's state-owned enterprises. This is yet another potent reminder of the risk of having climate goals tethered to supply chains that lead a single nation in the PV technology and demonstrates the irony of America's clean energy transition currently being hindered by reliance on coal to produce crystalline silicon solar models." -Mark Widmar, CEO First Solar (FSLR, mkt cap $12B), November 11, 2021 earnings call
COP26 ended with no binding agreements. Rich countries are still sitting on the $100B/year promised, then delayed, to fund the energy transition in emerging markets. India introduced last-minute language into the COP26 communique that changed plans for coal usage from "phase out" to "phase down"; and China this year alone has announced plans to build 43 new coal-fired power plants.1As if on cue, U.S. coal prices have surged to their highest point since 2009, while UK power prices hit GBP 2,000/per megawatt-hour—10x the month’s average—on a wind outage on November 15, and still sit 460% above 2020 averages.2Meanwhile, polysilicon prices are also up 330% this year, a rise that one energy consultancy says may delay more than half of global utility solar developments planned for 2022.3Put simply, the natural variability of renewable power, supply-side constraints on fossil fuel production, and a global shortage of battery capacity are contributing to rising food and fuel inflation, highlighting the enduring appeal of stable baseload power, which has been starved of investment capital for much for the last decade. For perspective, consider that coal and gas contributed 36.4% of German electricity supply in 2020; last week, they comprised 56.4% as renewable production stalled.4The outage highlights the uneasy state of European energy supplies: even with German renewable power production up 50% since 2015, capex by German electricity suppliers has fallen at an annual CAGR of 5% over the same period, making Russia a more crucial supplier of European fossil fuels.5In order to pay for the costlier, less reliable renewable energy, the average German household is now paying 48 euros a month in taxes, up from 12 Euros in 1998, with those taxes now representing 53% of the annual electricity bill—up from 24%.6No wonder the ruling CDU/CSU, which had led a grand coalition with the SPD since 2013, recorded its worst ever result in September's federal election with just 24% of the vote.
The UK seems to be following a similar path. Electricity demand is down 19% from its 2005 peak, but UK natural gas production is down an ever starker 65% since 2000.7Meanwhile the Bank of England has aligned its monetary policy with a green agenda, last week introducing new eligibility criteria to tilt its bond purchases "towards the stronger climate performers within their sectors," the BoE said in a statement. There is also the matter of the upcoming UK gas boiler ban, which mandates heat pumps or hydrogen boilers in place of gas boilers for any new construction after 2025. Thus the current market prices for UK power—more than 4x higher than 2020 average—may be a signal of the required return for these non-market-based climate policies.
Source: Bloomberg. as of 11/16/2021.
Europe's recent energy experience raises the question of whether Americans might bear a similar burden if domestic production growth does not re-accelerate. According to an October Politico/Morning Consult poll, 89% of Americans are somewhat or very concerned about inflation, and 62% say "Biden administration policies" are "very or somewhat responsible".8Keep in mind that food and fuel inflation is highly regressive: top quintile American wage-earners spend 19% of total expenditures on food and fuel vs. 28% for the lowest income quintile.9Inflation is also a lethal weapon to ruling politicians, a lesson repeated in Argentina last weekend when President Alberto Fernandez's ruling left-wing bloc were thrashed in midterm elections amidst 52% inflation.10
What does this all have to do with digital assets? Well in our view, politically driven and thus artificial supply-side constraints in primary energy markets are creating more arbitrage opportunities in global energy markets thanks to Bitcoin, vs. pre-Satoshi. Whereas in the past, jurisdictions or households who disagree with the forced “energy transition” might have struggled to export their stranded carbon because of the high cost, long lead times or environmental hassle associated with transporting energy, now they can co-locate a Bitcoin mining rig close to the energy source and send the money instantly to anywhere in the world with an internet connection. No need for transmission lines! In a world short of battery capacity, Bitcoin’s energy storage capability is actually quite helpful—particularly if the miners promise to turn off their machines when the base load demand is needed, as many contracts are now structured, or if they find energy that would otherwise have gone to waste.
You can see this phenomenon most clearly in Texas, where flared gas alone could power nearly a third of the total Bitcoin network11, and where miners are rapidly signing power purchase contract agreements to exploit the state's frequent negative energy costs. (U.S. market share of Bitcoin hash rate has risen from 4% to 42% in just two years). We expect Bitcoin miners, in the midst of rapid capital formation thanks to 100% annual IRRs at the $60k BTC price12, to deploy profits upstream to acquire stranded carbon in remote locations. Indeed crypto mining company Enegix announced plans this month to build its own hydropower plants in Kazakhstan. Of course the extreme example of this is a government using its own stranded energy directly to mine Bitcoin, as El Salvador has begun to do, and which is also under consideration in Miami, FL.13Last week's news that the Russian Duma is also considering whether to legalize Bitcoin mining shows Moscow understands the value of stranded carbon as well. Certainly Germany's delay of Russia's Nord 2 gas pipeline on November 16 should also provide further incentive.14
Source: Berkeley Lab, as of 2020.
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Originallypublishedby VanEck on November 18, 2021.
For more news, information, and strategy, visit theBeyond Basic Beta Channel.
DISCLOSURES
Important Information Regarding Cryptocurrencies
VanEck assumes no liability for the content of any linked third-party site, and/or content hosted on external sites.
The information herein represents the opinion of the author(s), an employee of the advisor, but not necessarily those of VanEck.The securities/ financial instruments discussed in this material may not be appropriate for all investors. The appropriateness of a particular investment or strategy will depend on an investor’s individual circumstances and objectives.
This material has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy or sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any security/financial instrument, or to participate in any trading strategy.
Certain statements contained herein may constitute projections, forecasts and other forward looking statements, which do not reflect actual results, are valid as of the date of this communication and subject to change without notice. Information provided by third party sources are believed to be reliable and have not been independently verified for accuracy or completeness and cannot be guaranteed. VanEck does not guarantee the accuracy of third party data.References to specific securities and their issuers or sectors are for illustrative purposes only.
Cryptocurrency is a digital representation of value that functions as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, or a store of value, but it does not have legal tender status. Cryptocurrencies are sometimes exchanged for U.S. dollars or other currencies around the world, but they are not generally backed or supported by any government or central bank.Their value is completely derived by market forces of supply and demand, and they are more volatile than traditional currencies. The value of cryptocurrency may be derived from the continued willingness of market participants to exchange fiat currency for cryptocurrency, which may result in the potential for permanent and total loss of value of a particular cryptocurrency should the market for that cryptocurrency disappear.Cryptocurrencies are not covered by either FDIC or SIPC insurance. Legislative and regulatory changes or actions at the state, federal, or international level may adversely affect the use, transfer, exchange, and value of cryptocurrency.
Investing in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, comes with a number of risks, including volatile market price swings or flash crashes, market manipulation, and cybersecurity risks. In addition, cryptocurrency markets and exchanges are not regulated with the same controls or customer protections available in equity, option, futures, or foreign exchange investing. There is no assurance that a person who accepts a cryptocurrency as payment today will continue to do so in the future.
Investors should conduct extensive research into the legitimacy of each individual cryptocurrency, including its platform, before investing. The features, functions, characteristics, operation, use and other properties of the specific cryptocurrency may be complex, technical, or difficult to understand or evaluate. The cryptocurrency may be vulnerable to attacks on the security, integrity or operation, including attacks using computing power sufficient to overwhelm the normal operation of the cryptocurrency’s blockchain or other underlying technology. Some cryptocurrency transactions will be deemed to be made when recorded on a public ledger, which is not necessarily the date or time that a transaction may have been initiated.
• Investors must have the financial ability, sophistication and willingness to bear the risks of an investment and a potential total loss of their entire investment in cryptocurrency.
• An investment in cryptocurrency is not suitable or desirable for all investors.
• Cryptocurrency has limited operating history or performance.
• Fees and expenses associated with a cryptocurrency investment may be substantial.
There may be risks posed by the lack of regulation for cryptocurrencies and any future regulatory developments could affect the viability and expansion of the use of cryptocurrencies. Investors should conduct extensive research before investing in cryptocurrencies.
1CREA Briefing, August 2021
2Bloomberg, 11/15/2021
3Rystad Energy, Bloomberg, as of 11/16/2021
4Fraunhofer ISE
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
7Bloomberg, Statista
8Morning Consult/Politico tracking poll October 16-18, 2021
9BofA Global Research, BLS
10Argentina Census Bureau, Bloomberg, October 2021
11EIA, CBECI, Nic Carter presentation at Texas Blockchain Summit, 10/8/2021
12Permian Chain, Compass Mining,Hashrateindex.com
13Coindesk November 9; Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, CNBC interview, 6/17/2021
14Statement from Russian Duma, 11/11/2021
Information provided by Van Eck is not intended to be, nor should it be construed as financial, tax or legal advice. It is not a recommendation to buy or sell an interest in cryptocurrencies.
All investing is subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest. As with any investment strategy, there is no guarantee that investment objectives will be met and investors may lose money. Diversification does not ensure a profit or protect against a loss in a declining market. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
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We encourage you to verify all terms and conditions of any product before you apply. || RETRANSMISSION: HIVE Presents Record October 2021 Production Figures, HODL 1,350 Bitcoins as of October and Appointment of Luc Ouellette as VP of our New Brunswick Data Centre Campus: Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - November 22, 2021) - HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: HIVE) (Nasdaq: HIVE) (FSE: HBF) (the "Company" or "HIVE") is pleased to announce the production figures from the Company's global Bitcoin and Ethereum mining operations for the month of October 2021, our BTC HODL position of 1,350 coins and announcing a new team member from our local community in New Brunswick.
October 2021 Production Figures
Following a record Q2 2021 earnings report (period end September 30, 2021), HIVE is pleased to announce its October 2021 production figures. The Company notes it currently has:
• US$23.4M Revenue
• 234 BTC Produced
• 2,591 ETH Produced
Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman of HIVE stated, "We are proud of the growth and operational excellence exhibited from our global operations, which has HIVE generating US$280M in annual revenue on a run-rate basis using October figures, or approximately C$350M."
Aydin Kilic, President & COO of HIVE noted, "We would like the investing public and crypto enthusiasts to understand the financial relationship between BTC and ETH mining. For example, currently 1,000 GH/s of ETH mining is equivalent in daily revenue from value of coins produced to approximately 215 PH/s of Bitcoin mining, using daily averages from the month of October. The Company believes it is in a unique position of having a large BTC and ETH mining footprint to provide investors a valuable value proposition. Mr Kilic continued, "Similarly, where one can equate hashrate on a revenue basis between BTC and ETH, you can also equate the value of the coins on a daily basis, as such the 2,591 ETH that HIVE produced is approximately equal in value to 171 BTC, in addition to the pure 234 BTC produced from our BTC operations."
The Company's total Bitcoin equivalent production in October 2021 was:
405 BTC Equivalent Produced13.1 BTC Equivalent per day average Produced
BTC Coin Inventory (HODL)
On October 31, 2021 HIVE was Holder of 1,350 mined Bitcoin coins and has been banking them in secure wallets. Our continued strategy is one to continue holding coins, as we feel that it will benefit our shareholders.
This HODL strategy continues to led to the strengthening of our balance sheet and liquidity each and every month as we add to our BTC HODL position.
Appointment of Luc Ouellette as Vice President of New Brunswick Operations
Mr. Luc Ouellette has been in the IT services sector for many years and is a fixture of the local community in New Brunswick where HIVE's state of the art 70MW data center campus is being constructed, which operates on green energy. Mr. Holmes noted, "We are pleased to welcome Mr. Ouellette to the HIVE family, as he has been an integral part of our operations in New Brunswick as a contractor since we acquired this site earlier this year. In addition to being 100% green energy focussed, we believe it is important to recognize talent in the communities where we invest, and we look forward to Luc growing with us as we expand our facility in New Brunswick as a HIVE team member."
Currently HIVE's New Brunswick facility is operating at 30MW of power capacity and generating approximately 650 PH/s of Bitcoin mining capacity. In December 2021 the Company expects the next 20MW phase of this campus to be complete, for which HIVE will have ASIC hardware ready to be installed immediately adding 500 PH/s of Bitcoin mining capacity.
Furthermore, the Company expects that the subsequent 20MW expansion phase will be completed in Q1 of calendar 2022, which will add an additional 500 PH/s of Bitcoin mining capacity and bring the campus to 70MW of total operating infrastructure. HIVE has ASIC hardware secured on delivery such that upon completion of the 70MW New Brunswick campus, this site will produce over 1.6 Exahash of Bitcoin mining capacity, which Mr. Ouellette will directly oversee the day-to-day operations of.
Mr. Kilic stated, "We are excited to have Mr. Ouellette oversee the on-site operation of what will be one of Canada's largest single-site crypto mining campuses. I had the pleasure of meeting Luc when I travelled to the HIVE New Brunswick site earlier this year and was very impressed by his professionalism and resourcefulness." Mr. Ouellette, a local resident in the community, will manage the logistics and installations of all incoming ASIC hardware, in addition to on-going maintenance and repairs to ensure optimal hashing uptime, as well will be HIVE's regional representative in New Brunswick.
About HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd.
HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd. went public in 2017 as the first cryptocurrency mining company with a 100% green energy focus and an ESG strategy.
HIVE is a growth-oriented technology stock in the emergent blockchain industry. As a company whose shares trade on a major stock exchange, we are building a bridge between the digital currency and blockchain sector and traditional capital markets. HIVE owns state-of-the-art, green energy-powered data centre facilities in Canada, Sweden, and Iceland, where we source only green energy to mine on the cloud and HODL both Ethereum and Bitcoin. Since the beginning of 2021, HIVE has held in secure storage the majority of its ETH and BTC coin mining rewards. Our shares provide investors with exposure to the operating margins of digital currency mining, as well as a portfolio of cryptocurrencies such as ETH and BTC. Because HIVE also owns hard assets such as data centers and advanced multi-use servers, we believe our shares offer investors an attractive way to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency space. HIVE traded over 2 billion shares in 2020.
We encourage you to visit HIVE's YouTube channelhereto learn more about HIVE.
For more information and to register to HIVE's mailing list, please visitwww.HIVEblockchain.com. Follow@HIVEblockchain on Twitterand subscribe toHIVE's YouTube channel.
On Behalf of HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd."Frank Holmes"Executive Chairman
For further information please contact:Frank HolmesTel: (604) 664-1078
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
Forward-Looking Information
Except for the statements of historical fact, this news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of the applicable Canadian and U.S. securities legislation that is based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. "Forward-looking information" in this news release includes but is not limited to, statements with respect to information about the potential increase in hashpower, the potential for the Company's long-term growth, the Company's HODL strategy being beneficial to shareholders; and the business goals and objectives of the Company.
Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in such forward-looking information include, but are not limited to: the volatility of the digital currency market; the Company's ability to successfully mine digital currency; the Company may not be able to profitably liquidate its current digital currency inventory as required, or at all; a material decline in digital currency prices may have a significant negative impact on the Company's operations; the volatility of digital currency prices; continued effects of the COVID-19 pandemic may have a material adverse effect on the Company's performance as supply chains are disrupted and prevent the Company from carrying out its expansion plans or operating its assets; and other related risks as more fully set out in the registration statement of the Company and other documents disclosed under the Company's filings at www.sec.gov/EDGAR and www.sedar.com.
The forward-looking information in this news release reflects the current expectations, assumptions and/or beliefs of the Company based on information currently available to the Company. In connection with the forward-looking information contained in this news release, the Company has made assumptions about the current profitability in mining cryptocurrency (including pricing and volume of current transaction activity); profitable use of the Company's assets going forward; the Company's ability to profitably liquidate its digital currency inventory as required; historical prices of digital currencies and the ability of the Company to mine digital currencies will be consistent with historical prices; and there will be no regulation or law that will prevent the Company from operating its business. The Company has also assumed that no significant events occur outside of the Company's normal course of business. Although the Company believes that the assumptions inherent in the forward-looking information are reasonable, forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such information due to their inherent uncertainty.
To view the source version of this press release, please visithttps://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/104591 || S&P 500 Weekly Price Forecast – Stock Markets Pull Back Heading Into December: TheS&P 500has initially tried to rally during the course of the week but gave back the gains to show signs of weakness. All things being equal, this is a market that has been in an uptrend forever, and therefore I am looking at this as a potential buying opportunity on pullbacks. The obvious uptrend line is marked on the chart, so we could have further to go, but I think somewhere around 4500 is going to be a major support level. At this point, I do not have any interest in trying to get too cute with this market, so I am simply waiting for see some type of support of bounce to take advantage of.
If we can break above the top of the candlestick during the trading week, then it opens up the possibility of going all the way to the 4800 level in the short term. We do have the so-called “Santa Claus rally” about to kick off when money managers try to do everything that they can to earn some type of gains in order to show profit to clients. This forces traders to buy every dip along the road, and it will be interesting to see how the market looks at this on Monday when more volume returns. If that is the case, we may have a massive turnaround during the day, but I would not be willing to call that as likely quite yet. If we break down below the bottom of the candlestick, then I think 4500 is a reasonable area look for a bounce. Longer-term, we are going higher, because even with the Federal Reserve tapering, liquidity is still a major factor.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• BTC and ETH Dip as Covid Variant Fears Affect Financial Markets || TuSimple To Use Nvidia Chips For Autonomous Truck Driving Computer: By Sam Boughedda
Investing.com — Autonomous driving technology company Tusimple Holdings Inc (NASDAQ:TSP) has expanded its partnership with Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) to use its chips to design and develop an autonomous domain controller for autonomous trucks.
According to TuSimple, the design will incorporate the Nvidia DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip, which is specifically designed for autonomous driving applications.
The domain controller is the central computer for intelligent vehicles and powers autonomous driving capabilities.
"A high-performance, production-ready ADC is a critical piece to scaling our AFN, and we are taking a hands-on role to advance its development with the help of NVIDIA," said Cheng Lu, President, and CEO of TuSimple.
"We believe this move provides us a significant competitive advantage in speeding time to market and further extending our industry leadership position," added Lu.
Nvidia will also provide its AI expertise to TuSimple, which will own usage rights to the controller reference design, including certain limited "first-use" provisions. TuSimple said it intends to work with third-party manufacturers for the production of the ADC.
TuSimple shares are down 8% at the time of writing, while Nvidia shares have fallen 5.8%.
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France stocks higher at close of trade; CAC 40 up 1.39% || IBN’s CryptoCurrencyWire to Serve as Official NewsWire for the European Blockchain Convention: NEW YORK, Dec. 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via CryptoCurrencyWire -- IBN (“InvestorBrandNetwork”), a multifaceted communications organization with 50+ brands such as CryptoCurrencyWire (“CCW”), today announces its collaboration with the European Blockchain Convention on the occasion of next week’s event, which is set to be held in an entirely digital format Dec. 13-16, 2021. The European Blockchain Convention was founded in 2017 with the stated mission to accelerate the blockchain ecosystem in Europe. Since then, the conference has become a key meeting point of the blockchain industry in Europe, combining world-class content and large audiences while leveraging the organizers’ extensive experience in hosting online and offline events. Over the first nine months of 2021, global venture capital funding touched $15 billion, which is up substantially from 2020’s full-year total of $3.1 billion. Amidst that backdrop of surging interest within the sector, the European Blockchain Convention is set to attract upwards of 2,500 attendees who will get access to the talks and round-table discussions held by a carefully curated lineup of more than 120 speakers who will join this year’s event. Presenters will include the likes of Algorand Foundation CEO Sean Lee; “The Bitcoin Standard” author Dr. Saifedean Ammous; Bitstamp managing director Jean-Baptiste Graftieaux; Bank of Israel deputy governor Mr. Andrew Abir; Bank Santander head of blockchain Coty de Monteverde; Circle chief strategy officer Dante Disparte; Distrikt co-founder Andra Georgescu; ConsenSys Health founder Heather Flannery; and Hyperledger executive director Daniela Barbosa and European Parliament member Eva Kaili. CryptoCurrencyWire (“CCW”) has been engaged as the Official NewsWire of the European Blockchain Convention to leverage its extensive array of corporate communications solutions to increase recognition for conference participants who are seeking to enhance visibility before investors, journalists, consumers and the public. Effective brand awareness strategies provided include article syndication to publicize the event via 5,000+ downstream partners, press releases to reach North American demographics, and featured placement of the event on IBN’s dedicated events page. “We are delighted to be working with IBN and CryptoCurrencyWire on the occasion of our upcoming European Blockchain Convention,” said European Blockchain Convention co-founder Daniel Salmerón. “Their widespread syndication network delivers further exposure for our sponsors while complementing our existing strategies to increase attendance and participation.” Story continues Separately, and in addition to the coverage provided by CryptoCurrencyWire, IBN is set to provide social media coverage of the virtual event. Collectively among its 50+ brands, IBN reaches more than 2 million likes and followers across a variety of social networking platforms. “Our team is excited to be working with the European Blockchain Convention’s team of professionals as we work collectively to highlight the exciting innovations taking place with blockchain technology while helping newcomers better understand the industry,” said Jonathan Keim, director of communications of IBN. “The European Blockchain Convention has become the most influential blockchain event in Europe, and we always appreciate valuable opportunities like this one to help advance the space as a whole.” For additional details about the European Blockchain Convention, visit https://eblockchainconvention.com . About IBN IBN (“InvestorBrandNetwork”) consists of financial brands introduced to the investment public over the course of 15+ years. With IBN, we have amassed a collective audience of millions of social media followers. These distinctive investor brands aim to fulfill the unique needs of a growing base of client-partners. IBN will continue to expand our branded network of highly influential properties, leveraging the knowledge and energy of specialized teams of experts to serve our increasingly diversified list of clients. Through NetworkNewsWire (“NNW”) and its affiliate brands, IBN provides: (1) access to a network of wire solutions via InvestorWire to reach all target markets, industries and demographics in the most effective manner possible; (2) article and editorial syndication to 5,000+ news outlets; (3) enhanced press release solutions to ensure maximum impact; (4) full-scale distribution to a growing social media audience; (5) a full array of corporate communications solutions; and (6) a total news coverage solution. For more information on IBN, visit https://www.InvestorBrandNetwork.com . Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the InvestorBrandNetwork website, applicable to all content provided by IBN wherever published or re-published: https://IBN.fm/Disclaimer Corporate Communications IBN (InvestorBrandNetwork) Los Angeles, California www.InvestorBrandNetwork.com 310.299.1717 Office Editor@InvestorBrandNetwork.com View comments || Bitcoin Well Announces Enhanced Investor Relations Program, Including Appointment of Investor Relations Director: EDMONTON, Alberta, Dec. 02, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bitcoin Well (TSXV: BTCW) ( Bitcoin Well or the Company ), a technology company building and utilizing products that offer safe and easy ways to buy, sell and use bitcoin, is pleased to announce that the Company has expanded our ongoing investor relations and capital markets engagement programs with several key internal and external appointments. These include the appointment of a new, in-house Director of Investor Relations along with the engagement of Hybrid Financial Ltd. ( Hybrid ), providing support for investor relations and capital markets initiatives; North Equities Corp. ( North Equities ) to deliver social media and investor engagement strategies; and TSM Talk Shop Media Inc. ( Talk Shop ), providing support for the Companys public and media relations efforts. Since listing on TSXV in July of this year, we have continued to expand our in-house capabilities, including adding to our talented team of professionals to set the stage for anticipated rapid growth, while remaining active with acquisitions, continued ATM deployment, and ongoing software development, said Adam OBrien, CEO of Bitcoin Well. The addition of Myles as our in-house IR Director, and the engagement of Hybrid and North Equities which both have significant experience working with other public companies in the bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry, will add valuable capital markets and external communications expertise to supplement our existing investment community strategy. Bitcoin Well anticipates being quoted on the OTC Pink Markets in the US in the near future, and will explore obtaining a full listing on OTCQB subsequently. These additions will add tremendous firepower to enhance exposure to US and global investors." Director of Investor Relations Appointment Bitcoin Well is very pleased to welcome Mr. Myles Dougan as our new Director of Investor Relations, who joins us this week and will initially be based out of our office in Calgary. Myles has over 16 years of hands-on strategic and tactical investor relations expertise, having worked with a number of large, publicly-traded companies on both Canadian and US exchanges, including ATCO Ltd., Nexen Inc., AltaGas Ltd., and TC Energy and TC Pipelines, LP. As a strategic storyteller, Myles has a passion for pitching value propositions to investors and other stakeholders, complemented by a deep knowledge of capital markets and extensive global network of public equity and debt investor contacts. He has a proven track record of developing, advising and executing investor communication strategies, along with financial valuation acumen and broad understanding of public disclosure requirements. The team at Bitcoin Well is excited to welcome Myles and will be able to leverage both his IR strengths along with his ability to coach executives and colleagues to help them realize their peak potential in public speaking and investor interactions. To sign up for our Investor Newsletter, please click here . Story continues Expanding our Market Reach with the Engagement of Hybrid, North Equities and Talk Shop Bitcoin Well has retained Hybrid Financial Ltd. The service provided by Hybrid to the Company is a database of Registered Financial Professionals in North America. Hybrid is not promoting the specific purchase or sale of securities. It provides its database, technology, and call centre services to enable the issuer to disseminate its information to Financial Professionals only. Hybrid connects issuers to the investment community across North America. Using a data driven approach, Hybrid provides its clients with comprehensive coverage of both American and Canadian markets. Hybrid Financial has offices in Toronto and Montreal. Hybrid provides its services directly to Bitcoin Well. Hybrid has agreed to comply with all applicable securities laws and the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange (the TSXV) in providing the Services. Hybrid has been engaged by Bitcoin Well for an initial period of 12 months (the Initial Term ) ending on November 15, 2022 (the Agreement ) which shall be renewed automatically for successive six month periods thereafter, unless terminated by the Company. Hybrid will be paid a monthly fee of $22,500, plus applicable taxes, during the Initial Term. Hybrid has no interest, directly or indirectly in the Company or its securities, and acts at arms length to the Company. The appointment of Hybrid remains subject to regulatory acceptance of applicable filings with the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV). Bitcoin Well has also entered into a consulting and investor engagement agreement with North Equities (the North Equities Agreement ) pursuant to which North Equities will work with Bitcoin Well to support our ongoing social media and investor engagement strategies, bringing together strong market awareness of Bitcoin Well among our target audiences, including customers, investors, regulators, other stakeholders and the general public. Under the terms of the North Equities Agreement, Bitcoin Well will pay North Equities $200,000 CAD + GST to be paid as follows: (i) half at commencement of the contract, provided that such initial payment shall only be due upon confirmation of approval of the appointment of North Equities from the TSXV and half of the payment due after a period of six months. In addition, Bitcoin Well agreed to grant North Equities 550,000 options to purchase the Companys common shares (the Options ). The Options will be exercisable at a price of $0.255 per common share for a period of five years, are subject to the Companys stock option plan and will vest in accordance with the provisions therein and the policies of the TSXV. Prior to entering into the North Equities Agreement, North Equities had no interest, directly or indirectly, in the Company or its securities and acted at arms length to the Company. The appointment of North Equities as an investor relations consultant of the Company, and the granting of the Options, remain subject to regulatory acceptance of applicable filings with the TSXV. Bitcoin Well is thrilled to be working with the talented team at Talk Shop to support our ongoing public relations and media relations strategies, enhancing awareness of Bitcoin Well in the media and to our target audiences. Talk Shop has earned a reputation for delivering cutting-edge public relations programs across multiple sectors with expertise rooted in traditional public and media relations, thought leadership, media training and speaker training. Bitcoin Well is keen to continue establishing our team as a leading voice in the bitcoin and fintech sectors, building our CEO and executive profiles by offering expertise and insights that can guide consumers into the future. Through our agreement with Talk Shop, we will seek to leverage their expertise in embracing innovation, starting conversations and executing a strategic approach to gaining PR and exposure that can translate into regular commentary and coverage within media, as well as speaking opportunities at leading industry forums. About Bitcoin Well Bitcoin Well offers convenient, secure, and reliable ways to buy and sell bitcoin through a trusted Bitcoin services network. The Company is the first publicly traded Bitcoin ATM company in the world (based on managements assessment of publicly available data), with an enterprising consolidation and expansion strategy to deliver accretive and cost-effective expansion in North America and globally. Management of Bitcoin Well brings deep operational capabilities with a combined 20+ years experience in the bitcoin industry. Bitcoin Well is on a mission to shift the relationship that society has with money by offering an ecosystem of products and services that make bitcoin accessible and understood. This mission includes a three pillared approach: 1) non-custodial financial offerings (both in-person and online) 2) technology development, including SaaS and internal technology developments through Ghostlab, the technology arm of the business 3) educational resources designed with the needs of both their customers, and the industry, in mind. Follow us on LinkedIn , Twitter , YouTube , Facebook and Instagram to keep up to date with our business. Sign up for our Investor targeted newsletter here . Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-Looking Information Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information under applicable securities laws, rules and regulations, including, without limitation, statements with respect to acceptance by the TSXV of the engagement of Hybrid and North Equities as investor relations consultants. and grant of the Options to North Equities. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "intend", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected", estimated, anticipated and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on Bitcoin Wells current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate. Actual future results may differ materially. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to Bitcoin Well. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and Bitcoin Well undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Because of the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein. Contact Information For investor information, please contact: Bitcoin Well 10142 82 Avenue NW Edmonton, AB T6E 1Z4 investors.bitcoinwell.com Adam OBrien , President & CEO or Dave Bradley , Chief Revenue Officer Tel: 1 888 711 3866 ir@bitcoinwell.com Myles Dougan, Director of Investor Relations Tel: 587 982 2769 m.dougan@bitcoinwell.com For media queries and further information, please contact: Karen Smola , Director of Marketing Tel: 587-735-1570 k.smola@bitcoinwell.com || Crypto Lender Nexo Teams Up With Fidelity to Offer Products for Institutional Investors: Cryptocurrency lender Nexo will work with Fidelity Digital Assets to provide products to and infrastructure for institutional investors, Nexo announced Tuesday. Institutional investors who use Fidelity as their custodian will have access to Nexo’s products and crypto prime brokerage under one umbrella. That will bridge the gap between Nexo’s lending products and Fidelity’s asset protection businesses, the firms said in a press release. “On the one hand, what brought Nexo and Fidelity Digital Assets together was that we felt the pressing need to directly address institutional investors’ challenge of safely storing digital assets, which has historically limited the large players from entering the space,” Kalin Metodiev, co-founder and managing partner at Nexo, told CoinDesk. “On the other, we saw the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to introduce services that simply do not exist to this day, and this is precisely what we plan on doing through our collaboration.” London-based Nexo has processed over $50 billion in transactions for more than 2.5 million users worldwide. Meanwhile, Fidelity has been expanding its digital assets team as institutional demand for crypto assets continues to grow. Read more: Fidelity Launches Canada’s First Institutional Bitcoin Custody Service
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 41911.60, 41821.26, 42735.86, 43949.10, 42591.57, 43099.70, 43177.40, 43113.88, 42250.55, 42375.63
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2018-08-13]
BTC Price: 6297.57, BTC RSI: 35.49
Gold Price: 1191.30, Gold RSI: 23.92
Oil Price: 67.20, Oil RSI: 43.31
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
The Ledger: Satoshi Wannabes, Bitcoin's Role in Russian Election Interference, Vitalik Clapping: Satoshi Nakamoto tweeted at me last week. The previous week, the same person had emailed me, as he—or she, or they—has been doing since April, claiming to be the creator of Bitcoin and describing a forthcoming book that would supposedly “explain what happened to us and why we left and also tell our story from our viewpoint.” This time, though, the self-proclaimed Satoshi, emailing from a mybitcoincenter.com domain, was trying to disclaim credit for something that was making waves in the cryptocurrency community: An online missive June 29, signed by a Satoshi Nakamoto and posted on the site nakamotofamilyfoundation.org , announcing an autobiography . A Bloomberg article the following day also ran excerpts of the book that had been released on the site. The listed email for the purported book author: nakamotofoundation@protonmail.com. My Satoshi was having none of it. “Please inform your editors that the publication recently mentioned on Bloomberg is not authentic,” read the subject line of the email, sent the evening of June 30. It continued: “Dear Jen, Its Satoshi Nakamoto. You read my emails and my past writings and therefore must know that in no realm of possibility is that information released recently affiliated with myself or any member of our group.” Two weeks earlier, this Satoshi had emailed me a “preview” of the book coming fall 2018, complete with a cover mockup showing the title, The Genesis Block: The Proof of Work. Of course, I hadn’t responded to this email, or any others, since April, when it became clear to me that this Satoshi wannabe was likely wasting my time. In my first reply, I demanded proof that this author was indeed Satoshi Nakamoto. I asked for Satoshi’s cryptographic signature; I asked for proof my pen pal held the private keys; I asked Satoshi to convince me in any way possible. I even asked for Satoshi’s Twitter handle, once it became clear that this person was closely following my tweets . (My follower finally did reveal at least his Twitter persona last week, when he took to the platform to gripe again about a “book-off” with the new rival author.) Story continues The responses that came back, and the emails that followed, were frequently over 1000 words, and read like part nonsense and part fan fiction— an elaborate (and quite entertaining) imagining of what had caused Bitcoin’s founding father to go silent and retreat from the community, and why no one has ever been able to prove Nakamoto’s true identity. “If there was a key left behind a ski mask and AK -47 would be the ultimate key,” went the cryptic explanation (suggesting some sort of heist) of why this Satoshi didn’t have access to the private keys to unlock the original Bitcoin wallet, containing more than 1 million Bitcoins that have never been moved. In the writings, there were several tip-offs that this Satoshi was almost surely an imposter. There was the missing punctuation—a pattern of unsophisticated grammar and a complete disregard for contractions of “it is,” which requires an apostrophe. The real Satoshi never made such a mistake, as far as I can tell. Then there was a tone of arrogance and combativeness in this Satoshi’s emails that seemed absent in the archive of authentic Satoshi emails and writings. “This is a biblical journey and those who believe they can stop the work of the creator will fall like all others before them,” my Satoshi snarked in one email recently. But I do believe this fake Satoshi about one thing: The recently published passages of the purported Satoshi Nakamoto book aren’t authentic either. As Bloomberg noted in its introduction to the book excerpt, the news outlet “has been unable to independently verify its authenticity.” My guess? Neither of these Satoshis is the real deal—though I’d welcome being proven wrong. After all, the creator of a mighty system for— in his words —transacting electronically “without relying on trust” would not simply ask us to blindly take his word for it, would he? BRAINSTORM TECH The Ledger team will be in Aspen, CO for Fortune’s annual Brainstorm Tech conference next week, where several panels will focus on cryptocurrency and fintech. For example, I’ll be talking about blockchain payments with Ripple SVP Asheesh Birla, Stripe CEO Claire Hughes Johnson and IBM’s blockchain lead Bridget van Kralingen on stage at 10:05 a.m. MT on Tuesday, July 17. You can watch the livestream here. GOT TIPS? Send feedback and tips to ledger@fortune.com, find us on Twitter @FortuneLedger or email/DM me directly at the contact info below. THE LEDGER’S LATEST Steven Cohen’s Venture Capital Firm Gets Into Crypto With New Partner by Lucinda Shen Robinhood Adds Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin in Push to Expand Crypto by Jeff John Roberts Ripple Hires Facebook Payments Exec and Names New CTO by Jeff John Roberts Live Fast, Die Young: Many Startups Powered by Initial Coin Offerings Don’t Last, But There’s Still Money to Be Made by Lucas Laursen Another Crypto Fail: Hackers Steal $23.5 Million from Token Service Bancor by Jeff John Roberts Ethereum-Based Blockchain Betting Platform Augur Just Launched. Here’s Why It’s Not Married to Ether by Lucinda Shen A Traditional Stock Exchange Is Also Going to Trade Cryptocurrencies Like Bitcoin by David Meyer DECENTRALIZED NEWS To the moon… Major League Baseball collectibles go crypto—think baseball cards meet CryptoKitties . Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund makes its first investment. Hypnotists and “crimestoppers” are helping to recover $20 billion in lost Bitcoin. India may not ban cryptocurrency after all. CryptoKitties: there will soon be an app for that. Crypto.com sells for an estimated price of up to $10 million. Binance forecasting $1 billion profits. . …Rekt: Elon Musk praises “mad skillz” of Ether scambots, misspells Ethereum. World Cup gambling ring with $1.5 billion in crypto gets busted. “Bitcoin Maven” goes to jail. Iran could use cryptocurrency to circumvent U.S. sanctions. The Chinese yuan now makes up less than 1% of Bitcoin trading . Silk Road alleged coconspirator extradited to the U.S. Romania moves to regulate electronic money (read: crypto). Rain in China may have flooded Bitcoin mining equipment. BALANCING THE LEDGER Olaf Carlson-Wee, head of Polychain Capital—the largest cryptocurrency hedge fund with $1 billion in assets at last disclosure—dropped by Balancing the Ledger to talk about the tech talent “exodus” out of the Facebooks of the world and into crypto, Tezos controversies, and why the blockchain industry is healthier than Bitcoin prices suggest. BUBBLE-O-METER Bitcoin transaction times have spiked this month—to as high as 85 minutes on July 3rd and 43 minutes on Friday. Imagine trying to buy a latte with Bitcoin, only to be stuck at the cash register for almost an hour and a half waiting for payment to go through. Still, that’s not as long as it took earlier in 2018. Here’s a sampling of how confirmation times for Bitcoin transactions have varied this year: Bitcoin Average Confirmation Time January 22, 2018*: 7 days, 23 hours (*all-time high) February 2: 13 minutes February 22: 1 day, 3.8 hours March 16: 7.6 minutes May 11: 2 hours, 26 minutes May 24: 6.3 minutes June 13: 131 minutes July 3: 85 minutes July 13: 43 minutes [Source: blockchain.com] [h/t: Stripe] MEMES AND MUMBLES Vitalik Clapping. This week, someone who goes by username 1000x uploaded a 33-second video featuring Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin ecstatically applauding an unknown presentation. The setting and context is unclear. But the clip, set to a boisterous and catchy little ditty—featuring the lyrics, sung in accented English, “Vitalik clapping, Vitalik impress”—is guaranteed to make you at least half as happy as Buterin appears in the video. The Internet enjoyed it so much that there is now a 10-hour continuous loop version, GIF versions , and a general feeling of “to the moon.” FOMO NO MO’ Don’t miss out: On Friday, a dozen Russian intelligence officers were indicted by a grand jury in D.C. on charges including hacking the Hillary Clinton campaign in an attempt to influence the presidential election. Among the 11 criminal counts is one alleging a conspiracy “to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions structured to capitalize on the perceived anonymity of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.” Here’s the indictment’s explanation of how the Russian hackers allegedly used cryptocurrency to steal and leak emails of Clinton and Democratic committee staffers: Although the Conspirators caused transactions to be conducted in a variety of currencies, including U.S. dollars, they principally used bitcoin when purchasing servers, registering domains, and otherwise making payments in furtherance of hacking activity. Many of these payments were processed by companies located in the United States that provided payment processing services to hosting companies, domain registrars, and other vendors both international and domestic. The use of bitcoin allowed the Conspirators to avoid direct relationships with traditional financial institutions, allowing them to evade greater scrutiny of their identities and sources of funds….The Conspirators funded the purchase of computer infrastructure for their hacking activity in part by “mining” bitcoin….The pool of bitcoin generated from the GRU’s mining activity was used, for example, to pay a Romanian company to register the domain dcleaks.com through a payment processing company located in the United States. We hope you enjoyed this edition of The Ledger. Find past editions here , and sign up for other Fortune newsletters here . Question, suggestion, or feedback? Drop us a line . || Big Four Giant PwC Director Quits, Joins Cryptocurrency Exchange as CEO in Australia: Ben Ingram bitcoin.com.au cryptocurrency Australia A director at big four accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in Australia has quit the firm to join crypto exchange bitcoin.com.au as its newest CEO. Ben Ingram left PwC Australia back in March, where he was responsible for digital strategy, accounting and consulting, as its director before taking over the exchange as its chief executive, Business Insider Australia reports. The executive joins a long list of finance high-profile professionals switching their traditional careers for exciting opportunities in the crypto world. PwC has made the news several times in connection to blockchain projects. The company is known for supporting several distributed ledger technology ventures, going as far as working on a blockchain auditing service . Plan to Bring Crypto Products to Corporate Pension Plans Ingram will reportedly be responsible for working on the overall platforms functionality, as well as developing crypto-based financial products for areas such as companies pension plans, also known as superannuation. The CEO explained his crypto exchange is so much more than that it is an entry point for users to get exposed to Bitcoin in a simple manner. Ingram says their customers can as easily acquire the digital currency as getting rid of it one of the features of the platform is same-day settlements. While the crypto exchange currently only supports Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest cryptocurrencies in the world, there are plans in sight to add other digital currencies in the future. Millennials Expected to Turn to Self-Managed Funds However, Ingrams focus seems to be on bringing crypto products to superannuation, as he stated, There are not many tangible examples of crypto-based investment products yet. SMSFs have typically been the preserve of the wealthy. Its a vehicle where you can manage your own investments, and you also carry the cost of that audit. Self-Managed Super Funds (SMSF) are superannuation trust structures in which its members are also trustees of the fund. Story continues The CEO believes millennials owning crypto assets are more likely to turn to self-management, as the underlying blockchain technology allows for easy and fast auditing. While he agrees we still dont have a full picture yet of how blockchain will impact our overall future, hes positive it is the future. He explained: Were in the early-stage development of a new protocol. I think the core premise of distributed ledger technology (DLT) has very obvious widespread appeal. Even if the tech capabilities at present arent capable, I think humans will prevail. We know this tech doesnt have a dead-end. While the evolutionary path hasnt been fully determined, I think theres enough evidence that there is a path. Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Big Four Giant PwC Director Quits, Joins Cryptocurrency Exchange as CEO in Australia appeared first on CCN . || Better Buy: Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) vs. Alphabet (GOOG): If you had invested in Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Google -- now part of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) -- three years ago, your return on investment would be about the same. Microsoft's shares have climbed 119% as of this writing, and Google/Alphabet shares are up 105%. Those are impressive gains on their own, but they're even better when you consider that the S&P 500 gained just 30% over the same period. Share-price gains aside, both of these companies are still dominating the tech space. But which company looks like the better long-term buy right now? Let's take a look at the companies' financial fortitude, competitive advantages, and valuations to help answer that question. People standing over a conference table pointing to charts Image source: Getty Images. Financial fortitude Company Cash Debt Free Cash Flow (TTM) Microsoft $132.2 billion $88.6 billion $33.5 billion Alphabet $102.8 billion $5.3 billion $21.2 billion Data sources: Yahoo! Finance and Morningstar. TTM = trailing-12-month. Each of these companies has an impressive amount of free cash flow and a massive amount of cash. But Alphabet has significantly less debt, with just over $5 billion, while Microsoft has amassed far more. That doesn't mean that Microsoft has any problems covering its debt responsibilities, but it does mean that Alphabet gets the win in this category. Winner: Alphabet. Competitive advantage Microsoft built its dominance with its Office suite of applications and its Windows operating system, but lately the company has focused its attention on becoming a cloud computing powerhouse. Several years ago Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella set a goal for his company to achieve an annual run rate of $20 billion for cloud computing sales by the end of fiscal 2018. Microsoft achieved the goal in the first quarter of the fiscal year, several quarters ahead of schedule. Much of the company's progress comes from its Azure cloud computing services, which saw sales jump by 93% in the most recent quarter. That's great news, as the cloud computing market is expected to grow from $285 billion last year to $411 billion by 2020. Story continues But even with all of this growth from Microsoft's cloud computing efforts, the company still falls far behind the current leader. Amazon held 33% of the cloud infrastructure market in the first quarter, leaving Microsoft in the No. 2 spot with just 13%. So while cloud computing continues to offer new areas of growth for Microsoft, the company doesn't really have a competitive advantage in the space right now. In contrast to Microsoft, Alphabet has some significant advantages over its competitors in a few key areas. First, and most importantly, Google holds a massive 37% of the digital ad market, compared to its rival Facebook 's 19%. According to data by eMarketer, Google will hold onto 36% or more of the market until at least 2020. This leading position in the ad space earned Google $26.6 billion in the most recent quarter, an increase of 24% year over year. But Alphabet's competitive leads go beyond just the advertising space. Consider that Waymo, a driverless car company spun out of Google, has already taken the lead in the autonomous vehicle space. Waymo has plans to launch a self-driving fleet of taxis later this year, which would be the first ever of its kind . Sure, Waymo isn't a significant source of revenue for the company, but with the autonomous vehicle market expected to reach $127 billion by 2027, Alphabet's advantage starts to become clearer. Additionally, Google has been busy gobbling up artificial intelligence (AI) companies and even building its own AI processor to set itself apart. The company uses AI for everything from its cloud computing platform to software for Waymo, and even to improve its advertising business. With the company's early moves in AI, and its ability to use it across many of its businesses, Alphabet is building out a key position in this growing market as well. Alphabet simply has a bigger lead in its key advertising business than Microsoft does with its cloud computing focus, as well as other growing advantages over its competitors. So I'm giving Alphabet the win here. Winner: Alphabet. Valuation Now let's take a quick look at both of these companies' valuations based on their price-to-earnings ratios (P/E) and their forward P/Es (a ratio that looks at future earnings projections). Company P/E Ratio (TTM) Forward P/E Microsoft 67.0 24.6 Alphabet 47.4 23.6 Data source: Yahoo Finance. TTM = trailing-12-month. Alphabet data is for Class C (GOOG) shares. Technology stocks often have high price-to-earnings ratios relative to other industries and the broader S&P 500, which has an average P/E of about 25 right now. Surprisingly, Microsoft and Alphabet's shares currently trade at about that average when factoring in projected earnings. But when we look back at Microsoft's trailing P/E we see that it's significantly higher than Alphabet's, making its shares relatively more expensive. Microsoft's stock isn't absurdly overpriced, but it does appear more expensive than Alphabet's shares, so Alphabet gets the win for this category. Winner: Alphabet. The verdict Based on all of the factors above, Alphabet is the better buy right now. I still believe Microsoft is a good bet for many investors . But when you compare Alphabet's dominance in advertising and other businesses, along with the company's strong financial performance and its relatively inexpensive share price, Alphabet is the clear winner. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors; LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. Chris Neiger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), AMZN, and FB. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Bitcoin Looking Ready to Make a Move: Bitcoin slipped by just 0.14% on Sunday, following Saturday’s 2.03% gain, to end the week down 4.65% to $6,143.1.
In a particularly volatile session, Bitcoin slid through the day’s first major support level at $6,032.33 and second major support level at $,5899.67 to a morning low $5,800 before temporarily recovering to $5,900 levels.
An early afternoon sell-off saw Bitcoin pullback through the second major support level, with Bitcoin falling to an intraday low and new swing lo $5,908.1, Bitcoin managing to avoid testing the day’s third major support level at $5,653.67, with losses through the week minor relative to its peers.
While Bitcoin managed to break back through the day’s major support levels to end the day above the first major support level at $6,032.33, failing to test the day’s first major resistance level at $6,278.33 and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $6,874 left the extended bearish trend intact as June comes rapidly to an end.
There was materially negative news to hit the wires through the weekend, with investors having to remain wary of what lies ahead for the crypto exchanges, as regulators look to bring some oversight into the asset class that has run wild for a number of years now.
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At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up just 0.05% to $6,151.1 in what’s been a particularly range bound start to the day, following Sunday’s wild swings.
An early morning $6,107.4 low held well above the day’s first major support level at $5,848.83, with a late morning $6,199.7 falling well short of the first major resistance level at $6,343.53 and more importantly, the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $6,874, supporting the extended bearish trend formed at 5thMay’s swing hi $9,999.
For the day ahead, a move through the morning’s $6,199.7 high to $6,200 levels would support a run at the first major resistance level at $6,343.53, while the day’s second major resistance level at $6,543.97 and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $6,874 will likely continue to remain out of reach, as the bears maintain control of the broader market.
Failure to move back through the morning’s high could see Bitcoin take a hit later in the day, with the day’s first major support level at $5,848.83 likely to be tested before any recovery later in the day.
Much will depend upon the news wires, which if silent, would support some upside through the middle part of the day, though investors may well look to lock in profits sooner rather than later in the event of a move through to $6,200 levels.
Elsewhere in the cryptomarket, it was a mixed bag, with Monero’s XMR leading the way, up 3.83% at the time of writing, while EOS and Ethereum saw the heaviest losses through the morning, the pair down 1.33% and 1.15% respectively.
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• NEO Technical Analysis – Resistance Levels in Play – 25/06/18 || Retired? 2 Stocks You Should Consider Buying: If you're retired, you've likely shifted from building your nest egg to trying to live off of your savings. That means you'll want to look at stocks that are relatively safe and pay a generous dividend. Investors have punished the stocks of giant U.S. utility Southern Company (NYSE: SO) and packaged-food specialist General Mills (NYSE: GIS) for what are likely to be near-term problems, leading to big dividend yields. Although each has some issues to deal with, the real risks are less than they appear for investors willing to think long term. Both should interest retired investors today. 1. A giant, high-yield utility Southern is one of the largest electric and natural gas utilities in the United States. The stock is down 20% from the highs it reached in mid-2016. The yield is a robust 5.1%, more than twice the yield offered by an S&P 500 Index fund. And Southern's beta, a measure of relative volatility , has been extremely low over the past five years, with the stock at times moving in the opposite direction of the overall market. Three golden eggs sitting in a basket made of dollar bills If it's time to live off of your hard-earned savings, then high-yield stocks are a good place to start. Image source: Getty Images. There are a few headwinds facing Southern today. First, rising interest rates have helped push the shares lower this year, but that's an industrywide issue that Southern can't do anything about. Second, Southern has a major nuclear power project, known as Vogtle, that hasn't been going very well. It was over budget and missing key construction deadlines when its contractor Westinghouse declared bankruptcy last year. But Southern has taken greater control of the project and switched to a new contractor. Since this change, the project has been hitting its key milestones. The third issue is funding the company's over $30 billion in capital spending plans, which notably include the nuclear power plants. This spending is expected to drive 4% to 6% earnings and dividend growth, but only if Southern can pay for it. On this front, the utility ended the first quarter with $6.2 billion in liquidity. It since has agreed to sell assets or interests in assets to raise additional cash, including a Florida utility and a piece of its solar business. Story continues These moves should reduce debt and leave ample cash for capital projects once they're consummated. Fears over massive dilutive stock sales, which have been hampering the shares lately, are unlikely to come to fruition. An update on Southern's nuclear power project explaining that it is on time and on budget with the adjusted plans Southern's first-quarter update on its Vogtle nuclear power plant. Image source: The Southen Co. Essentially, Southern has been addressing the issues it can control -- funding investment plans and righting the Vogtle nuclear project. With the utility's yield at the high-end of its range over the past decade, it would make a good addition to a retirement portfolio as it begins to deal with some of the concerns that have led to its relatively low share price. 2. A big deal, but risk is priced in Next up is General Mills, the iconic packaged-foods company that owns name brands like Cheerios and Betty Crocker. Don't look at the company as a food maker, however, because it's really a brand manager. In fact, at a recent conference, CEO Jeffrey Hardmening made sure to point out that the company uses its global distribution system, product development skills, and advertising heft to support a collection of leading brands... that change over time. The stock is down 40% from its 2016 highs and lower by nearly 30% in 2018 alone. That's pushed the yield up to a very generous 4.4%. That's at the high end of the historical range for General Mills' dividend yield, making it worth a deep look from retired investors. SO Dividend Yield (TTM) Chart SO Dividend Yield (TTM) data by YCharts. General Mills is facing three main issues. First, changing consumer tastes have led to weak sales for packaged-food makers. However, the company has been taking steps to adjust, and fiscal third-quarter sales were up 1% year over year. Not a great showing, but a solid one. The second issue is profitability, which has been hampered by increasing costs, notably for transportation (profit margin fell 1.2 percentage points year over year in the quarter, to 15.7%). General Mills is planning on pushing through price increases to address this issue. The third problem dragging General Mills shares lower today was the recent roughly $8 billion acquisition of fast-growing premium pet-food maker Blue Buffalo . This deal will push General Mills' debt higher at a time when profitability is being constrained by rising costs. However, the company has stated that it's committed to maintaining the dividend at the current level, with plans to focus on debt repayment over the next few years. That's likely to include non-core asset sales. With regard to integrating this new business, General Mills has a successful track record of taking on new brands, like Annie's, and using its scale to broaden the acquired brand's product lineup and distribution. The cost was material here, but the potential to leverage General Mills' business strengths is huge. The worst-case scenario is that the deal is a dud. But giant General Mills, despite notable leverage (long-term debt was around 60% of the capital structure before the Blue Buffalo deal), likely has the financial strength to muddle through such an outcome and keep rewarding investors with a hefty dividend . With such a large stock price decline, however, even this risk appears to be priced in today. Retired investors willing to take a long-term view of the situation should be taking a close look at General Mills. Short-term thinking is your friend Benjamin Graham is famous for saying that the stock market is a voting machine over the short term and a weighing machine over the long term. That's a nice way to say that investors often get caught up in short-term issues that aren't likely to have a major long-term impact on a company, pushing the shares lower temporarily. Southern and General Mills both appear to be dealing with short-term thinking today, creating a high-yield opportunity for investors willing to think long term. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Reuben Gregg Brewer owns shares of General Mills and Southern Company. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Polaris Industries Drives a Quarterly Beat: Polaris Industries Inc. (NYSE: PII) announced second-quarter 2018 results on Wednesday before the market opened, highlighting the fruits of healthy retail demand, increasing market share, the completion of a large acquisition, and clarity on recent tariff concerns . Still, with shares of the off-road vehicle (ORV) and motorcycle leader down modestly in early trading as of this writing, let's take a closer look at what Polaris accomplished over the past few months. Polaris RZR Turbo kicking up dirt with two riders inside IMAGE SOURCE: POLARIS INDUSTRIES. Polaris Industries results: The raw numbers Metric Q2 2018 Q2 2017 Year-Over-Year Growth Sales* $1.503 billion $1.365 billion 10.1% GAAP net income (loss) $92.5 million $62.0 million 49.2% GAAP earnings per diluted share $1.43 $0.97 47.4% DATA SOURCE: POLARIS INDUSTRIES, *AS REPORTED. What happened with Polaris this quarter? On an adjusted (non- GAAP ) basis -- which notably excludes restructuring expenses, acquisition costs, as well as sales and other costs related to the wind-down of Victory Motorcycles -- net income increased 47.1% year over year to $114.6 million, or $1.77 per share. Adjusted sales grew 11% year over year to $1.505 billion. These results easily exceeded expectations for adjusted earning of $1.62 per share on revenue of $1.45 billion. Parts, garments, and accessories (PG&A) revenue (excluding aftermarket segment sales) grew 11% driven by growth in all segments, regions, and product lines. International sales (including PG&A) increased 7% (or 3% at constant currency) to $204 million, led by strong demand in the EMEA region for both ORVs and motorcycles. ORV and snowmobile sales increased 17% year over year to $991 million. ORV and snowmobile PG&A sales grew 13%. Within that total, ORV wholegood sales grew 18%, thanks to strong RANGER, RZR, and ATV shipments. For perspective, Polaris North American OV retail sales increased in the mid-single-digit percent range, outpacing roughly flat sales for the broader ORV industry. Snowmobile wholegood sales fell to $4 million from $7 million last year in the seasonally slow quarter. Motorcycle sales fell 13% year over year to $171 million, driven by a combination of shipment timing and weakness in the broader motorcycle industry. Global adjacent market sales increased 17% to $113 million, helped by higher Goupil and Commercial/Government/Defense business product sales within the segment. Aftermarket segment sales grew 1% to $227 million, as a slight increase from Transamerican Auto Parts (to $210 million) was mostly offset by lower accessory sales related to the delayed availability of the new Jeep Wrangler. On July 2, 2018, Polaris completed its $805 million acquisition of Boat Holdings, LLC, the country's largest manufacturer of pontoon boats. Story continues What management had to say Polaris CEO Scott Wine said: With solid retail growth and market share gains in both our Off-Road Vehicle business and Indian Motorcycles, we are clearly reaping the benefits of our safety and quality investments, new product innovations and improved delivery performance. Consumer sentiment and dealer traffic improved throughout the Quarter, building momentum which will help offset the rising risk of tariffs in the 2nd half. [...] Between organic growth and considered acquisitions, Polaris' underlying performance has significantly improved, but much of our success is being masked by substantial cost escalation driven by tariffs and commodities. As we navigate through increasingly dynamic markets, our efforts to enhance product quality and innovation, boost productivity and become a more customer centric company are paying off, and Polaris is well-positioned for further success. Looking forward Given the acquisition of Boat Holdings and accounting for an estimates $50 million of escalating tariff and commodity cost increases, Polaris now expects adjusted sales growth in the range of 11% to 12% over 2017 and adjusted net income per share of $6.48 to $6.58. By comparison, most investors were modeling earnings of $6.53 per share -- or right at the midpoint of Polaris' new guidance -- on top-line growth near the low end of that range. In the end, while today's slight decline may not indicate as much -- and noting shares were already up almost 30% in the year leading up to this report -- I think this was as solid a quarter as Polaris investors could have hoped to see. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Steve Symington has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Polaris Industries. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . View comments || Why Intel's Move Into Discrete Graphics Cards Is a Waste of Time: It will be an understatement to say that Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is in a state of disarray. Its core markets are being attacked from several angles, its latest chip architecture has been delayed (yet again), and the company has been left rudderless after the resignation of Brian Krzanich . But there's still a lot that could go wrong for Intel in addition to all of these problems. The company recently revealed that it plans to launch its first discrete graphics card by 2020 . But even if Intel hits the promised timeline and actually manages to get a discrete GPU (graphics processing unit) on the market, I believe that it won't be able to make a big dent in this space. Its foray into discrete GPUs could, at best, turn out to be an exercise in futility. Drones making an Intel logo in the sky. Image Source: Intel. Intel may have already missed the bus Graphics card specialists NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) have been plying their trade in the GPU market for a very long time now. Both of these companies have poured research and development (R&D) dollars into their GPU architectures and are currently preparing for another generational leap. For instance, NVIDIA's Turing GPUs are expected to succeed the existing Pascal architecture this year. Now, there's a lot of speculation about the process node on which the Turing architecture will be based. The general consensus among industry watchers suggests that it could probably be based on a 12-nanometer process node as compared to the current generation's 16 nm and 14 nm nodes. A smaller process node allows the chipmaker to pack more processing power into a smaller footprint, leading to lower production costs and more power efficiency. Now, the jump to 12 nm won't be a huge generational leap over the current architecture, but it sets NVIDIA up to eventually move to a more efficient 7 nm process node from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company . However, there are rumors that suggest NVIDIA is skipping the 12 nm process altogether and moving to 7 nm. But even if NVIDIA sticks to 12 nm first, we can assume that the graphics specialist will be able to roll out cards based on the more efficient 7 nm manufacturing platform by 2020. This is because NVIDIA usually releases new products every two years. Meanwhile, AMD recently showcased a 7 nm Vega GPU for use in servers and powerful workstations. Story continues AMD will eventually bring this architecture to the consumer GPU market as well sometime next year. Intel, however, is probably waiting for its 10 nm process node to materialize so that it can compete against these upcoming chips. But the problem is that Intel has run into consistent delays with this technology. Provided Intel manages to hit its timeline and launches 10 nm parts by 2020, it still won't be offering anything new over what NVIDIA and AMD would be at that time. This will make it difficult for Intel to score customers for its discrete GPUs given the dominance that its rivals have already established in this space. Knocking NVIDIA off its perch won't be easy NVIDIA currently commands nearly two-thirds of the GPU market, as per Jon Peddie Research. It won't be losing its stronghold anytime soon thanks to its solid presence in both emerging and developed markets. NVIDIA's emerging market base has increased at a very impressive annual pace of 40% over the past five years, while developed markets have also clocked an envious 28% growth rate. This has helped the company establish a solid installed base of users who will likely upgrade to its subsequent GPU generations thanks to technology advancements such as ray tracing . In fact, NVIDIA claims that just 30% of its installed base is currently on the latest Pascal platform, while the remaining uses older-generation GPUs. So the company has a big opportunity to sell more GPUs as its installed base upgrades to new platforms that come out in the next couple of years. Given that an average GPU is expected to provide service inside a PC for an average of three years, NVIDIA looks all set to lap up most of the addressable market as it launches its more advanced GPU technology before Intel does. Intel is wasting time It will be extremely difficult for Intel to crack the dominance of its rivals in the discrete GPU market given the massive technology and time lead that they enjoy. The company is better off focusing on other areas such as field-programmable gate arrays and server chips, two markets where it has a realistic chance of making it big but faces severe competition from the likes of Xilinx and AMD . In all, Intel could be making a big mistake by turning its attention toward a market that's already notoriously competitive, as this could cause it to lose sight of the more important opportunities that it's sitting on. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Harsh Chauhan has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Buy a Whole Bitcoin Before Buying Any Altcoins, Says Litecoin Creator Charlie Lee: Charlie Lee Litecoin It’s common for longtime cryptocurrency investors to advise newcomers to invest heavily in bitcoin and — depending on their proclivity toward “Bitcoin maximalism — ethereum before investing in what many of them not-so-affectionately refer to as s–tcoins. What’s less common, though, is for an altcoin creator himself to give that same advice. Yet that’s exactly what Litecoin creator Charlie Lee did on Monday when he counseled his Twitter followers to obtain at least 1 BTC before buying any other cryptocurrency, LTC included. “There will be at most 21 million bitcoins in existence. There isn’t even enough BTC to go around for EVERY millionaire to own one. So before you buy any other coin (LTC included), try to own at least 1 BTC first,” he said. “Once you have 1 BTC, buy all the s–tcoins you want! There will be at most 21 million bitcoins in existence. There isn't even enough BTC to go around for EVERY millionaire to own one. So before you buy any other coin (LTC included), try to own at least 1 BTC first. 🥅 Once you have 1 BTC, buy all the shitcoins you want! 😂 pic.twitter.com/bc3xKKGB0m — Charlie Lee [LTC⚡] (@SatoshiLite) July 17, 2018 Litecoin, which Lee created in 2011 as a fork of Bitcoin, has always marketed itself as a payments network , the so-called “silver to bitcoin’s gold,” rather than a direct competitor to the flagship cryptocurrency. Some Bitcoin maximalists have even acknowledged the value of Litecoin as a testbed for Bitcoin development, perhaps best evidenced by the former’s adoption of scaling solution Segregated Witness (SegWit) well in advance of its activation on the Bitcoin network. Lee, as CCN reported , revealed in December that he had sold his entire LTC stake, a move he made shortly before the cryptocurrency market entered what has now become a seven-month freefall. Story continues The former Coinbase engineer, who now works on Litecoin full-time, said that he sold his funds to remove what he believed was a “conflict of interest” in his promotion of the project. “[W]henever I tweet about Litecoin price or even just good or bads news, I get accused of doing it for personal benefit,” he said. “So in a sense, it is conflict of interest for me to hold LTC and tweet about it because I have so much influence.” That decision was incredibly controversial within the Litecoin community, and critics were quick to bring it up after Lee tweeted that investors should buy at least 1 BTC — currently valued at $6,739 — before diversifying into any other coins. Lee, however, doubled down on his advice in response to critics. “The point is, don’t think of it as missing out. Owning other coins is much riskier. Owning BTC is more of a sure bet. So before you speculate, invest in something solid first,” he said. “And no, I’m not calling LTC a s–tcoin.” Featured image from YouTube/ Crypto Channel The post Buy a Whole Bitcoin Before Buying Any Altcoins, Says Litecoin Creator Charlie Lee appeared first on CCN . || Bitcoin Price Drops to $7,900 as SEC Denies Winklevoss ETF, Crypto Market Loses $11 Billion: The bitcoin price has dropped by nearly 4 percent almost immediately after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) denied the Winklevoss bitcoin ETF on July 27. Bitcoin ETF as a Major Factor A sudden drop in the price of BTC from $8,300 to $7,900 led other major digital assets and small market cap tokens to fall substantially in both value and volume. Consequently, the crypto market lost $11 billion in valuation overnight, primarily due to the short-term decline of BTC. Apart from VeChain (VEN), which has demonstrated a 20 percent increase in value supported by strong momentum on July 26, the majority of major digital assets and tokens experienced a significant drop in price, in the range of 5 to 12 percent. WanChain, Komodo, Stratis, Polymath, Aion, Stellar, and Basic Attention Token, which have performed well against bitcoin and the US dollar throughout the past five days, were the worst performers on Friday, losing nearly 12 percent of their value against the US dollar. While the drop in the price of Stellar was expected given its 20 percent price surge on July 25 initiated by a strategic partnership it secured, the decline of BAT, POLY, and KMD was unexpected, given their strong performance throughout July. Evidently, the price of BTC has fallen due to the rejection of the Winklevoss bitcoin ETF and in a logical sense, if investors initially believed that the price of BTC surged from $6,800 to $8,500 triggered by the increase in anticipation towards the approval of a bitcoin ETF, it makes sense for the price of BTC to drop even lower. But, the Winklevoss bitcoin ETF is not the ETF the cryptocurrency market has been anticipating since mid-July. Rather, the market has been highly optimistic regarding the VanEck-SolidX bitcoin ETF and the Cboe ETF, considering that VanEck and Cboe are strictly regulated and well recognized financial institutions in the US. Specifically, VanEck has the experience of filing, deploying, and overseeing hundreds of ETFs, and it has strategically partnered with SolidX to assist its bitcoin ETF in receiving the approval from the US SEC. Story continues Generally, major investors have expressed their reluctance towards the approval of a bitcoin ETF by the end of 2018, and even with the VanEck-SolidX and Cboe ETFs, investors expect the SEC to delay its decision until early 2019. Where Does Bitcoin go Next? It is possible that the price of BTC dips below the $7,700 mark and test the $7,600 resistance level in the next short-term movement. If it remains stable in the $7,700 region, a recovery back to the $8,000 region is a likely scenario but if BTC moves below the $7,700 mark relatively quickly, a drop to the mid-$7,000 region can be expected. The reaction of the market towards the disapproval of the Winklevoss bitcoin ETF was exaggerated and was intensified by panicking investors who initiated a large sell-off within a 30-minute period. Featured image from Flickr/ TechCrunch . The post Bitcoin Price Drops to $7,900 as SEC Denies Winklevoss ETF, Crypto Market Loses $11 Billion appeared first on CCN . || Better Buy: The Walt Disney Company vs. Nike: Two of the most iconic names on the stock market areThe Walt Disney Company(NYSE: DIS)andNike(NYSE: NKE), and they've both been huge winners for investors. Since the beginning of the century, they've generated 354% and 1,450% respectively for investors, more than doubling the S&P 500's total return.
Right now, both companies face challenges from new competitors, whether it's streaming competition for Disney, or upstart apparel brands and new distribution methods like online shopping for Nike. The company better positioned to weather the competition will be the better stock of these two, so let's look at how they stack up.
Image source: Getty Images.
Over the past decade, Nike has beaten Disney on top-line growth. But net income grew at about the same rate until the most recent quarter, when the new tax law impacted short-term results.
DIS revenuedata byYCharts. TTM = trailing 12 months.
This chart doesn't tell us anything about what these companies will do in the future, but I wanted to frame historical growth rates, which show that both companies have the ability to grow steadily long term. The more important factor for investors is strategy going forward and the value investors get from the stock today.
As big as Disney has become, it may not have built as effective a moat as investors once thought.ESPN is losing millions of subscribersper year to cord-cutting,Netflixhas come to dominate the adjacent streaming business, and Disney is now in a bidding war withComcastoverFox'smedia content. But amid all this, the company still has a solid foundation to build from in a digital future.
Disney arguably has the best media content assets in the world, notably in the Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm studios. These assets, along with ESPN, will become the foundation ofthree streaming servicesDisney plans to have available in 2019. In the media business, content is king, and it's hard to argue that anyone has better content than Disney.
What competitors like Netflix can't match is Disney's multi-pronged business model. The company doesn't just make money from TV networks and studios. It has theme parks and consumer products as well. In the past year, these two divisions have generated $24.4 billion in revenue and $5.9 billion in operating income. That essentially gives you two times what Netflix makes in annual revenue above and beyond of the content business that's the core of Disney's long-term value.
For an apparel company like Nike, there's not the same tangible competitive advantage that Disney has in content, where a franchise can generate value for decades. Each apparel purchase is a distinct decision by consumers. That's why for Nike, brand is everything.
Nike has done a better job than most apparel brands staying relevant over the course of multiple decades. Since Michael Jordan made Nike a household name in the mid-1980s, the company has been able to grow into new markets and maintain a premium price point. According to Forbes, the brand alone is worth $29.6 billion.
Nike has built a durable competitive advantage by using its scale and financial muscle to attract the best athletes in the world through sponsorships. That's how the company signs big names like golf's Tiger Woods, USA Soccer's Alex Morgan, and NBA stars Kevin Durant and Michael Jordan. You can see below that it can simple outspend competitors in negotiations with stars if it wants to. And having stars wear your products will help fend off competition.
NKE Revenue (TTM)data byYCharts.
While Nike can maintain a strong position with scale, its size will also limit upside for investors. In the past two years, revenue is only up 1.6%. And future growth will be difficult to come by simply because the company is already so big, which is why investors shouldn't be paying growth-stock prices for Nike today.
Disney may be facing a more disruptive threat from streaming competition, but I think the company is well positioned to withstand it, and potentially generate more value from streaming content than any other company in the world long term. Where I see the biggest difference in these two stocks is what investors have to pay, and right now Disney looks like the far better value.
DIS P/E Ratio (TTM)data byYCharts.
The chart above only shows P/E ratios to the end of 2017 because that's when net income went wild with adjustments from the tax law, but you can see that Disney has long traded at a discount to Nike.
It's the value and potential for long-term growth that has me picking Disney as the better stock between the two. The company has challenges, but with the best content in media and a plan to become a streaming giant, I think it's well positioned for success.
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Travis Hoiumowns shares of Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Netflix, Nike, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
@btc_0 || Closing auction volume today for @GeminiDotCom BTCUSD was 1.5361 #Size-ola #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/gPw4za5qbF || @India_Bitcoin || @lifeoncoin || Bitcoin Cash Price Analysis: BCH/USD Facing Uphill Task https://www.icryptodesk.com/2018/08/02/bitcoin-cash-price-analysis-bch-usd-facing-uphill-task-2/ …pic.twitter.com/ppxWYZmXsq || @Bitcoin_price_8 || @India_Bitcoin || @Bitcoin_Stats || THIS HOW BITCOIN WORK. || @btc_update
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Trend: up || Prices: 6199.71, 6308.52, 6334.73, 6580.63, 6423.76, 6506.07, 6308.53, 6488.76, 6376.71, 6534.88
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2020-01-29]
BTC Price: 9316.63, BTC RSI: 69.33
Gold Price: 1569.80, Gold RSI: 66.34
Oil Price: 53.33, Oil RSI: 26.08
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
US Stock Market Overview – Stocks Surge on Phase One Trade Deal: US stocks surged higher on Thursday, rallying following news that the Trump administration has reached a trade deal in principle with China. Most sectors were higher led by energy and financials, real estate and utilities bucked the trend. Wholesale prices came out in line with expectations. US jobless claims jumped to a fresh 2-year high. The VIX volatility index tumbled 7% back below the 14% level.
The White House and China reached a trade deal in principle with China according to sources. It appears that the Trump administration is ready to scrap the next round of tariffs on China. The Trump administration has offered to eliminate tariffs on Chinese goods set to take effect Sunday and cut some existing duties in half. It appears that China will purchase 40-billion in agricultural products compared to the 50-billion the Trump administration wanted.
US Wholesale prices were unchanged according to the Labor Department which followed last months 0.4% surge in October. On a year over year basis, the PPI gained 1.1%, matching October’s rise, which was the smallest increase since October 2016. Expectations were for PPI would rise 0.2% in November and accelerate 1.2% on a year-on-year basis. Core PPI was also unchanged last month after edging up 0.1% in October. Core PPI increased 1.3% year over year, the smallest gain since September 2016, after advancing 1.5% in October.
Jobless claims surged 49,000 to 252,000 for the week ended December 7, the highest reading since September 2017. The increase was the largest since August 2017. Claims dropped to 203,000 in the prior week, which was a seven-month low. Expectations were for claims to increase to 213,000 in the latest week. The four-week moving average of initial claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, rose 6,250 to 224,000 last week.
Exit polls from the UK show that the conservatives have won a majority and will likely move forward withy a Brexit. Shortly after 10 p.m. London time, a survey of thousands of people who had just left the voting booth, indicated that the Conservatives are on course to gain around 50 seats, ensuring a healthy majority. The Labour would lose 71 seats from its performance in 2017. In Scotland, the Scottish National Party is forecast to win as many as 55 seats
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Silver Price Forecast – Silver Markets Fell At 50 Day EMA || How does Bitcoin’s hash rate impact price?: Recently, cryptocurrency enthusiasts on Twitter have been debating whether the Bitcoin block reward halving event has already been priced in by miners and investors and the impact of a high hash rate on BTC price. When the halving event finally comes around in May, I see two major possibilities: A) BTC increases in price in order to accommodate miners at the current mining difficulty. B) BTC price stays more or less the same and we see miners capitulating as they become unprofitable. To better understand which scenario is most likely to happen, I believe two key data points need to be taken into consideration – namely the hash rate (and expected hash rate) and the behaviour of hodlers. Bitcoin’s hash rate has once again reached new all-time highs , but how does that relate to the amount of Bitcoins that haven’t moved? Will Bitcoin hodlers keep holding during a bull market? At what percentage levels have miners and hodlers sold the majority of their positions? And does the hash rate predict price swings or the behaviour of hodlers? Hopefully, I’ll be able to answer some of these questions below. Hash rate hits new all-time highs CM estimates have Bitcoin's Difficulty increasing by ~8% in 4 days time to reach a new ATH at ~15,000,000,000,000 This is due to the implied hash rate of Bitcoin maintaining ATH levels since Jan 1 pic.twitter.com/MfLOKTJNiK — CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) January 10, 2020 As Bitcoin’s hash rate increases, mining difficulty also increases. That’s exactly what’s been happening with Bitcoin since the beginning of 2020. As estimated by CoinMetrics, a research firm specialising in the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has been steadily increasing at a rate of 8% over the last four days. The analysis conducted by CoinMetrics shows that in the next four days, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty will reach a record value of approximately 15,000,000,000,000 TH/s. Just as the hash rate is a good measure for price prediction, the difficulty adjustment is also an important data point. Some believe it has some correlation with cryptocurrency price drops and spikes as miners enter and leave the market. The Bitcoin difficulty target adjusts every two weeks to ensure that blocks are added at regular intervals. Therefore, this data point is closely linked to the profit of the miners. Story continues Consequently, the link extends to miner capitulation and the general market price as well. As such, it seems there is a direct correlation between the difficulty adjustment and Bitcoin rallies. At what point do miners sell? Rien ne va plus #bitcoin 🚀 pic.twitter.com/epwODQ40cm — PlanB (@100trillionUSD) September 10, 2019 One of my favourite crypto analysts and the creator of the Bitcoin stock-to-flow model, PlanB, suggested the price of Bitcoin has a tendency to rally during mining difficulty downturns. The analyst revealed that since the creation of Bitcoin, there have been several cycles of difficulty adjustments, and for each new rally, the trend has been one of a declining magnitude. Therefore, I personally believe that during the next bull run, we could see miners and hodlers selling a great deal of their positions when Bitcoin’s price hits between 1,000% to 5,000% above the difficulty bottom. If you’re wondering about “when”, historically we have two periods of price appreciation and two periods of price downfall. Since 2018 and 2019 have been declining years compared to all-time highs, I believe Bitcoin will pump over 2020 and 2021. At what point do hodlers sell? Bitcoin UTXO age distribution Interestingly, for Bitcoin’s price to skyrocket, hodlers need to sell . The graph above, courtesy of Unchained Capital , shows the unspent transaction output (UTXO) of Bitcoin over time. The data shows that during moments of price appreciation, long-term Bitcoin hodlers have a tendency to sell. However, during periods of price decline, long-term hodlers buy BTC . The red, yellow, and orange bands represent the amount of BTC being exchanged. The green and blue bands show the amount of BTC that hasn’t moved for up to five years or more. As you can see, the blue band has been consistently increasing and now accounts for close to 25% of the total BTC supply. This means a great deal of hodlers have been increasing their stacks. While there was some sell-off pressure (the yellow and orange bands) during 2019, it seems buyers are now back in control. To conclude, what the above data shows is crucial to understand when price will most likely appreciate. In my opinion, only when we start to see the blue and green bands increasing between 10-20% will a proper bull run begin. When will that happen? Probably between the end of 2020 and start of 2021. Until the halving, I expect long-term hodlers to continue to accumulate as miners sell their coins to keep farms profitable. Safe trades. The post How does Bitcoin’s hash rate impact price? appeared first on Coin Rivet . View comments || Cryptocurrencies Are Still the World’s Best Performing Asset Class This Year: As the year and decade come to an end, cryptocurrencies once again outperform other major asset classes. Despite trading significantly down from their record highs of late December 2017, large-cap cryptocurrencies had a phenomenal year and remain one of the greatest investment success stories of the decade. Cementing themselves as the world’s leading asset class for yearly performance, cryptocurrencies have risen well above annualized returns of the U.S. equities, commodities and bond markets for 2019. Related: Bitcoin Risks Deeper Drop After Shallow Price Bounce Ryan Alfred, President and co-founder of Digital Assets Data said large-cap crypto assets possess significantly higher returns versus traditional markets for this year. “Looking back at the performance of the top ten large-caps ( Bitwise 10 ) in comparison to other major asset classes, we can see their special signature,” Alfred said. Crypto versus traditional assets Credit: Digital Asset Data As seen in the chart above, research provided by Digital Assets Data shows how this year’s performance of the top 10 cryptos by market capitalization fared against other major asset classes such as gold, oil and equities. Of course, 2019 didn’t start out that way. Back in February, the top 10 crypto began a fairly dismal run, resting well below all other traditional asset classes when viewing their return on investment figures. However, sentiment began to pick up significantly in March and by mid-year, cryptocurrencies were far out ahead of other the other assets. Related: Ride ‘Em, Cowboy: Bitmain’s Marketing Gambit Ups Its Texas-Sized Position on Bitcoin That gap has begun to narrow as stocks, bonds and commodities begin to increase their lead. Yet cryptocurrencies remain significantly ahead of all other asset classes as the year comes to a close. Much of this rally is courtesy of bitcoin (BTC). The world’s first cryptocurrency is currently up 100 percent since the year began. Meanwhile, Ether, the world’s second-largest crypto is up 35 percent year-to-date, though XRP is down 25 percent from where it traded on Jan. 1. Story continues The big picture: Crypto’s success story In the year before the decade began, the world was in the throes of a financial crisis. Since then, stocks have rebounded. From its March 2009 market meltdown lows to now, the S&P 500 has gained a respectable 369 percent. Similarly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has also had a good run, up 326 percent in that same time period. Bitcoin Price Index However, BTC has blasted those figures, rising well above a staggering 12 million percent ( yes, you read that correctly ) over a one-year-shorter time frame, beginning March 2010. That’s when the price of 1 BTC was around $0.05, data taken from Messari shows. Crypto’s success can likely be attributed to its most defining characteristics: high volatility and liquidity, allowing market participants to quickly and easily trade between digital and fiat currencies. Lorenzo Pellegrino, CEO of Skrill, a cross-border payments platform utilizing crypto, said digital assets resembled a nascent market. Prices bouncing around in a frantic manner enable the asset class to outperform all others based on irrational sentiment and low barriers to entry. “As it (crypto) matures we should start to see increased stability and the core fundamentals will become more apparent,” Pellegrino said. Related Stories Bitcoiners Are Building a Sidechain Version of Ethereum’s MakerDAO Bitcoin Eyes Minor Price Bounce After Hitting Two-Week Low || BlockFi’s new trading platform allows users to trade Bitcoin, Ether, and Gemini Dollar in real-time: Crypto financial services provider BlockFi has launched a commission-free trading platform, BlockFi Trading, where users can trade Bitcoin, Ether, and ERC20 stablecoin Gemini Dollar in real-time.
Founded in 2017, BlockFi provides crypto financial products traditionally reserved for fiat currencies. Users can deposit crypto assets and either earn interest on them or take out U.S. dollar loans against their crypto collateral. It offers interest rates of up to 8.6% for balances held in its accounts and rates as low as 4.5% for loans, according to its press release.
With the new trading platform, users can also trade between cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether, and Gemini Dollar using their existing crypto deposits. The company believes that this new function will benefit not only existing crypto investors but also new investors trying to enter the field.
“To date, we have focused on providing products to existing crypto investors that are readily available to investors in other asset classes. With the launch of trading, we are taking a big step in the direction of enabling net new investors to come into the ecosystem,” said Zac Prince, BlockFi CEO and founder.
In the meantime, the company has completed a money services business (MSB) registration with the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to improve its compliance status, the press release says, and is looking to add money transmission licenses to its existing state lending licenses. || Connecting Smart Contracts To The Real World: We continue to see a stark contrast between Bitcoin (BTC) and other leading cryptos ("altcoins") that are bound to thrive and the hundreds of other digital assets that are, or will become, zombie coins with virtually zero adoption in the real world. This is especially true for the non-native tokens that reside on digital ledger platforms like Ethereum (ETH), EOS (EOS) or NEO (NEO). But it’s NOT true for all of them! Some projects do have real-world, fundamental value. This is due to specific applications that can make them useful in the longer term. Which ones? Will they truly gain mass adoption in the next crypto growth cycle? Could they become the crypto equivalent of shares in Amazon.com, Inc . (NASDAQ: AMZN ) and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG ) when they first went public? In the Wild Wild West of crypto, no one can say with certainty. But we have been reviewing a small handful of token projects that seem to have promise. Here’s an update on one of the leaders in this sector. Chainlink: Feeding Real-World Data Into Blockchains We first reviewed Chainlink (LINK) on Sept. 27. Subsequently, its value jumped from about $2 to $3, but has recently retraced back the low $2 area. Here’s the key: Blockchains and smart-contract platforms like Ethereum, EOS, Cardano (ADA) and NEO may often exist inside a kind of cocoon, isolated from the real world. And this can curtail their usefulness. To get connected to the outside, they need access to data from the outside. It could be data on ... Crypto market prices Stock prices Commodity prices GPS coordinates for supply-chain management Air temperatures for weather forecasting And more This data is then “fed” into a blockchain so that the blockchain “knows” about real-world events. This is exactly what Chainlink is focused on doing. And it seems to be working — because since our last review, Chainlink has gained more adoption and entered into more partnerships. One good way to measure adoption is the number of payments it receives for actual usage in the form of its tokens, called LINK. The unit used is exactly one-third of a token, or 0.333 LINK. Story continues And the daily volume of these “0.333 LINK transfers” are the best metric for evaluating the actual usage of Chainlink. So, look how they have steadily improved over the past half-year: Image Source: Glassnode Studio The Bloomberg Of Crypto? In some respects, Chainlink is seeking to become a kind of decentralized Bloomberg — so far, just for the crypto markets and Decentralized Finance. But the hope is for much more in the future. Right now, it has already developed data sources for seven different cryptos, called “reference price data.” One good example is what Chainlink is doing for a lending-and-borrowing platform called Compound. The platform needs to calculate interest payments on each transaction. And to do so, it needs to know the price of coins such as Ether. Obtaining a reliable crypto price may sound trivial. But unlike prices on regulated stock exchanges, it’s actually very complex. And since this price is the basis for calculating principal and interest payments, the data is mission-critical for two reasons: First , it must be reliable. That means weeding out fake or fraudulent data sources. Second , it needs to be secure. If the data comes from a single, centralized computer, it is vulnerable to hacking or tampering. A hacker can deliberately alter the price of ETH and game the system to his or her own advantage. This is impossible when using Chainlink. Its reference price data comes from 21 different sources and is aggregated into a single price. Needless to say, it’s harder to hack 21 sources than a single source. Moreover, Chainlink provides the data source an incentive for reliability: It rewards reliable sources with LINK tokens, and ... It punishes unreliable (or dishonest) sources by dropping them from its list and confiscating their LINK tokens. Other platforms like Ethereum, Cardano and Tezos (XTZ) will probably also need Chainlink. Reason: They run lots of smart contracts and aim to replace a host of centralized services in the world today. That’s not going to be possible without reliable and secure real-world data. This is why platforms like TomoChain, High Performance Blockchain and Ocean Protocol have already integrated Chainlink. And this is just the beginning. Enterprises like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG ) and Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL ) are already beginning to use Chainlink. And Chainlink recently announced that Intel will follow suit, along with Hyperledger, a consortium that facilitates the development of blockchains for enterprises. This is big . It means Chainlink’s reach won’t be limited just to public blockchains. It will move into the world of enterprise blockchains as well. This points to a future of increasing adoption of the LINK token — more partnerships, more integrations with blockchain platforms and, of course, for Decentralized Finance. For investors with patience for the long term and tolerance for price volatility, LINK tokens could be an intriguing and potentially very profitable investment. They’re readily available on most major crypto exchanges. Chainlink currently has an overall "C-" Weiss Crypto Rating. Check out Weiss Crypto Ratings and Indexes: https://www.benzinga.com/cryptocurrency/weiss-crypto-ratings/ https://www.benzinga.com/cryptocurrency/weiss-crypto-indexes/ 0 See more from Benzinga Weiss Crypto Ratings Model: Why We've Made Some Changes © 2019 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers -01/12/19: Bitcoin fell by 2.52% on Saturday. Partially reversing a 4.50% rally from Friday, Bitcoin ended the day at $7,599.9. A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin rise to a late morning intraday high $7,861.6 before hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $8,003.33, Bitcoin slid to a late afternoon intraday low $7,492.00. Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $7,519.93 before finding support. A move back through the first major support level to $7,600 levels was short-lived, however. Bitcoin closed out the day at $7,500 levels to end the month of November down by 17.3%. The near-term bearish trend, formed at late June’s swing hi $13,764.0, remained firmly intact, in spite of 4 days in the green from 6. For the bulls, Bitcoin would need to break out from $11,000 levels to form a near-term bullish trend. The Rest of the Pack Across the rest of the top 10 cryptos, it was a bearish day for the majors on Saturday. Binance Coin and Bitcoin Cash ABC led the way down, with losses of 3.32% and 3.23% respectively. Litecoin (-2.86%), Ripple’s XRP (-2.19%), and Stellar’s Lumen (-2.82%) also saw relatively heavy losses. EOS (1.65%), Ethereum (-1.92%), and Bitcoin Cash SV (-1.94%) fared better than the rest. The last day of the month was a reflection of the bearish November that left the majors deep in the red. Binance Coin (-21.1%), Bitcoin Cash ABC (-23.2%), and Ripple’s XRP (-23.3%) saw the heaviest losses. Things were not much better elsewhere, however. Bitcoin Cash SV (-16.7%), EOS (-15.4%), Ethereum (-16.8%), Litecoin (-19.1%), and Stellar’s Lumen (-11.4%) also saw double digit losses. Through the current week, the crypto total market cap slid to a Monday low $180.76bn before rebounding to a Saturday current week high $211.90bn. While recovering in the week, the total market cap sat well below a November high $254.2bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $202.40bn. Story continues Bitcoin’s dominance held on to 66% levels in spite of Saturday’s fall. 24-hour trading volumes did fall back to sub-$60bn levels on Saturday, having peaked at $133bn levels earlier in the week. This Morning At the time of writing, Bitcoin was down by 2.19% to $7,433.4. A particularly bearish start to the day saw Bitcoin slide from an early morning high $7,600.1 to a low $7,420.0. Falling short of the major resistance levels, Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $7,440.73. Elsewhere, it was a sea of red across the crypto board. Binance Coin and Bitcoin Cash SV led the way down, with losses of 3.0% and 3.6% respectively. Ethereum (-2.4%), Litecoin (2.8%), and Stellar’s Lumen (2.1%) also saw heavy losses early on. Bitcoin Cash ABC (-1.5%), EOS (1.7%), and Ripple’s XRP (-1.7%) saw relatively modest losses, however. For the Bitcoin Day Ahead Bitcoin would need to move back through the first major support level to $7,650 levels to support a run at the first major resistance level at $7,810.33. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break out from $7,600 levels. Barring a broad-based crypto rebound, resistance at $7,600 levels would likely cap any upside. Failure to move through $7,650 levels could see Bitcoin spend a 2 nd consecutive day in the red. A fall through to sub-$7,400 levels would bring the second major support level at $7,281.57 into play before any recovery. Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$7,000 for a 4 th consecutive day. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: E-mini S&P 500 Index (ES) Futures Technical Analysis – Sellers Targeting 3122.75 to 3109.00 Retracement Levels Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 30/11/19 Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Bearish Factors Adding Up; Expect Volatility into OPEC+ Meeting Brent Crude Price Futures (BZ) Technical Analysis – Testing Critical Support Cluster at $60.47 to $60.35 NZD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – Strengthens Over .6411, Weakens Under .6394 The UK General Election – Odds, Polls, and Predictions End of Week Update || Google searches for Bitcoin halving have doubled this month: Data shows that Google searches for Bitcoin halving have doubled this month from December levels. The search volume for the term is now at its highest since the last halving event in 2016. Google searches for Bitcoin halving on the rise For some time now, cryptocurrency enthusiasts have been talking about the upcoming Bitcoin Halving in May. But unlike 2016 when fewer people were aware of Bitcoin and its properties, interest in the event from the general public is also rising. So why is the Bitcoin halving commanding so much attention? Many people in the industry believe that the event that cuts the block reward in half for miners will spur a new Bitcoin bull market . This is based on the effects that the last two halvings had on the number-one cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin halving happens every four years. After the first halving in 2012, BTC hit its first all-time high. Shortly after the halving in 2016, BTC skyrocketed to its biggest all-time high on record at just shy of $20,000. Many industry insiders and analysts are calling for highs of more than $30,000 and even as much as $80,000 following the next halving, taking data from Digitalik . Its not surprising then that interest in the event is piquing and that Google searches for Bitcoin halving have doubled in January compared to last month. Google Trends feature shows queries on the term #bitcoin #halving have doubled this month from December levels to the highest since the last such event in 2016. Weiss Crypto Ratings (@WeissCrypto) January 27, 2020 More public interest in Bitcoin in 2020 According to cryptocurrency research analysis firm Arcane Research, Google searches for Bitcoin halving have been accelerating lately. Story continues The rising number on Google Trends could be an indicator that the event will capture greater public interest in 2020. Historically, a new wave of adopters comes following a significant price spike. The report, published on January 24, states, There is now a clear indication that awareness of the concept is spread to new people. Google Trends doesnt reveal the actual number of searches for Bitcoin halving. However, it does show that searches for the term registered a reading of 35 during the week ending January 19. This is double the amount in December, at 15. Thats not 35 and 15 searches respectively, its a scale from zero to 100 whereby 100 represents the peak search popularity of a term. With the event coming up in just a few months, its probable that Google searches for Bitcoin halving will continue to rise. Its also possible that the Bitcoin price will continue to rise along with the searches. However, as Arcane points out, even though more and more people are interested in the Bitcoin halving: Still, searches for the Bitcoin halving is totally insignificant in comparison to overall Bitcoin searches. Google searches for Bitcoin register 30 times more action, which probably goes to show that not so many no-coiners are aware of the event after all. The post Google searches for Bitcoin halving have doubled this month appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Bitcoin surge halted by bitter $8,830 level of resistance: The historic $8,830 level of resistance has caused a period of disruption for Bitcoin following a staggering 30% rally since the turn of the year. As previously reported by Coin Rivet , the $8,830 level will be a stern test for BTC as price was rejected there on October 10 as well as numerous times in May before the eventual rally to $14,000. Bitcoin will now either come back to test the $8,450 level of support or attempt another breakout above $8,830, which could spur a rally towards the psychological level of $10,000. However, before $10,000 is tested, there is another level of resistance at $9,330, which became a level of support following the bearish reversal from Junes local high. The daily relative strength index (RSI) remains in a bullish position moving into the second half of the week after making a clear higher high of around 70 during yesterdays rally. The stochastics also reiterate the bullish sentiment with clear upticks in the bullish control zone demonstrating that more upside price action is likely in the coming week. Another bullish case for Bitcoin is that the 22 and 50 exponential moving averages (EMA) are moving at a rate of knots towards the 200 EMA, which would indicate a golden cross on the daily chart that will undoubtedly cause a significant rally to the upside. For more news, guides, and cryptocurrency analysis, click here . The post Bitcoin surge halted by bitter $8,830 level of resistance appeared first on Coin Rivet . View comments || Bitcoin Cash miners propose 12.5% share of block rewards to support ecosystem: Jiang Zhuoer, CEO of BTC.TOP, the largest mining pool on Bitcoin Cash, announced a proposal through a blog post that wouldredirect12.5% of Bitcoin Cash Coinbase block rewards to a development fund. The fund is a Hong Kong corporation that has been set up to legally accept and disperse funds and would be provided funding for six months to support Bitcoin Cash infrastructure. The plan is to implement this proposal into Bitcoin Cash's May 2020 protocol upgrade. The fund would receive approximately 112.5 BCH per day and about 20,588 BCH over the six months. Based on the current prices of BCH, the fund would receive roughly $7.1 million in total.
The proposal has garnered support from other large mining pools part of Bitcoin Cash, which includes Antpool,BTC.com, ViaBTC, andBitcoin.com. These five pools represent 34.5% or a little more than a third of Bitcoin Cash’s hash rate.
The blog states that this proposal may be controversial, and some in the community may have reservations toward it; however, the plan would move forward regardless. “To ensure participation and include subsidization from the whole pool of SHA-256 mining, miners will orphan BCH blocks that do not follow the plan. This is needed to avoid a tragedy of the commons," the post reads. || France’s New ‘Napoleon Bitcoin Fund’ Is Tied to CME’s Cash-Settled Futures: French asset management firm Napoleon AM has launched a new fund tied to Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s (CME) cash-settled bitcoin futures. The “Napoleon Bitcoin Fund” began trading on Dec. 6 with a minimum €100,000 ($110,000) buy-in for professional investors, who must reside in France, according to the prospectus. It can not be traded cross-border. It is the first bitcoin fund released by Napoleon AM, the asset management wing of French financial services firm Napoleon Group. Napoleon AM became a licensed “Alternative Investment Fund Manager” in May 2019, the French financial regulator’s website shows . Related: State Street: 38% of Clients Will Put More Money into Digital Assets in 2020 And it’s also one of the first French funds to make novel use of CME’s cash-settled Bitcoin futures. The fund seeks exposure to bitcoin price movements without holding any actual bitcoin, according to the prospectus. To that end, it trades CME bitcoin futures, the United States’ only regulated cash-settled bitcoin futures products (CME competitor Bakkt launched its own cash-settled bitcoin futures product in Singapore on Monday). Napoleon could conceivably tap into Bakkt’s new product; the prospectus and investor factsheet leave open the possibility of including “similar[ly] organized exchange listing cash-settled BTC futures” going forward. “We have opened the door for alternative use of futures in order to optimize replication and maintain access to the best sources in the future,” said Napoleon AM’s Communications Director Sergio Gonzalez. Related: French Central Banker Advocates for Blockchain-Based Settlements in Europe Stéphane Ifrah, President of Napoleon AM, said in a press statement that the fund “is the culmination of discussions with the [French] regulator.” “We are proud to contribute to the institutionalization and democratization of digital assets through a unique regulated fund under French law.” It remains to be seen how popular an investment vehicle tied to bitcoin futures will be with French investors. Story continues Their U.S. counterparts have shown some interest in regulated futures products, with the CME recently reporting a 61% year-over-year increase in its bitcoin futures’ open contracts. Related Stories Bakkt in Discussions to Offer Cash-Settled Bitcoin Futures in Singapore French Central Bank Job Posting Reveals Digital Currency Program
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 9508.99, 9350.53, 9392.88, 9344.37, 9293.52, 9180.96, 9613.42, 9729.80, 9795.94, 9865.12
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2020-06-29]
BTC Price: 9190.85, BTC RSI: 45.31
Gold Price: 1774.80, Gold RSI: 62.41
Oil Price: 39.70, Oil RSI: 60.58
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Chinese Government Advisers Propose Regional Stablecoin for 4 Asian Countries: Top Chinese political advisers have proposed a regional digital currency that would be backed by four major Asian currencies including the Japanese yen, Korean won, Hong Kong dollar and the yuan. The proposal unveiled Thursday describes the currency as a stablecoin, a term for cryptocurrencies designed to hold their value and backed by a reserve currency, although it does not explicitly mention crypto or blockchains. The Peoples Bank of China (PBOC) would lead the proposed effort. The basket of underlying collateral would follow the special drawing rights (SDR) model of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where each countrys currency is assigned a different weight based on its economy. Related: Internal Struggle at Bitcoin Mining Giant Bitmain Escalates to Physical Confrontation As such, the proposal resembles the original vision for libra , before that Facebook-spawned project watered down its plans and pivoted to developing digital versions of individual fiat currencies. (The Libra Association recently welcomed Singapore investment company Temasek as its first state-owned entity member .) The proposed stablecoin would help facilitate trade among the four countries, which is key to economic recovery in the region after coronavirus, its proponents said. It would do so by improving cross-border settlement and clearing services with a new payment network and digital wallet for enterprises. Read more: Chinese City Known for Bitcoin Mining Seeks Blockchain Firms to Burn Excess Hydropower Neil Shen, founding and managing partner of Sequoia China and a member of Chinas upper house, presented the proposal to Chinese legislators during the Two Sessions, the countrys largest annual political gathering. Related: Crypto Exchange OSL to Establish Digital Asset Powerhouse in Asia, US Regions Nine other advisers who are also upper house members, including Kennedy Wong, a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Hong Kong, former chief secretary of Hong Kong Henry Tang and Hong Kong-based Chinese billionaire Songqiao Zhang, co-signed the proposal. Story continues Shen attended the first session of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (PCC) on Thursday. The PCC is essentially an advisory upper house where a range of organizations and independent members help the government make national-level decisions. This meeting will be followed by plenary sessions of the National Peoples Congress (NPC) starting Friday and lasting for about two weeks. Proposals out of the PCC do not tend to have the same level of influence as the more concrete bills discussed in the NPC because the bills will yield significant changes in laws and regulations. However, in this case the proposal might have some sticking power. California-based Sequoia Capital, Sequoia Chinas parent, is one of the few big-name VC firms that have ventured into crypto. It invested in $10 million in one of the largest global crypto exchanges by volume, Huobi Group, when it was based in China in 2014. (Huobi Group is now based in Singapore.) It also invested in Nervos and Conflux via private token sales. Both these startups have collaborated with Chinas state-owned entities to develop blockchain technologies. The stablecoin proposal also suggests creating a regulatory sandbox and scaling up the system in Hong Kong over time to improve cross-border payment services between the four countries. Read more: Meet Red Date, the Little-Known Tech Firm Behind Chinas Big Blockchain Vision Led and supervised by the PBOC, companies from private sectors would launch the stablecoin and develop the project with the latest financial technologies. Enterprise users would be able to store the coins in a digital wallet and deposit cash at a custodian as reserves to back their stablecoins, according to the proposal. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and PBOC can create a framework to regulate the stablecoins cross-border transactions, manage risks and discourage money laundering, the proposal said. The stablecoin could be launched ahead of Chinas national digital currency and pave the way for its rollout by testing use cases to identify potential risks and technical problems. If launched, the stablecoin could be seamlessly connected with the digital yuan, the proposal said. The proposal stresses Hong Kong is one of the most important financial gateways that connect mainland China to the other Asian countries, with over 70% of cross-border renminbi payment processed in the city. Hong Kong could be the most favorable jurisdiction for such a regional stablecoin. The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission created a licensing system to regulate virtual assets transactions and trading platforms in November. Among the first 12 entities awarded with the license are Tencents WeBank; Alibabas fintech arm Ant Financial; Infinium Limited, a joint venture that includes Tencent, Industrial and Commerce Bank of China (ICBC) and other two Hong Kong-based institutional investors; and SC Digital Solutions Limited, whose 65 percent stake is owned by Standard & Chartered Bank. Read more: Starbucks, McDonalds Among 19 Firms to Test Chinas Digital Yuan: Report On the other end, the PBOC and the top Chinese financial watchdog, the China Securities and Regulatory Commission (CSRC), recently put forward a slew of new measures to reform the financial system in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and encourage blockchain applications for improving international financial services in this area. In 2017, the Chinese government came up with an initiative to further integrate the Guangdong province with Hong Kong and Macau in a bid to build stronger financial connections between these cities and the mainland. The initiative encourages banks in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) to have a regional network and operate in a more interconnected financial system. Related Stories Interest in Gold-Backed Token Trading Grows Amid Supply Disruptions Money Reimagined: COVID-19s Lessons in Innovation || Colombia, Deloitte, ConsenSys Sign On to WEF’s ‘Blockchain Bill of Rights’: The token economy just gained an organized structure for collaborating with world leaders. The World Economic Forum revealed its Presidio Principles on Friday, a “blockchain bill of rights,” according to the nonprofit focused on fostering diplomacy and international business partnerships. The document includes signatories from the Government of Colombia, Deloitte Consulting LLP, ConsenSys, Electric Coin Company, CoinShares and the United Nations’ World Food Program, just to name a few. “We supported the creation of the Presidio Principles – as well as guidelines and design principles for public institutions – because we wanted to ensure that progress can continue rapidly and responsibly, ensuring that basic characteristics like security and data privacy are secured for our citizens,” Victor Munoz, Colombia’s presidential advisor on economic affairs and digital transformation, said in a press statement. Related: Thailand Turns to Blockchain to Boost Renewable Energy Push Read more: Why the World Economic Forum Is Creating a Blockchain ‘Bill of Rights’ The principles include a user’s right to “manage consent of data stored in third-party systems, port data between interoperable systems” and “revoke consent for future data collection.” Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin encouraged crypto startups to become signatories and join the WEF’s open dialogue. In a press statement, he said he hopes “all builders of Ethereum-based projects – and across the blockchain landscape – will sign on to demonstrate their commitment to the users of their systems and applications.” Indeed, Aya Miyaguchi of the Ethereum Foundation was involved. Greg Medcraft of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Delia Ferreira Rubio of Transparency International also contributed to the project. Related Stories RenBTC Quietly Goes Live in Latest Bid to Bring Bitcoin to Ethereum US Military Is Falling Behind China, Russia in Blockchain Arms Race: IBM, Accenture Staking Will Turn Ethereum Into a Functional Store of Value || The Klein Law Firm Reminds Investors of Class Actions on Behalf of Shareholders of CAN, HAFC and FITB: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 4, 2020 /The Klein Law Firm announces that class action complaints have been filed on behalf of shareholders of the following companies. There is no cost to participate in the suit.If you suffered a loss, you have until the lead plaintiff deadline to request that the court appoint you as lead plaintiff.
Canaan Inc. (CAN)Class Period:publicly traded securities of Canaan, including its American Depository Shares pursuant and/or traceable to the Company's registration statement and related prospectus issued in connection with the Company's November 20, 2019 initial public offering.Lead Plaintiff Deadline:May 4, 2020
The CAN lawsuit alleges that Canaan Inc. made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the purported "strategic cooperation" was actually a transaction with a related party; (2) the company's financial health was worse than what was actually reported; (3) the company had recently removed numerous distributors from its website just prior to the initial public offering, many of which were small or suspicious businesses; and (4) several of the Company's largest Chinese clients in prior years were clients who were not in the Bitcoin mining industry and, thus, would likely not be repeat customers.
Learn about your recoverable losses in CAN:http://www.kleinstocklaw.com/pslra-1/canaan-inc-loss-submission-form?id=6332&from=1
Hanmi Financial Corporation (HAFC)Class Period:August 12, 2019 to January 28, 2020Lead Plaintiff Deadline:May 26, 2020
The complaint alleges that throughout the class period Hanmi Financial Corporation made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the $40.7 million troubled loan that the Company disclosed on conference calls would necessitate further and future specific provisions for the Company – in the millions; (2) the same $40.7 million troubled loan would necessitate the Company to appraise and take personal property securing a portion of the amount of the loan; and (3) as a result, Defendants’ public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
Learn about your recoverable losses in HAFC:http://www.kleinstocklaw.com/pslra-1/hanmi-financial-corporation-loss-submission-form?id=6332&from=1
Fifth Third Bancorp (FITB)Class Period:February 26, 2016 to March 6, 2020Lead Plaintiff Deadline:June 8, 2020
According to the complaint, Fifth Third Bancorp allegedly made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) as a result of Fifth Third Bank’s aggressive incentive policies to promote its cross-sell strategy, Fifth Third Bank employees engaged in unauthorized conduct with customer accounts; (ii) since at least 2008, Fifth Third Bank, and by extension, Fifth Third, was aware of such unauthorized conduct and, thus, that it was violating relevant regulations and laws aimed at protecting its consumers; (iii) Fifth Third failed to properly implement and monitor its cross-sell program, detect and stop misconduct, and identify and remediate harmed consumers; (iv) all the foregoing subjected the Company to a foreseeable risk of heightened regulatory scrutiny or investigation; (v) Fifth Third’s revenues were in part the product of unlawful conduct and thus unsustainable; and (vi) as a result, the Company’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
Learn about your recoverable losses in FITB:http://www.kleinstocklaw.com/pslra-1/fifth-third-bancorp-loss-submission-form?id=6332&from=1
Your ability to share in any recovery doesn’t require that you serve as a lead plaintiff. If you suffered a loss during the class period and wish to obtain additional information, please contact J. Klein, Esq. by telephone at 212-616-4899 or visit the webpages provided.
J. Klein, Esq. represents investors and participates in securities litigations involving financial fraud throughout the nation. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.
CONTACT:
J. Klein, Esq.Empire State Building350 Fifth Avenue59th FloorNew York, NY 10118jk@kleinstocklaw.comTelephone: (212) 616-4899Fax: (347) 558-9665www.kleinstocklaw.com
SOURCE:The Klein Law Firm
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/588269/The-Klein-Law-Firm-Reminds-Investors-of-Class-Actions-on-Behalf-of-Shareholders-of-CAN-HAFC-and-FITB || First Mover: Cardano’s No Ethereum Killer Yet, but It’s Winning in Crypto Markets: As Ethereum pushes slowly toward a new type of blockchain technology that some cryptocurrency experts predict could represent the future of decentralized finance, the upstart competitor Cardano is getting ready to go live.
AndCardano’sdigital token, ADA, is soaring this year in digital-asset markets on speculation the project’s early embrace of a “proof-of-stake” blockchain might put it in a stronger position to challenge the much-larger Ethereum network.
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Prices for ADA have climbed over 120% this year, the second-best performance among digital assets with a market value of at least $1 billion. It’s trouncing the 80% year-to-date gains forether(ETH), the Ethereum network’s native cryptocurrency.Bitcoinis up 31% in 2020.
The goal for Cardano, similar to Ethereum’s, is to build a massive, decentralized computing network that millions of people, businesses and governments could someday use to run financial applications from anywhere in the world. And while the Ethereum blockchain’s native token, ether, currently has a commanding lead in the competition, with a $26.3 billion market capitalization that’s13 times the size of ADA’s, the smaller challenger might be poised to win a growing share of the fast-moving industry.
The recent catalyst for ADA’s price rally appears to be Cardano’s progress toward a key upgrade of its network known as “Shelley,” scheduled to go live over the next month.
Cardano launched its token in early 2017, but that version was “federated,” or managed more centrally. TheShelley upgradeaims to make Cardano “50 to 100 times more decentralizedthan other large blockchain networks,” according to the supporting foundation’s website, using proof-of-stake blockchain technology that is seen as more efficient than the electricity-hungry proof-of-work system used by the Bitcoin blockchain. A testnet of Shelley launched on June 9.
Related:First Mover: Cardano’s No Ethereum Killer Yet, but It’s Winning in Crypto Markets
Ethereum is moving to shift to proof-of-stake from proof-of-work as part of a “2.0” upgrade, but backers of that project have only stipulated that the transition will begin by September and then be phased in over stages.
“We believe Cardano’s recent price appreciation is partially related to the anticipation of their mainnet launch,” Guy Hirsch, managing director of multi-asset brokerage eToro, told CoinDesk. “If the team working on the project fails to deliver what was proposed, then the market might react negatively.”
Cryptocurrencies tied to staking have been among the hottest this year in digital-asset markets, partly because holders can earn rewards akin to interest – especially prized as the world’s biggest central banks have slashed interest rates to accommodate economies racked by the coronavirus and related lockdowns. Another staking token, Tezos (XTZ), is up 93% this year.
According to the Cardano website, investors can receive 10% a year in “delegation rewards” from staking ADA.
Some cryptocurrency investors see the Shelley upgrade as little more than an opportunity for Cardano to hype itself. The giant U.S. digital-asset exchangeCoinbase already offers Tezos staking, and custodianStaked lists eight different digital assetsallowing users to earn a return simply for holding them.
“I’m personally short on ADA currently,” Mostafa Al-Mashita, vice president of digital liquidity firm Secure Digital Markets, said via a Telegram chat. “We do trade it for our clients. I think the Shelley upgrade will be another case of, ‘Buy the rumor, sell the news.’”Cardano’s charismatic leader is Charles Hoskinson, who marshals the project as co-founder of his own five-year-old engineering company, IOHK. And he might be perfectly equipped, based on his prior work experience, to take on Ethereum: He was anEthereum co-founder before leaving in 2014.
Hoskinsonposted a roadmap on Twittershowing that full staking via the Shelley upgrade would be available by August 18.
“Cardano has very high potential in my opinion,” Michael Gord, CEO of GDA Capital, a firm that trades various cryptocurrencies, including ADA and ether. In the race to build a computing platform for applications designed to run on decentralized networks, he said, “it’s the only blockchain that is challenging ether as the potential No. 1 operating layer.”
Yet, in crucial ways, Cardano lags far behind Ethereum.
Cardano doesn’t plan to add smart contract programming – the key to building decentralized applications, known as dapps – until asubsequent phase; Ethereum already offers the functionality. According to the website DeFi Pulse, 19 of the top 20 dapps by volume are using the Ethereum network, and the remaining dapp is on the Lightning Network, which is associated with the Bitcoin blockchain.
Among open-source software developers, Ethereum garners far more attention. Some28 people are active on the IOHK GitHub, where the Cardano node and wallet open source software is hosted, versus61 people working on open-source repositorieson Ethereum’s GitHub.
In digital-asset markets, Cardano registers little more than a blip compared with the Ethereum network, already used as the backbone for dollar-linked stablecoins like tether and USDC, as well as early-generation decentralized exchanges and lending platforms.
Ether’s liquidity at $594 million per day is about 10 times ADA’s, according to Messari, a provider of data on digital assets.
“Replicating Ethereum’s developer footprint and network effects is nearly impossible for a smaller network today, and probably value destructive for the crypto ecosystem,” Lex Sokolin, global fintech co-head at the Ethereum-focused software-engineering firm ConsenSys, told CoinDesk in an email.
One thing the competing projects have in common is high-profile leaders: Where Ethereum has Vitalik Buterin, Hoskinson provides the charismatic presence for Cardano’s development.
He frequently conducts live “ask me anything” sessions on YouTube, interspersing discussions of the Shelley release with musings on meditation, fasting and picking radishes in his garden.
He can be brusque with questioners he feels are unprepared or less informed. In a surprise AMA session on June 9, Hoskinsontold one community member, “I will answer your questions if your questions are new, but if your questions have been answered previously, you need to pay attention.”
Admirers say he’s merely doing his job of taking Cardano to the next level.
“Thanks to Charles Hoskinson, Cardano enjoys some of the same audience and hype that has carried Ethereum into the upper echelons of the industry,” said Edward DeLeon Hickman, founder of Anatha, a startup building its own blockchain.
In a recent interview with Hoskinson, he acknowledged how little control he has over the market for ADA tokens.“Sometimes the market just values something differently, and you just accept that as reality, because you can’t really fight the market, and then you just do your best to try to work within the constraints of a broken system,” Hoskinsontold CoinDesk in a recent interview.
Traders seem more willing than ever to take a view on Cardano as a cryptocurrency. And gains this year in the ADA token may represent a bet on the ability of network’s leader to execute the project roadmap.
BTC: Price: $9,107 (BPI) | 24-Hr High: $9,441 | 24-Hr Low: $8,910
Trend:Bitcoin fell to three-week lows below $9,000 earlier on Monday and may be looking at further losses as technical charts have turned bearish.
To start with, the 14-day relative strength index has dipped below 50, confirming a head-and-shoulders breakdown – a bearish reversal pattern. Meanwhile, the MACD histogram, an indicator used to identify trend changes and trend strength, is beginning to produce deeper bars below the zero line. That implies that the downward move may be about to pick up the pace.
On the downside, key support is located at $8,630 (May 25 low). A breach there would invalidate the bullish higher-lows pattern and may invite stronger chart driven selling. Below $8,630, the focus would shift to the 200-day moving average (MA) at $8,000.
So far, however, downside has been restricted near $8,900. At press time, the cryptocurrency is trading near $9,089, representing a 2.7% decline on the day.
While the daily chart indicators are biased bearish, the longer duration charts are still calling a move to the higher side. Notably, the weekly chart RSI is hovering in bullish territory above 50 and the 10-week MA is still trending north in favor of the bulls.
As a result, a fresh move to $10,000 cannot be ruled out. The probability of a move higher would improve if prices hold above $9,000 through the U.S. trading hours.
Theoptions marketis also suggesting losses may be limited, with the put-call volume ratio having risen to three-month highs.
• First Mover: Bitcoin Recouples With Wall Street as Stocks Tumble, Fear Trade Returns
• Why Bitcoin Suddenly Dropped 6% on Thursday || Blockchain Bites: Google Validates Theta, Coinbase and BitGo Eye Crypto Prime Brokerage: Base-Layer TechGoogle isteaming up with Theta Labsto help the video delivery network onboard users through Google Cloud. As part of the partnership, the tech giant is assisting Theta with its Mainnet 2.0 launch, and will become the platform’s fifth validator.Polkadot is now livefollowing the mining of its first “chain candidate’s” genesis block. Polkadot will first launch under a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) consensus algorithm controlled by the Web3 Foundation, in its bid to become an interoperable blockchain for other chains and dapps to utilize.
Prime BrokerageSan Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchangeCoinbase is finally acquiring Tagomi,a prime brokerage platform specializing in digital asset trading. In an all-stock deal, Tagomi will integrate into Coinbase’s product suite, helping the firm complete its liquidity, custody, lending offerings. BitGo, a crypto custodian, has also announced its prime brokerage status, with thelaunch of its new entity BitGo Prime.Earlier this year, London-basedBequant launched a prime brokerage service,while Genesis Trading (owned by CoinDesk parent DCG) recentlypurchased crypto custodian Vo1tin a bid to become a prime broker.
Financial InnovationBrazilian retailerVia Varejo has purchased the Boston-based fintech startup Airfoxto provide financial services for underbanked Brazilians. The firm, with more than 1,000 locations in the country, plans to begin offering free bank accounts and gradually expand into other financial services, with Airfox serving as an innovation hub. Meanwhile, a senior figure at theInternational Monetary Fund said a digital currency backed by a central bank, but issued through private entities, would open the door to much greater innovationin retail payments. “This public-private partnership is intended to conserve the competitive advantages of the private sector: to interface with clients and innovate, and the comparative advantage of the central bank: to regulate and provide trust,” IMF’s Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli said.
Related:Genesis Hires Ex-Galaxy Digital Staffer to Run New Derivatives Trading Desk
ExpansionsTradeLens has been tapped by India’s largest port operator todigitize shipping supply chainsacross the nation. Crypto.com will expand its Visa crypto debit card and a wallet app to 31 European countries with a partnership with digital-payments company i2c Inc. (PYMNTS)
Open AccountsKingdom Trust has rolled out a singleretirement account for traditional and digital assetscalled Choice. The self-service retirement platform allows investors to hold stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and digital assets in one tax-advantaged account. Bitfury launched an investment opportunity offering “exposure to bitcoinby way of the mining company’s data center” for institutional investors, The Block reports.
Real and Virtual WorldsSwitzerland’s government has rejected a $103 million coronavirus-related bailout for “Crypto Valley.” The Swiss Blockchain Federation recently surveyed 203 firms in the area and found 80% on the brink of bankruptcy. (Bitcoin.com) Crypto startup Centrifuge is introducing a dapp that allows users to collateralize real-world assets for use in the decentralized finance ecosystem. (The Block) Land parcel auctions in the virtual Somnium Space have totaled $470,000 over the past 10 weeks. (Decrypt)
To See Libra’s Potential, Look at the Philippines, Not the USLeah Callon-Butler argues thatthe much derided Libra project could provide real utilityin countries where Facebook – one of the project’s leads – essentially is the internet. “Take the Philippines as an example. I’ve lived here since 2018 and it’s not hard to imagine how fast libra could become the preferred tender of Filipinos everywhere. To paint you a picture: While very few are banked – only 22.6 percent of adults have a formal account – the number of mobile phone subscriptions is greater than the number of actual people who live here,” she said.
Related:First Mover: Chainlink ‘Marines’ Are HODLing and Here’s Why You Should Care
Look to Design, Not Laws, to Protect Privacy in the Surveillance AgeRaullen Chai argues thatprivacy preserving measures should be built into a product,rather than ensured by law, if there is any hope to counter wanton surveillance. “Data privacy regulations have begun emerging in recent years, but these reactive measures simply cannot guarantee our privacy. We must proactively build and adopt new technologies with “privacy by design” to reach a human-centered future,” he said.
Macro MovementsThe yuan (CNY) fell to 7.1613 per U.S. dollar earlier on Tuesday to hit the lowest level since early September.Bitcoin has historically seen gains as the Chinese yuan falls.“If China’s CNY continues to weaken against USD, then we could have a 2015 and 2016 repeat, where BTC strength coincided with yuan weakness,” tweeted Chris Burniske, partner at venture capital firm Placeholder.
EOSOver the past year, theEOS token’s price is down 69%,the worst performance among digital assets with a market capitalization of at least $1 billion, based on Messari data. That’s more than twice the decline over that period in prices for EOS’s biggest rival, Ethereum. Bitcoin is flat over the past 12 months. Things could worsen for the cryptocurrency, as lingering concerns over its applicability and centralized structure have yet to be adequately addressed, according to industry experts surveyed by CoinDesk’s First Mover team.
‘Narrative Violations’Bedrock Capital founder Geoff Lewis joins The Breakdown podcast to discuss how alternative ideas and narratives are challenging the media’s consensus-making function. These“narrative violations” are reshaping how people understand the world.
• Bitcoin News Roundup for May 27, 2020
• Google Signs On as Network Validator for Blockchain Video Network Theta || The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers – June 20th, 2020: Bitcoin rose by 0.63% on Saturday. Partially reversing a 0.90% fall from Friday, Bitcoin ended the day at $9,371.3.
It was a mixed start to the day. Bitcoin rose to an early morning high $9,357.0 before hitting reverse.
Falling short of the major resistance levels, Bitcoin slid to a late morning intraday low $9,178.0.
Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $9,220.30 before striking a late morning intraday high $9,406.6.
Falling short of the first major resistance level at $9,427.40, Bitcoin fell back to sub-$9,300 levels before finding late support.
Steering clear of the major support levels, Bitcoin bounced back to $9,400 levels before easing back.
The near-term bullish trend remained intact in spite of 3 consecutive days in the red mid-week. Bitcoin continued to hold above the 23.6% FIB of $8,900.
For the bears, Bitcoin would need to slide through the 62% FIB of $6,400 to form a near-term bearish trend.
Across the rest of the majors, it was a mixed day on Saturday.
Bitcoin Cash ABC (-0.67%), Cardano’s ADA (-0.20%), Monero’s XMR (-0.11%), Stellar’s Lumen (-0.17%), and Tezos (-0.13%) saw red on the day.
It was a relatively bullish day for the rest of the majors, however.
Bitcoin Cash SV (+1.19%), Litecoin (+1.80%), and Tron’s TRX (+1.19%) led the way.
Binance Coin (+0.88%), EOS (+0.46%), Ethereum (+0.06%), and Ripple’s XRP (+0.48%), saw modest gains on the day.
Through the current week, the crypto total market cap fell to a Monday low $245.97bn before rising to a Wednesday high $267.65bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $260.69bn.
Bitcoin’s dominance rose to a Monday high 66.60% before sliding to a Wednesday low 65.79%. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s dominance stood at 66.16%.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up by 0.13% to $9,383.7. A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin rise to an early morning high $9,394.2 before falling to a low $9,355.4
Bitcoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.
Elsewhere, it was a mixed start to the day.
Tezos and Tron’s TRX struggled, with losses of 0.37% and 0.26% respectively.
It was bullish for the rest of the majors, however, with Binance Coin up by 0.50% to lead the way.
Bitcoin would need to avoid a fall through the $9,320 pivot to support a run at the first major resistance level at $9,459.27.
Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break out from Saturday’s high $9,406.6. Resistance at $9,500 has continued to pin Bitcoin back since 11thJune.
Barring a broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level at $9,459.27 would likely cap any upside.
In the event of a crypto breakout, Bitcoin could test the second major resistance level at $9,547.23.
Failure to avoid a fall through the $9,320 pivot level could see Bitcoin struggle on the day.
A fall through to sub-$9,300 levels would bring the first major support level at $9,230.67 into play.
Barring another extended crypto sell-off, however, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$9,000 levels. The second major support level at $9,090.03 should limit any downside.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
• The Week Ahead – COVID-19 Numbers, Geopolitics and June PMIs in Focus
• S&P 500 Weekly Price Forecast – Stock Markets Continue to Grind Higher
• Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Rise but are Likely Capped as Production Rises
• E-mini S&P 500 Index (ES) Futures Technical Analysis – Weaker After Apple Recloses Some Stores
• E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis – Rally Fizzles as Apple Re-Closes Stores
• NZD/USD Forex Technical Analysis – Increasing Selling Pressure Amid Rising Recession Fears || Kyber to Offer Delegated Token Staking After Coming Network Upgrade: Kyber Network is adding a new staking option for token holders once a planned protocol upgrade is implemented in less than two months.
A new partnership with StakeWith.US, a Singapore-based blockchain infrastructure firm that provides staking services, is expected to provide “greater flexibility” for stakeholders and community members by increasing their control over decision-making, Kyber said.
Holders of Kyber Network Crystal (KNC), an Ethereum-based (ERC-20) token, will be able to delegate their tokens and voting power to StakeWith.US’s staking pool,ATLAS, when the network’s Katalyst upgrade is completed by the end of June.
Related:Stablecoins Push Ethereum’s Transaction Count to Highest Since July 2019
“This seems like a logical tie-up and would allow KNC token holders who are either too busy or don’t feel comfortable enough to vote on KyberDAO initiatives to delegate their votes to an informed third party and still receive voting rewards,” said Gerrit van Wingerden, CTO and co-founder of crypto asset management platform Caspian.
Kyber Network is a decentralized exchange that allows instant trading and conversion of cryptocurrencies and tokens with high liquidity.
Under the planned protocol upgrade, KNC holders will be able to vote on various protocol decisions and in return will receive rewards from network fees in the form ofether(ETH).
See also:New Cross-Chain Network Plans to Bring Bitcoin’s Liquidity to the DeFi Space
Related:Kyber Network Activity Surges as DEX Plans Switch to Staking Model in Q2
“Kyber will be the only protocol that has a deflationary staking token with network fees paid out inETH, an asset with monetary premium,” said Michael Ng, co-founder of StakeWith.Us.
With the change, KNC holders will receive their ETH rewards based on the number of tokens staked. Token burn and rewards are determined by actual network usage and DeFi growth, Kyber said.
“It’s interesting to see staking providers, such as StakeWithUs, working closer with DAOs. Collaboration will lead a healthy debate around governance and proxy smart contracts,” said David Freuden, DAO enthusiast and founder of Monsterplay, a blockchain consultancy firm working in the areas of smart cities, privacy and decentralized autonomous organisations.
“Staking providers can also access a broader and potentially larger network of staking participants which will increase the size of deployable pooled funds,” Freuden added.
See also:Should the Government Have a Say in Where You Can Invest?
Kyber Network activity surgedin late April amid news that staking was on the way, with the number of addresses with a balance in KNC reaching an all-time high of 61,980 on April 27.
• Network Bringing Bitcoin to DeFi Taps Libra Member Bison Trails for Staking Services
• OpenLaw Launches First ‘Legal DAO’ for Distributed VC Investments || Latest Ripple price and analysis (XRP to USD): As previously noted in Coin Rivet’s analysis XRP remains in bearish territory following a relatively dismal performance over the past six weeks. It is now trading back below the $0.20 level of psychological resistance while $0.1825 remains an important level of support to the downside. In order for XRP to trigger a bullish reversal it needs to break above not only the $0.20 level but also the daily 200 moving average, which is at $0.2125 after sloping to the downside for more than two years. In the past 12 months XRP has spent just three weeks above the 200MA as it continues to struggle due to a lack of bullish momentum. If the $0.1825 level of support eventually falls XRP can be expected to drop to as low as $0.1475, which is around the point it bounced in March. XRP’s notably bearish chart is baffling considering the amount of work the Ripple Foundation has been putting in on a global level, with increasing numbers of significant partnerships being secured. However, one of the main issues that keeps rearing its ugly head in terms of XRP’s price is the over-the-counter token sales that have been commencing. A group of aggrieved XRP investors filed a lawsuit against Ripple over the token sales, although Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse replied by claiming that the sales were “vital to the survival of the company” . For more news, guides and cryptocurrency analysis, click here . Latest Ripple price Current live XRP price information and interactive charts are available on our site 24 hours a day. The ticker bar at the bottom of every page on our site has the latest Ripple price. Pricing is also available in a range of different currency equivalents: US Dollar – XRPtoUSD British Pound Sterling – XRPtoGBP Japanese Yen – XRPtoJPY Euro – XRPtoEUR Australian Dollar – XRPtoAUD Russian Rouble – XRPtoRUB Bitcoin – XRPtoBTC About Ripple (XRP) Ripple is a real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) developed by the Ripple company. It is also referred to as the Ripple Transaction Protocol (RTXP) or Ripple protocol. It can trace its roots to 2004 when a web developer called Ryan Fugger had the idea to create a monetary system that was decentralised and could effectively allow individuals to create their own money. Story continues Ripple is one of the largest cryptocurrencies and is one of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation. More Ripple news and information If you want to find out more information about Ripple or cryptocurrencies in general, then use the search box at the top of this page. Here’s a recent article to get you started: https://coinrivet.com/ripple-ceo-brad-garlinghouse-hits-back-at-critics-xrp-is-not-a-security/ As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not. || Off the Chain Capital to Host Webinar 4pm EST Tuesday, May 26 – Turbulent Times: Why Add Bitcoin to Your Portfolio Now: IPO Edge, in partnership withOff the Chain Capital, LLC, a digital currency & blockchain asset investment manager andThe Palm Beach Hedge Fund Association, a Florida trade association for financial professionals, will host a Webinar on Tuesday, May 26 at 4pm EST –Turbulent Times: Why Add Bitcoin to Your Portfolio Now.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
The Webinar will feature Brian Estes, Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner at Off the Chain Capital, LLC, which employs a value-based approach to cryptocurrency inspired by the works of Graham and Dodd. Bitcoin has come into the spotlight recently as central banks around the world adopt zero interest rate policies and investors including Paul Tudor Jones have taken significant positions in the cryptocurrency. Whether as a substitute for fiat currencies such as the U.S dollar or a hedge against inflation, bitcoin has drawn Wall Street’s attention as investors navigate the latest financial crisis.
Cryptocurrencies may also disrupt legacy technology companies like Amazon.com, Inc., Facebook, Inc., Paypal Holdings, Inc., and Apple Inc. Decentralized platforms built on blockchain technology using cryptocurrency for native tokens on the internet pose a challenge such tech giants.
Mr. Estes will discuss:
• Why does bitcoin have value?
• What is the bitcoin halving and why is it important?
• Today’s global debt crisis and how it will benefit bitcoin
• Why add bitcoin to a diversified investment portfolio
• Models used to determine bitcoin’s value
Brian Estes is the CIO and Managing Partner at Off the Chain Capital; he is also invested in the General Partner at Polychain. Brian helped finance, build, and mentor 4 blockchain companies whose combined value is over $10B today. Prior to his involvement in blockchain in 2014, Brian was a leading endowment and foundation asset manager who was ranked in the top 1/10th of 1% of Morningstar asset managers between 2004 -2014. Brian has his BA from the University of Illinois and MBA with high honors from Washington University. Brian also studied at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics. For fun, Brian has been an instrument-rated private pilot for 30 years and has over 2100 flight hours in his single-engine Cessna Cardinal.
Note: This Webinar is intended for informational purposes only and not to solicit any specific investment.
Contact:
John Jannarone, Editor-in-Chief
editor@IPO-Edge.com
www.IPO-Edge.com
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Instagram:@IPOEdge || Coinbase Offers US Feds New Crypto Surveillance Tools: While the market expects bitcoin to be calm over the next few days, attention is now on the economy, with the U.S. looking as if it turned a corner in May. However, some observers see fundamental problems ahead. Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $9,735 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), gaining 1% over the previous 24 hours. At 00:00 UTC on Friday (8:00 p.m. Thursday EDT), the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was changing hands around $9,800 on spot exchanges like Coinbase. The price stayed around there until 10:00 UTC (6:00 a.m. EDT), when selling caused bitcoin to drop as low as $9,584. Bitcoin is now close to its 50-day and 10-day technical indicator moving averages, indicating sideways trading heading into the weekend. Read More: Bullishness Building in Bitcoin Options Market, Data Suggests The markets story of the day was the surging performance of stocks on Friday. Economic data released from the U.S. Labor Department showed May to have the largest one-month employment increase ever . That was after a record drop in April due to the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on the global economy. As a result, Europe posted big gains in late trading, as the FTSE 100 of top public companies closed the day up 2.25%, thus making the week positive by 6.7% . In the United States, the S&P 500 index climbed 2.6%, closing the week in the green 5.2% . Yet the total employment number likely belies bigger economic problems ahead and the rally in equities might be short lived, said George Clayton, managing partner of Cryptanalysis Capital. Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Flat as Stocks Swell on Positive Jobs Report “Stocks are on Prozac,” Clayton said. “Unemployment came in better than forecast, but it’s still at 13.3%.” Some traders skeptical of traditional markets see crypto as the best investment during turbulent times. That likely has been one of the reasons for bitcoin’s continued outperformance relative to the S&P 500 year-to-date. Story continues “For the last two years, many have been anticipating a global economic crisis. 2008-2009 did not change anything in the fundamental faults of global debt, money printing and wealth distribution,” said Sweden-based over-the-counter crypto trader Henrik Kugelberg. Read More: Bloomberg’s Pie-in-the-Sky Bitcoin Call Looks Directionally Defensible Although equities appear to be turbocharged Friday, many forget the increasing role of the U.S. Federal Reserve in traditional markets in 2020. “There seems to be no stopping this market with the Fed liquidity pump, but they can’t hold it up forever,” said Rupert Douglas, head of institutional sales at digital asset brokerage Koine. “Bitcoin still looks good to me; I would much rather hold that than equities now,” he added. “Eventually, share prices are going to follow the economy and it is not headed in a good direction,” Cryptanalysis Capital’s Clayton said. “Meanwhile the crypto ecosystem marches forward; bitcoin mines another block. The money printing and every other macro trend sets crypto up for a rally.” Other markets Digital assets on CoinDesk’s big board are mixed Friday. The second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether (ETH), is trading around $242 and slipped less than a percent in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT). Read More: Crypto Derivatives Exchange OKEx Launches Options on Ether Cryptocurrency winners on the day include lisk (LSK) in the green 13%, eos (EOS) climbing 5% and zcash (ZEC) up 1.6%. Cryptocurrency losers Friday include decred (DCR) down 4.6%, stellar (XLM) in the red 2%. and dogecoin (DOGE) in the doghouse 1.4%. All price changes were as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT). Read More: The Free Market Will Determine Cardano’s Fate In commodities, oil is making big gains, UP 5% as a barrel of crude is priced at $39.17 as of press time. Gold dropped significantly in early trading Friday and while it recovered somewhat, it’s still in the red, down 1.8% for the day. Japan’s Nikkei 225 of top companies missed the equities party by ending the day flat in the green less than a percent although up 50% from March lows . U.S. Treasury bonds all climbed Friday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were up most on the 10-year in the green 6.7%. Related Stories Bullishness Building in Bitcoin Options Market, Data Suggests Bitcoin Is a Way to Repair Economic Injustice: Author Isaiah Jackson
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 9137.99, 9228.33, 9123.41, 9087.30, 9132.49, 9073.94, 9375.47, 9252.28, 9428.33, 9277.97
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Here’s How Okta Plans to Secure Your Banking and Retail Apps: Okta, a cloud security company known for making it easier for business customers to sign onto corporate apps securely, wants to go bigger. The company hopes to extend its purview to retail and banking web sites and mobile apps that serve millions of consumers.
While demand for single-sign on and identity management for corporate customers is huge--Okta CEO Todd McKinnon estimates it to be about $5 billion a year-- the market for providing similar functions to consumers wanting to log into their bank accounts, for example, is much bigger. Generally, this type of technology is known as identity and access management (IAM.)
Thus, Okta’s interest and why the San Francisco-based company on Tuesday will unveil guidelines and application programming interfaces (APIs) that banks, stores, and other consumer-facing businesses can use to integrate Okta’s identity management into their existing systems.
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These tools would enable an automaker, for example, to build a secure log-on system (using Okta’s technology) that looks like the rest of the company’s web site. Given that every company these days from banks to appliance makers to e-commerce sites and stores now build and run their own web sites and mobile apps, the ability to offer secure customer access to service portals and payment pages is essential
“This is a huge thing for Okta. We’re attacking all these customers,” McKinnon toldFortunein advance of the company’sOktane tech conferencein Las Vegas. The news will be announced at the event later on Tuesday. Okta’s back-end software stores user information, logs in users, and provides security.
Related:Okta Wants to Go Big and Go it Alone in Enterprise Software
Okta, whichwent public in April,isn’t alone in this arena. , which offers Active Directory identity management for corporate applications, is also pushing a cloud version of that product calledAzure Active Directory.and also have a stake here as do Okta’s cloud-oriented rivalsPing Identityand OneLogIn, according to Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research.
And, he added, many companies now use open-source technology to build their own secure access capabilities. Presumably, Okta is banking that its new APIs will be an easier option for them.
In a recent report, Gregg Keizmann, research vice president at Gartner , said most work-oriented IAM products can suit consume needs, but may also offer functions that are not required in this market. The key issue for consumer IAM is it must be extremely easy to use but also scale up to handle millions--as opposed to hundreds or thousands--of users.
Note: (August 29, 2017, 9:05 a.m.) This story was updated to add comments from Gartner.
See original article on Fortune.com
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• Google Issuing Refunds for Ads Seen Only by Robots || Your first trade for Wednesday, September 6: The " Fast Money " traders shared their first moves for the market open. Tim Seymour was a buyer of Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) . Karen Finerman was a buyer of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) . Dan Nathan was a seller of Boeing (NYSE: BA) . Guy Adami was a buyer of Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) . Trader disclosure: On September 5, 2017, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Tim Seymour is long AMZA, APC, BAC, C, CCJ, CLF, CSCO, DAL, DPZ, DVYE, EEM, EWM, FB, FXI, GILD, GM, GOOGL, INTC, LOW, M, MAT, MCD, MOS, MPEL, RAI, RH, RL, SBUX, SQ, T, TWTR, UA, UAL, VALE, VIAB, VOD, VRX, XLE. Tim is short IWM, XRT, RACE, SPY. Tim is long XLE. Karen is long AAL, BAC, BAC short calls, Bitcoin and Ethereum, C, DAL, EEM, EPI, EWW, DVYE, FB, FNAC, GMLP, GLNG, GM, GOGO, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, LYV, KORS, KORS calls, KORS puts, MA, SEDG, SPY puts, TACO, WIFI, WFM. Bitcoin and Ethereum are in her kids' Trust. Her firm is long ANTM, BAC short calls, C, C calls, FB, FNAC, GOOG, GOOGL, GLNG, GMLP, JPM, JPM calls, KORS puts, LYV, SPY puts, SPY put spreads, VRX, WIFI, UAL, her firm is short IWM, MDY, VRX calls. Dan Nathan is Long Sept xlf puts. Dan is also long DIS, INTC, M, NKE, T. Dan sold TWTR and SNAP. Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck. The " Fast Money " traders shared their first moves for the market open. Tim Seymour was a buyer of Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) . Karen Finerman was a buyer of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) . Dan Nathan was a seller of Boeing (NYSE: BA) . Guy Adami was a buyer of Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO) . Trader disclosure: On September 5, 2017, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Tim Seymour is long AMZA, APC, BAC, C, CCJ, CLF, CSCO, DAL, DPZ, DVYE, EEM, EWM, FB, FXI, GILD, GM, GOOGL, INTC, LOW, M, MAT, MCD, MOS, MPEL, RAI, RH, RL, SBUX, SQ, T, TWTR, UA, UAL, VALE, VIAB, VOD, VRX, XLE. Tim is short IWM, XRT, RACE, SPY. Tim is long XLE. Karen is long AAL, BAC, BAC short calls, Bitcoin and Ethereum, C, DAL, EEM, EPI, EWW, DVYE, FB, FNAC, GMLP, GLNG, GM, GOGO, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, LYV, KORS, KORS calls, KORS puts, MA, SEDG, SPY puts, TACO, WIFI, WFM. Bitcoin and Ethereum are in her kids' Trust. Her firm is long ANTM, BAC short calls, C, C calls, FB, FNAC, GOOG, GOOGL, GLNG, GMLP, JPM, JPM calls, KORS puts, LYV, SPY puts, SPY put spreads, VRX, WIFI, UAL, her firm is short IWM, MDY, VRX calls. Dan Nathan is Long Sept xlf puts. Dan is also long DIS, INTC, M, NKE, T. Dan sold TWTR and SNAP. Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck.More From CNBC
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• Dennis Gartman believes this is the biggest risk to the market || Should You Buy These Semiconductor ETFs & Stocks Now: Semiconductor ETFs had a great 2016, having returned in the range of 35-46%. Areas like autonomous cars, 3D printers, fitness devices and IoT fueled growth in the sector, offsetting otherwise-saturating businesses like PCs and smartphones. Though things moderated for the space in early 2017, semiconductor ETFs gathered steam from mid-May. In the last six months (as of August 18, 2017), semiconductor ETFs kept pace with the soaring broader technology sector (read: Will Semiconductor ETFs Repeat This Year's Success in 2017?). Let’s find out which factors may drive the semiconductor rally ahead. Usage of Semiconductor in Cryptocurrencies Bitcoin is on a tear this year. The digital currency has now more than quadrupled in value from around $997 at the start of the year. Bitcoins are ‘mined’ by using a greater amount of computer processing power. Creation and transactions in bitcoin are controlled through cryptography to keep transactions secure (read: Bitcoin Skyrockets, Race to First Cryptocurrency ETF Heats Up). Like bitcoin, Ether or etherum is also quite popular this year. Now, mining of cryptocurrencies needs the usage of semiconductors. A hardware known as an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) is designed explicitly for mining bitcoin (read: Ethereum ETF? The Bitcoin Crushing Digital Currency Explained). This where semiconductor companies can gain traction. As per Bloomberg, there was a 10-fold rise from April to June in the Ethereum market which helped shares of Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) substantially. Barclays recently added that Nvidia is better placed than its competitors to cash in on the cryptocurrency rally. Rise of 4G LTE Though shipment of smartphones has cooled down lately, the continued shift toward 4G LTE in high-end smartphones has given a boost to wafer demand for advanced process technologies, as per research agency Gartner. Plus, the rapid deployment of fingerprint sensors and active-matrix dynamic light-emitting diodes (AMOLEDs) by Chinese smartphones should also give the space a boost, as per several research agencies including Gartner. Recently, the agency indicated that consumer applications will likely make up for about 63% of the overall IoT applications in 2017. Story continues Value-Centric Area In any case, semiconductor is the value-centric traditional tech area that is likely to have an upper hand in an edgy investing environment. Moreover, the semiconductor space is consolidating rapidly with a number of deals announced lately. Market Trends Favorable Investors should note that there was a gathering ofshort sellers in the semiconductor sector only to acknowledge defeat. As per an article published on Investopedia, out of the 10 biggest semiconductor shorts in the U.S. market only two, Xilinx Inc. (XLNX) and Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM), were in favor of short sellers. The rest eight punished them with over $3.5 billion. ETF Picks Against this backdrop, investors can take a look at ETFs like VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF SMH , PowerShares Dynamic Semiconductors Portfolio ETF PSI and iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF SOXX . Stock Picks We also highlight a few semiconductor stocks with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and a value score of A. These are: Micron Technology Inc. MU This is one of the leading worldwide providers of semiconductor memory solutions. It belongs to the Zacks Industry Rank of top 1% and Sector Rank of top 44%. IEC Electronics Corp. IEC It is a full-service contract manufacturer employing state-of-the-art production utilizing both surface mount and pin-through-hole technology. The Zacks Industry Rank is in the top 13%. Stoneridge Inc. SRI It is a designer and manufacturer of highly engineered electrical and electronic components, modules and systems for the automotive, medium and heavy-duty truck, and agricultural vehicle markets. The Zacks Industry Rank is in the top 13%. Want key ETF info delivered straight to your inbox? Zacks’ free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing ETFs, each week. Get it free >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Stoneridge, Inc. (SRI) : Free Stock Analysis Report IEC Electronics Corp. (IEC) : Free Stock Analysis Report ISHARS-PHLX SEM (SOXX): ETF Research Reports PWRSH-DYN SEMI (PSI): ETF Research Reports VANECK-SEMICON (SMH): ETF Research Reports Micron Technology, Inc. (MU) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report || The 5 best new features of this week's YouTube redesign: This is a big week for YouTube (GOOG,GOOGL). It’s getting a new design and new features—all of which have been in the works, carefully and methodically, for a very long time, and all of which, as far as I’m concerned, are welcome!
It’s time. As theYouTube blogpoints out, “When YouTube launched 12 years ago, it was a single website that supported one video format, 320×240 at 4:3 aspect ratio.” 320×240 pixels? Man, that’s not even big enough for the YouTube logo these days.
Which, by the way, is new, along with new fonts and new colors. The logo plays down the TV-ness of the old one, since, you know—who watches TV sets anymore?
On the desktop, you get four juicy new features:
• The weirdTheater Modebutton, which never really did much, now does something great. It makes the video fill the screen except for the menu bar and YouTube controls. It’s one stop short of Full Screen, and genuinely useful.
• No more “Load More” buttons! TheComments scroll forever, loading more comments or videos automatically. Same thing with the thumbnails page.
• You can nowpreview a thumbnailby pointing to it without clicking.
• The newDark Themeis meant for nighttime viewing so all that white isn’t so blinding. It makes all the white areas of the screen black. To turn it on, click your avatar (your little account icon in the upper-right corner of the screen), click “Dark Theme,” and, in the resulting panel, turn on “Activate Dark Theme.”
There are some changes in the phone app, too. The big one: You’ve always been able to control the playback speed of a video on your computer, using the little sprocket menu. But now,finally, you can speed up or slow down playback on the app, too! The trick is to tap the three dots in the upper right, and then hit “Playback Speed.”
It’s hard to redesign something as huge and popular as YouTube. But you know what? They’ve done it. Today’s YouTube update is a big bundle of good stuff.
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David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’sdavidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s@pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You canread all his articles here, or you can sign up toget his columns by email. || Chinese Liquidation Panic Causes Massive Bitcoin Price Crash: FromTyler Durden: Yuan-denominated Bitcoin has crashed as much as 25% 35% in Chinese trading, plunging from 25,000 yuan to as a low of 16,000 on local exchanges BTCChina (and as low as 20,000 on OKCoin), following confirmation of last week’s Caixin report that Beijing would stop cryptocurrency exchange trading.
China’s second largest exchange, BTC China, said that it would halt all trading on the platform beginning September 30, launching a liquidation panic.
In a statementreleased on Weibo, BTC China said that it would immediately stops accepting new account registrations on BTCChina Exchange. The decision was made after “carefully considering” Chinese regulatory bodies’ Sept. 4 announcement on preventing risks associated with token fundraising. A google-translated version of the statement:
China will stop all trading business on September 30th
And on Twitter:
The immediate result was a sharp plunge in the CNY-denominated price of bitcoin on exchangeslike BTC China and OKCoin:
While China no longer dominates cryptocurrency trading – it accounted for nearly 90% of all trading in late 2016 before Beijing launched a series of measures to limit participaton – and is now responsible for less than 40% of global volumes, the Chinese selloff has spooked global markets, pushing bitcoin sharply lower on international exchanges as well like Coinbase, where it was trading at approximately $3,600 last.
A breakdown of global bitcoin exchanges by volume is shown below:
Also notable: as of this moment, China-denominated bitcoin is trading at about 17,000 yuan or just under US$2,500,indicating there is a nearly 30% arb between Chinese and offshore trading.
This isn’t the first time the bitcoin market in China has come under regulatory scrutiny. In early February, major exchanges suspended withdrawals of bitcoin and stepped up their scrutiny of clients after meeting with the central bank.
Emil Chan, vice-president of the Hong Kong Blockchain Society, said it would be difficult for regulators to outlaw bitcoin trading altogether. “There is no option to restrict cross-border sales of bitcoin. It is a smarter move to maintain the operation of the local exchanges if the central bank’s goal is to minimise the outflow of yuan.”
Still, the virtual currency is up more than six times from a year ago, with some participants convinced the bitcoin market is in a bubble. “In fact, the market was too hot. The action taken is an effective action to cool down the global cryptocurrency market,” said Chan.
Meanwhile, Leonhard Weese, president of the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong, said if China continues to toughen up on regulations to restrict growth in bitcoin, it may drive the business to the city.
“People in China will be more careful about marketing these events, and a lot of that marketing activity will come to Hong Kong in the form of conferences and communities,”said Weese.
It remains to be seen if Chinese bitcoin fans will simply switch to other OTC/bilateral forms of trading, or simply take their trading to neighboring Japan and South Korea which remain eager advocates of trading in the crypto space.
This article is brought to you courtesy ofZeroHedge. || Bitcoin Rockets Past $3,000 to a New Record High: In just four hours of early Saturday trading, the price of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin surged over 9% to a new record. At the time of this writing, one Bitcoin is valued at $3,169.90, well above the previous record of $3,000 setin June.
Bitcoin’s total market value is now more that $52 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap, and the return on Bitcoin investments made on January 1st of this year stands at nearly 220%.
Bitcoin will almost certainly remain a highly volatile asset, but its latest high reflects a major positive development. After years of heated debate over how to increase the Bitcoin network’s transaction capacity, major players have finally agreed on a compromise solution known asSegwit2x. That accomplishment is reassuring for those who may have begun to doubt the effectiveness of Bitcoin’s leaderlessgovernance model.
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The Segwit2x solution also seems to have driven Bitcoin’s price higher in a less direct way. On Tuesday, a faction who disagreed with the proposal spun off a so-called ‘fork’ of Bitcoin, known asBitcoin Cash, which implemented a different fix. All holders of Bitcoin received matching Bitcoin Cash, which now trades as BCH on exchanges, and has a total current value of $3.75 billion.
However, the price of Bitcoin Cash has declined steadily over the last two days as Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies have surged. That suggests investors are cashing out of the upstart fork, which has sparse support fromminersand exchanges, and pumping their gains back into older, more trusted, and more widely-adopted cryptocurrencies. || Fed Starts Monetary Policy Meeting, Trump Speaks to UN: On Tuesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve began its two-day monetary policy meeting, but during the trading session financial market traders shifted their focus to the United Nations, where U.S. President Donald Trump tried to encourage members to confront threats from rogue nations like North Korea.
In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Trump said “North Korea’s reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles threatens the entire world with unthinkable loss of human life.”
Trump also said, “No nation on Earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready willing, and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That’s what the United States is all about. That’s what the United Nations is for. Let’s see how they do.”
Despite the tough talk from Trump, the financial markets had no response to his speech. This is because most investors feel that a war on the Korean Peninsula seems very unlikely at this time. Investors in China, Japan and South Korea don’t believe there will be a war because they perceive a low potential reward with high risk.
The United Nations likely feels the same way this is why the U.N. Security Council is more likely to continue with strong sanctions like imposing a ban on North Korea’s textile exports and capping its crude oil imports.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is not expected to raise rates at the September meeting. However, it may drop hints that it is still on track to raise rates at its December 12 -13 meeting. Market expectations for a December rate hike rose to 58.3 percent on Tuesday, according to the Fed Funds Indicator.
The Fed is also widely expected to announce its plan to begin unwinding its $4.5 trillion portfolio in October.
Stock market investors were also focused on U.S. Tax Reform. Interest on this topic grew after Senator Bob Corker told reporters that GOP lawmakers had reached a tentative tax reform-budget deal. Once again, the market’s reaction to this news was muted because investors are looking for something more concrete and nobody wanted to take a big position in the market ahead of the Fed.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
• Bitcoin Traders: Embrace the Volatility or Perish
• Fed Starts Monetary Policy Meeting, Trump Speaks to UN
• Daily Economic Calendar, September 20, 2017
• Market Snapshot – Markets in Consolidation Phase
• Trump, Federal Reserve and German Elections will Set the Tone
• Strong Investor Confidence Failed to Lift European Shares || Bitcoin little changed, Bitcoin Cash gains ground: Investing.com - The price of the digital currency bitcoin was trading near the $4,550 level on Thursday, having clawed back all of the losses from Monday’s slump, which was triggered by China’s ruling that initial coin offerings are illegal.
On the U.S.-based Bitfinex exchange, Bitcoin touched a low of $4,465.30 and was at $4,569.9 by 06:42 AM ET (10:42 GMT) having opened at $4,594.60.
At current prices bitcoin has a market cap of about $75 billion.
Cryptocurrency prices, including bitcoin dropped on Monday afterChina banned all fundraising related to ICO’s, in what is the strongest regulatory challenge so far to the burgeoning market for digital token sales.
The popularity of coin offerings has surged in China this year. ICOs have become a bonanza for digital currency entrepreneurs, allowing them to raise large sums quickly by creating and selling digital "tokens" with little or no regulatory oversight.
Prices then rebounded as bitcoin traders seemed to view the selloff as a buying opportunity.
Meanwhile, the price of the new bitcoin offshoot, Bitcoin Cash rose to its highest level in two-weeks. It touched a high of $697.00 and was last at $692.00, having opened at $646.00.
At current prices, bitcoin cash has a total market capitalization of around $11 billion, making it the third most valuable cryptocurrency.
Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading, Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin, was down 3.07% to $327.00.
To stay on top of the latest moves in the crypto-space, be sure to check out:https://www.investing.com/crypto/
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Euro firms before ECB decision; Riksbank eyed || Beijing cryptocurrency exchanges told to announce trading halt - source: By Brenda Goh SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have ordered Beijing-based cryptocurrency exchanges to stop trading and immediately notify users of their closure, signalling a widening crackdown by authorities on the industry to contain financial risks. Exchanges were also told to stop allowing new user registrations as of Friday, according to a government notice. The notice was signed by the Beijing city group in charge of overseeing internet finance risks and circulated online. A government source verified it to Reuters. Platforms should also tell the government by Wednesday Sept. 20 how they will allow users to make withdrawals in a risk-free manner and handle funds to make sure investor interests are protected, according to the notice, which was also reported by state newspaper Securities Times. "All trading exchanges must by midnight of Sept. 15 publish a notice to make clear when they will stop all cryptocurrency trading and announce a stop to new user registrations," the government notice said. China is cracking down on the cryptocurrency business to try to limit risks as consumers pile into a highly speculative market that has grown rapidly this year. Reuters and other media reported earlier this week that it planned to shut down the exchanges. Shanghai-based BTCChina, a major Chinese bitcoin exchange, said on Thursday it would stop all trading from Sept. 30, citing tightening regulation. Smaller Chinese bitcoin exchanges ViaBTC, YoBTC and Yunbi on Friday announced similar closures. Beijing-based platforms OkCoin and Huobi, which are among China's biggest exchanges, said late on Friday that they planned to stop yuan-based trading by Oct. 31. By 1406 GMT, BTC's price was down 7.63 percent at 19,797.00 yuan ($3,024.71). The bitcoin price was down 5 percent at $3,071 at 1036 GMT on U.S. exchange Bitstamp. The bitcoin price index on trade website Coindesk slid below $3,000 for the first time in six weeks. Story continues Bitcoin fell by more than 10 percent on Wednesday after a warning by JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon that it "is a fraud" and will eventually "blow up". "ILLEGAL FLOWS" Li Lihui, a senior official at the National Internet Finance Association of China and a former president of the Bank of China, told a conference in Shanghai that global regulators should work together to supervise cryptocurrencies. "Digital tokens like bitcoin, ethereum that are stateless, do not have sovereign endorsement, a qualified issuing body or a country's trust, are not legal currencies and should not be spoken of as digital currencies," he said. "They can become a tool for illegal fund flows and investment deals." He said there should be a distinction between digital currencies, which were being studied and developed by authorities such as the Chinese central bank, and digital tokens such as bitcoin. Digital currencies developed by authorities could be used for good, with the right regulation, he said. The state-backed internet finance body was set up by the central bank, and its members include banks, brokerages, funds and consumer finance companies. On Wednesday, it urged members to abide by Chinese laws and not deal in cryptocurrencies. Since January, Chinese bitcoin exchanges have rolled out a series of changes to comply with increased scrutiny by Beijing. But they were thrown into chaos on Sept. 4 when China issued a directive banning initial coin offerings (ICOs). China's crackdown "is all about protecting market stability and protecting the interest of investors, so halting these kinds of initial coin offerings is a very necessary action," Li said. Vlad Zamfir, a researcher at the Switzerland-based Ethereum Foundation, told Reuters that it was no surprise China is moving against such currencies. Beijing has capital controls, he said, that are "in direct tension with the free ability to send any amount of money anywhere without any kind of delay". ($1 = 6.5440 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by Brenda Goh; Additional reporting by Bi Xiaowen in BEIJING, Shanghai Newsroom and Adam Jourdan; Editing by lARRY kING) || What is bitcoin, how does it work and what affects its price?: Bitcoin - Bloomberg News Few technologies have the ability to stir passionate online debate and baffle the vast majority of the population as bitcoin . The virtual currency has been a constant source of interest and confusion since it thrust itself into the mainstream more than five years ago. But interest in bitcoin is now greater than ever. Its value has soared to above $4,000, a new high point, turning some people who hoarded vast amounts early on into millionaires. But why? Is bitcoin the future of currency? Is it currency at all? What is it for? And should I buy some? Read on to have your questions answered. What is bitcoin? Bitcoin is a digital currency created in 2009 that uses decentralised technology for secure payments and storing money that doesn't require banks or people's names. It was announced on an email circular as a way to liberate money in a similar way to how the internet made information free. FAQ | Bitcoin How does it work? Bitcoin works on a public ledger called blockchain, which holds a decentralised record of all transactions that is updated and held by all users of the network. To create bitcoins, users must generate blocks on the network. Each block is created cryptographically by harnessing users' computer power and is then added to the blockchain, letting users earn by keeping the network running. A limit for how many bitcoins can be created is built into the system so the value can't be diluted. The maximum amount is just under 21 million bitcoin. There are currently 15 million in circulation, each of which was worth more than $4,000 ($3,080) at the time of writing. What affects its price? The price of a bitcoin has jumped up and down since it first entered the mainstream consciousness in 2013. That year prices rose by almost 10,000 per cent before the collapse of Mt Gox, the biggest online bitcoin exchange, sent it crashing. Prices slowly crept up after that but have since surged again. This is largely put down to regulators appearing to warm to bitcoin and the rise of initial coin offerings - a way for projects to raise money by selling cryptographic tokens similar to bitcoins. Many sceptics believe we are in the middle of a new bitcoin bubble while advocates say we are just beginning to see the rise of bitcoin. Story continues Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Satoshi Nakamoto is the mysterious creator of bitcoin and blockchain. Despite countless attempts to unmask the person or people behind the name, their identity has remained elusive. There have been numerous unsuccessful attempts by journalists to reveal the bitcoin founder. In a high-profile incident in 2014, Newsweek magazine relaunched with a feature outing Dorian Nakamoto, a 64-year-old Japanese-American man, as the creator. The affair, having fallen apart under scrutiny, ended with a car chase and the real Nakamoto refuting the allegations. Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed he was Satoshi Nakamoto last year Credit: PA The most recent candidate was Craig Wright, a former Australian academic, who claimed to be the bitcoin inventor. Wright wrote blog posts and gave interviews to Wired, BBC and the Economist in 2015 and 2016 saying he was behind bitcoin. After failing to provide unquestionable proof, Wright posted an apology message that said: "I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot." How many people use bitcoin? There are as many as 5.8 million users that have cryptocurrency wallets, according to research from the University of Cambridge, the majority of whom use bitcoin. What is it used for? Bitcoin is has a range of uses, including funding companies, investing cash and transferring money without fees. It is commonly associated with criminal activity such as drug dealing, cyber crime and money laundering, since it can be near-impossible to tie a bitcoin wallet to any one individual. Bitcoin can be spent online and at select retailers in the UK. They include CEX stores, Dell's website, Your Sushi restaurants, and some pubs. A full list of online and offline businesses that accept bitcoin is available here . They can also be withdrawn at a couple of dozen bitcoin ATMs, which can be found here . Others simply hold their bitcoins, hoping they will accumulate in value and prove to be a lucrative investment. Its price is notoriously volatile, and early investors are now sitting on massive gains. Should I invest in bitcoin? Bitcoin is safeguarded against fraud and theft through independent and decentralised set up, as well as being free from transaction fees. It has also given great returns to some investors, with the price jumping from a few dollars at the beginning of 2013 to $1,100 by November. People who invested £2,000 five years ago would now be millionaires. After a few level years, its dollar price soared again this year , and it has peaked at around $4,200. But the price has also dropped in the past and left people out of pocket . Back in May it fell by $400 in a day.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Buy! (3:21:00 pm PDT)
Price: 4570.02 (+/- 0.5)
Close: 4574.40 (+/- 0.5)
Stop: 4567.02 (+/- 0.5)
#gdax #coinbase #btc #trading #signals || One Bitcoin now worth $3772.43@bitstamp. High $3820.00. Low $2972.01. Market Cap $62.495 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/pSbQHMWZxg || To your Trezor LTC account or BTC account? || Earn $100 free btc in 5 minutes http://fb.me/6BlkU11a1 || #SegWit blocks mined: 100.00%; 602 more for lock-in. (Period ends in 4 days) #Bitcoin $BTC || $NEO $BTC chart https://www.coinigy.com/s/i/5990de2c615e9/ … $NEO.X via @coinigy || $4122.82 at 04:45 UTC [24h Range: $3964.96 - $4368.00 Volume: 16963 BTC] || Genesis mining promotion code: HbGlDj http://ift.tt/2isdkOW #Bitcoin #Mining || One Bitcoin now worth $3760.05@bitstamp. High $3820.00. Low $2972.01. Market Cap $62.298 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Ix7hzBuInC || #Bitcoin #News: "Poloniex and Breadwallet Will Support Bitcoin Cash Transfers" http://bit.ly/2uSuBTB
|
Trend: up || Prices: 4409.32, 4317.48, 4229.36, 4328.41, 4370.81, 4426.89, 4610.48, 4772.02, 4781.99, 4826.48
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2017-05-11]
BTC Price: 1848.57, BTC RSI: 94.04
Gold Price: 1222.70, Gold RSI: 35.63
Oil Price: 47.83, Oil RSI: 44.30
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Alternative cryptocurrency ether has done something only bitcoin has managed to do: A cryptocurrency called ether hit an all-time high on Monday, prompting its market capitalization to exceed $2 billion, a feat only bitcoin(Exchange:BTC=-USS)has managed to achieve in the digital currency world.
Ether runs on an underlying technology called Ethereum, which is a different blockchain to the one that powers bitcoin. Each blockchain – or decentralized ledger – has their own property, but arecent rally in bitcoinhas prompted traders tolook at other cryptocurrenciesto invest in.
The price of one ether was $28.26 at the time of publication, but hit a high of just over $30 on Monday, according to price tracking website CryptoCompare. This marks a roughly 20 percent rise in price from just a week ago on March 6. In that period, the market cap of Ethereum has risen from $1.8 billion to more than $2.57 billion.
One major reason for the rally in ether is traction among big corporates for the underlying technology Ethereum. An organization called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance was recently set up to connect large companies to technology vendors in order to work on projects using the blockchain. Companies involved in the launch include JPMorgan(JPM), Microsoft(MSFT)and Intel(INTC). This has added legitimacy to the cryptocurrency but also requires ether to be transferred and stored in order to access applications using Ethereum, according to Aurélien Menant, founder and CEO of Gatecoin, a blockchain assets exchange based in Hong Kong.
"This provides more reason to value ether at a higher price than its recent levels," Menant told CNBC via email on Tuesday.
Alternative digital currency bitcoin in comparison has a market capitalization of over $20 billion and one bitcoin is worth $1,235.83 at the time of publication. But it has been around for longer and has had a chance to mature. But ether is the only cryptocurrency other than bitcoin that has managed to hit a $2 billion market cap. In comparison, alternative digital currency Dash has a market capitalization of $556.9 million, while Monero is worth $248 million, according to price tracking website Coinmarketcap.com.
Some experts have suggested that bitcoincould hit $3,000 this yearbut the market was watching a key decision last week which did not go the way traders wanted. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Fridayrejected a requestby Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss to list a bitcoin exchange-traded fund on the market. It would have been the first product of its kind and brought more investors into the bitcoin market.
This caused a plunge in the bitcoin price on Friday when the decision was announced but it has slowly recovered. Bitcoin is still off its all-time of over $1,300, which was reached ahead of the SEC decision. The bitcoin rally however, has also supported ether.
"With the recent bull run on bitcoin due to the anticipation of the SEC decision on the bitcoin ETF, traders had more bitcoin purchasing power that they could use to exchange for other blockchain assets such as ether. With the ETF rejection, ether benefitted from this liquidity spillover, as traders saw more value in exchanging bitcoin for another cryptocurrency, with long-term promise, rather than fiat," Menant said. || Humaniq, Blockchain Financial Platform for the Unbanked, Appoints CEO and 20 Members to Global Advisory Board: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - Apr 12, 2017) - Humaniq ( https://humaniq.co/ ), the blockchain financial platform offering financial inclusion solutions for the unbanked, today announced its executive leadership and advisory board, helping guide the company through its current token sale and the development of its mobile banking app that will support Humaniq's humanitarian initiative. "Humaniq is a disruptive tech platform innovation for good. We are a solution to a global problem," said Alex Fork, President and co-Founder of Humaniq. "More than half the world lives on less than $2.50 a day and more than 80 percent of the world's population lives in countries where income differentials are widening. Humaniq will help reverse these trends and bring people out of poverty by giving them banking tools that are easy to understand. Humaniq will provide liquidity for entrepreneurial ventures via loans, online work and crypto-financing as well as helping to create new opportunities in the digital economy, locally, nationally and internationally. With the appointment of our new CEO we are ready to capitalize on these opportunities immediately." Dinis Guarda has been appointed as CEO of Humaniq. Guarda is an entrepreneur and author with a strong background in international management, blockchain and financial inclusion, who has previously founded the successful ventures Ztudium, intelligenthq.com and Tradingfloor.com. Alex Fork, who founded Humaniq in 2016 to help lift the unbanked out of poverty in emerging economies, now serves as President and Leading Visionary of Humaniq. Fork previously founded the Future Fintech Accelerator and authored the book "Bitcoin: More than money." "We strongly believe that the heart, humanity and experience represented on this team will be the driving force behind Humaniq's success," said Dinis Guarda, CEO of Humaniq. "We have already raised over $3M for our token sale in just three days," added Guarda. "With our strong team and advisory board as our foundation, we look forward to building the new world of financial inclusion, industry 4.0 and education together with Humaniq," Guarda explained. Story continues The Humaniq executive leadership team consists of: Alex Fork , President and Co-Founder of Humaniq and Leading Visionary, Luxembourg. Dinis Guarda, CEO of Humaniq, UK. Dmitry Kaminskiy, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Humaniq, UK. Richard Kastelein, Chief Marketing Officer, Netherlands. The Humaniq advisory board consists of twenty leaders from around the world with diverse backgrounds in global policy, public affairs, technology, science, blockchain and education: Nick Ayton, Technology Advisory Board / 21 Million Project, UK Karl Hoods, Policy and Legal Advisor, Save the Children, London, UK Pavel Kravchenko, Technology/Blockchain Advisor, Ukraine Michael Terpin, Technology Advisor/Transform Group, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Chami Akmeemana, Technology Advisor/Policy and Legal advisory board / Advisor for regulator, Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), Australia Matt McKibbin, Technology Advisor/Crypto Economy, US Ron Morris, Scientific Advisor/Education/Universities Advisor, Director Groupe INSEEC San Francisco, US Derin Cag, Advisor Chief Influencer Officer, Founder of Richtopia.com, UK Tim Campbell MBE, Public Affairs and Global Policy advisory, UK Alex Bausch, Technology Advisory Board / Co-Chairman of the Blockchain Ecosystem Network, Netherlands Matthias Klees, Technology Advisor / Bitcoinsulting, Szenekonzept, Germany Iggy Bassy, Policy and Legal advisory board / Social Impact and AI, Data expert, Founder Cervest UK Paul Mears, Policy and Financial Risk advisory board / Currency International Payments advisor, Monaco Vishai Mishra, Technology advisory board / Big Data and Security, Rightrelevance.com, US David Applefield, Public Affairs and Global Policy Advisor/Communications and PR Advisor, FT Special Rep for Africa, France. Jochen Heussner, Chief Financial Officer / Legal and Financial Investment Advisor EU, Founder Planetcompliance.com, Italy Alexander Perkins, Legal and Financial Investment Advisor, USA Alakanani Itireleng, Africa [leading] Ambassador, Botswana Dickson Nsofor, Technology and Policy advisor, New York branch lead, United Nations relations, US Maria Fonseca, Evangelist and Thought Leader, Editor Intelligenthq.com, UK. Humaniq is currently hosting a public Token Sale to fund its Blockchain banking app for financial inclusion. The ICO reached 1706 Bitcoin, 2,030,037.64 US Dollars in its first day. "This project is much beyond crypto-currencies. This is a social good movement gathering the best people in the world focused on converting the most advanced tech for sustainable development in the undeveloped world. Now, with this enhanced advisory board, the Humaniq project will be able to address governments and global non-profit organizations. The technological tool to tackle down the main challenges facing the 2 billion unbanked people has arrived. Humaniq will create deep impact for social good on a global scale," said Dmitry Kaminskiy, co-founder of Humaniq and managing partner of Deep Knowledge Ventures. To learn more and to participate, visit: https://my.humaniq.co/?roistat_visit=103423 . About Humaniq: Humaniq is an Ethereum-based blockchain banking app building the next generation model for financial services. Launched in 2016, Humaniq aims to provide mobile finance to the 2 billion unbanked population through its mobile app that uses biometric authentication to replace traditional methods of ID and security. Humaniq's open source stack and API will be available for startups and other businesses to build services on its core technology, making it easy to adapt their service and plug it into Humaniq's network to reach a huge, untapped audience. For more information, visit https://humaniq.co/ . || Your first trade for Wednesday, April 26: The "Fast Money" traders shared their first moves for the market open.
Tim Seymour was a buyer of the iShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF(NASDAQ: EUFN).
Brian Kelly was a buyer of Freeport-McMoRan(NYSE: FCX).
Steve Grasso was a buyer of Square(NYSE: SQ).
Guy Adami was a buyer of Juno Therapeutics(NASDAQ: JUNO).
Trader disclosure: On April 25, 2017, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Tim Seymour is long ABX, AAPL, APC, AVP, BAC, BBRY, C, CLF, CVX, DO, DVYE, EDC, EWN, EWZ, F, FB, FCX, FXI, GM, GOOGL, GE, INTC, LQD, MOS, MCD, MUR, OIH, PG, RACE, RAI, RH, RL, SINA, SQ,T, TWTR, VALE, VZ, XOM. short: EEM, SPY, XRT; Tim's firm is long ABX, BABA, BIDU, CBD, CLF, EEM, EWZ, F, KO, MCD, MPEL, NKE, PEP, PF, TCEHY, SAVE, SBUX, SINA, VALE, VIAB, WMT, WEN, X, YHOO, short EWG, HYG, IWM. Brian Kelly is long Bitcoin, FCX, GE, GDX, HLF, IWM, TLT, TSLA, WMT. Steve Grasso's firm is long stock AON, BX, CUBA, DIA, F, HES, ICE, KDUS, MAT, MFIN, MJNA, MSFT, NE, RIG, SNAP, SPY, SQBG, TITXF, UA, WDR, WPX, ZNGA. Grasso is long stock BABA, CHK, EEM, EVGN, GDX, KBH, MJNA, MO, MON, OLN, PHM, SQ, T, TWTR, VRX. Grasso's kids own EFA, EFG, EWJ, IJR, SPY. No Shorts. Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck.
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• Traders discuss strategy as US equities rally after French elections || No Bitcoin ETF Says SEC: What's Next?: Bitcoin may be hogging limelight in the investing world, but its ETF form was not that attractive to the SEC. Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust has filed for one to make bets on this soaring digital currency easy. Investors were hoping for a YES from the SEC, but the opposite happened. The SEC declined the proposal apprehending chances of fraud (read: Will Bitcoin ETF See the Light of Day in March?).
What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoins are ‘mined’ by using a greater amount of computer processing power. However, since there is a fixed amount of bitcoins, as the limit is reached, it becomes hard to ‘mine’ for the coins. The best part of this system is that it is beyond the reach of central banks.
SEC Version
The committee did not “find the proposal to be consistent with Section 6(b)(5) of the Exchange Act, which requires, among other things, that the rules of a national securities exchange be designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices and to protect investors and the public interest.”
The news hit the cryptocurrency hard on the March 10 judgement day when its price fell about 15% to $1,050. Bitcoin pricings had been firing on all cylinders since the beginning of 2017, which drove it past the $1,100 mark on February 21, 2017 – the highest in more than three years. Notably, its value beat the $900 mark in late December for the first time since February 2014. In mid-2015, the currency was at around $200 (read: Explaining Bitcoin and Crypto Currency).
The tussle between the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission and Winklevoss over the launch has been going on for about three years. In fact, the issuer has restructured the proposals for the Bitcoin ETF multiple times.
What Next?
While the first ETF did not gain approval, other issuers filed for their products on this currency. SolidX Partners sought SEC approval last July for its bitcoin ETF, SolidX Bitcoin Trust, which also would be listed on the NYSE. In January 2017, Grayscale Investments filed to list its own Bitcoin Investment Trust on the NYSE. The SEC’s rigidity could also make the situation tough for these two products.
However, after an initial dip, the bitcoin bounced back all over again. It has gained about 13% since the SEC’s decision. This could be because of the fact “bitcoin isn’t regulated by any government and has been used by consumers worldwide to shelter assets from inflation or political upheavals in their home countries.”
Bloomberg noted that bitcoin topped all key foreign-exchange trades, stock indexes, currencies and commodity contracts last year, which can be a proof of its sturdiness.
As per CNBC, “bitcoin is a very volatile asset” but doesn’t have a strong correlation with other asset classes. Bourgeoning trading volumes in China, bitcoin’s largest market, has favored the price. As Chinese investors wanted to shield their portfolio from a depreciating yuan, they bet big on bitcoin, driving the currency to double in 2016.
Moreover, trading volumes in China have been solid with the government taking proactive measures against illegal money transfer. As per an article published on CNBC, Bitcoin is emerging as a safe haven asset like gold.
WithSPDR Gold SharesGLD coming under pressure due to rising rate prospects in the U.S. and a higher greenback, one can possibly find safety in seemingly safe or alternative assets like bitcoin.
Other digital currencies like Ethereum, Dash and Monero have also been gaining considerable attention these days. Since SEC’s bitcoin ETF decision on March 10, 2017, these three currencies have gained about 60%, 59% and 40%, respectively.
Bottom Line
The prospect may be strengthening for bitcoin, but the SEC needs more proof of the safety in bitcoin trading. Only then can we expect a bitcoin ETF. As of now, investors have to be happy with traditional safe-haven assets and gold and silver bullion ETFs like GLD andiShares Silver TrustSLV (read: 3 Safe-Haven ETFs to Watch on Market Correction).
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Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportSPDR-GOLD TRUST (GLD): ETF Research ReportsISHARS-SLVR TR (SLV): ETF Research ReportsTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment ResearchWant the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report || Bitcoin steadies after biggest three-day tumble in over two years: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin regained its footing on Monday, having suffered its heftiest falls since early 2015 between Thursday and Saturday as investors sold the digital currency on worries about its future. Having soared to an all-time high of $1,350 on the Bitstamp exchange on March 10, on speculation that regulators could approve the first U.S. bitcoin exchange traded fund the following day, the digital currency then slipped back. Its falls began accelerating on Thursday and it hit a five-week low of $944.36 on Saturday. But bitcoin recovered a little on Sunday and built on those gains on Monday, climbing around 2.5 percent to roughly $1,050 by 1815 GMT. Bitcoin experts said its steep losses were driven by a longstanding, and intensifying, row over whether - and how - to increase the capacity of the "blocks" that bitcoin transactions are processed in, so as to make sure there are no delays in transactions being finalised. "The bitcoin scaling debate is a risk for the network and highlights core issues in terms of governance and this is where more nimble crypto competitors see advantages in fleshing out their capabilities sooner," said Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency analysis website Crytocompare, in London. At the same time that bitcoin was plunging, a newer, rival "cryptocurrency" was soaring: ether. The digital currency behind Ethereum - a project that some experts say holds more potential than bitcoin - has almost tripled in value this month, jumping to record highs of around $45. Some experts said traders were selling bitcoin and buying ether, which was exacerbating the falls in the original cryptocurrency. "Traders in the space are looking for better returns in the more risky and nascent cryptos such as Dash, Monero and Ethereum (and are) looking to replicate the extraordinary returns that bitcoin saw in its early days," added Hayter. U.S. regulators dashed Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss's bitcoin ambitions earlier in the month by rejecting their application to list an exchange-traded fund linked to the digital currency. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Alison Williams) || Flow's Ultimate Football Experience Attracts Top Manchester United Star: MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Mar 31, 2017) - When young Jamaican footballers take to the field on April 1stfor theFlow Ultimate Football Experiencethey'll be joined by Manchester United (Man Utd) Legend and fan favourite, Quinton Fortune who will share words of encouragement and guidance to the youngsters.
The tough-tackling midfielder and South African international, earned his place in the hearts of his friends, peers and supporters of Man Utd after a 6-year stint with the club. He's one of several Man Utd Legends who will be present in some of Flow's markets at the skills-based events, leading up to theFlow Ultimate Football Experience Finalin Trinidad on May 7th.
During his time at Old Trafford, Fortune displayed an honourable sense of determination and drive, despite being hampered by a string of unfortunate injuries.
As part of the club, he earned the Intercontinental Cup (1999) and the FA Community Shield (2003) before moving on to other teams.
Like many other former pro footballers, Fortune is not just a player; he's a coach, too. After his retirement in 2010, he spent time training with Man Utd's reserve team while simultaneously working towards his coaching badges, which he received in 2013.
Needless to say, Fortune -- who wore number 25 with the Reds -- brings a unique combination of playing experience and coaching acumen to the Jamaican chapter of theFlow Ultimate Football Experience. And not only will the youngsters get expert advice on ways to enhance their performance, they'll also doubtlessly get a fresh boost of energy by simply playing in the presence of one of football's best.
Flow and Manchester United's latest region-wide initiative, theFlow Ultimate Football Experienceis designed to give youngsters the chance-of-a-lifetime to participate in local talent development football camps across Flow's 15 markets. Two winners from each country will advance to the two-day skills session in T&T to experience one-on-one training with Caribbean Football Union (CFU) and Manchester United Soccer School Coaches. There, they will participate in a series of drills designed by the coaches and compete for the chance for two finalists and their coach to win a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Old Trafford in Manchester, England to seeMan Utd in a Premier League fixture.
Skilled boys and girls between the ages of 13 to 16 can register online athttps://discoverflow.co/flowmanutd.
Follow Flow Jamaica onFacebookand Twitter@FlowJamaicato track his visit to Jamaica for theFlow Ultimate Football Experience!
"Flow and Manchester United - together we are in a different league."
About C&W Communications
C&W is a full service communications and entertainment provider and delivers market-leading video, broadband, telephony and mobile services to consumers in 18 countries. Through its business division, C&W provides data center hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customized IT service solutions, utilizing cloud technology to serve business and government customers.
C&W also operates a state-of-the-art submarine fiber network -- the most extensive in the region.
Learn more atwww.cwc.com, or follow C&W onLinkedIn,FacebookorTwitter.
About Liberty Global
Liberty Global is the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with operations in more than 30 countries across Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. We invest in the infrastructure that empowers our customers to make the most of the digital revolution. Our scale and commitment to innovation enable us to develop market-leading products delivered through next generation networks that connect our 25 million customers who subscribe to over 50 million television, broadband internet and telephony services. We also serve over 10 million mobile subscribers and offer WiFi service across 5 million access points.
Liberty Global's businesses are comprised of two stocks: the Liberty Global Group (NASDAQ:LBTYA) (NASDAQ:LBTYB) (NASDAQ:LBTYK) for our European operations, and the LiLAC Group (NASDAQ:LILA) and (NASDAQ:LILAK) (OTC PINK:LILAB), which consists of our operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Liberty Global Group operates in 11 European countries under the consumer brands Virgin Media, Unitymedia, Telenet and UPC. The Liberty Global Group also owns 50% of VodafoneZiggo, a Dutch joint venture, which has 4 million customers, 10 million fixed-line subscribers and 5 million mobile subscribers. The LiLAC Group operates in over 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean under the consumer brands VTR, Flow, Liberty, Más Móvil and BTC. In addition, the LiLAC Group operates a sub-sea fiber network throughout the region in over 30 markets.
For more information, please visitwww.libertyglobal.com.
Image Available:http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3125292 || Bitcoin is closing in on its all-time high: Bitcoin is trading at its best level in a month. The cryptocurrency is up 2.8% at $1241.35 a coin and is within striking distance of its all-time closing high of $1277.65, which was set on March 6. Four days later, bitcoin put in a record high of $1327.19 before crashing more than 25% after the US Securities and Exchange Commission rejected the Winklevoss twins' plans for a bitcoin ETF. The SEC rejected the plans for another bitcoin ETF just a few weeks after that. However, bitcoin has rallied off its March 24 low of $959.45 as it has gained acceptance elsewhere. First, Japan announced it was accepting the crypticurrency as a legal payment method , then, Russia said it would consider recognizing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in 2018. Bitcoin has been the top-performing currency every year since 2010, aside from 2014. It's up 30% so far in 2017. Bitcoin (Markets Insider) NOW WATCH: Here's footage of the US military's new helicopter that'll cost as much as an F-35 More From Business Insider There's $29.4 billion in cryptocurrencies here's which ones people are using the most An under-the-radar startup is behind what might be the best watch you can buy for under $250 Iran's 'stealth' fighter is a total joke || Ethereum Is The Next Big Thing In Cryptocurrency: The cryptocurrency ether, which hails from the open source blockchain network Ethereum, is now valued at over $100 per token for the first time since the Ethereum platform went live in the summer of 2015 . Much like the fellow cryptocurrency bitcoin, the market value of ether has surged upwards over the past few weeks. Coindesk reported ethers value skyrocketed 900 percent so far this year. The New York Department of Fiscal Services has already approved Ethereum trading and ether tokens are officially a regulated currency. Ethereum has also attracted investment from major corporations like Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase , two of the 30 companies that now make up the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance . Yet the new blockchain technology is still largely shrouded in mystery. Read: UN Using Blockchain Technology To Help Refugees, Fight World Hunger So International Business Times sat down with Jutta Steiner, founder and COO of Parity Technologies , a blockchain startup that developed an Ethereum network browser. Parity Technologies is one of the companies behind the United Nations first large-scale Ethereum test , a humanitarian aid project at refugee camps in Jordan. Together with Steiner, weve put together a list of three things you need to know about this up and coming cryptocurrency. 1. Ethereum is the worlds second most popular cryptocurrency. Ether tokens are the second most popular currency for blockchain transactions. According to a recent study by Cambridge University , the first two months of 2017 saw more than 47,790 daily transactions on the Ethereum network. The study revealed that Bitcoin is still king, supported by 98 percent of cryptocurrency exchange networks and vendors, compared to 33 percent that accommodate ether tokens. However, ether tokens are gaining traction at a much faster rate than bitcoin. The number of Ethereum transactions has more than doubled since last year. 2. Although Ethereum has its own coins, Bitcoin exchanges still sell ether tokens. Story continues Bitcoin exchanges like Kraken, Bitfinex, Coinbase and Gemini, all allow ether trading and some even let users trade the tokens for U.S. dollars, CoinDesk reported . These days its easier to go shopping with bitcoin than it is with ether tokens . But Ethereum and Bitcoin arent necessarily competitors. They are more like cousins. They generally use the same technology for different purposes. Rather than competing with Bitcoin like many other cryptocurrencies, Ethereum complements it, Entrepreneur magazine explained. While the Bitcoin blockchain network tracks ownership of its own currency...People use Ethereum to create custom [but trustworthy] crowdfunding platforms, autonomous online organizations and even their own cryptocurrencies. 3. Ethereum has the potential to be much more than just digital money. Ethereum has, from my perspective, much more vibrant developer community that thinks about different usages and explores them, Steiner told IBT. For example, rather than needing Airbnb or Uber to facilitate exchanges between individuals, Ethereum could be used to disrupt the sharing economy, which critics see as exploitive . In the future, the ether blockchain network could connect users directly with providers. Right now, these middleman apps charge the provider a fee and collect the users data for their own corporate interests. Read: Bitcoin Price Reaches All-Time High, Continues Upward Trend In 2017 Ethereum processes user's transactions on these applications, Steiner explained. Parity's browser can be used to explore the new generations of Uber or Airbnb networks that are 100 percent in the hand of their users, where no intermediary can extract large fees just by sitting in the center. The Ethereum community is still relatively small. Steiner estimates user's number in the tens of thousands, compared to 2.9 to 5.8 million cryptocurrency users worldwide, according to the Cambridge study. But since the same study estimates around 1,875 people now work full-time in the cryptocurrency industry, many of which are Ethereum developers, that ratio is expected to change quite quickly. I really believe we've reached a tipping point, Steiner said. Maybe not yet in day to day adoption, but definitely in awareness, which I'm sure will turn into adoption in the end. Related Articles Russia Announces Plan To Legalize Cryptocurrency Cryptocurrency Is Coming To A Las Vegas Strip Club || Nearly $2 billion has been wiped off bitcoin’s value in three days all because of a fork: Just under $2 billion has been wiped off the value of bitcoin(Exchange: BTC=-USS)in under three days as a fight over the future of the technology underpinning the cryptocurrency wages on.
Bitcoin was trading at around $1,142.60 at time of publication, giving it a market cap of $18.53 billion, according to CoinDesk data. This is down from highs of $1,255.32 on Tuesday, which valued the total bitcoin pile at $20.36 billion.
Meanwhile, rival cryptocurrency ether is up over 84 percent from highs of $29.87 on Tuesday to trading at all-time highs of around $55 on Friday, according to Coinmarketcap.com. The market captilization shot from $2.68 billion to $4.95 billion. It is the only other cryptocurrency to be valued at over $1 billion.
Much of the inverse price movement stems from traders' worries over the future of bitcoin and the underpinning blockchain technology.
What's happened?
To understand the issue, it's key to look at how bitcoin transactions are processed. Transactions by users are gathered into "blocks" which is turned into a complex math solution. So-called miners, using high-powered computers work these solutions out to determine if the transaction is possible. Once other miners also check the puzzle is correct, the transactions are approved and the miners are rewarded in bitcoin.
But there's a massive backlog of transactions in bitcoin that are waiting to happen. The number of outstanding transactions is up more than four times from just six months ago, according to data from bitcoin wallet Blockchain. This is bad for a system that has promised fast and cheaper transactions than the traditional financial system.
Because of this, a group called Bitcoin Unlimited has emerged. This faction is suggesting increasing the size of the block which would allow more transactions to be bunched together and processed. Major bitcoin industry players including Roger Ver have backed the plan. But some developers in the community suggest that increasing the block size could be unsafe.
What's this about a fork?
The real concern is if Bitcoin Unlimited gains major support, it could have an impact on the underlying blockchain technology that supports bitcoin. Bitcoin Unlimited has about an 11 percent market share of all the "nodes" in existence. Nodes are the backbone of bitcoin's infrastructure and refer to those mining the transactions as well as those tracking the movement of bitcoin to make sure it is all working correctly.
Nodes can run Blockchain Unlimited software which would signal their support for increasing the block size. If 50 percent of bitcoin miners adopted Bitcoin Unlimited, there would then be two major blockchains and a "fork" would be created made of Bitcoin Core, the current main software behind the infrastructure, and Bitcoin Unlimited.
Both blockchains would continue to run as long as there are nodes running them. But there would then be essentially two different coins – Bitcoin and Bitcoin Unlimited.
So why has the price fallen?
And this is why bitcoin has seen sharp declines in price, while other cryptocurrencies like ether have gained support.
"Bitcoin traders may have wanted to offset some of their exposure should a fork occur or the scaling deadlock continue, and ether seems to be the most promising alternative. Bitcoin-ether volumes have surged since and are currently rivaling bitcoin-fiat currency trading liquidity," Aurélien Menant, founder and CEO of Gatecoin, a regulated blockchain assets exchange based in Hong Kong, told CNBC by email on Friday.
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• Amazon flloats an idea for delivery drones with robotic wings and legs || More than 75 banks are now on Ripple's blockchain network: The concept of ablockchainoriginated in 2009 with the digital currency bitcoin, but now Wall Street institutions are interested in blockchain technology without bitcoin.
RippleNet is a blockchain-like protocol for faster settlement of international payments. It launched in 2012 butits concept predates bitcoin.And it has added 75 banking clients already.
Ripple Labs announced on Wednesday it has signed 10 new banks from all over the world, including BBVA in Spain; MUFG in Japan; Akbank in Turkey; SEB in Sweden; and Axis Bank and Yes Bank, both in India. Add those 10 to the 47-bank consortium in Japan that implementedRipple in March. And add those 57 to existing big-name clients like Bank of America, RBC, Standard Chartered and UBS, and RippleNet starts to look like it’s gaining traction very quickly.
“Our pace [of signing new clients] has dramatically increased,” says Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse. “I also think people are getting more comfortable with blockchain technologies. It’s no longer a science experiment. It’s not theory, it’s very real.”
Thebitcoin blockchain is a decentralized, public, permissionless ledgerthat records every transaction and trade done in bitcoin. But now all manner of companies, from “blockchain as a service” startups like Rippleand Chainto established tech giants like IBM, are developing all manner of distributed ledgers forareas like food shipment tracking, smart contracts, and agriculture.
In many cases these applications of blockchain are closed and permissioned, which is a very different proposition than the spirit of the anonymized, open-to-all bitcoin blockchain. In banking, for now, the main appeal is toimprove the efficiency of their transaction processing.
Ripple’s value proposition to banking clients is cheaper rates and faster transfer times for international payments. The bank’s customers don’t have to know or care that they’re using Ripple (it isn’t like you’d tell your bank, “I want to send this money using Ripple”), but would certainly notice the faster transaction time than they’re used to.
Garlinghouse gives the pitch to banks this way: “If your customer wants to send yen to Japan, you are captive to the correspondent banking network and your customer has a bad experience and you, as a bank, have to endure cost to transmit that money.”
Ripple’s Consensus Ledger can process 1,000 transactions per second, and settles an international payment in three seconds on average. (He compares that to the bitcoin blockchain, which has slowed recently to two hours per transaction, creating a debate over block size; to be fair, both speeds are much faster than sending money with a traditional clearinghouse like Western Union.)
Ripple can also be used for in-country payments; many of the banks in Japan are using Ripple for domestic payments due to the sluggishness of the local payments network there. But for the most part, Ripple is focusing on cross-border payments because that’s the biggest pain point for banks and banking customers.
Santander added a function to its mobile app that lets customerssend money abroad over the Ripple network.While Ripple is hardly the only blockchain-for-banking startup out there, Garlinghouse boasts, “We are the only company in the space with real customers.” Competitors, Garlinghouse says, “are still playing in the sandbox. And proof of concepts are not a business model.”
That’s tough talk, and true only to an extent. Chain has partnered with heavy-hitters like Visa, Citi, and Nasdaq, but for now the results have been experiments, trial runs,or “previews” like Visa B2B Connect.
All the experimentation has led critics to say that the Wall Street interest in blockchain is all just talk, or as IBM blockchain exec Jerry Cuomo puts it, “blockchain tourism.” Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas acknowledges that the term itself has become a “classic technology buzzword.”
But Garlinghouse is confident that distributed ledger technology and its many applications will bring about the “Internet of value.” Many have applied that phrase to bitcoin (causing some contention over who owns the phrase), but Garlinghouse says it hasn’t lived up to that promise.
“We feel like to enable an Internet of value, you have to connect through repositories of value, and those are the banks,” he says. “Where many in the bitcoin community have espoused a view of, ‘Down with the banks, down with fiat currency,’ Ripple has taken the opposite: we think the banks are critical to the future of an Internet of value.”
Bitcoin has risen 178% in value in the past year(it’s now around $1,300), but critics now doubt that the coin can become more than a speculative investment.
“We might end up finding that bitcoin is the Napster of digital assets,” Garlinghouse says. “Napster lived in a world devoid of trademark law, and royalties, andtried to live outside of the rules, and you could say the same about bitcoin. I’m not predicting that bitcoin will go the way of Napster, but I would point out that bitcoin has demonstrated some very cool capabilities that, in the end, bitcoin may not be the best tool for.”
Ripple has its own digital token, XRP, and it is often billed by tech press as a bitcoin competitor, but that’s not quite right. Ripple uses it as a settlement token, and banking clients don’t have to use it or touch it at all. It is more of an institutional digital asset than a public investment vehicle like bitcoin, though anyone could buy some XRP if they wish. (Its value has risen 345% in the past year, but in dollars it is worth just 3 cents; again, its trading price is not the point.)
Ripple’s XRP coin is “about reducing the cost for banks to fund liquidity around the world,” says Garlinghouse. That can double as a statement of Ripple’s purpose, too. And if its banking clients, over time, decide that Ripple’s rail has reduced friction and made customers happier, expect Ripple to continue adding banks and financial clients, who are itching to show their innovativeness by saying they’re in the blockchain tech space.
—
Daniel Roberts covers bitcoin and blockchain tech at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at@readDanwrite.
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Why 21 Inc is the most exciting bitcoin company right now
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Bitcoin’s biggest investor just bought its biggest news site
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin Mais - Bitcoins Grátis - R$ 7.000,00 por Mês http://fb.me/8GUrkZtlP || #Bitcoin 's price is 1259.00 A Satoshi for your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/FVkLbGMG4V || 1 Bitcoin =$1644.00
As
#teamelite= Doubling it || $1201.51 at 00:30 UTC [24h Range: $1179.61 - $1210.00 Volume: 5549 BTC] || $1176.42 at 05:15 UTC [24h Range: $1165.00 - $1192.50 Volume: 1748 BTC] || Bitcoin trading at 969.00.
Don't miss out on the action! Automate trades with ModoBot.
http://www.ModoBot.com #BTC #Bitcoin || #UFOCoin #UFO $0.000010 (-2.11%) 0.00000001 BTC (0.00%) || Average Bitcoin market price is: USD 1,029.00, EUR 958.71 || $1272.80 at 12:45 UTC [24h Range: $1241.68 - $1274.00 Volume: 3573 BTC] || 1 KOBO = 0.00000601 BTC
= 0.0060 USD
= 1.8900 NGN
= 0.0754 ZAR
= 0.6150 KES
#Kobocoin 2017-03-27 12:00
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Trend: up || Prices: 1724.24, 1804.91, 1808.91, 1738.43, 1734.45, 1839.09, 1888.65, 1987.71, 2084.73, 2041.20
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin Rallies From Oversold Levels; Resistance Nearby: Bitcoin ( BTC ) buyers were active over the weekend as the cryptocurrency broke above the 50-day moving average near $34,000. The intermediate-term downtrend is reversing, although resistance near $40,000 could trigger some profit taking. Upside momentum is improving after several months of consolidation and multiple oversold readings on the charts. Bitcoin was trading around $38,000 at press time and is up 10% over the past 24 hours. Early Monday, the price climbed to about $39,500. The relative strength index ( RSI ) on the daily chart is approaching overbought levels for the first time since April. This could precede a brief period of profit-taking near the 100-day moving average at $40,000. The weekly RSI is not yet oversold, although selling pressure from May is starting to slow. Price action is consistent with previous rallies from $30,000 support, albeit more persistent given the break above the 50-day moving average. Bitcoin remains in a consolidation phase until price moves above $40,000, which is the top of a two-month range. Initial support is seen around $34,000, which could stabilize a pull-back. Related Stories Amazon: No, We Have No Plans to Accept Bitcoin Payments The Tether Put: Crypto Equivalent of Credit Default Swap? Market Wrap: Possible Trend Reversal as Bitcoin Spikes Past $40K Are Amazon Rumors Behind Bitcoins Biggest Surge in Months? View comments || Sainsbury's stock jumps 9% on private equity takeover rumours: Sainsbury's was the subject of takeover speculation over the weekend. Photo: Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty (SOPA Images via Getty Images) Sainsbury's ( SBRY.L ) stock jumped on Monday morning in London as investors reacted to reports over the weekend that the grocery giant might be the latest UK private equity takeover target. The Sunday Times reported that Britain's second largest supermarket chain could potentially see bids from suitors such as Apollo ( APO ) of more than £7bn ($9.55bn). Stock was 9.3% higher by 9am in London, trading at 321.9p per share. The interest from Apollo is understood to be exploratory, according to the report. Sainsbury's stock jumped on rumours of a possible takeover. Chart: Yahoo Finance UK Analysts were sceptical of the report, with Shore Capital calling it "shallow" and "sensationalist," noting that Sainsbury's has long been considered a takeover target. It also said that it couldn't discount Apollo bidding for the grocer if it wasn't part of the consortium buying out Morrisons ( MRW.L ). Sainsbury's shares had headed higher earlier this year as hopes of a takeover offer mounted. The Qatar Investment Authority — its largest shareholder — had sold more than £300m in shares to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky in April. The potential move follows a slew of private equity deals in the market, with UK grocery chains a particularly attractive target for foreign money. Watch: Asda bought from Walmart by UK billionaire brothers in £6.8bn deal On Friday, Morrisons agreed to a £7bn takeover by US private equity group Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R), which upped its bid for the supermarket chain, taking on rival suitor Fortress Investment Group. Earlier, CD&R had made an offer of 230p a share, which valued Morrisons at £5.5bn, but this was rejected for undervaluing the retailer. It has now increased its offer to 285p. Morrisons has accepted the latest offer, which beats competitor bidder Fortress. Apollo had also been in the race in this deal as part of a consortium of bidders. Read more: Bitcoin crosses $50,000 as PayPal offers crypto products in UK British companies that have recently fallen to private equity include supermarket Asda, mechanics AA, infrastructure firm John Laing, St Modwen Properties, fund administrators Sanne Equiniti, private jet firm Signature Aviation, insurer LV, aerospace company Senior, and pan-Asian takeaway chain Itsu. Story continues The Morrisons deal was a 60% premium to the share price before the takeover first emerged and is likely to predicate an increased price for Sainsbury's, which is currently valued at £6.9bn. Once the Morrisons deal closes 1 million British workers will be employed by companies owned by private equity. This equates to about 3% of the UK’s total workforce. Sainsbury's and Apollo declined requests for comment. Watch: Morrisons takeover battle heats up as fresh £7bn US takeover offer trumps rival || Coinbase crushes Q2 expectations, notes Q3 trading volume is trending lower: After the bell today, Coinbase reported another period of impressive results in itssecond quarter earnings report.
During the quarter, Coinbase's total revenue reached $2.23 billion, which helped the company generate net income of $1.61 billion in the three-month period. The company benefited from a one-time line item worth $737.5 million, which stemmed from what Coinbase described as a "tax benefit" from its direct listing earlier in the quarter.
This puts us in the odd position of leaning more heavily on the company's adjusted EBITDA metric, a figure that we usually discount, rather than the stricter net income result. This quarter the adjusted metric is actually a bit clearer regarding the company's regular profitability. Coinbase posted adjusted EBITDA of $1.1 billion in the period.
The company easily bested expectations, with the market expecting revenues of just $1.85 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of $961.5 million,per Yahoo Finance.
Everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase
All that's well and good, but the company provided a fascinating set of data for us to peruse that may help us better understand where the crypto economy stands today. Let's get into the details.
There are two data sets from Coinbase's Q2 that we need. The first deals with monthly transacting users, and overall trading volume:
Seeing Coinbase continue to add MTUs in the second quarter was impressive, as was the company's Q2 trading volume result in light of the falling platform asset figure. Quite simply, Coinbase managed to accrete trading volume despite generally falling crypto prices over the time period in question.
Or as the company put it, "[d]espite price movements, we saw billions of dollars of net asset inflows and new customers added throughout Q2."
The next data set deals with a breakdown of trading volume by source and type:
The incremental growth in retail volume from Q1 2021 to Q2 2021 is impressive for a single quarter, frankly, but the pace at which Coinbase added institutional volume in the quarter is even stronger. It's a huge result.
For the more crypto-focused than financials-focused out there, the second set of numbers is even more notable. Ethereum trading volume beat bitcoin trading volume, while "other" was more than twice what bitcoin itself managed.
A changing of the guard? The company listed three reasons for why this happened, the second of which is the most interesting. Per the earnings report:
[The mix shift was driven by] meaningful growth in Ethereum trading volumes, surpassing Bitcoin trading volumes on Coinbase for the first time driven by growth in the DeFi and NFT ecosystems (where Ethereum is an important underlying blockchain), and increased demand driven by our ETH2 staking product.
Basically, the neat stuff that the Ethereum blockchain enables is driving volume in its underlying coin, ether. Bitcoin may be the oldest crypto, but its crown may be starting to rust. Bitcoin remains the largest asset on Coinbase, at 47%, however.
Now let's talk revenues.
While institutional trading volume was an impressive source of growth for Coinbase, the company's revenue breakdown remained retail-heavy. Here's the data:
The transaction revenue growth from Q1 to Q2 speaks for itself, and was a key driver of the company's strong second-quarter aggregate results. But perhaps more notable was the huge differential in subscription and services revenue at the company, growing nearly 100% from $56.4 million in Q1 2021 to $102.6 million in the most recent period.
Certainly, Coinbase remains a transaction-led company, but in revenue terms, its third line-item is becoming material.
Now, the somewhat bad news.
Let's start with how Coinbase describes the start to its third quarter:
In July, retail MTUs and total Trading Volume were 6.3 million and $57.0 billion, respectively, as crypto asset prices and crypto asset volatility declined significantly relative to Q2 levels. August month-to-date, retail MTUs and Trading Volume levels have slightly improved compared to July levels but remain lower than earlier in the year. As a result, we believe retail MTUs and total Trading Volume will be lower in Q3 as compared to Q2.
In contrast, Q2 MTUs were 8.8 million and total trading volume, pro-rated for each month of the quarter, came to $154 billion. Therefore, Coinbase had a far smaller July than what it managed on a monthly basis in Q2. That August is trending better than July is a small consolation, but it does appear that Coinbase will be a smaller business in Q3 than it was in Q1 or Q2.
If you were curious why Coinbase's stock is not flying in the wake of its strong Q2 results, this is likely why. Of course, any serious investor in a crypto exchange is aware of how variable results can be in the sector. So a decrease after a few periods of strong results is not a huge lump to swallow.
Coinbase is worth $267.55 per share in after-hours trading as of the time of writing, off around three-quarters of a percent. That's not even a haircut.
All told, Coinbase's second quarter was excellent. || Former Monero Maintainer ‘Fluffypony’ Arrested and to Be Extradited for Non-Crypto Crimes: Riccardo Spagni, the former maintainer of privacy coin monero , was arrested in Nashville, Tenn. on July 20 and will be extradited to South Africa to face fraud charges for crimes unrelated to crypto. Spagni, known online as “Fluffypony,” is accused of stealing approximately $100,000 from his former employer, Cape Cookies, by generating false invoices from fictional entities and routing payment to his personal bank accounts between 2009-2011. Spagni was previously charged with fraud and related charges in a regional court in Cape Town, but pleaded not guilty and failed to appear in court. According to court documents, South African authorities could not find Spagni at his home address in South Africa. After speaking with Spagni’s friends and family they learned Spagni had fled South Africa. Related: Bug Found in Decoy Algorithm for Privacy Coin Monero South African police issued a warrant for Spagni’s arrest in April. Spagni’s wife, Sashka Spagni, tweeted a message on her husband’s behalf on Monday in which he said, “Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding with regards to the setting of court dates in an old matter, which I have continuously been trying to resolve since 2011, I have been held in contempt of court and currently awaiting extradition.” Spagni added that he was hoping to resolve the issue soon and that “in the meantime my business affairs will continue under the leadership of my partners.” Though Spagni stepped down from his day-to-day leadership role in 2019 after five years with the privacy-focused project, he was still a public representative of Monero and often took responsibility for coordinating Monero’s press and public-facing information. Related: ¿Qué es el hashrate y por qué importa? Spagni was arrested in Nashville when a private charter jet he was using for a trip from New York to Los Cabos, Mexico, stopped for fuel. According to the arrest warrant, Spagni is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service and will be held without bail until his extradition. Story continues Spagni is believed to have “significant cryptocurrency assets that would enable him to flee” as well as a “watch valued at $800,000,” according to the warrant. UPDATE (August 2, 21:48 UTC): Updated with Spagni’s response as tweeted by his wife. Related Stories Further 8,000 MTI Bitcoin Traced as Firm Is Put Into Final Liquidation: Report South Africa to Accelerate Crypto Regulation in Wake of Scams: Report || ‘Walking Dead’ NFTs to Roam the Metaverse: Zombie apocalypse TV show “The Walking Dead” hasenteredThe Sandbox, a non-fungible token (NFT) metaverse.
The Sandbox, a Hong Kong-based virtual world that allows users to monetize assets and game experiences through blockchains, NFTs and its nativeSANDtoken, is forming a partnership with “The Walking Dead” creator Skybound Entertainment, according to an announcement on Thursday.
Gamers will be able create a horde of assets to combine with their favorite “Walking Dead” characters. The idea is for users to recreate comic book storylines or to forge their own original adventures, the companies said.
Related:MLB NFT Auction Includes LA Dodgers World Series Ring
Virtual reality platforms such as The Sandbox and Decentraland have seen adoption skyrocket with NFTs. The Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget said the advent of digital cats on the Ethereum blockchain –CryptoKitties, the NFT sector’s first smash hit in 2017 – signaled a paradigm shift.
Borget said:
“We immediately saw the potential to apply that technology, not just to create virtual cats, but to enable anyone to make their own NFTs, exchange them with other users, monetize them on the marketplace, and use them to build games and be rewarded for the time they spend on the platform.”
In addition to providing no-coder game creation tools, The Sandbox has a map of parcels of virtual land for sale. The platform has 166,464 plots of digital land in total, each one an individual NFT, and there will never be more, Borget explained.
Related:CryptoKickers Is Bringing NFT Sneakers to the Hypebeasts of the Metaverse
“Unlike Decentraland, which sold its entire map at the beginning, we are selling progressively,” Borget said. “Today we have sold 52% and we should have land for sale until about the end of 2021.”
“The Walking Dead” joins over 160 existing partners in The Sandbox, including Canadian music producer Deadmau5, musician and DJ Richie Hawtin, “The Smurfs,” Atari and CryptoKitties. The Sandbox is scheduled to go live this summer.
• Axie Profiting From Booming NFT Economy as Bitcoin Struggles
• CryptoPunks Get Punked || USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis – Bullish Over 109.876, Bearish Under 109.569; Be Prepared for Whipsaw Action: The Dollar/Yen is inching lower Friday after giving up earlier gains as traders prepare for the release of a major U.S. employment report. Trader expect strong numbers that could make the case for faster U.S. policy tightening at a time when action in Japan seems long distant.
At 07:38 GMT, theUSD/JPYis trading 109.738, down 0.043 or -0.04%.
The USD/JPY plunged to its lowest level since May 25 on Wednesday before rebounding quickly after Federal Reserve Vice Chair Richard Clarida laid the groundwork for dollar gains by suggesting this week conditions for hiking interest rates might be met as soon as late 2022.
All eyes are now on Friday’s jobs report, which will show how the labor market fared during July.Economists expect the economy to have added 845,000 jobs last month, according to estimates from Dow Jones. However the broad range of targets – from 350,000 on the low end to 1.2 million at the top – show the uncertainty that’s currently in the market.
A print below 300,000 would be a cause for concern and should drive the USD/JPY lower. A reading between 300,000 and 400,000 would be considered “friendly” and should underpin prices. Hitting near the high end of the consensus or better could trigger a sharp breakout to the upside.
The main trend is up according to the daily swing chart, but momentum has shifted to the upside.
A trade through 110.590 will change the main trend to up. A move through 108.722 will signal a resumption of the downtrend.
The short-term range is 110.590 to 108.722. The USD/JPY is currently trading inside its retracement zone at 109.656 to 109.876.
The intermediate range is 111.659 to 108.722. Its retracement zone at 110.191 to 110.537 is another potential upside target. It could act as resistance on the first test, but taking out 110.537 could trigger an acceleration to the upside.
On the downside, potential support is 109.569 to 109.076, followed by 108.230.
The direction of the USD/JPY on Friday is likely to be determined by trader reaction to 109.876.
A sustained move over 109.876 will indicate the presence of buyers. This could launch a quick rally into 110.191. Look for sellers on the first test. Taking it out should lead to a test of 110.537 to 110.590.
Watch for a breakout to the upside if strong buying takes out 110.590. The daily chart indicates there is plenty of room to the upside with no major resistance until 111.659.
A sustained move under 109.876 will signal the presence of sellers. This should lead to a quick break into 109.656 to 109.569.
Taking out 109.569 could trigger the start of a break into 109.305. If this fails as support then look for the selling to possibly extend into 109.076, followed by 108.722. The latter is a potential trigger point for a further break into 108.230.
Due to the spacing between potential support and resistance levels, traders should be prepared for wide, volatile swings. Also keep in mind that most traders are focused on the headline jobs number, but there is also the unemployment rate figure to deal with. Because of this, we could see two reactions after the release of the NFP report. Try not to get caught trading the headline, use the Treasury yields for guidance.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Bitcoin Price Prediction – A Move Through to $41,500 Would Bring $45,000 into Play || On-Chain Analysis: Two Indicators Signal a Long-Term Bottom for Bitcoin: BeInCrypto –
Today’s on-chain analysis provides a look at two long-term indicators that could signal a macro bottom in the BTC market. These are the Entity-Adjusted Number of Transactions on the Bitcoin network and the Entity-Adjusted Dormancy Flow.
Furthermore, the maximum and minimum bitcoin price models created by Willy Woo indicate that if today were the peak of a long-term bull market, BTC would cost $176,000. On the other hand, if we had a bear market, it would fall to $15,000.
BTC number of transactions lowest in 2 years
The number of transactions on the Bitcoin network has reached a 2-year low. On-chain analystLex Moskovskitweeted today a chart of the 30-day moving average Entity-Adjusted Number of Transactions. It shows that the value has fallen to a level in the area of 180,000, which has not been recorded since January 2019.
This storywas seen first onBeInCryptoJoin our Telegram Groupand get trading signals, a free trading course and more stories likethisonBeInCrypto || Bitcoin Price Prediction Failure to Hit $40,500 Would Bring sub-$38,000 into Play: After a bullish day for the crypto majors on Thursday, it has been a bearish morning for Bitcoin and the broader crypto market this morning. At the time of writing, Bitcoin , BTC to USD, was down by 3.47% to $38,646.8. A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin rise to an early morning high $40,248.0 before hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $40,682, Bitcoin slid to a late morning intraday low $38,343.0. Bitcoin fell through the first major support level at $39,331 and the second major support level at $38,626. Steering clear of sub-$38,000 levels, Bitcoin moved back through the 2 nd major support level going into the afternoon. The Rest of the Pack It has been a bearish morning for the broader crypto market. At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was down by 3.91% to lead the way down, with Litecoin (-3.64%) also struggling. Binance Coin (-2.46%), Bitcoin Cash SV (-1.98%), Cardanos ADA (-2.01%), Chainlink (-1.53%), Crypto.com Coin (-1.62%), and Ethereum (-1.92%) were not far behind, however. Through the early hours, the crypto total market rose to an early morning high $1,569bn before falling to a low $1,495bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $1,509bn. Bitcoins dominance rose to an early high 48.47% before falling to a low 48.07%. At the time of writing, Bitcoins dominance stood at 48.12%. For the Afternoon Ahead Bitcoin would need to move back through the first major support level and the $39,977 pivot to bring the first major resistance level at $40,682 into play. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break back through to $40,000 levels. Barring an extended crypto rally through the afternoon, the first major resistance level at $40,682 would likely limit any upside. In the event of a breakout, however, Bitcoin should target the 38.2% FIB of $41,592 before any pullback. The second major resistance level sits at $41,328. Failure to move back through the first major support level at $39,331 pivot would bring the second major support level at $38,626 back into play. Story continues Barring an extended sell-off on the day, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$38,000 levels, however. The third major support level sits at $37,275. Looking beyond the support and resistance levels, we saw the 50 EMA narrow on the 100 and 200 EMAs this morning. This supported the downside through the morning. A further narrowing of the 50 on 100 and 200 EMAs this afternoon would bring sub-$38,000 levels into play. Key going into the afternoon will be for Bitcoin to avoid a fall back through the morning low $38,343.0 to sub-$38,000 levels. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Natural Gas Weekly Price Forecast Natural Gas Give Up Early Gains for the Week USD/JPY Price Forecast US Dollar Continues to Consolidate Against Yen Oil Price Fundamental Daily Forecast Price Action Indicates Traders Believe Demand Will Outstrip Supply Gold Weekly Price Forecast Gold Continues Same Pattern of Consolidation Crude Oil Weekly Price Forecast Crude Oil Continus to See Upward Pressure GBP/USD Weekly Price Forecast British Pound Continues to Look Strong || SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Pomerantz Law Firm Reminds Shareholders with Losses on their Investment in Coinbase Global, Inc., of Class Action Lawsuit and Upcoming Deadline COIN: NEW YORK, Aug. 13, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Coinbase Global, Inc. (Coinbase or the Company) (NASDAQ: COIN) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and docketed under 21-cv-06049, is on behalf of a class consisting of all persons and entities other than Defendants that purchased or otherwise acquired Coinbase Class A common stock pursuant and/or traceable to the Companys registration statement and prospectus (collectively, the Offering Materials) for the resale of up to 114,850,769 shares of its Class A common stock, whereby Coinbase began trading as a public company on or around April 14, 2021 (the Offering). Plaintiff pursues claims against the Defendants under the Securities Act of 1933. If you are a shareholder who purchased or otherwise acquired Coinbase Class A common stock pursuant and/or traceable to the Companys registration statement and prospectus, you have until September 20, 2021 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com . To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at newaction@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll-free, Ext. 7980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and the number of shares purchased. [Click here for information about joining the class action] Coinbase powers the cryptoeconomy, offering a trusted platform for sending and receiving Bitcoin and other digital assets built using blockchain technology to approximately 43 million retail users, 7,000 institutions, and 115,000 ecosystem partners in over 100 countries. On April 14, 2021, Coinbase filed its prospectus on Form 424B4 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which forms part of the Registration Statement. The Company registered for the resale of up to 114,850,769 shares of its Class A common stock by registered shareholders. According to the Registration Statement, the resale of the Companys stock was not underwritten by any investment bank and the registered stockholders would purportedly elect whether or not to sell their shares. Such sales, if any, would be brokerage transactions on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, and Coinbase would purportedly not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of Class A common stock by the registered stockholders. Thus, Coinbases operations, including its liquidity and capital resources, would continue to be financed with cash flow from operating activities and net proceeds from the sale of convertible preferred stock. As of December 31, 2020, Coinbase had cash and cash equivalents of $1.1 billion, exclusive of restricted cash and customer custodial funds. Story continues The complaint alleges that, the Offering Materials were false and misleading and omitted to state that, at the time of the Offering: (1) the Company required a sizeable cash injection; (2) the Companys platform was susceptible to service-level disruptions, which were increasingly likely to occur as the Company scaled its services to a larger user base; and (3) as a result of the foregoing, Defendants positive statements about the Companys business, operations, and prospects, were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. Only a month later, the high-flying promise of Coinbase came to a screaming halt, as Coinbase conceded the need to raise capital and revealed performance issues that prevented users ability to trade cryptocurrencies. On May 17, 2021, Coinbase announced its plans to raise about $1.25 billion via a convertible bond sale. Then, on May 19, 2021, Coinbase revealed technical problems, including delays . . . due to network congestion effecting those who want to get their money out. On this news, the Companys share price fell $23.44 per share, nearly 10% over two consecutive trading sessions, to close at $224.80 per share on May 19, 2021, thereby injuring investors. By the commencement of this action, Coinbase stock traded as low as $208.00 per share, a significant decline from its April 14, 2021 opening price of $381.00 per share. Pomerantz LLP, with offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, and Tel Aviv, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, Pomerantz pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 85 years later, Pomerantz continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomlaw.com . CONTACT: Robert S. Willoughby Pomerantz LLP rswilloughby@pomlaw.com 888-476-6529 ext. 7980 View comments || As Inflation and Tapering Concerns Cool, Gold Consolidates: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. The U.S. consumer price index rose only .5% in July, down from a .9% increase in June, easing tapering fears. Meanwhile, spot gold opened today at $1,751.27, having recorded its biggest one-day percentage gain since early May. Additional support for gold was provided by a dip in both the dollar and bond yields . For the gold market, the “immediate question is that of tapering, which some FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) members have been suggesting could start as soon as late 2021. But the latest CPI numbers suggest that those arguments have weakened,” StoneX analyst Rhona O’Connell said in an interview with CNBC . Inflation fears have also somewhat subsided, though the delta variant could lead to further shutdowns, which might mean additional stimulus checks. Additionally, President Biden’s 3.5 trillion dollar budget along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill have opened the door for an increase in the debt ceiling, which could further buoy gold. Regarding the CPI data, OANDA Europe senior market analyst Craig Erlam wrote that "the data yesterday was encouraging but any signs here that it was a blip could unwind all of yesterday’s good feeling and replace it with anxiety once more.” Some people, such as Diego Parilla, manager of a $250 million dollar Quadriga Igneo fund, believe that massive long-term damage has been caused by the monetary and fiscal policies of governments around the world in the past few years. "Central bank money printing isn't really solving problems, it's delaying the problem," Parrilla told Bloomberg . "Gold will benefit purely from being a physical asset that you cannot print." Investors can get gold exposure through the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS) , which holds gold bullion. Sprott also offers two actively managed precious metals mining ETFs: the Sprott Gold Miners ETF (SGDM) , which tracks gold majors, and the Sprott Junior Gold Miners ETF (SGDJ) , which tracks junior gold miners. Story continues For more news, information, and strategy, visit the Gold & Silver Investing Channel . POPULAR ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM SPY ETF Quote VOO ETF Quote QQQ ETF Quote VTI ETF Quote JNUG ETF Quote Top 34 Gold ETFs Top 34 Oil ETFs Top 57 Financials ETFs ETFs to Target Deal-Making in a Record Year of M&A Activity J.P. Morgan Proposes Conversion of Select Mutual Funds to ETFs Stocks and ETFs Remain Composed after New CPI Data ETF Prime: Lara Crigger on a Futures-Based Bitcoin ETF Stock Market Contrarians See Danger Ahead READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM >
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 47054.98, 47166.69, 48847.03, 49327.72, 50025.38, 49944.62, 51753.41, 52633.54, 46811.13, 46091.39
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2021-02-05]
BTC Price: 38144.31, BTC RSI: 62.34
Gold Price: 1810.90, Gold RSI: 40.87
Oil Price: 56.85, Oil RSI: 76.53
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
History Says Riot Blockchain Stock Could Bounce Back: The shares of Riot Blockchain Inc (NASDAQ:RIOT) are surging today, up 20.2% at $21.54 at last check, though a reason for the positive price action was not immediately clear. The last time we checked in on the security, shares were pulling back from fresh highs as Bitcoin plummeted , before surging right back to a Jan. 14, three-year high of $29.98. The stock now sports an impressive 1,533.8% year-over-year lead, and a recent dip has RIOT close to a historically bullish trendline, which could send shares even higher. Specifically, Riot Blockchain stock just came within one standard deviation of its 40-day moving average, after spending the last few months above this trendline. According to data from Schaeffer's Senior Quantitative Analyst Rocky White, three similar signals have occurred in the past three years. In 67% of those instances, the equity enjoyed a positive return a month later, averaging a 22% gain. From its current perch, a move of similar magnitude would put RIOT just over the $26 mark -- closer this month's peak. RIOT 40 Day Digging deeper, a short squeeze could create additional tailwinds for the security, pushing shares higher still. Short interest rose 21.7% in the last two reporting periods, and the 13.07 million shares sod short make up a whopping 81.9% of RIOT's available float. The options pits, on the other hand, already lean firmly bullish. This is per the equity's 10-day call/put volume ratio of 3.16 at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), which sits higher than 91% of readings from the past year. In other words, calls are being picked up at a quicker-than-usual clip. View comments || Author Ben Mezrich on Capturing the Winklevii and Plans for a ‘Bitcoin Billionaires’ Movie: What do you know about Mark Zuckerberg? What about the origins of Facebook? Or the Winklevoss twins? Odds are you first learned about them from “The Social Network.” And that film was based on the book “The Accidental Billionaires,” written by Ben Mezrich, who – in a remarkable bit of savvy – sold the movie rights before he even finished the book.
This is Mezrich’s specialty: sniffing out the big stories that seep into the zeitgeist. He pulled the same trick with blackjack (“Bringing Down the House,” later adapted into the movie “21”), UFOs, wooly mammoths and, most recently, bitcoin.
This post is part of CoinDesk’s2020 Year in Review– a collection of op-eds, essays and interviews about the year in crypto and beyond. This interview with Ben Mezrich, author of “Bitcoin Billionaires,”has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Related:The Blockchain NFT Wars Are Here
Mezrich returned to the world of the Winklevii with “Bitcoin Billionaires,” the book that introduced the story of the Bitcoin system (through the prism of the Winklevoss twins) to a new mainstream audience. And as 2020 draws to a close, Mezrich seems to have caught a bit of crypto fever, relishing his role as a Bitcoin Bull. “Bitcoin 20K! Now everyone who ever bought bitcoin and held has made money,” he tweets, noting that “Ain’t nobody talkin’ bout tulips anymore.”
The author’s influence goes beyond Twitter. In early 2020, in what feels like 37 years ago, Mezrich worked as a writer on Season 5 of “Billions,” helping the show nail its crypto arc and nudging the storyline further to the mainstream. From the way Mezrich gushes online aboutbitcoin, you’d assume a good chunk of his assets are pegged to BTC and that he’s on the cusp of buying Lambos.
The exact amount of his holdings?
Zero.
Related:Druckenmiller, Jones and Bitcoin’s Perfect Trading Machine
“I don’t own any bitcoin,” Mezrich tells me in our wide-ranging conversation. “I’m sure my book inspired a lot of people to buy it. And a lot of people are going to get a lot richer than I am because they read my book. And I’m happy for them.”
Mezrich is not into bitcoin to get rich but to help tell its story. And this he does well. From his pandemic-getaway home in Vermont, he explains how the Winklevoss twins are misunderstood, why “mining is one massive mind-f**k,” shares some behind-the-scenes nuggets from the writing room of “Billions,” teases that Armie Hammer might reprise his role in a movie or TV adaptation of “Bitcoin Billionaires,” and floats the possibility of a sequel to “The Social Network.”
Let’s start with the twins.
How’d you first get involved in the world of crypto?
Ben Mezrich:So when I wrote “Accidental Billionaires,” that started as a random email in the middle of the night, from a friend of Eduardo Saverin’s. It was just: ‘My best friend founded Facebook, and no one’s ever heard of him.’ And when I started writing that book, I reached out to the Winklevoss twins. When I first met them, they were the bad guys, or at least that’s how I viewed them. They were the big jocks, dressed up in skeleton costumes, chasing the Karate Kid around the gym. But the Winklevoss twins were incredible sources, and I stayed in touch with them.
A lot of people are going to get a lot richer than I am because they read my book. And I’m happy for them.
They actually came to the movie premiere. Even though they didn’t love everything about their portrayal, at least their story was being told. So we got along very well. I thought they were very honest people, but I really only saw them in one light. I knew nothing about Bitcoin [the blockchain]. People over the years have said, “You should write about Bitcoin,” but I’d never been interested in writing about it because, honestly, it just sounded likemath. I hate that word “blockchain.” And I didn’t really know the story. Then, years later, my wife saw a headline that the Winklevoss twins are the first bitcoin billionaires. [In anarticlefrom The New York Times’ Nathaniel Popper.]
And that’s a total curveball, right?
Mezrich:I thought, “Wow, that’s strange.” Because I assumed you’d never hear from these guys again. And then I see them as billionaires suddenly in their own right. And I thought, “Okay, now that makes bitcoin interesting to me.”
How have your thoughts on the Winklevoss twins changed?
Mezrich:It was sort of looking at them again in a totally different light. Not that theyaren’tthese big Olympic athletes who were the cool kids on campus. All of that is still true. But they’re not one-sided. These are guys who definitely understood something about revolutions, and understood something about starting a business and entrepreneurship and building something.
And it wasn’t an accident that they had stumbled into bitcoin. Because a lot of people stumbled into bitcoin. Every one of us had heard about bitcoin, but we’re not all billionaires. What’s crazy about bitcoin is that every one of us could be a billionaire right now, because we all could have once afforded 200,000 bitcoin when it was just [worth] pennies.
See also:Winklevoss Twins to Help Produce‘Bitcoin Billionaires’ Book for Film
What were your first impressions of the crypto space?
Mezrich:The first thing you kind of have to get through is the question of whether this is a scam. Whether this is a scheme. Or tulips. Or a bubble. And when I first got into the story, bitcoin had fallen from its height of $20,000 down to $3,000.
And then the second thing, of course, is the Silk Road stuff, and where Bitcoin came from. The people who were into Bitcoin originally were outsiders … fringe people. The people who understood it first were not mainstream people. So one of the things when I started researching was, “What is Bitcoin? What is it supposed to be? And the people who were into it at first, are they going to be the people who will take it to that next place?”
What was intriguing about the Winklevoss twins is that they came into it from a very different perspective from the people who started it – the Roger Vers of the world. They had a very different perception of what Bitcoin is supposed to be. And that conflict feeds the whole book.
You seem like quite the bitcoin bull. You’re optimistic about the space?
Mezrich:I don’t own bitcoin. I have missed out again and again and again. If I had taken my book advance in bitcoin I would be retired right now. [Laughs.] I would have had made six times my money. And I kick myself every day because I don’t have any bitcoin.
I never would have guessed that!
Mezrich:As a writer, my goal is not to make money on bitcoin, my goal is to tell the story of bitcoin. And I think, at first, that really was something I did purposefully. I am a big believer in where bitcoin is going, and I love the fact that people are going to get wealthy off of it. And I think that we should be happy when people take a risk and succeed because it’s inspiring. People were willing to take a risk, and they were smart enough to look at it the way other people didn’t. And everyone was telling them they were wrong. I love that. I love that Silicon Valley didn’t get it. And I love that the mainstream economic world just didn’t understand it.
I didn’t buy any Facebook stock either, and I was in on that story before the IPO. I’ve written a lot of stories that have made a lot of other people rich while I stay in Vermont and watch them get rich. If some hedge fund was smart enough to just hire me, I could sit in a room and tell them what they should invest in.
They should totally hire you!
Mezrich:They should! You should tell them that. Tell them in your article I’m available. Just put me up in an office and I’ll give you a couple of ideas.
You’re kind of like the “anti-quant,” you’re like the “qualt” for extremely qualitative analysis.
Mezrich:Exactly.
The qualts are the guys who come in, think of book ideas, and that’s where you put your money.
Mezrich:It’s really true. I mean, listen, I was in on DraftKings before DraftKings appeared. I wrote a book called “Straight Flush” about the online gambling world. I wrote a book called “Woolly” about the woolly mammoth coming back to life, and it’s all about genetic engineering. I mean, I’ve been on the verge of a lot of these stories because I’m looking for revolutions every time. It’s cool to see these things happen. And it’s neat that with bitcoin, I’m actually able to watch in real time. Right now it appears to be finding this mainstream voice, which is amazing.
What’s your process for finding story ideas?
Mezrich:Most of my main stories have come to me just luckily and randomly. Someone calling or emailing or messaging me on Twitter, just finding me and pitching me a story. That’s where a good three-quarters of my stories have come from. I’m also always on the lookout. But it’s really tricky. I can’t just write agoodstory. It needs to be big enough that everyone in the world is going to want to read it, that Hollywood is going to want to make a big movie about it.
They were the big jocks, dressed up in skeleton costumes, chasing The Karate Kid around the gym. But the Winklevoss twins were incredible sources, and I stayed in touch with them.
Every book I’ve ever written, I’ve sold the movie rights before I sold the book rights. For every project I do, I write a treatment, I sell the Hollywood rights and then I write the book. And I won’t write a book if I don’t think it can be this huge international movie or whatever. So the stories have to bebig. They have to be woolly mammoth big.
See also: Jeff Wilser –Addicted to Crypto?
What stories have you tried to get but it didn’t quite work out?
Mezrich:I’ve tried to get to [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk because I’m fascinated by someone who breaks all the rules and changes everything. I think that’s a story that I would obviously want to write, and I think I’d be the right person to write it. But I haven’t heard back from him.
I don’t know what the next thing will be but I always have my eyes open. When someone pitches me a story, I have a checklist in my head of what I’m looking for. And one of the important things is having access. So when people just tell me, “Oh, you should write about this, or you write about that,” that’s kind of useless, because I’m not going to throw my hat in the ring with 100 other journalists and chase someone down the street.
What do you mean exactly?
Mezrich:That’s not the kind of writer I am. I have to have specific, unique access to the story. Like Eduardo coming to me to tell the Facebook story, or the Winklevoss twins willing to tell me their story. I need that because I’m not a journalist. I’m not a newspaperman. I have friends who are very good newspapermen, and what they do is something I can’t do. I can’t track things down. I can’t chase people down. It’s not what I do. I’m the person who translates someone’s story into a book and a movie.
I love that self-awareness. What else is on that checklist of yours when you’re looking for a good story?
Mezrich:The first thing is the elevator pitch. With “Bringing Down the House,” it was the perfect one-sentence: “Six MIT kids who took Vegas for millions.” You can’t get better than that. It literally was a true story about six brilliant math kids, who took down Las Vegas. Beautiful. And so for every book, I’m looking for that. I need to have that one-sentence. It’s got to be that simple.
Second, it has to be big. Vegas. Wooly Mammoth. Facebook. Bitcoin. It has to be something that everyone in the world has heard of, but they don’t already know the story.
And the next thing is you have to have access to the story that no one else can have. Those are the main things.
What are some stories that you almost wrote, but it didn’t work out for whatever reason?
Mezrich:I’ve been pitched so many amazing stories over the years. I’m trying to think of the famous ones. [Pauses. Thinks.] Charlie Sheen’s people came to me. And I thought about that. And then my wife was like, “You can’t spend a year with Charlie Sheen.”
Smart lady. Let’s talk about “Billions” and its crypto arc. How’d you get involved?
Mezrich:It was over Twitter, to be honest with you. So I knew Brian Koppelman and David Levine, who make the show. Not personally. We had kind of known about each other, but never really met. And then Brian called me up to talk about “Bitcoin Billionaires.” He was intrigued and wanted to know what the movie situation was, all that kind of stuff. So we were just chatting about that, and he asked if I’d ever written for television before. And I was a huge “Billions” fan.
Charlie Sheen’s people came to me. And I thought about that. And then my wife was like, ‘You can’t spend a year with Charlie Sheen.’
Amazing. What was it like working in the writer’s room?
Mezrich:It’s really cool. Part of what I think I was there for – and why it worked so well – was that Ilivewith these people. I’m not just a writer from LA. I know billionaires. I know private jets. I know that world because that’s what I’ve been writing about, and been involved with, for the past 20 years.
The show did a good job translating some blockchain and mining concepts. How’d you crack that?
Mezrich:I had some great connections to real people [in the blockchain space] that I met through the twins and others. So we were able to work with consultants who really knew what they were doing to try and put together a mining rig, or a multi-mining rig. It needed to look as real as we can make it. “Billions” is an incredible show in that it works so hard to get the details right.
What were some of the toughest crypto concepts to translate to a broad audience?
Mezrich:Well, it’s the mining. Mining is one massive mindf**k. I mean, we all know that. To try and explain mining to my mother is physically impossible. It’s just not gonna happen, right?
Totally.
Mezrich:Like, I’m too old to understand mining. If you’re over the age of 40, it’s very hard to understand what the hell is going on, right?
Basically.
Mezrich:And no matter how many times you explain it, it still doesn’t really translate. And so that was tricky. And also the word “blockchain.” What is “the blockchain?” Good God. I mean, that word is thrown about in every industry now. And I guarantee you, 80% of people are using it incorrectly. It’s just not an easy concept, and it never will be.
And there’s another reason why I am so impressed by people who are into Bitcoin, and into it early. They were understanding very complicated things. The way I understand Bitcoin is actually quite simple: peer-to-peer, electronic money, nobody in between. It’s a simple, simple concept. But then as I did my book tour, people would be asking me questions that just had nothing to do with that. About nodes, right?Nodes. What the hell is a node? All of these things that, obviously, Ishouldunderstand, but that’s not part of my story.
That must be a constant dilemma, how technical to get in stories?
Mezrich:When I wrote the Facebook story, it was very similar. You could get very complicated in writing that story. That’s never been my goal. I never wanted to have Mark Zuckerberg sitting in front of a computer, other than looking at a simple screen and coding. Similarly, I never wanted to have the Winklevoss twins or Charlie Shrem or Roger Ver or anyone talking about nodes, because it’s going to kill your audience.
Any plans to return to “Billions”?
Mezrich:So, Season Five got split in half. It got interrupted by COVID-19. I don’t know when that’s going to start filming again, but I think I’m technically a consulting producer on the second half as well, because those episodes were already written. But I’d be happy to write for the show any time Brian and David wanted me to. I just had such a wonderful experience.
What are you working on now?
Mezrich:I wrote a serialized novella in the Boston Globe in May, it was like a “Da Vinci Code”-style thriller.
This is “The Mechanic,” right?
Mezrich:Yeah. And it was very successful; we had hundreds of thousands of readers. It was an incredible experience where I literally wrote a chapter, handed it in and it was in the newspaper the next day. I wrote the book in basically two weeks. It was a really crazy experience and I ended up selling the book. It’s actually going to be two books: one coming out next fall and one the following year. And then I sold the movie to Spielberg, to Amblin [Amblin Entertainment], and I’m writing the screenplay.
Not a bad gig!
Mezrich:Oh, no pressure at all, writing a screenplay to Steven Spielberg! It’s a little terrifying, but I’m working on the screenplay for Amblin. The goal is for it to be a big feature movie and a big franchise book. And if it does what I hope it does, I hope to be writing a lot of these. I’m really fascinated by it – reinterpreting history in ways that people don’t realize “this is how things actually happened.”
What can you tell us about a possible “Bitcoin Billionaires” TV or movie?
Mezrich:It’s atStampede. Greg Silverman, who is a wonderful producer – and who used to be one of the heads of Warner Brothers – is leading the project to make it. [The Winklevoss twins arealso involved.] Hollywood got a little frozen by COVID-19. We were on track to get something going, and now everyone’s just waiting to see what the hell happens. I would love to see it being a big feature, but a lot of the greatest stories are being told in TV. So either way, it would be phenomenal and exciting.
I think we got Mark Zuckerberg exactly right and the Winklevoss twins exactly wrong.
Is there any talk of getting Armie Hammer to reprise his role as the Winklevoss twins? That would be incredible.
Mezrich:I would love to get Armie. I think the twins would love to see Armie do it. I think Armie is just a phenomenal actor, and he’s become iconic and that’s a part he was born to play. So I’d love to see it, and there’s not that many actors who can play the Winklevoss twins. You could get Thor, right? [Chris] Hemsworth? There are some guys who could maybe handle it, but Armie was phenomenal and I’d love to see that.
And if you get Armie, then it could be like the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe], where “The Social Network” and the “Bitcoin Billionaires” live in the same connected cinematic universe, right?
Mezrich:Yeah. That’s the way I’ve always seen this: That Facebook was the Avengers, and we could do a sequel to Facebook, which is kind of the “Avengers 2,” but meanwhile you tell the origin stories. We have the Winklevii. And then we do Sean Parker. I would love to do a Sean Parker story. Or a Sheryl Sandberg story.
[Beat.] I don’t know if Mark will let me do his story. He doesn’t like me so much. But there’s definitely a lot of stories to be told in that world. And I think there will be a sequel to “The Social Network.” I really do.
Interesting.
Mezrich:I know Aaron Sorkin wants to write it, I know Scott Rudin is interested in producing it. If they could get [David] Fincher into it, I think it would really happen.
You’re someone who helped bring the backstory of Facebook into the public eye, and now – especially in the wake of all the lawsuits and potential regulation–Facebook is seen very, very differently by the world. What has that been like for you?
Mezrich:I always say, I think we got Mark Zuckerberg exactly right and the Winklevoss twins exactly wrong. I really do think that this [the 2020 reality] is the Zuckerberg from “The Social Network.” This is what he was always going to be. He was a bit megalomaniacal, brilliant, but he wants Facebook to be in his image and how he believes the world should be, and everyone else can go screw themselves. And I think that he really and truly created the company in a way that he has that control and he has that power.
Sheryl Sandberg [Facebook chief operating officer] is supposed to be the adult in the room, and to some extent that’s what she was attempting to be, but I think they just got caught in thing after thing after thing and now they’re in a tricky situation. And I understand this is much more complicated than people want it to be. The idea of,Are you a publishing company? Do you have to edit content? Should you be editing content?
Right. There aren’t easy answers here.
Mezrich:But I definitely think that this is where Zuckerberg was always going to take the company. His goal was to dominate the world with it and to put us all on Facebook. And we’ve gotten there to some extent. So yeah, I’m not surprised by any of it.
Predictions on how this all shakes out?
Mezrich:I don’t believe you can break up a social network. I think social networks have to be monopolies. Because if everyone you know isn’t on Facebook, then you’re not going to go on Facebook. There’s no point to it if everyone’s not doing it. So if it’s not a monopoly, it’s just a failure. And similar with Twitter. If everyone shifts to Parler or whatever, then everyone’s on that one.
Right, right.
Mezrich:But I do think there needs to be some self-policing, if not outward policing. I really think that these places just become cesspools. They become something like out of “Mad Max,” especially Twitter. It’s just complete craziness and it brings out the absolute worst in people.
“Cesspool” is a good word. On a more positive note, for your next project, maybe something involving AI?
Mezrich:You know what? I agree with you. That would be cool. It’s the question of what story to tell that hasn’t been told. But if something happened in AI that I found out about … Like, if someone really made one [an AI person] and nobody realized it …
Exactly, like if we find out there’s some kind of public personality or celebrity that’s actually an AI bot?
Mezrich:That would be perfect. If you hear about that, send it my way.
Will do. Thanks again.
• Author Ben Mezrich on Capturing the Winklevii and Plans for a ‘Bitcoin Billionaires’ Movie
• Author Ben Mezrich on Capturing the Winklevii and Plans for a ‘Bitcoin Billionaires’ Movie || Why Jack Dorsey Sees Bitcoin As The Answer To Donald Trump Ban Controversy: Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR ) and Square Inc. (NYSE: SQ ) CEO Jack Dorsey on Wednesday said he saw Bitcoin (BTC) and an open decentralized standard for social media as a solution to a handful of companies controlling the conversation on the internet. Justifies Trump Ban: Dorsey said while he did not “celebrate or feel pride in our having to ban” outgoing President Donald Trump from Twitter, he believed it was the right decision to take. “We faced an extraordinary and untenable circumstance, forcing us to focus all of our actions on public safety,” the billionaire entrepreneur said. “Offline harm as a result of online speech is demonstrably real, and what drives our policy and enforcement above all.” Dangerous Precedent: Dorsey said while Trump’s ban may be justified, such de-platforming of users sets a “dangerous” precedent and highlights “ the power an individual or corporation has over a part of the global public conversation.” While individuals or entities can always choose a different platform to voice their views, Dorsey seemed to hint at the Big Tech action against social media platform Parler last week to note how this doesn’t always play out. Parler was banned from accessing the products and services of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN ), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL ), and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) (NASDAQ: GOOG ), which effectively forced it to shut down its operations. “I do not believe this was coordinated. More likely: companies came to their own conclusions or were emboldened by the actions of others,” Dorsey said. Trump, meanwhile, has been banned permanently by Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP ) and his accounts have been temporarily restricted by Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB ), Instagram, and YouTube. This moment in time might call for this dynamic, but over the long term it will be destructive to the noble purpose and ideals of the open internet. A company making a business decision to moderate itself is different from a government removing access, yet can feel much the same. — jack (@jack) January 14, 2021 Bitcoin As The Answer: As Dorsey noted the need to ensure we don’t “erode a free and open global internet,” he said he was particularly passionate about Bitcoin (BTC) because of the “model it demonstrates.” Story continues “A foundational internet technology that is not controlled or influenced by any single individual or entity. This is what the internet wants to be, and over time, more of it will be,” the Twitter CEO said. Dorsey noted his company’s efforts to develop a decentralized standard for social media to overcome the problem of enforcement of policies. “This will take time to build. We are in the process of interviewing and hiring folks, looking at both starting a standard from scratch or contributing to something that already exists,” the Twitter CEO said. “No matter the ultimate direction, we will do this work completely through public transparency.” It's important that we acknowledge this is a time of great uncertainty and struggle for so many around the world. Our goal in this moment is to disarm as much as we can, and ensure we are all building towards a greater common understanding, and a more peaceful existence on earth. — jack (@jack) January 14, 2021 Price Action: Twitter shares closed 0.38% higher at $47.22 on Thursday and added another 0.3% gains in the after-hours. See Also: Why Jack Dorsey And Square Are Opposing FinCEN's Proposed Cryptocurrency Rules See more from Benzinga Click here for options trades from Benzinga Snapchat Follows In Twitter's Footsteps To Permanently Boot Out Donald Trump YouTube Deletes Donald Trump's Video, Restricts Account For 7 Days © 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Crypto for Advisors: A Growing Opportunity: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
Whether you’re a true believer or a skeptic, it’s hard to ignore how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies performed in 2020. Crypto has gone from the realm of early adopters and fringe enthusiasts to major institutions and wealth managers.
In the upcoming webcast,Crypto for Advisors: A Growing Opportunity, Matt Hougan, Global Head of Research, Bitwise Asset Management, will present the results of the 2020 Crypto-for-Advisors survey, exploring how the wealth managers have included crypto assets as part of client portfolios, and discuss how to access crypto, how it’s stored, and new ways investors can access this exciting new asset class.
Bitwise Asset Management is the creator of the world’s first cryptocurrency index fund and offers low-cost, liquid beta funds, holding Bitcoin and Ethereum exclusively.
The Bitwise Bitcoin Fund and the Bitwise Ethereum Fund are the second and third strategies in the Bitwise fund family, joining the broad-market Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund. The funds are driven by inbound client interest and investor dissatisfaction with existing options, many of which carry premiums, charge exit fees, have lockups, and/or charge expenses to the fund outside the stated management fee.
The Bitwise Bitcoin Fund holds Bitcoin and captures the total returns available to investors in the world’s largest crypto asset, including any meaningful hard forks and airdrops. The Bitwise Ethereum Fund does the same for Ether. Funds safeguard holdings in 100% cold storage with an institutional third-party custodian and prepare simple K-1 tax documents for investors each year.
"The speed at which professional investors are moving into crypto right now is remarkable," Hunter Horsley, cofounder and Chief Executive Officer of Bitwise, said in a note. "While adoption of crypto as an asset class and conviction around its role in portfolios rapidly expands, we continue to urge all investors to consider the risks associated with investing in cryptocurrencies in general and the Bitwise Funds in particular."
Financial advisors who are interested in learning more about cryptocurrencies canregister for the Tuesday, January 12 webcast here.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || Bitcoin Tops $40K for First Time, Doubling in Less Than a Month: Causing observers to run out of superlatives and Google users to query about whether a crash is coming, bitcoin’s price topped $40,000 for the first time Thursday, only hours after the leading cryptocurrency blew past $38,000 and $39,000.
• The price of bitcoin set a new-all time high of $40,123.30, up 13.45% over the last 24 hours. Yesterday,bitcoinpassed $36,000 and $37,000 for the first time before rocketing today past $38,000, $39,000 and now $40,000.
• It continues a wild start to 2021 and follows a landmark year in which the cryptocurrency rose more than 300%, with an almost 50% gain in December alone. On Nov. 30, bitcoinbreacheda nearly three-year-old high of $19,793. By the close of Dec. 31, the cryptocurrency had risen about $10,000.
• Seven days into 2021, bitcoin is on pace to put December’s performance to shame. It’s now up 36%, or about $11,000.
• Bitcoin’s price is now more than twice that previously mentioned all-time high of $19,783 reached during 2017’s bull market run.
• The prevailing narrative of this record-setting run is a growingviewthat bitcoin represents a form of “digital gold,” a view that has brought a flood of institutional investors into the cryptocurrency. Among them: Anthony Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital ($182 millionin December); insurance giant MassMutual ($100 millionin December); and Guggenheim Investments (up to 10%of its $5 billion macro fund).
• The latest records, however, may have more to do with the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday by President Donald Trump’s supporters believing the election was rigged and upset by the certification process that was underway than with any inflation hedge.
• Global macro uncertainty has the potential to devalue fiat currencies, which in turn could potentially increase the attractiveness of bitcoin. A disputed election followed by protestors breaking into the Capitol with at least one person being shot and killed would seem to fall under the category of “uncertainty.”
• In addition, with the Democrats now in control of both the House and the Senate in the U.S. the chance of increased government spending is viewed as going up. Increased spending is considered a possible source of inflation, against which bitcoin is viewed as a hedge.
• With a market value now of $746 billion, bitcoin ismore valuablethan all but seven publicly traded companies, sitting between Tesla at $758.8 billion and Tencent at $723.0 billion.
• The market’s supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins is keeping pace with bitcoin’s meteoric rise. Since New Year’s Eve, the supply oftetherhas growth by over 10%, reaching 22.7 billion USDT at last check. Total supply of the runner-up stablecoin, Circle’sUSDC, has also grown by double-digit percentages so far in January, currently sitting at 4.4 billion USDC, according toGlassnode.
UPDATE (Jan. 7, 13:10 UTC):Adds new all-time high, fixes current price.UPDATE (Jan. 7, 16:21 UTC):Adds new all-time high.
• Bitcoin Tops $40K for First Time, Doubling in Less Than a Month
• Bitcoin Tops $40K for First Time, Doubling in Less Than a Month
• Bitcoin Tops $40K for First Time, Doubling in Less Than a Month
• Bitcoin Tops $40K for First Time, Doubling in Less Than a Month || Bitcoin’s Bull Run Is on a Rampage — But How Long Will It Last?: Amidst fears of a new COVID-19 strain striking across the U.K. and the resulting 300-point drop of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Monday morning,Bitcoin stayed strong. The cryptocurrency reached a value of more than $23,000 on Monday, rising $4,000 in four days. It dropped to $22,930 by midday Monday, continuing its bull run.
But how long can the rampage last? According to Finder’s Bitcoin Price Predictions report, quite a while. More than half the panelists stated BTC will continue rising through the second half of 2021. The price could more than double by the end of 2021, forecasters say, predicting, on average, a price of $51,951 per BTC.
See:Bitcoin Finally Breaks $20,000 Barrier — Is the Cryptocurrency Bubble About to Burst?Explore:9 Investing Bubbles That Will Make You Rethink Bitcoin
The 47 panelists polled about the future of Bitcoin included Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song, BitBull Capital Chief Operating Officer Sarah Bergstrand and Finder co-founder Fred Schebesta. Nearly three-quarters (72%) of those polled believe institutional investors are leading the rally. Only 17% believe “Wall Street whales,” such as the biggest mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and institutions, are raising BTC’s value, while 11% attribute the gains to retail investors.
“Of course, the renewed interest from Wall Street, endorsement from big, giant corporations, whales moving into the Bitcoin market and ongoing aspirational educational projects within the community have significant influence over one of the best bullish performances of Bitcoin this year,” said panelist Ajay Shrestha, PhD candidate at the University of Saskatchewan.
Meanwhile, crypto analyst Michaël Van Poppe is keeping an eye on Ethereum and altcoins such as XRP, which, he says, is “well below its all-time high.”Both cryptocurrencies have seen significant increases recently.
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This article originally appeared onGOBankingRates.com:Bitcoin’s Bull Run Is on a Rampage — But How Long Will It Last? || Ripple demands Bitcoin and Ethereum docs from SEC amid legal fight: The cryptocurrency company Ripple has taken the unusual step of filing a Freedom of Information request with the Securities and Exchange Commission, asking the agency to release documents concerning its determination that Bitcoin andEthereum—the two most popular digital currencies—are not securities.
The request comes a month after theSEC sued Rippleand two of its executives, alleging that they sold unlicensed securities in the form of XRP, a cryptocurrency createdby Ripplein 2012.
Ina letter, Ripple asked for any correspondence between the agency and those who helped create Ethereum, including Vitalik Buterin and Joe Lubin. It also asks for letters between former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, agency staff and members of Congress.
The request is based on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law intended to promote transparency in government. FOIA requests, frequently used by journalists, permit the public to demand non-classified documents from a wide variety of federal agencies.
In the case of Ripple, the FOIA demand appears to be part of a larger legal and public relations strategy to rebut the SEC’s allegations. In a reply brief filed on Friday in response to the agency’s complaint, the company denied that its sales of billions of dollars of XRP constituted investment contracts.
“The SEC’s filing, based on an overreaching legal theory, amounts to picking virtual currency winners and losers as the SEC has exempted bitcoin andether from similar regulation,” said the Ripple court filing.
The SEC’s decision to sue Ripple has resulted in the value of XRP, which had long been the third most valuable cryptocurrency, to plummet. In its court filing, the company claims the SEC “caused more than an estimated $15 billion in damage to those it purports to protect.”
The lawsuit between the SEC and Ripple represents uncharted legal ground in many respects. The agency claims that Ripple’s creation and distribution of XRP amounts to a new twist on an old scheme in which company insiders talk up an investment opportunity, and then enrich themselves when gullible newcomers buy in.
For its part, the company says it has never claimed that owning XRP amounts to an ownership claim in Ripple, which has long tried to persuade banks and financial institutions to use its software—and XRP—as facilitate global money transfers. The company also asserts that the price of XRP is not correlated to Ripple’s business activities, and notes that other agencies, including the Justice and Treasury Departments, have characterized XRP as a currency not a security.
In this context, Ripple’s demands for SEC correspondence about Bitcoin and Ethereum appear to be an attempt to portray the agency’s lawsuit as arbitrary and unfair. In particular, Ripple is likely to focus on the SEC’s 2018 conclusion that Ethereum is not a security—even though the Ethereum conducted a so-called “Initial Coin Offering” that gave outside buyers an opportunity to buy into the project early.
The SEC did not immediately respond to a comment as to whether it would comply with Ripple’s FOIA request, or instead invoke one of a variety of exemptions that allow agencies to refuse demands for documents. In its request, the company stated “Ripple is willing to pay fees for this request up to a maximum of $61.”
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This story was originally featured onFortune.com || Tilson: Avoid Bitcoin And 'Lead A Happier And More Prosperous Life': Bitcoinprices pulled back from their all-time highs above $23,000 on Friday, but theGrayscale Bitcoin Trust(OTC:GBTC) traded higher by 1.7% on investor optimism that the huge 2020 bitcoin rally will spill over into 2021.
Former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson predicted the bursting of the bitcoin bubble back in 2017, but Tilson has a different take on the cryptocurrency this time around. On Friday, Tilson said he doesn't recommend shorting bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, even at all-time highs.
Related Link:Will Bitcoin 'Rise 50% And Possibly Double' In 2021? These Pros Think So
Back in 2017, Tilson said bitcoin was demonstrating signs of a classic market bubble. One of the biggest red flags at the time was the type of investors that were asking questions about bitcoin. Tilson noted that 2017 bitcoin investors were among the “least-knowledgeable investors imaginable.” This time around, Tilson said much more mainstream investors and firms are involved in the bitcoin rally, which suggests the 2020 gains may be more likely to hold.
How To Play It:While 2021 may not bring another 2018-style bitcoin bubble bursting, Tilson still isn’t recommending investors buy bitcoin.
“I would never short any cryptocurrency – ironically, for the exact same reason I would never own one: there's no intrinsic value,” Tilson said.
Without any intrinsic value, Tilson said the price of bitcoin could literally go anywhere from $100 to $1 million and anywhere in between. Tilson said it’s never a good idea to short an open-ended situation like that, but there is also nothing supporting bitcoin’s valuation to the downside.
“In summary, I think you will lead a happier and more prosperous life if you avoid cryptocurrencies altogether,” Tilson said.
Benzinga’s Take:Stocks, bonds, real estate and even gold have long, well-established track records of investment performance, but bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have only been around for a little over a decade.
A cryptocurrency’s supply is fixed, it doesn’t have the intrinsic value of a share of stock or a plot of real estate, and it doesn’t have the yield of a bond or certificate of deposit. Therefore, the prices of cryptocurrencies in the long term will be determined only by changes in long-term demand from investors and users.
Latest Ratings for GBTC
[{"Feb 2018": "Jul 2015", "Buckingham": "Wedbush", "Initiates Coverage On": "Initiates Coverage on", "": "", "Sell": "Outperform"}]
View More Analyst Ratings for GBTCView the Latest Analyst Ratings
See more from Benzinga
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• Will Bitcoin 'Rise 50% And Possibly Double' In 2021? These Pros Think So
• Bitcoin Crosses K For The First Time. Is This Rally A Repeat Of 2017?
© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Blockchain Bites: OCC’s Head Stepping Down, Anchorage to Become First National ‘Digital Asset Bank’: Bitcoin is booming again as crypto-bull Brian Brooks pushes through his “open access” banking rules before stepping down as the top U.S. banking regulator.
Going public?The Winklevoss twins are considering taking Gemini Trust, the cryptocurrency exchange and custodian founded in 2014,public, according to a Bloomberg interview. “We are definitely considering it and making sure that we have that option. We are watching the market and we are also having internal discussions on whether it makes sense,” Cameron Winklevoss said. The firm released the Gemini Credit Card offeringcryptocurrency rewardstoday.
Race for adoptionCentral bank digital currencies (CBDCs) arelagging behind in crypto adoption, according to a new research note from the Australian investment bank Macquarie. “It is still unclear how entrenched private cryptos will become before CBDCs become a viable alternative for more efficient transactions,” with central banks at risk of losing control over the monetary system if so. While crypto is growing more popular, there are serious roadblocks to hyperbitcoinization – like brokeragesrunning out of BTCand ex-Ripple CTOslosing their keys.
Related:First Mover: Forget Facebook's Stablecoin. Now It's $700B Bitcoin in the Crosshairs
Security measuresGrayscale Investments, the world’s largest digital currency asset manager, announced it has begundissolution of its $19.2 million Grayscale XRP Trust, the latest step to minimize risk by distancing itself fromXRP. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is suing Ripple Labs for unregistered sales of XRP. Grayscale, owned by CoinDesk parent Digital Currency Group, had already removed XRP from its large-cap crypto fund. Meanwhile, Japan’s top financial regulator has saidXRP is a is a crypto asset, not necessarily a security, under state law.
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• UPPER LIMIT?Deribit offers $400,000 strike on bitcoin futures. (CoinDesk)
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• UNHOSTED DEBATE:Comment period for controversial FinCEN rule proposal extended. (CoinDesk)
Trading hall of fameOn Oct. 30, someone (a single trader or small group) bought 16,000 contracts of Jan. 29 expiry call options at the $36,000 strike for 0.003 bitcoin per contract, according to data shared by Deribit. The initial investment or total purchase cost was 48 BTC, or roughly $638,400 as per bitcoin’s price back then.Omkar Godbole tells the story of this legendary trade.
Finance, censorship and BrooksActing Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks is set tostep down today, ending a brief though impactful stint at the U.S.’ top banking regulator.
Brooks, who came to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency by way of Coinbase and Fannie Mae, has pushed for greater flexibility and amiability between the banking sector and crypto – including issuing several interpretative letters saying federally regulated banks can custody crypto, process stablecoin transactions and serve as nodes in a blockchain network.
Related:OCC Chief Brian Brooks Is Stepping Down Thursday
As part of his mandate, Brooks also attempted to create a more “open” financial system by preventing banks from withholding services from “high-risk” businesses, like those in culturally sensitive industries such as tobacco, guns and fracking, as well as financially dubious firms like payday lenders.
Open for a 45-day comment period, Brooks finalized the rule today in what some are calling 11th-hour decision-making.
In November, Brooks and OCC Chief Economist Charles Calamoris proposed a rule that said banks should judge prospective clients based only on specific credit and operational criteria. This, the regulators wrote, would prevent “politically driven discrimination.”
Brooks hasn’tgiven up the theme. “We live in a world where not only information but also money might be controlled by a handful of elites who might not like the way that any one of us thinks [about an issue],” Brooks said yesterday at a livestreamed Elliptic event.
The outgoing OCC chief was speaking obliquely about financial firms like Shopify, Stripe and Deutsche Bank cutting ties with outgoing President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capital riot that left five dead and interrupted the congressional certification of the presidential election results.
“Everything is at risk” if financial technology is politicized, Brooks said.
The trouble is, as J.P. Koning noted in a CoinDesk column in December,everything is already politicized. Responding to Brooks’ proposal to foster a politically neutral financial system, Koning wrote:
“In banking, loans are the fodder for creating safe deposits. So if a bank wants to attract modern consumers by setting up a clean supply chain (aka fair trade bank account) that means pruning source material for deposits, say coal miner loans.”
Banks are private institutions that have the right to make tough calls about who to serve and how to curate the types of products they have on offer, Koning argues. While some people see the rise of “woke capitalism” as a form ofsocial coercion, it’s anything but.
No one compels the creation of cruelty-free T-shirts anymore than bonds definitely not backed by blood money. If there is a market for it, these non-neutral, inherently political products will arise, the argument goes. Further, attempts from regulators like Brooks to foist neutrality on the system – thereby preventing banks from cutting ties with dubious businesses for any number of reasons – is a bridge too far.
“The rule lacks both logic and legal basis, it ignores basic facts about how banking works and it will undermine the safety and soundness of the banks,” BPI President Greg Baer said in a Thursday statement responding to the formalized rule.
It’s for similar reasons that Twitter’s decision to banish Trump from its internet fiefdom is an act of free speech,rather than censorship.
Nic Carter, partner at Castle Island Ventures, CoinDesk columnist and public intellectual, calls this rhetorical technique the “private company fallacy.” While businesses are free to curate, this “implies a kind of anarcho-capitalist paradise, where firms are sovereign and the sole masters of their own destinies,” he wrote in a recentCoinDesk op-ed.
In reality, Carter argues, companies are enmeshed in a public-private network. Corporate executives filter in and out of public office (like Brooks!) and most industries are protected by regulations crafted with direct input from the private sector.
“Banks are demonstrably not private companies; they are better understood as public-private partnerships, being granted the ability to create money in exchange for heavy regulation,” Carter wrote.
Wherever you may draw the line, Brooks “open access” rule is reportedly likely to be overturned. Bloomberg reports banks are “fuming” at the last-minute act, and that several are already planning lawsuits.
In fact, much of Brooks’ legacy is in danger of being overturned. There’s nothing binding about interpretative letters – like the ones allowing banks to custody crypto or bank stablecoin clients. And even if it were, industry commenters have cast doubt that any bankswould jumpat theopportunities presented.
What this means for Anchorage’s conditional approval for a national trust charter – announced yesterday, setting it up as the first “digital asset bank” to be allowed to operate across the U.S. – is unknown.
To be sure, Brooks is thinking far ahead into the future, when banks will beself-driving bits of code.
• Blockchain Bites: OCC’s Head Stepping Down, Anchorage to Become First National ‘Digital Asset Bank’
• Blockchain Bites: OCC’s Head Stepping Down, Anchorage to Become First National ‘Digital Asset Bank’ || XRP Erases SEC-Led Drop as Supporters Pump Price Over $0.60: Payments-focused cryptocurrency XRP jumped to an over two-month high on Monday. The move more than reversed the late-December price slide triggered by legal troubles at the San Francisco-based payment protocol developer Ripple Labs, which has close ties to the digital asset. XRP rose to a high of $0.6836 during European trading hours, its highest level since Nov. 25, extending the weekends rally from $0.27 to $0.50, according to CoinDesk 20 data. As a result, the cryptocurrency has replaced the tether stablecoin as the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value. Related: Blockchain Bites: The 'Silver Lining' for Bitcoin XRP prices fell from $0.55 to $0.20 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced a lawsuit against Ripple Labs on Dec. 22, triggering a number of exchange delistings of the cryptocurrency. The regulator charged the company with violating securities laws by raising $1.3 billion over seven years from retail investors through its sales of XRP. Ripple Labs pushed back against the SECs allegations on Friday, arguing the functionality and liquidity of XRP are wholly incompatible with securities regulation, and its registration as a security would impair its main utility in faster, cheaper and more transparent global payments. The cryptocurrency picked up a strong bid on Saturday, rising 56% to register its biggest single-day gain in three years, and has remained on the offensive ever since. A coordinated effort by the members of the two-day-old Telegram group called Buy & Hold XRP alongside calls to buy XRP by the r/SatoshiStreetBets group seems to have helped push the cryptocurrency to multi-month highs. At press time, the Telegram pump group had 200,000 members. Related: XRP Pump Fails to Materialize as Price Crashes 40% From Day's High However, some observers are of the opinion the Telegram traders may not be the sole drivers of the price rise. 24H volume on XRP on Sunday was over $26 billion. Even if each of the groups members dropped $5,000 on XRP, that equates to 2% of total daily volume. Lets be rational here no Telegram group is pumping the 5th largest coin in the space, popular Twitter-based analyst Credible Crypto tweeted Sunday. Story continues The cryptocurrency is trading near $0.66 at press time, representing a nearly 30% gain on the day. XRPs next target is $0.80, which, if breached, would allow a rally to $1 and higher, Alex Melikhov, CEO and founder of cryptocurrency framework Equilibrium and the EOSDT stablecoin, told CoinDesk. As Melikhov said, there are no resistance levels between $0.80 and $1.00. A convincing move above the $1 mark would shift the focus to record highs above $3.00 reached in December 2017. Related Stories XRP Erases SEC-Led Drop as Supporters Pump Price Over $0.60 XRP Erases SEC-Led Drop as Supporters Pump Price Over $0.60
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
|
Trend: up || Prices: 39266.01, 38903.44, 46196.46, 46481.11, 44918.18, 47909.33, 47504.85, 47105.52, 48717.29, 47945.06
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2018-01-25]
BTC Price: 11259.40, BTC RSI: 40.30
Gold Price: 1362.40, Gold RSI: 77.33
Oil Price: 65.51, Oil RSI: 75.43
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Second bitcoin futures debut could lure volume to wild market: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin investors expect futures volumes to perk up when CME Group Inc, the world's largest derivatives exchange operator, launches its own contract to wager on the cryptocurrency on Sunday. The second U.S. bitcoin futures launch is seen as another step towards big institutional investors warming up to a volatile asset that had until recently been accessible only via largely unregulated markets. Like the futures contract launched last week by rival Cboe Global Markets, CME's will be cash settled. But it will be priced off an index of data from several cryptocurrency exchanges, instead of just one. "The CME contract is based on a broader array of exchanges," said Matt Osborne, chief investment officer of Altegris, a $2.5 billion alternative investments provider based in San Diego, California. "So there is a possibility that the CME contract may generate more interest and more volume." The January CME contract will trade on. Bitcoin has drawn attention for its eye-popping price gains, but it is also notoriously volatile. Bitcoin exchanges and digital currency wallets meanwhile have struggled with issues like outages, denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and hacks. Bitcoin hit another record high on Friday near $18,000 on the Luxembourg-based BitStamp platform, and has soared roughly 1,700 percent so far this year. Chicago-based Cboe's bitcoin futures surged nearly 20 percent in their debut on Monday, and more than 4,000 contracts changed hands by the end of the 4:15 p.m. EDT settlement. But the trading volume in the one-month contract, which expires in January, fell to just around 1,500 contracts the next day. By Friday, volume had stabilized at roughly more than 1,000 contracts. In contrast, trading volume in the Cboe volatility index futures typically runs in the tens of thousands to more than 100,000 contracts, market participants said. The decline in bitcoin futures volume had been expected, analysts said, given concerns about the cryptocurrency's underlying volatility. Story continues And discount brokerage TD Ameritrade said on Friday it would allow certain clients to trade Cboe bitcoin futures from Dec. 18, pointing to a potential pickup. The futures contract price has declined more than 5 percent since its launch on Dec. 10. Some investors believe the CME bitcoin futures could attract more institutional demand because the final settlement price is culled from multiple exchanges. The Cboe futures contract is based on a closing auction price of bitcoin from the Gemini exchange, which is owned and operated by virtual currency entrepreneurs and brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. To be sure, the general sentiment in the market remains one of caution and this has been reflected in margin requirements for the contracts. In the futures market, margin refers to the initial deposit made into an account in order to enter into a contract. The margin requirement at CME is 35 percent, while at Cboe, it is 40 percent, reflecting the cryptocurreny's volatility. The margin for an S&P 500 futures contract, by contrast, is just 5 percent, analysts said. One futures trader said the average margin for brokers or intermediaries on bitcoin contracts is roughly twice the exchange margins. Andrew Busch, chief market intelligence officer of the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission in an interview with CNBC last week pointed out that the underlying cash market for bitcoin is still not regulated. "It's important to keep that in mind when (investors) are trying to make a decision," he added. Some analysts believe it is going to take some time before bitcoin futures take off in a big way. Many professional traders use quantitative systems to identify trading opportunities and that requires a history of data which the bitcoin futures contracts do not yet have. "Volumes are going to slowly increase as professional traders get comfortable with the price action and more importantly get comfortable with the volatility and the margin usage," said Altegris' Osborne. Bitcoin was set up in 2008 by an individual or group calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto, and was the first digital currency to successfully use cryptography to keep transactions secure and hidden, making traditional financial regulation difficult if not impossible. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli) || Bitcoin Gold DASH and Monero forecast for the week of December 25, 2017, Technical Analysis: Bitcoin Gold BTG/USD has struggled a bit during the week, initially tried to rally, reaching towards the $350 level. However, we have rolled over rather drastically to form an absolutely engulfing red candle, breaking down below the bottom of the shooting star from the previous week. We have tested $200, and it looks as if we will probably go below there. Longer-term, Bitcoin Gold is probably a short, as crypto currencies or falling out of favor quite rapidly. With this, Bitcoin Gold is probably going to get punished as it isnt one of the bigger crypto currencies. If the $200 level holds, then we could rally again towards the $300 level, but it isnt looking as if this is going to happen this week. Get Into Dash Trading Today BTG/USD DASH USD and XMR USD Video 25.12.17 BTG/USD weekly chart, December 25, 2017 DASH DASH/USD rallied a bit during the trading session, reaching towards the $1200 level initially before falling to the $800 level. One of the most interesting things about this week is not only that it was so brutally negative, but it is the highest volume week going back several months. Because of this, I believe that the selling pressure continues, and a move below the $800 level opens up the market to reach towards $600, and then $400. The markets have been overdone for a while, and I think we are starting to look for more reasonable pricing underneath, as DASH continues to be extraordinarily volatile, even for crypto currency. DASH/USD weekly chart, December 25, 2017 Monero XMR/USD initially shot above the $450 level, but then broke down significantly to form a massive shooting star. At this point, I think that if we break down below the $200 level, the Monero markets are done. That would send the market looking towards the $100 level at the very least, and much like the DASH markets, weve seen heavy volume on an extraordinarily negative candle stick. Alternately, if we break above the top of the shooting star, that would be an extraordinarily bullish sign. From a technical analysis standpoint, theres nothing good about what just happened over the last 5 sessions. Either way, this is going to be very volatile market. Story continues Buy & Sell Cryptocurrency Instantly Monero/USD weekly Chart, December 25, 2017 This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: ETH/USD Price Forecast December 26, 2017, Technical Analysis Silver forecast for the week of December 25, 2017, Technical Analysis USD/CAD forecast for the week of December 25, 2017, Technical Analysis ETH/USD forecast for the week of December 25, 2017, Technical Analysis Gold forecast for the week of December 25, 2017, Technical Analysis Dow Jones 30 and NASDAQ 100 forecast for the week of December 25, 2017, Technical Analysis || What Happened in the Stock Market Today: The market was broadly positive on Tuesday, with theDow Jones Industrial Average(DJINDICES: ^DJI)closing basically flat and theS&P 500(SNPINDEX: ^GSPC)posting a small gain.
[{"Index": "Dow", "Percentage Change": "(0.01%)", "Point Change": "(3.79)"}, {"Index": "S&P 500", "Percentage Change": "0.22%", "Point Change": "6.16"}]
Data source: Yahoo! Finance.
Biotech stocks had another strong day, with theiShares NASDAQ Biotechnology ETF(NASDAQ: IBB)rising 1.1%. Gold and gold mining stocks were also up; theVanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF(NYSEMKT: GDX)gained 1.6%.
As for individual stocks,Netflix(NASDAQ: NFLX)shares gained on strong subscriber growth, andResMed(NYSE: RMD)soared due to good profits.
Image source: Getty Images.
Shares of Netflix continued their epic run, as they jumped 10% after the companyannounced resultsfor the fourth quarter. Revenue increased 33% to $3.3 billion and earnings per share grew from $0.15 in Q4 last year to $0.41. Both numbers were consistent with the company's guidance and analyst expectations. The surprise came in the closely watched metric of net subscription additions. The company added 8.3 million new subscribers in the quarter, compared with 7.1 million a year earlier and previous guidance of 6.3 million.
Memberships in the U.S. increased by 2 million compared with expectations of 1.25 million, and international subscriber additions totaled 6.4 million, exceeding guidance of 5.1 million. The surprisingly high rate of additions came in spite of price increases of about 10% in the U.S. and Europe, resulting in an increase in average selling price of 5% domestically and 12% internationally. The international segment delivered its first full year of positive contribution profit in the company's history.
Netflix believes subscriber growth is being driven by the original content that the company is investing billions to produce. With the higher subscriber numbers, Netflix plans to accelerate investment in new original content. "We believe our big investments in content are paying off," the company wrote in its quarterly investor letter. "In 2017, average streaming hours per membership grew by 9% year-over-year. With greater than expected member growth (resulting in more revenue), we now plan to spend $7.5-$8.0 billion on content on a P&L basis in 2018."
With the higher content spending, Netflix expects the consumption of free cash flow to increase from about $2 billion this year to $3 billion to $4 billion in 2018. As long as that negative cash flow keepsbringing in new viewersaround the world, investors seem more than willing to bid up the value of the company.
ResMed, a maker of medical devices for respiratory conditions,blew away expectationswith results from its fiscal second quarter, and the stock soared 14.7% to an all-time high. Revenue increased 13% to $601 million and non-GAAPEPS hit $1.00, up 37% from last year. Analysts were expecting the company to earn $0.78 per share on sales of $580 million.
Revenue in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America, excluding the software-as-a-service business Brightree, increased 12% to $329 million. Revenue in the rest of the world was up 15%, or 8% in constant currency terms. Non-GAAP operating income increased 20% thanks to operating leverage. The company will take a charge of $126.6 million due to the new tax law, but expects long-term benefits from decreased tax rates going forward.
"We had a strong quarter with double-digit revenue and operating profit growth," said CEO Mick Farrell in the press release. "Our masks have performed well around the world, device sales are solid, and our cloud-based software continues to grow rapidly. Our operating excellence initiatives are achieving leverage in the business with more runway ahead."
ResMed is seeing double-digit growth as it combines its devices for sleep apnea and COPD with cloud-based monitoring apps, winningfavor with investors, as today's stock price gain demonstrates.
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Jim Crumlyowns shares of Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Netflix. The Motley Fool recommends ResMed. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Will McDonald's Do a Stock Split in 2018?: McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) is an American icon , pioneering the fast-food industry and becoming one of the most recognized brands in the world. Shareholders in McDonald's have also shared in the company's success, with dependable dividend income and impressive share-price advances over time. Yet for those who like to see signs of confidence from their investments, the 21st century has been a disappointment for McDonald's. The company hasn't done a stock split in 18 years, even though its stock price is now in a position at which it would previously have made such a move fairly quickly. Let's turn to where McDonald's stands right now and whether 2018 is likely to bring a decision to split the shares of the restaurant chain. Golden Arches hanging from the ceiling of a convention hall over an empty carpet, with McDonald's booth at right. Image source: McDonald's. When has McDonald's done stock splits before? As you can see below, stock splits weren't unusual for McDonald's during the 20th century. Date of Split Split Ratio 100 Shares in 1965 Would Be... March 29, 1966 3 for 2 150 shares May 7, 1968 2 for 1 300 shares May 23, 1969 2 for 1 600 shares May 21, 1971 3 for 2 900 shares May 22, 1972 2 for 1 1,800 shares Sept. 14, 1982 3 for 2 2,700 shares Sept. 5, 1984 3 for 2 4,050 shares June 3, 1986 3 for 2 6,075 shares June 8, 1987 3 for 2 9,112 shares June 2, 1989 2 for 1 18,225 shares June 7, 1994 2 for 1 36,450 shares Feb. 12, 1999 2 for 1 72,900 shares Data source: McDonald's investor relations. The clusters of McDonald's stock splits mirror the most successful times in the stock market. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, sizable advances for the stocks in the Dow Jones Industrials helped lift McDonald's to new heights. Consistent share-price gains required stock splits at a pace of every one to two years. The bear market of the mid-1970s put a stop to McDonald's split history, and repeated bouts of inflation held down the market until the early 1980s. Story continues From there, another phase of growth brought splits every year or two for McDonald's shareholders. A quick rebound from the 1987 market crash led to further stock splits. During the 1990s, McDonald's favored 2-for-1 splits over its previous predilection for 3-for-2 splits, and that allowed it to make less frequent moves. What price levels triggered McDonald's splits? The guidelines that McDonald's seemed to use in determining when to do stock splits were fairly common among its peers. Early on, when the stock started to get into the neighborhood of triple-digit levels -- reaching into the $80 to $90 range most often -- the company would do a 3-for-2 split to push the price down into the $50s or $60s. Later on, when 2-for-1 splits were used more frequently, splits could happen anywhere between $60 and $100. What's remarkable though is that the stock never came close to reaching its current level around $170 without seeing a split hold it down. The gains that McDonald's has posted recently have put the share price into unprecedented territory, and that has frustrated investors who've counted on a stock split to keep the share price down and to communicate the company's confidence in its long-term prospects. Why a stock split might not be on the menu at McDonald's The fact that McDonald's didn't do a split long before now shows how much things have changed in the industry. The need for a double-digit share price to accommodate retail investors has disappeared with the advent of discount brokers. Moreover, although McDonald's has an above-average weighting of just under 5% in the Dow Jones Industrials, five Dow components currently have higher share prices, and a sixth has been trading places with McDonald's on a regular basis. To keep its influence in the Dow, McDonald's might actually feel pressure not to consider a stock split. McDonald's has said that it looks at the issue periodically, but since an early 2016 investor question on the topic, the company behind the Golden Arches hasn't seemed inclined to take action. Previous comments focused on the logistical and expense ramifications of splits for the company. Based on current conditions, it's unlikely that McDonald's will do a stock split in 2018. While its share price has kept climbing thanks to favorable strategic moves for the business, the fast-food giant seems content to deliver the healthy dividend and strong share-price increases that resulted in total returns exceeding 40% in 2017. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Dan Caplinger has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || My Top Casino Stock Pick for 2018: Last year was outstanding for the casino industry: Most of the industry's major operators beat the S&P 500. Penn National Gaming (NASDAQ: PENN) was the biggest winner, due both to its acquisition of Pinnacle Entertainment and its continued operational improvements. Wynn Resorts (NASDAQ: WYNN) , one of my picks a year ago , and Melco Resorts (NASDAQ: MLCO) were also up over 80% on the year. The big driver behind the rise in casino stocks was a recovery in Macau's gaming market . Casino revenues in the Chinese territory rose 19.1% in 2017 to $33.1 billion, and the VIP market finally showed some renewed life after a few years during which a Chinese government crackdown on corruption and conspicuous luxury drove the wealthy away from its high-stakes tables. Now, as the calendar turns to 2018, the casino industry may offer some unique values to investors. WYNN Chart WYNN data by YCharts What goes up... keeps going up? I mentioned that Macau's gaming revenues were up in 2017; that trend should continue into 2018. Regulatory controls on players from China appear to be easing, and mid-market consumers looking for entertainment have been increasingly making Macau their destination of choice. If Macau's gaming revenue continues to rise, the companies with the most to gain are Wynn, Las Vegas Sands, and Melco Resorts. But there's risk in being blindly bullish on Macau's growth. The revenue chart there can turn on a dime if the Chinese economy slows or if the leadership in Beijing decides to restrict visitation or money flowing to Macau . On top of the risks to the overall Macau market, new properties from MGM Resorts (NYSE: MGM) and SJM are scheduled to open there in 2018. When you look at the potential market dilution, and the premiums that investors are paying for Macau-centric stocks (which I'll cover in a monemt), there's reason to be skeptical about the prospects of 2017's winners continuing their upward runs. Story continues Macau skyline at night. Image source: Getty Images. Growth opportunities are rare For decades, the casino industry has been in growth mode. But that pattern is largely over; in 2018, there just aren't a lot of growth opportunities to be had. Macau's market is limited by government regulations that cap both the number of casinos and the total numbers of gaming tables. There also aren't many meaningful casino resorts set to be completed in the next year in the U.S. or Asia. One company that will complete an important resort in 2018 is MGM Resorts. It's putting the finishing touches on MGM Cotai, located between Wynn Palace and Sands Cotai Central in the heart of Cotai. It could add between $500 million and $1 billion in EBITDA to the company, a sizable impact even for a business the size of MGM Resorts. Japan, which recently opened itself up to casino gaming, presents the other big potential opportunity, and bids to build megaresorts there may open up in 2018. But no Japanese resort will be completed until at least 2021, and it's unclear both how many will be built and by whom. So for the next few years, most gaming companies will rely on their existing properties for growth. The best value in casino stocks With Macau-focused casino stocks trading for a premium (as measured by the enterprise-value-to-EBITDA ratio), I think the best value for 2018 is MGM Resorts. The MGM Cotai will open sometime mid-year, which will keep its bottom line growing. It also has a stable of consistent cash flows from Las Vegas, where it's one of the biggest casino owners. It's also a better value today (again, measured by EV-to-EBITDA ratio) than Wynn, Melco, or Las Vegas Sands . MGM EV to EBITDA (TTM) Chart MGM EV to EBITDA (TTM) data by YCharts If Macau grows quickly, that will favor Wynn, Melco, or Las Vegas Sands, but I think the growth rate there may cool down from 2017's pace, and new resorts may temper the impact of what growth that does occur. MGM, on the other hand, will likely grow no matter what Macau does, and that makes its value compelling for investors in 2018. I'm keeping my thumbs-up call on MGM Resorts on My CAPS page , and think this will be a year the stock outperforms the broader gaming market. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Travis Hoium owns shares of Wynn Resorts. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Bitcoin: Coinbase Users Get 'Cash' Windfall: Coinbase, the most popular U.S. crypto-currency exchange, released “Bitcoin Cash” — a new currency created this summer and currently worth around $3,000 — into many customer accounts on Tuesday evening.
The decision came as a surprise since Coinbase had previously said it would deliver the Bitcoin Cash, which is owed to anyone who held bitcoin on or before August, early in 2018.
The move caused the price of bitcoin, which started the day around $19,000, to drop sharply. Shortly after Coinbaseannouncedthe news, the price fell below $16,000 but has since risen closer to $17,000 according toCoindesk.
Bitcoin Cash, meanwhile, has soared nearly 50% in the last 24 hours, from around $2,100 to a brief high of around $3,600, and is now thethird most valuabledigital currency after bitcoin and Ethereum.
Here is what the announcement looked like on Coinbase:
While the arrival of Bitcoin Cash amounts to a windfall for Coinbase customer, it also has the potential to create a nightmare when it comes to dealing with the IRS. AsFortuneexplainedlast month, some lawyers think Bitcoin Cash could amount to a taxable event like a dividend while others believe the tax obligation will only arise when they sell it.
The creation of Bitcoin Cash took place this summer following abitter schismbetween bitcoin insiders. It’s essentially a clone of the original currency, which was created in 2009, but with “blocks” that are twice are as big. (Blocks are the units that make up a blockchain, a type of software that contain a permanent ledger of transactions).
When it arrived, Bitcoin Cash replicated every record found on the original bitcoin blockchain — including the existing distribution of bitcoin wealth. As such, everyone who possessed bitcoin received an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash.
Coinbase initially said it would not distribute the Bitcoin Cash, in part because it was wary of recognizing “forked” versions of the original currency. But following an outcry, and a threatenedclass action suit, the company relented.
Meanwhile, others who did not rely on a third party custodian like Coinbase to hold their bitcoin had immediate access to the Bitcoin Cash, and have been trading it in the market.
In the short term, the widespread distribution of Bitcoin Cash is likely to intensify the speculative mania surrounding crypto-currency, which some are warning is a bubble. In the longer term, Bitcoin Cash will also be a test of the viability of “forks” from the original bitcoin, including whether their proliferation will pose a threat to the larger market (one longtime bitcoin advocate notably called Bitcoin Cash a “dangerous trick“).
For companies like Coinbase, the arrival of forks also present engineering and security challenges that they must accommodate. In its blog post, Coinbase explained its decision to support Bitcoin Cash as follows: “We have been monitoring the Bitcoin Cash network over the last few months and have decided to enable full support including the ability to buy, sell, send and receive. Factors we considered include developer and community support, security, stability, market price and trading volume.” || Yahoo Finance Podcast with Alexis Christoforous: What are the dos and don’ts of finding—and landing—your dream job? Anchor Alexis Christoforous sat down with Glassdoor’s Scott Dobroski to highlight a few tips for making it happen. Listen to the whole podcast above or download it on Apple podcasts , Google Play or Stitcher . Glassdoor, one of the world’s largest job sites, recently launched a new online class, “ How to Get a Job: A Step-by-Step Guide ,” to help job seekers learn the best way to look, write the perfect resume and cover letter, stand out in an interview, negotiate pay and more. So, what are some of the tips? • Customize your resume for each job you apply for. Be sure to include skills that are relevant to the particular job. • Use your cover letter to describe yourself and explain why you are a good fit for the job. It shouldn’t re-list items on your resume—it should complement it. Thank-you notes are still a thing! Be sure to send one, via email or snail-mail. Be timely and reiterate your interest. Alexis and Scott talk these tips and more. Listen up—and get that dream job! Subscribe to Yahoo Finance Presents Podcast Apple podcasts , Google Play or Stitcher. Love this podcast? Check out some more: Bitcoin: Everything you need to know How the Trump tax cuts will affect you Like sports and business? Check out Dan Robert’s Sportsbook Podcast. The Patriots Problem? Can NFL bounce back in the Playoffs? Get a jump on your morning finance news with the Yahoo Finance Morning Brief newsletter. Sign up here . || Could Wheaton Precious Metals Be a Millionaire-Maker Stock?: Wheaton Precious Metals(NYSE: WPM)is the world's largest precious metals streaming and royalty company. Yet, the stock has not just lagged peersFranco-Nevada(NYSE: FNV)andRoyal Gold(NASDAQ: RGLD)in the past five years, but lost investors money during the period, unlike the other two stocks.
As an investor, though, you may have heard how past performance doesn't guarantee or predict future results. Because Wheaton Precious Metals wasn't a great stock in the past doesn't mean it can never be. In fact, Wheaton isn't the same company that you knew five, or even two, years ago. Management has, perhaps, realized the importance of shareholder returns, which is why it is taking a page out of Franco-Nevada's and Royal Gold's playbook and changing Wheaton's product mix dramatically to boost returns.
Could Wheaton Precious Metals' stock turn your thousands into millions? Image source: Getty Images.
The transformation is meaningful, one that has the potential to propel Wheaton shares higher and reward shareholders with much stronger returns than in the past -- something that the market appears to be overlooking, but you shouldn't.
The growth in Royal Gold's and Franco-Nevada's top and bottom lines in the past five years can put Wheaton's lackluster performance to shame.
It's not that Wheaton isn't utilizing its assets or capital resources efficiently. In fact, all three companies are generating strikingly similar returns on assets and invested capital of around 3% each. The problem lies elsewhere.
WPM revenue (TTM)data byYCharts.
Gold has historically outperformed silver, and 2017 was no different: While gold prices are up almost so far, silver notched up only about 3% gains. If you go back five years, silver prices have crashed 47% while gold has lost 24% in value.
Now correlate the disparate movements between gold and silver prices to the operational performances of the three streaming companies, and you'll spot one common factor between Franco-Nevada and Royal Gold: Both are primarily gold companies. So while Royal Gold gets 85% of its revenue from gold, the yellow metal contributed roughly 67% to Franco-Nevada's revenue in the last quarter. Comparatively,nearly 58%of Wheaton's total production came from silver last year.
To cut a long story short, a larger exposure to gold proved a disadvantage for Wheaton. But that's about to change.
During its third quarter, only 48% of Wheaton's total revenue came from silver. While the quarter was unusually skewed toward gold, Wheaton is striving hard to rebalance its silver-to-gold mix in the long run, which is why it paid $800 million to mining giantVale(NYSE: VALE)in 2016 to acquire the right to purchase an additional 25% of the gold produced from Vale's Brazil-based Salobo mine over and above the 50% production it already had an agreement on.
As you may know, Wheaton is a streaming and royalty company that doesn't own or operate mines but buys precious metal streams from mining companies such as Vale at low costs in exchange for up-front funding. With access to 75% production from Salobo, Wheaton's gold portfolio has got a huge boost, so much so that it projects gold to make up 45% of its average production between 2017 and 2021.
Image source: Wheaton Precious Metals.
Granted, Wheatonwill still lagRoyal Gold and Franco-Nevada in terms of exposure to gold, but for Wheaton shareholders, it is a step in the right direction that could boost the company's revenue, profit, and cash flow to a considerable extent. There's no reason why that shouldn't reflect in Wheaton's stock price.
In fact, there's no better stock for precious metals investors to gain leverage to both gold and silver than Wheaton Precious Metals today.
It's a myth that gold and silver companies can't be millionaire-maker stocks. Just look at Franco-Nevada's run-up in the past decade to see what I mean. I can't say if Wheaton Precious Metals can replicate Franco-Nevada's mind-boggling returns, but I do see strong chances of the stock faring better than in the past and rewarding patient investors forseveral reasons asidefrom the ones mentioned above. Now's a good time to consider Wheaton stock as you'll be entering during its early stages of transition from a primarily silver to a more balanced gold-and-silver company.
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Neha Chamariahas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Apple Addresses Repatriation Issue, but Leaves Big Question Unanswered: There has beenmuch conjecture,including from me, over howApple Inc.(NASDAQ: AAPL)would use the windfall of cash produced by recent changes to U.S. tax code. As of the company's last financial report, it had $252 billion stashed overseas, in an effort to avoid the 35% tax rate on repatriated profits.
In a press release on Wednesday, the iPhone maker confirmed that it will pay $38 billion in taxes, in line with what many believed, saying the payment "would likely be the largest of its kind ever made."
Apple also spelled out a number of ways it plans to spend and invest the cash hoard. While the details weren't entirely comprehensive, they did provide investors with some indication of Apple's plans over the next five years.
Image source: Apple.
The company said its direct contribution to the U.S. economy will top $350 billion over the coming five years, which will be achieved through a combination of current spending and new investments.
Apple said it's planning investments "to build on its commitment to support the American economy," and plans to focus on three areas that it believes will have the greatest impact creating jobs: direct employment at Apple, investing and spending among the company's domestic manufacturers and suppliers, and driving further growth in what the company calls the "fast-growing app economy" that are the result of the iPhone and App Store.
Apple said it will make over $30 billion in capital expenditures in the country over the next five years and will hire over 20,000 employees. While some of these new hires will staff existing campuses, Apple said it plans to open a new facility, though the location has yet to be announced. Apple plans to reveal details for the new campus later this year.
Of the $30 billion investment, Apple said that more than one-third of that will be in data centers. The company broke ground this month on a new facility on Reno, which will support existing locations in Nevada. The new campus will be run exclusively by "green energy." Apple reported that all of the company's U.S. offices, data centers, and retail stores are "powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources like solar, wind and micro-hydro power."
Apple is investing in suppliers and partners. Image source: Apple.
Early last year, Apple established the $1 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund to "support innovation among American manufacturers and help others establish a presence in the US." The company said it will increase that fund to $5 billion.
In 2017, Apple awarded $200 million toCorningto support the company's research and development, capital equipment needs, and state-of-the-art glass processing. The company produces the glass for Apple's iconic iPhone. Another recipient from last year wasFinisar, which received $390 million from the fund. The company produces the vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) that enable Apple's new Face ID feature, as well as Animoji and Portrait mode selfies. The funds will allow Finisar to exponentially increase its research and development spending and high-volume production of the components.
Apple also said it will support education programs in the areas of science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM), as well as specifically encouraging coding education. The company highlighted that there are more than 500,000 programming positions in the U.S. that lack qualified candidates, and that number is expected to rise to 1.4 million by 2020.
Apple developed what it called "a powerful yet easy-to-learn coding language called Swift, the free Swift Playgrounds app and a free curriculum, App Development with Swift," to address the skills gap. The company said these programs are available to anyone and plans to expand their reach to support teachers and target kids in "underserved communities."
Apple is investing in future coders. Image source: Apple.
While the company had lots to say about how it would spend its money, it's what the company didn't say that is likely of most interest to investors. Much of the conjecture regarding Apple's financial plans included returning a greater amount of capital to shareholders.
To be fair, the company has been generous over the past five years, doling out $61 billion in dividends and repurchasing $166 billion in stock, which reduced its share count by 20%. Many investors and analysts alike believe the company will boost its dividend and buyback program, but thus far the company has been silent on the issue.
As large as those numbers are, they don't tell the entire story. Apple's dividend yields a paltry 1.38% as of this writing, and the company is only paying out 26% of its profits, so there's still a lot of room to increase the dividend.
That said, I do expect an announcement when Apple reports its fiscal 2018 first-quarter results on Feb. 1. We'll just have to wait until then for the answer to the question on everyone's lips.
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• 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing
• 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today
• The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss
• Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This
Danny Venaowns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Corning. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Even Without Kansas City Southern's One-Time Tax Gain, Q4 Results Were Strong: Kansas City Southern 's (NYSE: KSU) most recent earnings results may have left some investors stunned. The company's fourth-quarter earnings were more than the past three quarters combined, and it wasn't as if the company was struggling in 2017 . Of course, the headline numbers were a little too good to be true, but the railroad company's results were still impressive in their own right. Let's dive into Kansas City Southern's most recent results as well as what investors can expect in 2018. Rail yard at dusk Image source: Getty Images. By the numbers Metric Q4 2017 Q3 2017 Q4 2016 Revenue $660 million $656 million $598 million Operating income $422 million $233.8 million $387 million Earnings per share (diluted) $5.33 $1.23 $1.21 Free cash flow $157 million $112 million $78 million Data source: Kansas City Southern earnings release. Kansas City Southern's earnings per share result likely has investors euphoric, but it should also have investors a little curious. In a slow-growth business like railroads, a more-than-300% improvement in earnings per share isn't possible. This was all attributed to the changes to the U.S. tax code and some of the deferred tax liabilities on the company's books. With a lower corporate tax rate, the company's future tax obligations are about $480 million less than before. When combined with the taxes it has to pay on its fourth-quarter results, the company netted a $359 million income tax gain. One-time gains have been a recurring theme among the other railroad companies that have reported earnings thus far . This shouldn't be the only story for Kansas City Southern's earnings, though, because these results were still admirable absent this one-time gain. Revenue was up 10% compared to this time last year as every business segment posted a year-over-year increase. The best-performing segment was its chemical and petroleum product segment, which benefited from increased shipments of refined petroleum products to Mexico. Story continues KSU revenue by segment for Q4 2016, Q3 2017, and Q4 2017. Shows year-over-year gains for all segments Source: Kansas City Southern earnings release. Chart by author. Even more impressive is that Kansas City Southern reported further improvements in costs and operational efficiency. In the fourth quarter, it reported an operating ratio -- operating expenses divided by revenue -- of 64%. The company was able to achieve this despite delays and other operational hiccups related to Hurricane Harvey in the U.S. and flooding in Mexico in the quarter. Sixty-four percent is by no means the best in the business , but it's encouraging to see the company improve its operating efficiency. These results all led to an adjusted earnings per share result of $1.38. So even if we don't count the tax gain, this was a good quarter for Kansas City Southern. What management had to say CEO Patrick Ottensmeyer was upbeat in the press release about the company's most recent results. He also hinted at 2018 being an even better year. Despite the impact of Hurricane Harvey in the third quarter, strong topline performance, led by our Energy, Automotive and Chemical & Petroleum business units contributed to record full-year adjusted diluted earnings per share of $5.25, an increase of 17% over 2016. Looking ahead to 2018, we believe KCS is positioned to maintain its growth momentum driven by unique franchise opportunities, a strengthening economy and a focus on cost control. We expect to continue leveraging the investments made in our network to grow our business, ensure good customer service and maximize shareholder returns. According to the company's forecast for 2018, there are a lot of factors working in its favor. Reforms to Mexico's energy sector and new petrochemical manufacturing facilities in the U.S. Gulf Coast should significantly boost its chemicals and petroleum business. The company also expects improvement in its intermodal and automotive segments. The one segment that could struggle is energy, as management anticipates lower volumes of coal shipments in Texas from lower demand and fewer deliveries of hydraulic fracturing sand because of new sand mines opening up close to demand centers in West Texas. KSU Chart KSU data by YCharts . What a Fool believes Investors have to be happy with Kansas City Southern's most recent results as well as some of the tailwinds benefiting the company in 2018. With so much manufacturing capacity coming on line on both sides of the U.S. and Mexican border, it seems as though increased cross-border traffic is extremely likely in the coming years. This bodes well for Kansas City Southern, as the railroad is inexorably tied to cross-border shipments between the U.S. and Mexico. The big unknown, of course, is how the recent negotiations of NAFTA will impact its future business. Management has tried to show on previous occasions that much of the company's traffic falls outside the NAFTA agreement and that the business ties between the two nations are so high that it won't lead to a complete breakdown of trade. However, it's not hard to see how a tightening of trade rules could have a significant impact on the company's future. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Tyler Crowe has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
BTC Real Time Price: $9692.16 #GDAX;
$9626.10 #bitstamp;
$9680.00 #gemini;
$9647.46 #hitbtc;
$9530.00 #kraken;
$9824.96 #cex; || こんばんは。 bitcoin priceという || So why didn't I invest in Bitcoin circa 2010? What was 15 year old me thinking!
#bitcoin pic.twitter.com/WRXFREjjbX || bitcoin priceってゆうか、 || The #BitcoinPizza would be worth US$110,275,000.00 right now (up 0.31% in the last 24 hours): #Bitcoin || bitcoin priceってゆうか、 || bitcoin priceってゆうか、 || Tiffany Haddishちゃんが || Bonus Bitcoin. Free bitcoin faucet. Claim up to 5000 satoshi every 15 minutes. http://bonusbitcoin.co/?ref=1172321FF857 … #bitcoin #faucet #btc #free #xe via @bonusbit || Tiffany Haddishちゃんが
|
Trend: down || Prices: 11171.40, 11440.70, 11786.30, 11296.40, 10106.30, 10221.10, 9170.54, 8830.75, 9174.91, 8277.01
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2016-08-24]
BTC Price: 580.18, BTC RSI: 42.34
Gold Price: 1324.40, Gold RSI: 44.00
Oil Price: 46.77, Oil RSI: 56.14
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
These are the most common misconceptions about the fintech industry: (Shutterstock)
The fintech industry promises to shake up the financial world, but the public might have some misconceptions about just how that will happen.
Fintech is surely disruptive and revolutionary, but is it truly a group of startups threatening to destroy traditional financial institutions as we know them? Not according toTradestreaming, which has compiled a list of the biggest misconceptions about the fintech industry.
1) Wall Street will not fall because of it.
The public's distrust for Wall Street and legacy financial players has reached unprecedented levels, but don't expect fintech to ride in like a white knight and change all that.
The finance world is losing some jobs and financial apps are growing in popularity, but these apps are nowhere close to a real threat to taking the place of banks in our economy. Instead, thefintech companiesare helping legacy players evolve.
2) Banks are not being replaced.
Brick-and-mortar banks are becoming less important, particularly among millennials, but they are far from dead and buried.A recent report from the The Institute of International Finance discovered that compliance and regulatory activities can cost banks $1 billion per year, which means it's far too difficult, expensive, and labor intensive for startups to compete with banks head-to-head.
As a result,fintech companieshave decided to compliment banks rather than fight them.
3)Fintech startupsare flashy.
The word "startup" conjures images of Silicon Valley, flowing cash, and fame. Butfintech startupsare anything but sexy, as these companies spend significant time and money to figure out ways to deal with state and federal regulations. Tradestreaming notes that an estimated 10-15% of total human capital costs go toward compliance.
Along with that, they must work tirelessly to bring on new clients, a challenge unto itself.
4) Fintech is not the ultimate equalizer.
Many view fintechs as an equalizer that gives powerful technology to the unbanked and underbanked, which in turn closes opportunity gaps. If everyone has access to cutting-edge financial technology, then the rich and elite wouldn't hold all the cards, right?
That's only true to a degree, as some apps have provided automated tools (such as robo-advisors) for the common man, but these tools typically only go as far the amount of money you pay for them.
Yet even with all these misconceptions, we’ve still entered the most profound era of change for financial services companies since the 1970s brought us index mutual funds, discount brokers and ATMs.
This change will create surprising winners and stunned losers among some of the most powerful names in the financial world: The most contentious conflicts (and partnerships) will be between startups that are completely reengineering decades-old practices, traditional power players who are furiously trying to adapt with their own innovations, and total disruption of established technology & processes:
• Traditional Retail Banks vs. Online-Only Banks:Traditional retail banks provide a valuable service, but online-only banks can offer many of the same services with higher rates and lower fees
• Traditional Lenders vs. Peer-to-Peer Marketplaces: P2P lending marketplaces are growing much faster than traditional lenders—only time will tell if the banks strategy of creating their own small loan networks will be successful
• Traditional Asset Managers vs. Robo-Advisors: Robo-advisors likeBettermentoffer lower fees, lower minimums and solid returns to investors, but the much larger traditional asset managers are creating their own robo-products while providing the kind of handholding that high net worth clients are willing to pay handsomely for.
As you can see, this very fluid environment is creating winners and losers before your eyes…and it’s also creating the potential for new cost savings or growth opportunities for both you and your company.
After months of researching and reporting this important trend, Evan Bakker, research analyst forBI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put togetheran essential report on the fintech ecosystemthat explains the new landscape, identifies the ripest areas for disruption, and highlights the some of the most exciting new companies. These new players have the potential to become the next Visa, Paypal or Charles Schwab because they have the potential to transform important areas of the financial services industry like:
• Retail banking
• Lending and Financing
• Payments and Transfers
• Wealth and Asset Management
• Markets and Exchanges
• Insurance
• Blockchain Transactions
If you work in any of these sectors, it’s important for you to understand how the fintech revolution will change your business and possibly even your career. And if you’re employed in any part of the digital economy, you’ll want to know how you can exploit these new technologies to make your employer more efficient, flexible and profitable.
Among the big picture insights you'll get fromThe Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industry:
• Why financial technology is so disruptive to financial services—it will soon change the nature of almost every financial activity, from banking to payments to wealth management.
• The basic conflict will be between old firms and new—startups are re-imagining financial services processes from top to bottom, while incumbent financial services firms are trying to keep up with new products of their own.
• Both sides face serious obstacles—traditional banks and financial services firms are investing heavily in innovation, but leveraging their investments is difficult with so much invested in legacy systems and profit centers.
• Meanwhile, startups are struggling to navigate a rapidly-changing regulatory landscape and must scale up quickly with limited resources.
• The blockchain is a wild card that could completely overhaul financial services. Both major banks and startups around the world are exploring the technology behind the blockchain, which stores and records Bitcoin transactions. This technology could lower the cost of many financial activities to near-zero and could wipe away many traditional banking activities completely.
This exclusive report also:
• Explains the main growth drivers of the exploding fintech ecosystem.
• Frames the challenges and opportunities faced by incumbents and startups.
• Breaks down global and regionalfintech investments, including which regions are the most significant and which are poised for the highest growth.
• Reveals which two financial services are garnering the most investment, and are therefore likely to be transformed first and fastest by fintech
• Explains why blockchain technology is critically important to banks and startups, and assesses which players stand to gain the most from it.
• Explores the financial sectors facing disruption and breaks them down in terms of investments, vulnerabilities and growth opportunities.
• And much more.
The Fintech Ecosystem Report: Measuring the effects of technology on the entire financial services industryis how you get the full story on the fintech revolution.
To get your copy of this invaluable guide to the fintech revolution, choose one of these options:
1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >>START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >>BUY THE REPORT
The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the fast-moving world of financial technology.
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• Lending Club may have hit a dead end || EU proposes stricter rules on Bitcoin, prepaid cards in terrorism fight: By Foo Yun Chee STRASBOURG (Reuters) - The European Commission proposed on Tuesday stricter rules on the use of virtual currencies and prepaid cards in a bid to reduce anonymous payments and curb the financing of terrorism. Virtual currency exchange platforms will have to increase checks on the identities of people exchanging virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, for real currencies and report suspicious transactions. Under the Commission's proposals the threshold for making anonymous payments with pre-paid cards was lowered to 150 euros ($167.28) from 250 euros. "Member states will be able to get and share vital information about who really owns companies or trusts, who is dealing in online currencies, and who is using pre-paid cards," EU Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said. Following attacks in Paris last November by Islamic State militants the EU executive said it would step up measures to cut off terrorists' access to funds. French authorities have proved that pre-paid cards were used by the Paris attackers. Prepaid cards are issued by a wide range of operators including banks using major networks, such as Visa and MasterCard. They are different from debit and credit cards because they need to be loaded before payments can be made, but can carry substantial amounts of money. MasterCard said it supported the Commission's objective of strengthening the security of prepaid cards while ensuring that people less well-off could still use them. The proposed higher controls on virtual currencies and pre-paid cards "are important in tackling black market and terrorist financing", said Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of tax at ACCA, which represents the interests of the accountancy sector. The Commission proposed increasing the amount of checks banks have to carry out on financial flows from risky third countries, namely states with poor anti-money laundering rules and difficulties countering terrorism financing. In a bid to end tax evasion after the publication in April of the Panama Papers - which revealed widespread tax avoidance practices by wealthy individuals - the Commission also proposed rules requiring the beneficial owners of trusts to be recorded in registers that in many cases will be accessible to the public. Story continues Existing and new accounts will be subject to due diligence controls and the Commission will look into finding effective ways for each member state to share information on beneficial owners of companies and trusts. "These proposals for public registers will be welcomed by citizens and anti-corruption activists who want to follow the trail of dirty money," Laure Brillaud, Transparency International EU policy officer, said. "However, we are concerned that it will be all too easy to evade being on the registers in the first place by gaming the rules on trusts. By simply nominating a non-EU resident as a trustee the secrecy can carry on as before," she added. Tuesday's proposals will need to be approved by the EU Parliament and EU states before they become law. ($1 = 0.8967 euros) (Writing by Julia Fioretti and Ines Kagubare; editing by Susan Thomas) || First Bitcoin CapitalCorp. FINRA approved Name Change is effective as of today: VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / August 15, 2016 /FIRST BITCOIN CAPITAL CORP. (OTC markets: BITCF), announced today that FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) has approved its name change to FIRST BITCOIN CAPITAL CORP from Grand Pacaraima Gold Corp. The change will be reflected at the opening of the market today, August 15th, 2016. For shareholders, the name change has no effect on the stock that is held. The name will automatically change in shareholders' brokerage accounts and the amount of shares will remain unchanged.
All shareholders are asked to update their email addresses in order to receive Company electronic communications and further instructions. Kindly send an email to us via:info@bitcoincapitalcorp.com
The company is excited to announce that it has developed for its own account and third parties certain crypto currencies such as TeslaCoil Coin (trading symbol TESLA), President Clinton coin (trading symbol HILL), President Trump coin (trading symbol PRES) , President Johnson (trading symbol GARY). These last three digital crypto coins -we believe to be history's first commemorative election coins trading as crypto currencies and public interest in these commemorative coins may increase as the election process comes to a close with the winning candidate's coin showing the most interest. These currencies have been launched using the OMNI protocol, developed by OMNI FOUNDATION and ride on the rail of the Bitcoin blockchain.
We also believe that we are history's first publicly traded company to develop a blockchain for our shares to dually trade both in a traditional market (OTC Markets) and on crypto currency exchanges, such as company's own cryptocurrency exchange COINQX. Our crypto currency symbol is: BIT
About the company:
First Bitcoin Capital is engaged in developing digital currencies, proprietary Blockchain technologies, and the digital currency exchange-www.CoinQX.comWe see this step as a tremendous opportunity to create further shareholder value by leveraging management's experience in developing and managing complex Blockchain technologies, developing new type of digital assets. "Being first publicly-traded cryptocurrency and blockchain-centered company we want to provide our shareholders with diversified exposure to digital cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies." At this time Company owns and operates the following digital assets.
1. www.BITCoinCapitalcorp.comcompany website.
2. www.CoinQX.comCompany operated Cryptocurrency Exchange, registered with FINCEN.
3. www.iCoiNEWS.comreal time cryptocurrency and bitcoin news site
4. www.BITminer.cccompany provides mining pool management services.
5. www.2016coin.orgonline daily election coverage and home page for $PRES,$HILL and $GARY coins
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This press release may contain forward-looking statements. The words "believe," "expect," "should," "intend," "estimate," "projects," variations of such words and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking statements are based upon the Company's current expectations and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ significantly from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements are risks that are detailed in the Company's filings, which are on file at www.OTCMarkets.com.
SOURCE:First Bitcoin Capital Corp. || Hacking group claims to offer cyber-weapons in online auction: By Joseph Menn (Reuters) - Hackers going by the name Shadow Brokers said on Monday they will auction stolen surveillance tools they say were used by a cyber group linked to the U.S. National Security Agency. To arouse interest in the auction, the hackers released samples of programs they said could break into popular firewall software made by companies including Cisco Systems Inc, Juniper Networks Inc and Fortinet Inc. The companies did not respond to request for comment, nor did the NSA. Writing in imperfect English, the Shadow Brokers promised in postings on a Tumblr blog that the auctioned material would contain cyber weapons developed by the Equation Group, a hacking group that cyber security experts widely believe to be an arm of the NSA. [ http://reut.rs/2aVA7LD] The Shadow Brokers said the programs they will auction will be better than Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm widely attributed to the United States and Israel that sabotaged Irans nuclear program. Reuters could not contact the Shadow Brokers or verify their assertions. Some experts who looked at the samples posted on Tumblr said they included programs that had previously been described and therefore were unlikely to cause major damage. The data [released so far] appears to be relatively old; some of the programs have already been known for years, said researcher Claudio Guarnieri, and are unlikely to cause any significant operational damage. Still, they appeared to be genuine tools that might work if flaws have not been addressed. After examining the code released Monday, Matt Suiche, founder of UAE-based security startup Comae Technologies, concluded they looked like "could be used." Other security experts warned the posting could prove to be a hoax. The group said interested parties had to send funds in advance of winning the auction via Bitcoin currency and would not get their money back if they lost. The auction will end at an unspecified time, Shadow Brokers said, encouraging bidders to "keep bidding until we announce winner." (Editing by Cynthia Osterman) || Hackers steal $63.7 million from Bitcoin exchange: A Hong Kong-based Bitcoin exchange has suspended all transactions after hackers stole a significant sum of the cryptocurrency. Bloomberg is reporting that 119,756 BTC, currently valued at $63.7 million, has been taken from Bitfinex. The news has helped to contribute to a drop in Bitcoin's value, and over the last two days it has fallen by around 13 percent. For its part, Bitfinex has already revealed that it is investigating the breach and is working with local law enforcement agencies. While the exchange actually deals in other cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin, the hack itself did not take anything beyond BTC. The company also directly contacted Bloomberg to confirm that deposits made in US dollars were not affected by the breach. Admittedly, incidents like this won't irreparably harm Bitcoin, but the regularity of these incidents must be concerning for outside investors. When you look at the controversies that have become associated with the currency over the last few years, it's hard to see how its reputation could get worse. From a high-profile ponzi scheme , through the FBI and Silk Road cases, all the way through to the fraud at the heart of Mt.Gox's collapse . 2016 has also seen prominent Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn quit after suggesting that the currency's structural failings can't be remedied. In addition, the reward for mining each coin has fallen, and while that's a well-known feature of the system, has forced a few businesses -- like KnCMiner -- to shut down. That's before we get to Craig Wright's announcement that he was Satoshi Nakamoto , but refusing to provide proof to support his claim. || Traders say it might be time to buy into tech after NASDAQ hits 2016 highs: The "Fast Money" traders are keeping an eye on the big tech names, after the technology-heavy NASDAQ(NASDAQ: .IXIC)saw its highest levels of the year on Tuesday.
Trader Pete Najarian said that technology and biotechnology companies could help drive the NASDAQ higher, especially if giants like Microsoft(NASDAQ: MSFT)and Apple(NASDAQ: AAPL)start participating in the rally.
Trader Dan Nathan said he likes PayPal(NASDAQ: PYPL)because of "interesting secular things going on in e-payments." Another stock he likes is JD.com(NASDAQ: JD), even though the "fundamentals haven't been fantastic." Nathan said that JD is a company is well-positioned.
Trader Brian Kelly said that he is less confident in tech's potential.
"If you're buying into tech and you're buying into dividend stocks, you just need to know that you're buying into a bubble. That doesn't mean that it can't go higher. Bubbles go on for a long time, a lot longer than most people can stay short them," Kelly said.
He said he would rather look at securities outside the United States, especially in Japan.
"To me, what happened in Japan over the last couple days could be game changing, so I would look towards Japan," Kelly said, adding that in particular he would look at the WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity Fund(NYSE Arca: DXJ).
Disclosures:
PETE NAJARIAN
Long stock: AAPL, BAC, BMY, CSCO, DIS, DISCA, GE, KMI, KMI.A, KO, LUX, MRK, PEP, PFE, SAVE, VIAB, ZIOP Long Calls: AAL, AKS, AMJ, CHK, CLF, CNX, CSX, DAL, EGO, GSAT, HBAN, HOG, INTC, KGC, LLY, MT, MU, NLNK, P, SBUX, SLV, SLW, SVU, TMUS, WLL, XLE, YELP. Long Puts: BID, CS,GM, NAV, NLY
TIM SEYMOUR
Tim Seymour is long APC, AVP, BAC, BBRY, CLF, DO, EDC, EWZ, F, FCX, FXI, GM, GOOGL, GRMN, GE, INTC, LQD, M, MCD, MPEL, NKE, RACE, RAI, RH, RL, SINA, T, TWTR, UA, VALE, VZ, XOM and short: SPY, XRT. His firm is long ABX, BABA, BIDU, CLF, EWZ, F, HD, KO, MCD, MPEL, NKE, PEP, PF, SAVE, SBUX, SINA, VALE, VIAB, WMT, WEN, YHOO, short HYG, IWM
BRIAN KELLY
Brian Kelly is long Bitcoin, DXJ, GLD, MOS, POT, SLV, XME, US Dollar UUP; he is short WTI crude, Swiss franc, euro and Japanese yen.
DAN NATHAN
Dan Nathan is Long JD Aug call spread, Long PFE, Long TWTR, BABA Aug put spread, IWM long Sept put, XLF long Aug put spread, XLK long Sept Put spread, FXI long Aug put spread, SMH long Aug put spread, long PYPL call calendar, long C Aug put spread, XOP Sept put spread, TGT long Aug calls, TSLA long Aug put, SPY long Sept put spread, BAC long Sept puts.
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• Personal Finance || ETF Strategies in a Post Brexit World: After a seven year bull run and an increased uncertainty, people may expect the equities market will more likely pullback and give up some of its gains. Consequently, traders have turned to bearish or inverse exchange traded fund strategies to hedge against turns in a more volatile market.
On an upcoming webcast this Wednesday,Sector Strategies in a Post Brexit World, Tom Dorsey, Co-Founder of Dorsey, Wright & Associates, and Sylvia Jablonski, Managing Director and Head of the Capital Markets & Institutional Strategy Team at Direxion, will discuss hedging strategies to manage a rougher road ahead.
According to Jefferson National’s second annual Advisory Authority Survey, financial advisors see ongoing volatility as one of the top macro issues that will adversely affect client portfolios over the next year, ThinkAdvisor reports.
Related:VIX, Bearish S&P 500 ETFs to Hedge Uncertainty
Specifically, 76% of RIAs and fee-based advisors, 89% of the highest earning advisors and 63% of investors in the survey expected volatility to rise in the coming year as both U.S. politics and domestic and international economics exacerbate the uncertain outlook. Among the top concerns, those surveyed pointed to energy prices, Federal Reserve policy, U.S. presidential election and Chinese instability.
“When it comes to investing, protecting clients’ portfolios and protecting their own practice, ongoing volatility remains the number one concern of RIAs and fee-based advisors year over year — while investors are aware of volatility’s impact, they say that protecting assets is their number-one concern,” Jefferson National president Laurence Greenberg said in a statement.
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Among those surveyed 48% of all RIAs and fee-based advisors looked to ETFs and alternative mutual funds as their number one solution in today’s volatile markets. Additionally, 60% of high earning advisors pointed to liquid alternatives.
ETF traders also have a number of liquid alternative strategies to choose from. For instance, theDirexion Daily S&P Biotech Bear 1X Shares (LABS), Direxion Daily Financial Bear 1x Shares (FAZZ) and Direxion Daily Energy Bear 1x Shares (ERYY) provide inverse or -100% exposure to some of the more volatile areas of the market this year.
Related:ETF Traders Look Beyond Brexit to China Risk
LABS may be a good way for investors to hedge against further selling in the biotech sector as political rhetoric puts a spotlight on pharmaceutical treatment prices and the growth play sours. FAZZ could be used to hedge against the Brexit fallout and potentially extended low-rate environment, which could weigh on the financial sector. Any further concerns on global growth and oil prices could also help traders hedge against a weakening energy sector with ERYY.
Financial advisors who are interested in learning more about sector strategies canregister for the Wednesday, June 29 webcast here. || Exclusive: LexisNexis Risk Solutions and start-up join to curb bitcoin money-laundering: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - A company that provides banks with anti-money-laundering controls has teamed up with a bitcoin security firm to try to curb nefarious uses of the digital currency, such as drug trafficking and terrorism financing. LexisNexis Risk Solutions said the new service it has created with London-based startup Elliptic would bring bank-grade AML controls to bitcoin transactions, making the virtual currency more attractive to those who might want to use it for legitimate transactions LexisNexis Risk Solutions, part of multinational analytics firm RELX Group, helps banks comply with AML regulation, using a database of 2.7 million global entities that could be involved in illicit transactions, such as those on sanctions and other watch-lists. It has shared that database with Elliptic, which monitors bitcoin transactions and can alert its clients - ranging from bitcoin exchanges to U.S. and European intelligence agencies - when money moves from bitcoin addresses that have been identified as bad actors. "This is a step towards making it (bitcoin) more mainstream and more acceptable," said Thomas Brown, of LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Bitcoin is a web-based digital currency that relies on complex algorithms to move money around quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority to process transactions. That has made it attractive to a variety of users, including those who want to get around capital controls and those who support a currency that is free from government control for ideological reasons. But it has also attracted criminals, such as drug dealers and arms traffickers. "Today, if you see bitcoins transacting, you almost assume they're from someone who wants to be off the grid, or they're proceeds from illicit transactions," said Brown. Last month Elliptic said it was working with the Internet Watch Foundation to clamp down on the use of bitcoin for online child pornography. "The single biggest thing keeping mainstream financial services out of the (bitcoin) ecosystem is the inability to do bank-grade anti-money laundering controls," said Elliptic's head of business development, Kevin Beardsley. Story continues "The hope is that this will unlock a whole wave of companies being able to enter financial services with bitcoin." (This August 2 story has been corrected to amend company name to LexisNexis Risk Solutions from LexisNexis) (Editing by Robin Pomeroy) || 'Grumpy hold-outs' could sink Bitfinex recovery plan after Bitcoin theft: By Clare Baldwin HONG KONG (Reuters) - Crypto-currency exchange Bitfinex's plan to impose losses on all its trading clients for the theft by hackers of $72 million in Bitcoin rests on two flawed pillars, according to lawyers. The Hong Kong-based exchange said on Aug. 2 that hackers had stolen 119,756 bitcoins from some clients' accounts, the second-biggest such hack in dollar terms, and later said it would spread the losses across all its customers, whether or not they had been hacked or even held bitcoin. It said customers would forfeit 36 percent of their holdings and be given "BFX tokens" instead that could be redeemed by the exchange or converted to shares in its parent company iFinex. Both elements of the plan are open to legal challenge, lawyers said. Imposing losses on customers who were not hacked appears to go against the company's terms of service, said Ryan Straus, a Fenwick & West lawyer who advises financial technology companies on regulation and co-authored the U.S. chapter of a book on bitcoin law. The terms state "bitcoins in your multi-signature wallets belong to and are owned by you", which Straus said implied a special banking relationship with clients that the Bitfinex plan would breach. "The depository ... is obligated to return, on demand, the same monetary objects deposited," he said, quoting a line from his book. The exchange's tokens could also be problematic, said Zach Zweihorn, a lawyer at DavisPolk who specializes in U.S. securities and trading laws. The way they are currently being described - redeemable by the exchange or convertible to shares in iFinex - places them somewhere between a bond and a security and makes it highly likely that issuing them and trading them would require licenses in the U.S. that Bitfinex doesn't have. "If they are issuing an equity interest in their parent company, I don't really think the fact that it's evidenced through an electronic token ... really changes the analysis of whether it's a security," said Zweihorn. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not return a request for comment. Bitfinex did not respond to requests for comment on either issue. "ROBBED" Bitfinex's website acknowledges there are "protocol level details" still to be worked out for the tokens, and that U.S. residents can sell but not buy them for the time being. "I feel like I was robbed," a 33 year-old investor who had a five-figure U.S. dollar amount on the platform told Reuters. He said he took a 36 percent "haircut" across all assets, including U.S. dollar reserves, and as a U.S. trader he couldn't properly deal in the IOU token. "Basically they took customers' funds in order to try to stay afloat. Nowhere in their terms of service did it mention that this was a possibility," said the user, who works in the financial services industry. Bitfinex is nevertheless hoping that traders will be patient and accept that they won't get a better deal if legal challenges force it into liquidation. "This is the closest approximation to what would happen in a liquidation context," it told traders in a blog post a week ago, while the tokens gave them some hope of ultimately recovering their losses. Traders will be aware of the fate of Tokyo-based crypto-currency exchange Mt Gox, which suffered the biggest bitcoin theft of all time in 2014, and consequently went bankrupt. Traders have not recovered any losses, and court proceedings are still ongoing. "People are afraid to see their assets completely frozen if they sue Bitfinex too early," said 28-year-old Nathan Bourgeois, who is based in France and moderates a 2,000-member traders' messaging group called Whaleclub under the username dr Helmut. He said he thought people would agree to the deal if there was a chance of getting some of their money back. But Patrick Murck, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, said the Bitfinex plan was unlikely to survive a legal challenge. "It might be a pyrrhic victory. You might still end up with less money," said Murck, who is also co-founder of the Bitcoin Foundation and its former general counsel, but the "odds are fairly low" that nobody will test it in court. "It takes one grumpy hold-out ... to blow the whole thing up,” he said. (Reporting by Clare Baldwin; Additional reporting by Hera Poon and Tris Pan; Editing by Will Waterman) || Exclusive: LexisNexis and start-up join to curb bitcoin money-laundering: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - A company that provides banks with anti-money-laundering controls has teamed up with a bitcoin security firm to try to curb nefarious uses of the digital currency, such as drug trafficking and terrorism financing. LexisNexis said the new service it has created with London-based startup Elliptic would bring bank-grade AML controls to bitcoin transactions, making the virtual currency more attractive to those who might want to use it for legitimate transactions LexisNexis, part of multinational analytics firm RELX Group (REL.L), helps banks comply with AML regulation, using a database of 2.7 million global entities that could be involved in illicit transactions, such as those on sanctions and other watch-lists. It has shared that database with Elliptic, which monitors bitcoin transactions and can alert its clients - ranging from bitcoin exchanges to U.S. and European intelligence agencies - when money moves from bitcoin addresses that have been identified as bad actors. "This is a step towards making it (bitcoin) more mainstream and more acceptable," said Thomas Brown, of LexisNexis Risk Solutions. Bitcoin is a web-based digital currency that relies on complex algorithms to move money around quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority to process transactions. That has made it attractive to a variety of users, including those who want to get around capital controls and those who support a currency that is free from government control for ideological reasons. But it has also attracted criminals, such as drug dealers and arms traffickers. "Today, if you see bitcoins transacting, you almost assume they're from someone who wants to be off the grid, or they're proceeds from illicit transactions," said Brown. Last month Elliptic said it was working with the Internet Watch Foundation to clamp down on the use of bitcoin for online child pornography. "The single biggest thing keeping mainstream financial services out of the (bitcoin) ecosystem is the inability to do bank-grade anti-money laundering controls," said Elliptic's head of business development, Kevin Beardsley. "The hope is that this will unlock a whole wave of companies being able to enter financial services with bitcoin." (Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
1 KOBO = 0.00001497 BTC
= 0.0094 USD
= 2.6278 NGN
= 0.1418 ZAR
= 0.9502 KES
#Kobocoin 2016-06-27 00:00 pic.twitter.com/038DyZkYfF || 1 KOBO = 0.00001497 BTC
= 0.0097 USD
= 2.7378 NGN
= 0.1493 ZAR
= 0.9825 KES
#Kobocoin 2016-06-28 06:00 pic.twitter.com/cBz98cBIvZ || #8BitCoin #8BIT $ 0.019609 (0.05 %) 0.00003366 BTC (-0.00 %) || One Bitcoin now worth $573.39@bitstamp. High $579.80. Low $563.00. Market Cap $ 9.070 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/cY5M3P8lsg || #ChainCoin #CHC $ 0.000159 (3.04 %) 0.00000024 BTC (-0.00 %) || $666.53 at 11:00 UTC [24h Range: $651.15 - $678.00 Volume: 4755 BTC] || $669.00 #bitfinex;
$667.58 #OKCoin;
$670.32 #GDAX;
$656.47 #btce;
$669.95 #itBit;
$669.58 #bitstamp;
#bitcoin news: http://bit.ly/1VI6Yse || BTCTurk 1953 TL BTCe 652.98 $ CampBx $ BitStamp 660.00 $ Cavirtex $ CEXIO 665.42 $ Bitcoin.de 604.71 € #Bitcoin #btc || You miss 100% of the shots you don�t take. Invest in #Marinecoin #bitcoin Blake Baden || One Bitcoin now worth $634.76@bitstamp. High $657.50. Low $630.00. Market Cap $10.021 Billion #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/664nQ2PGri
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Trend: up || Prices: 577.76, 579.65, 569.95, 573.91, 574.11, 577.50, 575.47, 572.30, 575.54, 598.21
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2019-07-30]
BTC Price: 9607.42, BTC RSI: 43.04
Gold Price: 1429.70, Gold RSI: 65.99
Oil Price: 58.05, Oil RSI: 54.48
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Monarch Crowns TGE: $2 Million+ Raised to Build Ultimate Crypto Software Suite: Now supported by millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands ofusers, Monarch quickly expands platform to make cryptocurrency moreaccessible for all users, merchants, and partners RENO, NV / ACCESSWIRE / JULY 4, 2019 / Monarch ( https://monarchtoken.io/ ) today announced the conclusion of its token generation event, raising more than $2 million to fund development of the Monarch Wallet, MonarchPay, and a suite of blockchain services. With over 270,000 users, Monarch makes cryptocurrency accessible for users, merchants, and partners by offering top blockchain services under a single login and KYC process. Monarch's extensive network of partners includes a recent agreement with Ambisafe to release an Alternative Trading System (ATS) that will allow for investment in tokenized entities (Pending FINRA & SEC Approval). Headlining the offerings in the Monarch/Ambisafe ATS will be a pre-IPO token for SpaceX. Earlier this year, Monarch partnered with Celsius to allow wallet users to earn up to 8.1 percent APR on their crypto. The company has also partnered with Totle to integrate its decentralized exchange and GoChain to support its wallet. In conjunction with the conclusion of their token generation event, Monarch also sponsored Nascar #52, Driver Bayley Currey, with Rick Ware Racing at the Chicagoland Speedway, June 30th. A YEAR IN REVIEW: Monarch launched its token generation event with a simple wallet supporting Bitcoin and ERC20 tokens on an iOS app. Since then, it's added support for 3,000+ cryptocurrencies with functionality across iOS, *Android, *desktop, and *Mac OS (*full functionality soon to come). Monarch has become a one-stop-shop bringing together the best blockchain services under one easy-to-use application for users, merchants, and partners. Monarch eliminates the need for multiple applications and improves security with a single wallet, delivering every service needed to buy, sell, trade, and manage digital assets. Monarch now supports 1900+ cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, all ERC20 and SLP tokens. The company has launched mobile apps on iOS and Android, desktop apps, a decentralized wallet with an integrated ERC20 decentralized exchange, portfolio tracker, and universal KYC integration. Story continues Concluding on June 30, 2019, Monarch's token generation event offered 250 out of a total of 500 million security tokens (MTS) and 500 million out of a total of 1 billion utility tokens (MT). Security tokens were priced at $0.125 USD and were available to approved accredited investors with a minimum contribution of $2,000. MTS token holders will receive 15 percent dividends via Monarch's hot wallet, based off the businesses' gross revenue, and will also be airdropped Monarch Utility Tokens 1-1 with some receiving a 250% bonus of MT for being early contributors. Utility tokens were priced at $0.10 and were available to all non-restricted residents at a minimum contribution of $40. Monarch also held 3 bounties during the last year giving away more than 13 million MT (the equivalent of ~$1.3 million USD in tokens) to tens of thousands of participants. "We launched Monarch as a community-driven project, and support for our token generation event demonstrates we are meeting the needs of cryptocurrency users," said Robert Beadles, President of Monarch. "We're grateful for the Monarch community's support, and look forward to being the one blockchain application to access all the best blockchain services and companies from one app, the Monarch Wallet. "Since the launch of our MVP and token generation event, the Monarch team has worked hard to deliver on every product on our roadmap and make Monarch the one service you need to rule your crypto kingdom," said Sneh Bhatt, CEO of Monarch. "In addition to the launch of these features, we've added partners and advisors that demonstrate our commitment to the long-term growth of the project." Monarch is advised by Roger Ver, Bitcoin Foundation Founder and Bitcoin.com CEO; Eric Ly, Co-Founder of LinkedIn; David Zimbeck, lead developer at BitBay and creator of the first smart contracts; Damon Nam, Founder of CoinVest, and many of the most influential names in the blockchain industry. Monarch has acquired a broker-dealer license and is awaiting SEC and FINRA approval. ABOUT MONARCH Monarch offers mobile and desktop apps, a decentralized wallet and exchange, a portfolio tracker, and universal KYC integration. Monarch supports more than 1900 cryptocurrencies. It allows qualified users to buy cryptocurrency with a bank or credit card, earn up to 7.1% APR interest on select cryptocurrency holdings, and switch between hot and cold wallets, all while maintaining their own private keys and seed. Contact Info: Name: William Lince Email: Send Email Organization: Monarch Blockchain Corporation Address: 401 Ryland St. STE 200-A, Reno, Nevada 89502, United States Website: https://monarchtoken.io/ SOURCE: Monarch Blockchain Corporation View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/550851/Monarch-Crowns-TGE-2-Million-Raised-to-Build-Ultimate-Crypto-Software-Suite || Electric Cars: Rivals Are Teaming Up, Its All About the Jesus Battery: When it comes to electric cars, whats one of the most common objections youve heard? Source: BMW Too expensive! Well, early adopters may have paid top dollar. But these days you can get one for $35,000 or less from Chevy, Nissan, Ford
and now even Tesla! InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Now that theyre more accessible, electric vehicles (EVs) are in high demand. Automakers are eager to meet it but first, theyve got to cut their OWN costs. In the global free market, the best way to do that is through mergers and partnerships. Thats how BMW and Jaguar Land Rover are handling it. Today these former partners announced a new alliance. By going in together on development and parts for electric cars, they can get to market quicker with a new fleet of electric BMWs, Land Rovers, and Jaguars. Meanwhile, Fiat Chrysler is taking it a step further. Its revving up for a full-on mega-merger with Renault . If all goes as planned in Fiat Chryslers $35 billion proposal, the new company will be the third-biggest in the world (behind Toyota and Volkswagen ). But in a sense, it would be the biggest automaker, because Nissan and Mitsubishi are also in the mix. And thats a big draw for Fiat Chrysler. Why? With Electric Cars, Its All About the Battery Japan has been obsessed with battery technology for decades. And Japanese automakers are much closer to solving some key problems: Current batteries rely on materials like cobalt
which is mined from conflict zones (mainly in the Democratic Republic of Congo) that are struggling to keep up with demand. And the liquid inside is not only toxic but also flammable. These are much the same batteries (lithium-ion) that were in Samsungs exploding phone, the Galaxy Note 7. And there have been some very concerning reports of electric car fires. Teslas have caught fire after accidents
and even while charging. Story continues You can see why battery makers are eager for new technology . Next-generation batteries will ditch the liquid electrolyte. Theyll also have a much shorter charging time and better range. With the current lithium-ion batteries, you wait around for 30 minutes just to get 200 miles of range. If youre Fiat Chrysler, and one of your top brands is Jeep, thats just not going to cut it. Not when offroading is the major selling point. But electric cars are the future. Thats especially true in Europe where carmakers face strict zero-emissions deadlines from EU bureaucrats and China, with its air pollution crisis. And itll be true for Americans, too, whenever they want to save money on gas. Better batteries are the key to this future. Japan is the current favorite to mass-produce these next-generation batteries , and France is eager to get in on this action through the Renault-Nissan partnership. One tiny company in the United Kingdom holds a few key patents, and Toyota is relying on it for its electric cars
yet most folks have never heard of it. Ive got a full presentation on the investment opportunity in this new technology nicknamed the Jesus Battery. Find out exactly what makes this battery so miraculous here . Matthew McCall is the founder and president of Penn Financial Group, an investment advisory firm, as well as the editor of Investment Opportunities and Early Stage Investor. He has dedicated his career to getting investors into the worlds biggest, most revolutionary trends BEFORE anyone else. The power of being first gave Matts readers the chance to bank +2,438% in Stamps.com (STMP), +1,523% in Ulta Beauty (ULTA), +1,044% in Tesla (TSLA), +611% in Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (LNGLY), +324% in Bitcoin Services (BTSC), just to name a few. If youre interested in making triple-digit gains from the worlds biggest investment trends BEFORE anyone else, click here to learn more about Matt McCall and his investments strategy today . More From InvestorPlace 4 Top American Penny Pot Stocks (Buy Before June 21) 10 Retirement Stocks That Won't Wilt in a Bear Market 5 Consumer Stocks Ready to Push Higher 3 of the Best ETFs to Buy for a Play on Gold Stocks Compare Brokers The post Electric Cars: Rivals Are Teaming Up, Its All About the Jesus Battery appeared first on InvestorPlace . || New Raspberry Pi capable of running a Bitcoin node is selling for just $35: The Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a new, more powerful model of its single-board computer. The new device will cost $35 a unit and has the capacity to run full nodes cheaply on the Bitcoin network. Earlier versions of the Raspberry Pi have been popular with Bitcoin enthusiasts and decentralisation advocates as it provides a low barrier to entry for those interested in running their own full nodes on the network. Raspberry Pi 4 is here! A tiny, dual-display desktop computer, with three RAM variants to choose from, and all the hackability you know and love. On sale now from the familiar price of $35: https://t.co/d9iwVidexm #RaspberryPi4 pic.twitter.com/4fll4gx1Ax — Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) June 24, 2019 Using the device to run a Bitcoin node allows users to verify their own transactions over the Bitcoin network independently without having to trust third-party wallets or custodial service providers. Unlike miners, who are rewarded with BTC for validating transactions, full nodes do not get compensation for their contribution to the network in the form of hosting and transmitting updated copies of the blockchain (or distributed transaction ledger). Monero is reducing the cost of running a full node By Jordan Heal – June 26, 2019 More than 10,000 reachable and public nodes At the time of writing, of the 10,516 reachable Bitcoin nodes on the network, we can see that almost 40% are geographically located in either the United States or Germany. The new Raspberry Pi model (4th version) represents a significant upgrade on earlier versions. Its most expensive option – with 4GB of RAM – will cost just $55 (excluding tax). It also comes with a new operating system, which the Foundation claims comes with a host of back-end technical improvements, a modernised interface, plus support for updated applications such as the Chromium 74 web browser. In the years since Pi’s initial release in 2012, other hardware options have emerged for use as a Bitcoin full node as well. These include HTC’s Exodus 1S smartphone, which has Bitcoin full node capability and was released this May . For more news, guides, and cryptocurrency analysis, click here . The post New Raspberry Pi capable of running a Bitcoin node is selling for just $35 appeared first on Coin Rivet . View comments || Facebook's Libra: UBS has 'more questions than answers': Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during the annual F8 summit in San Jose, California. Photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images Big questions remain about governance and the regulation of Facebook’s new cryptocurrency project Libra , according to UBS. “We are neither bullish nor dismissive of the Libra project given a lot of details about it are needed first,” UBS said in a note sent to clients this week. “Despite its unique characteristics, we have more questions than answers on Libra at this stage given the uncertainties around its governance and regulations,” a team of analysts led by Sundeep Gantori wrote. READ MORE: Facebook's cryptocurrency project is called Calibra, will launch in 2020 Libra has been spearheaded by Facebook ( FB ), but is backed by over 25 top tech and payment giants, including Visa ( V ), MasterCard ( MA ), PayPal ( PYPL ), eBay ( EBAY ), Spotify ( SPOT ), and Uber ( UBER ). All the backers will be equal members of the Libra Association, a new Geneva-based not-for-profit set up to govern the project. A key question highlighted by Gantori and his team include how members of the Libra Association “plan to align their interests and work together,” as well as how they will move to a more decentralised system in the future. Another unknown is “how the currency can be independent without major privacy and security challenges,” UBS wrote. Gantori and his team also note, “It is not clear to us how Libra can comply to regulations across the globe given the initial pushback.” Libra’s launch met an immediate backlash from regulators and politicians in the US and Europe . The G7 nations launched a joint inquiry into the risks of new cryptocurrencies like Libra and Rep. Maxine Waters, chair of the house of representatives’ financial services committee, called for an immediate pause to Facebook’s development efforts. READ MORE: Facebook's 'significant' Libra under scrutiny from new UK task force UBS said the project may face even bigger hurdles in Asian markets, where Libra will likely be targeting. “China, India, and Indonesia account for 30% of the 1.7 billion unbanked population globally where crypto regulations are very tough, so it remains to be seen how Libra can succeed in these markets,” UBS wrote. Story continues UBS said Libra is unlikely to have much impact on Facebook’s stock or the wider industry in the short-term but “could be disruptive in the long term.” Gantori and his team also analysed Libra’s white paper, which outlines the technical and logistical plans for the new cryptocurrency. The team concluded, “Libra sits somewhere in between the traditional notions of a cryptocurrency and the accepted views of fiat currencies.” They added Libra is “closer to Ethereum than to Bitcoin.” Read more on Libra: Facebook hasn't told us: why launch a cryptocurrency? Facebook's Libra could spark 'mass adoption' of crypto Why politicians and regulators are already going after Facebook's Libra Bank of England's Carney gives Facebook's Libra cautious backing Facebook's 'significant' Libra under scrutiny from new UK task force || Singaporean Exchange Bitrue Gets Hacked, Losing $5 Million in XRP, Cardano: Singapore-basedcrypto exchangeBitrue has suffered a majorhack, losing 9.3 millionXRPand 2.5 million cardano (ADA) from its hot wallet. The news was revealed in an officialstatementfrom the exchange published as a twitter thread on June 26.
At the time of the breach — 1 a.m. GMT+8 June 27 — the stolen funds would have been worth over $4.5 million in XRP (valued at $0.488) and $237,500 in ADA (valued at $0.095), according to CoinMarketCap data.
The exchange states that a purportedly single hacker first “exploited a vulnerability in our Risk Control team's 2nd review process to access the personal funds of about 90 Bitrue users,” subsequently using this first experience to access the exchange’s hot wallet and steal the cryptocurrency.
According to Bitrue, the attack was swiftly detected and the hacker’s activity suspended by the exchange. Bitrue reportedly notified the receiving exchanges of the incoming ill-gotten funds — specificallyHuobi,Bittrexand ChangeNOW — whom it credits with helping to freeze the relevant transactions and accounts.
The statement assures exchange users that “their personal funds are insured,” and that all those “affected by this breach will have their funds replaced by us as soon as possible.”
Currently, Bitrue says it is conducting an emergency inspection of the platform and aims to return to live service functionality as soon as possible — with log-in and trading support expected to relaunch sooner than withdrawals, which will remain offline for a longer period.
Bitrue provides the public with a link to trace the flow of funds on theXRP block explorer, and also states that it has contacted the Singaporean authorities to seek help in identifying the perpetrator.
An update is expected from the exchange once more has been learned of the incident.
Just this week, twoIsraelibrothers werearrestedin connection with the 2016 hack of crypto exchangeBitfinexand other crypto-relatedphishingattacks.
The$40 million hackof top crypto exchange Binance has loomed large over the industry this year — areported totalof sevencrypto exchangessuffered large-scalehacking attacksprior to Bitrue in the first six months of 2019.
• Major Korean Crypto Exchange Bithumb Prosecuted for Failure to Protect User Data
• Exit Scam? Dublin-Based Exchange Bitsane Vanishes With Users’ Funds
• Regtech Startup Coinfirm to Investigate XRP's Compliance With AML Provisions
• BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, BCH, EOS, BNB, BSV, XLM, ADA: Price Analysis 19/06 || Bitcoin extends losses after Fed chief urges halt to Facebook's crypto project: By Tom Wilson
LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin dipped almost 8% on Thursday, extending losses the day after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called for a halt to Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency project until concerns ranging from privacy to money-laundering were addressed.
The original cryptocurrency <BTC=BTSP> initially fell 7.7% to $11,164 in early morning trade, following a 3.8% slide on Wednesday after Powell's testimony on monetary policy before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. It was last down 4.5%.
Other major cryptocurrencies including Ethereum <BTC=BTSP> and XRP's Ripple <XRP=BTSP> fell by similar levels.
"This is a direct response to the Powell testimony and comments on Facebook's Libra and the implications that could have for the entire cryptocurrency space," said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at FX trading platform OANDA.
"Libra raises many serious concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, consumer protection and financial stability," Powell told the committee, adding that he did not think the project could proceed unless those concerns were addressed.
The proposed cryptocurrency has drawn close scrutiny from policymakers and financial regulators globally. Powell said existing rules do not fit cryptocurrencies.
Other traders said the moves fitted within the pattern of bitcoin's recent volatility, where double-digit intra-day price moves have been common.
The biggest coin climbed nearly 55% in nine days after Facebook unveiled its plans for Libra on June 18, touching an 18-month high of nearly $14,000. The project has boosted hopes that cryptocurrencies could gain wider acceptance.
(Reporting by Tom Wilson; Editing by Kevin Liffey) || ellpticSecure Announces the MIRkey, an All-In-One Cryptocurrency Wallet and USB Security Key to Secure Accounts Against Phishing: MIDDLETOWN, DE / ACCESSWIRE / July 15, 2019 / Phishing attacks are increasing in volume and severity. The most common form of phishing is tricking you to visit and log into fake websites, where hackers then steal your password. As both hackers and their methods are becoming more sophisticated, it also becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between real and fake websites. Enter a new-gen security key, the MIRkey . Google recently told Business Insider that they have had no reported or confirmed account takeovers since implementing security keys at Google. This means that since approximately 2017, none of Googles 85 000+ employees was successfully phished on their work-related accounts. And, according to a Google spokesperson: Security keys now form the basis of all account access at Google. This is impressive for a company the size of Google and was all as a result of using a physical security key. Security keys are a superior alternative to two-factor authentication (2FA) OTP codes. The problem with OTP codes is that the code is entered on the phishing website along with the users password - allowing account takeover when the hacker uses the correct credentials with the OTP on the actual website. In contrast to OTP codes, the MIRkey security key performs an authentication protocol known as FIDO2, allowing users to complete the login process by simply inserting the device and pressing a button to indicate user presence. Your security key is registered with an account such as Gmail, Coinbase, or Dropbox with the aid of public key cryptography. What this ultimately means is that even if you inadvertently end up on a phishing site the hacker wouldn't be able to take over the account without physical access to your security key that contains a private key for the account. Most modern browsers now support the authentication specification known as WebAuthn where you dont need any special software or drivers to be able to use the key. This eases rollout across the whole enterprise and enables strong multi-factor authentication with most known account services such as Google, Coinbase, Facebook, GitHub, Amazon, SalesForce, LastPass etc.; and password-less login with Microsoft Hello for business accounts. Story continues Besides securing cryptocurrency exchange logins such as Coinbase, as a hardware wallet the MIRkey allows you to store, send, and receive digital currency such as Bitcoin. If you purchase or trade cryptocurrencies, it is crucial to make sure the coins private keys are secure. The MIRkey integrates with popular software like Electrum to allow you to easily send and receive currency while still keeping the private key safe on the MIRkey - even if your computer is compromised. The MIRkey is also a general purpose PKCS#11 compliant Hardware Security Module (HSM) and therefore works out of the box with existing software like Adobe Reader DC (for document signing and encryption), VPN clients (that is, OpenVPN ), OpenSSH , Thunderbird (signing and encrypting emails), Firefox, Disk volume encryption (VeraCrypt) and any application that uses the PKCS#11 API. A software development kit allows the integration of custom applications with the MIRkey to help secure production lines, protect IoT server keys, sign software activations and assists with general key management. These keys are stored encrypted with master keys in tamper-proof silicon that can only be unlocked with the user password. Its hardware and operating system-free nature, safeguards your keys from being stolen or copied without your knowledge. This protects your keys from ransomware as well as malware and viruses. Cryptographic operations are performed on the MIRkey itself - therefore, the keys never leave the secure module. This prevents access to the keys even when a system is compromised. About ellipticSecure ( ellipticsecure.com ) ellipticSecure specializes in Cybersecurity products like PKCS#11 Hardware Security Modules, Hardware Security Keys, Bitcoin wallets and Hardware-as-a-Service services. Safe, secure key management for both enterprise and individual use. SOURCE: ellipticSecure View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/551939/ellpticSecure-Announces-the-MIRkey-an-All-In-One-Cryptocurrency-Wallet-and-USB-Security-Key-to-Secure-Accounts-Against-Phishing || Trade Bitcoin? Here's Why You Absolutely Need to Also Buy Gold: Every single bitcoin trader needs to buy gold, as the two so-called safe haven assets bear a surprising price correlation. | Source: Shutterstock By CCN Markets : Trading bitcoin comes with an extremely high degree of risk because of its volatility. Other than technical analysis , which can assist in finding buy and sell points, crypto traders are beholden to the whims of other traders. This is particularly true for bitcoin because its value isnt tied to any asset , which would give it some framework for intrinsic value. Traders are making decisions based on what they think someone else believes bitcoin to be worth in a specific moment, which is in turn based on that persons beliefs about other peoples psychology. Read the full story on CCN.com . View comments || Bitcoin sees $18bn wiped off market cap since four-hour death cross: Bitcoin has experienced yet another negative slump in price, with more than $18 billion wiped off the assets market cap since the dreaded death cross on the four-hour chart. On Monday, Coin Rivet reported that the death cross was beckoning as price hovered within the $10,200 and $10,650 range. Just hours later, the death cross where the 50 EMA crosses the 200 EMA to the downside came to fruition. Price proceeded to fall to test the $10,000 level of support before breaking it to the downside. Lower highs Bitcoin has since managed a slight bounce from the $9,580 region, although short-term momentum has almost certainly shifted, indicating a further fall in price over the coming days. The drop from $10,650 to $9,580 marks a 10.4% decline, with several analysts suggesting that this could be the start of a bearish phase in the market. $BTCUSD beginning to look a bit like the start of 2018 here. Lower highs, lower lows and a four-hour death cross. The bulls need to buck up their ideas rapidly to save Bitcoin from falling back into the mid 8k's and potentially lower. $crypto pic.twitter.com/FYUfguH2os Oliver Knight (@KnightCoinRivet) July 24, 2019 Coupled with the death cross, Bitcoin has put in three lower highs and three lower lows. This is typically indicative of a reversal similar to what was seen at the start of 2018. Following the tremendous bull run that saw Bitcoin touch $20,000, it made lower highs of $17,300 and $11,800 while making lower lows of $10,760 and $9,220. Lowerhighs1 This time around, Bitcoin has failed to breach the yearly high of $14,000, falling to subsequent lower highs of $13,200 and $11,100. Story continues The next notable level of support for Bitcoin would be $9,150. If that level breaks, then the $8,350 to $8,800 range seems to be the next logical stop. The previous four-hour death cross on September 8 last year culminated in a 56% drawback for the price of Bitcoin. While a drop of that extent seems unlikely, that would put the worlds largest cryptocurrency back below the $5,000 level. For more news, guides, and cryptocurrency analysis, click here . The post Bitcoin sees $18bn wiped off market cap since four-hour death cross appeared first on Coin Rivet . || ‘Insane’ Bitcoin Momentum Goes Overdrive as 'Real Volume' Hits $1.5 Billion: Bitcoin price is having a flourish, boosted by soaring trading volumes, as halftime approaches for 2019. | Source: Shutterstock By CCN Markets : Bitcoin price has increased by 16 percent in the past week against the U.S. dollar following its initial breakout of the $10,000 mark on June 21. The bitcoin price is up 16 percent in the past week against the U.S. dollar following a 3-fold increase from $3,150 to $10,000 The bitcoin price is up 16 percent in the past week against the U.S. dollar following a 3-fold increase from $3,150 to $10,000 (source: coinmarketcap.com) Luke Martin, a crypto trader, has said that the momentum of the dominant crypto asset is “insane,” indicating that minor corrections are being absorbed by the market at a fast pace and that the short term trend of the asset remains strong. How far can bitcoin go? Earlier this month, the “real 10” volume of bitcoin which refers to the daily spot volume of exchanges with more than $1 million in verifiable daily volume as found by Bitwise Asset Management, hovered at around $500 million. In the last several days, the real 10 volume of the asset has spiked to over $1.5 billion, peaking at $2 billion. Read the full story on CCN.com .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
$EPAZ's Bitcoin Sharing & Blockchain Social Media App Webbeeo Is In Alpha Testing Phase https://www.owltmarket || Rep. McCarthy: How can we ensure tomorrow is better than today?
Answer: US stockpiles bitcoin: https://t.co/q3znYge6HO || 🔷 La minería de Bitcoin contamina tanto al año como un millón de vuelos trasatlánticos https://t.co/KaO5Ph6WEj || $EPAZ's Bitcoin Sharing & Blockchain Social Media App Webbeeo Is In Alpha Testing Phase https://www.owltmarket || Manage your money robot on Telegram from 5 euros, with bitcoin arbitrage
Your own funds in bitcoins and yielding 0.7% interest per day
Sing-up: https://t.co/hfvbewScvh [more in https://t.co/zOXefI4VFB]
Verge Siacoin HuobiToken Aeternity || Are you interested in Bitcoin mining for FREE!?
You can start now if you already have a Bitcoin wallet.
https://t.co/cGs52O9eqE
#BITCOIN || It’s Now Harder to Mine ##Bitcoin Than Ever Before https://t.co/X3RIf3wTMS via @coindesk #cryptocurrency https://t.co/pE2lqlDRY8 || @SatoshiProof @ChrisCryptoBear @StopAndDecrypt @PeterSchiff @CryptoCardiff @Goldmoney how much do bitcoin transactions cost now? last time sent 5 bucks to my friend it cost me 5 bucks || $XRP/BTC Weekly&Daily
今がチャンス？ https://t.co/bt8utZgVLm || I think this ‘#shitcoin’ thing is going to crush all chances of a new real altseason.
$BTC is mainstream now, only a select few innovating projects will grow alongside it.
|
Trend: up || Prices: 10085.63, 10399.67, 10518.17, 10821.73, 10970.18, 11805.65, 11478.17, 11941.97, 11966.41, 11862.94
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2019-07-08]
BTC Price: 12285.96, BTC RSI: 62.14
Gold Price: 1397.00, Gold RSI: 61.55
Oil Price: 57.66, Oil RSI: 52.63
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
The Risk of Further Supply Disruption Remains Elevated: Indeed, it’s tough constructing a bullish argument amidst a constant stream of news flows pointing to a worsening global outlook as tariffs present a significant threat to US growth and in turn the health of the Global economy. And to complicate the matter even if OPEC extends their supply compliance, given the burgeoning non-OPEC supply as evidenced in the latest US inventory reports, OPEC+ will face a scabrous task balancing the current supply with the demand side of the equations. With the colossal supply tail risk following tanker attacks near the Strait of Hormuz fading quickly, it should be back to the markets seemingly endless preoccupation with US-China trade and the outlook for global oil demand. Waning risk appetite on the back of the omnipresent threat of trade war escalation continues to sully the landscape which has weighed on the oil price to an astonishing degree. Especially given that the impact on oil demand from higher tariffs is virtually impossible to quantify over the near term. But with the level of unease increasing across financial markets which continues to spread like spreading like wildfire, even the most ardent oil bulls might consider heading for the sideline until the dust settles But for me their opportunity at every turn, especially with the Middle East dust-up providing us with a stark reminder of how quickly things can escalate in this in this politically fractured part of the world. Here is what this lonely Oil bull is looking at While monthly reports from the EIA and OPEC this week both revised down estimates for 2019 global oil demand on global growth concerns, they also forecasted and undersupplied conditions his year, with OPEC expected to continue producing at a level below what would be needed to balance the market. The OPEC meeting looms large as it’s expected to resolve the critical issue of whether OPEC+ will extend the production cut agreement into 2H19. The conference is planned for June 25-26, but Saudi Arabia and Russia are reportedly seeking a delay into early July to allow June supply/demand data to be considered before a final decision is made. It also makes sense as the panel will be able to judge better the fallout from the crucial G-20 summit and whether President Trump will follow through with more tariffs. I was rewarded handsomely last week after reversing my short below WTI $51(as per Thursday market note) by the unexpected escalation in Middle East tension. But the reason I remain a buyer on overextended dips is I continue to believe that demand risks are more than sufficiently priced into oil now, especially the prompt contracts while supply risks are not. With the US administration pointing the finger at Iran for recent tanker attacks and going against the grain and the prevailing market flow I believe the risk of further supply disruption remains elevated and should provide a credible backstop for Brent and WTI. Story continues This article was written by Stephen Innes, Managing Partner at Vanguard Markets LLC This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Should You Own Crypto-Currencies or Invest in Them? The Crypto Week – The Bulls Fight Back Weekly Wrap – Stats, Trade and Geopolitics and the Dollar Comeback Adl Predicts Expected Range of the Nasdaq before Breakout Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 16/06/19 U.S Mortgage Rates – 30-Year Rates Steady while Applications Surge View comments || Op Ed: Debunking Bitcoin Myths: The ‘Intrinsic Value’ Fallacy: Bitcoin Value A series of op eds by Kyle Torpey addressing some of the oft-repeated arguments against Bitcoin. One of the earliest criticisms of Bitcoin was that the underlying token in the system had no intrinsic value. This point was an area of heavy debate among libertarians and Austrian economists who had become interested in bitcoin as a potential digital alternative to gold in the early stages of the crypto asset’s development. Much of the debate revolved around Austrian school economist Ludwig Von Mises’ regression theorem , which claims non-monetary use cases as a prerequisite for any good to become a money. Like many others, I fell on the side of bitcoin lacking any sort of intrinsic value after first learning about the new digital asset, but this was largely due to my lack of understanding around bitcoin’s utility as a digital bearer asset at the time (around 2011 to 2012). Medium of Exchange vs. Store of Value My view on bitcoin’s lack of intrinsic value changed once I realized that it was the only option in terms of a permissionless, censorship-resistant digital money. One of the common arguments around the intrinsic value of fiat currencies, such as the U.S. dollar, is that the key underlying value proposition is that you have to pay your taxes with it. Bitcoin has a similar property where it must be used for censorship-resistant transactions online (yes, there are other options but bitcoin is the most liquid). The continued existence of this point of view explains the thinking behind the creation of various altcoins focused on low-fee payments, such as bitcoin cash. Although, as Bitrefill CCO John Carvalho pointed out at the recent Understanding Bitcoin conference in Malta, many Bitcoin users have seen their thinking on this topic evolve further over the years. This is not to say payments are not important (Bitcoin has its own secondary payments network known as the Lightning Network ), but rather, the security and stabilization of Bitcoin’s base layer is key to protecting bitcoin’s utility as a store of value. Story continues These two differing views on why bitcoin is valuable was a core aspect of the scaling debate from 2015 to 2017 (I’ve written an in-depth exploration of this point here ). A number of altcoins have arguably made improvements over bitcoin in terms of adding additional payment features. For example, Monero is renowned for the increased levels of privacy it can offer (although bitcoin is now seeing privacy improvements of its own through software like Wasabi Wallet and Samourai Wallet ). As Blockstream mathematician Andrew Poelstra has explained in the past , Bitcoin users simply prioritize security and stability over new, experimental payment features. One of the key issues with these payment-focused altcoins is that they don’t have the same level of liquidity or network effects found with bitcoin, so bitcoin is still by far the most preferred money in the cryptocurrency space. The view of bitcoin being a good as a store of value is helpful in terms of increasing the utility of that good as a medium of exchange. If more people are willing to hold a good, then they’re more likely to accept that good as payment. Of course, having utility as a medium of exchange also assists the store of value proposition. But the key point to realize here is that a good acting as a medium of exchange is only possible if it first obtains some value. You can’t send value through a good if that good’s value is near zero (more on this from Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto later). To be clear, it’s not the specific 21 million cap that enables bitcoin’s usefulness as a store of value. Instead, it’s the credibility of that monetary policy that matters in that it can’t be changed on a whim by anyone ( not even a collection of the largest companies in the ecosystem ). Bitcoin is generally much less volatile than altcoins , which harms their comparative utility as stores of value (and, therefore, mediums of exchange). It should also be noted that altcoins tend to be more centralized in terms of influential nodes and less diverse user bases, which puts into question the level of censorship-resistance of these cryptocurrencies as payment networks (see Ethereum’s hard fork to bail out those who were negatively affected by the hacking of The DAO). So What Is Bitcoin’s Intrinsic Value? “Intrinsic value” is a weird term when applied to commodities like gold and currencies like the U.S. dollar. There is nothing intrinsic about the value of anything. Value is subjective and comes from outside forces. For example, a gold bar isn’t very valuable to someone stranded on a deserted island alone. In real terms, what makes bitcoin valuable is that it’s an apolitical digital money. The difficult-to-corrupt monetary policy is at the core of this value proposition, but other attributes and use cases are built on top of that base layer. So, what about Mises’ regression theorem? Well, technically, bitcoin was valued as a collectible by cypherpunks before it was used as a payment system. Although it was extremely easy for cypherpunks to obtain some bitcoin at a low cost, that cost was not necessarily zero. This early value as a collectible combined with a permissionless, censorship-resistant payment system illustrates bitcoin’s “intrinsic” utility. Satoshi wrote about this concept on the bitcointalk.org forum before he left the project. “If [bitcoin] somehow acquired any value at all for whatever reason, then anyone wanting to transfer wealth over a long distance could buy some, transmit it, and have the recipient sell it,” wrote Satoshi. “Maybe it could get an initial value circularly as you've suggested, by people foreseeing its potential usefulness for exchange. (I would definitely want some)[.] Maybe collectors, any random reason could spark it.” Many gold bugs ( see Peter Schiff ) still think there’s nothing valuable about bitcoin and perhaps they’ll never change their tune. But the same logic economists and financial experts use to argue for the intrinsic value of gold and fiat currencies applies to bitcoin too. This is a guest post by Kyle Torpey. Opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Bitcoin Magazine or BTC Inc. This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine . || VanEck China ETF Taps New, Consumer-Based Economy: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
Despite the trade uncertainty, China is still a fast growing economy that international investors should not ignore. As investors look for ways to gain exposure to this new economy, one may consider targeted China country-specific exchange traded funds.
For example, ETF investors can look to a fund like theVanEck Vectors ChinaAMC SME-ChiNext ETF (CNXT), which tries to reflect the performance of the SME-ChiNext 100 Index.
There are ways for investors to gain exposure to the evolution of the Chinese economy towards a consumer-based economy and away from an export focus. Specifically, VanEck argued that sectors primed to benefit the most from this shift include the consumer discretionary, consumer staples, health care, I.T., and healthcare industries.
"As China transitions towards a consumer-based economy, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have sprung up to cater to these new and growing segments of the economy. The defining characteristic of these sectors is that their growth and profitability is primarily driven by consumer spending and habits (as opposed to government-directed spending and investment)," according to a VanEck note.
VanEck highlighted the SME-ChiNext 100 Index, which has a high concentration in these sectors, with almost 65% of the index concentrated there.
The SME-ChiNext 100 Index tracks the largest 100 names across the ChiNext and SME boards, both of which trade on the Shenzhen exchange. The ChiNext board was crafted to support innovation in emerging and high-tech sectors, raising capital for smaller, non-SOE companies. The SME Board was also created to allow small- and mid-sized companies more easily access capital and grow their business.
More importantly, these smaller companies on the two boards have comparatively smaller degrees of SOE overlap when compared to indices with the largest Chinese companies, which may provide another layer of diversification when investors look to Chinese equity exposure.
"The onshore Chinese market is broad and deep, and represents a wide variety of companies and industries. The same factors that drove China’s growth for the last 20 years may not continue in the future. With China’s transition to a consumer-led growth economy, a new set of companies is primed to benefit. Fortunately for investors who are seeking to tailor their China exposure to benefit from these changes, there are many ways to access the opportunities in the onshore market, including ETFs that provide exposure to targeted segments of the economy," according to VanEck.
For more information on Chinese markets, visit ourChina category.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || The blockchain/crypto week in quotes: “Breaking through the $6,000 barrier is a moment of truth for Bitcoin. This had been a major support level throughout most of 2018 and holds major psychological significance for the community. I expect to see a small sell-off initially before the price breaks higher. If this happens, we could see prices reach levels last seen at the start of 2018, potentially hitting the $12,000-$14,000 range by the end of the year. Given that global markets are having a bit of a wobble at the minute, Bitcoin’s price growth in recent weeks means it is one of the strongest asset classes so far in 2019.” Simon Peters, analyst at eToro Well ….. I made Yahoo News. So at least someone In our government must have received my messages, if there's anyone left in the government who can still understand straight talk. https://t.co/TS1riS0y87 — John McAfee (@officialmcafee) May 11, 2019 “The situation with Tether and Bitfinex seems like a really big mess that probably won’t get better. Tether is somewhat important to our ecosystem because it’s used by different institutions to effect more fluid trading. There are other price-stable tokens out there – many others – and I think they’re going to gain traction because of this. I think that will be a really good thing.” Joseph Lubin, Co-founder of Ethereum and Founder of ConsenSys Today in Congress Rep. Sherman called for a bill to ban all cryptocurrencies. This is why Coin Center is needed in DC now more than ever. pic.twitter.com/jgikm7z8bI — Coin Center (@coincenter) May 9, 2019 “Cryptocurrencies are not really currencies, they are assets. A euro is a euro, today, tomorrow, in a month, it’s always a euro. And the ECB is behind the euro. Who is behind the cryptocurrencies? So they are very, very risky assets.” European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi CZ is catching a connecting flight. His bags don't make it in time. He saunters up the aisle and grabs the PA from flight attendant. "I could have stopped this plane and shut down the whole airport to get my bag, but I chose not to. I am a generous god." The passengers applaud — nic carter (@nic__carter) May 8, 2019 “The attack on Binance is a yet another case showing how unreliable centralised exchanges are. Obviously, even with the presence of impressive financial resources, enabling the exchange to address the security issue properly, and despite the trust of millions of users around the world (as is well known, Binance is one of the leaders in trading volumes), such exchanges are outdated and are more like a giant game of Russian Roulette than a financial ecosystem that stimulates the favourable development of the crypto market. It is highly likely that a similar situation will soon happen at other “Binance-like” major exchanges that will remain nameless. The consequence of such events is the slowing down of the development of the crypto financial market, since such attacks increasingly weaken the confidence of participants and delay the entry of institutional entities into the market. Market participants have high expectations related to attacks: namely, that the market will begin to develop strongly and become more orderly and professional. In other words, the institutional entities will lead the market to a higher professional standard. There is only one way out, and that is to urgently and drastically change the approach to the storage of client funds. The funds must either be kept in the custody of licensed, highly-reputable third-party custodians or with the client in a personal decentralised account, which, in our opinion, is a more reliable option. At Xena, we are actively working on this solution and will soon present it. Only the client is able to access their funds, and the relationship with the exchange must remain independent and trustless.” Julie Plavnik, CBDO, Xena Exchange Using crypto is easy! You just need: – 2FA on everything – Ledger for cold storage – Key recovery plan – New browser extensions – Wallet for phone – An exchange account – Know terms like "gas" Oh & 95% of coins are scams & hackers are always trying to steal your money Easy! — Ryan Sean Adams (@RyanSAdams) May 8, 2019 “Despite the Binance hack, Bitcoin seems to be continuing with its current upward trend. That’s not to say that we’re unlikely to see any more falls. While the market has been overdue a rally, it won’t just be a straight line upwards from here on out. Prices are likely to remain volatile with wild swings. While some attribute the rally to the upcoming New York blockchain week, this seems more coincidence than cause. The main driver is likely to be the anticipated halving of the mining reward for Bitcoin. While still a year away it has been identified that a rally in Bitcoin tends to precede this event. This has happened every time a halving has taken place, as a diminished supply will naturally lead to more demand.” Gavin Smith, CEO, Panxora To advocate for crypto is to advocate for money to be subject to open competition, like any other important good or service in a market economy. The money monopolists (central banks and governments) will oppose this change, softly & curiously at first, and then with a vengeance. — Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) May 12, 2019 “With Facebook Coin, Facebook has lit a fire in the pants of every major FinTech and financial institution in the US.” Blockchain Capital partner Spencer Bogart I am shocked that @cz_binance even went there. Talk of forking or reorganizing the blockchain is close to heresy. When the ethereum community did it the project was like 5 months old. A baby. Bitcoin now has $100bn market cap and is a legitimate store of wealth. https://t.co/pXSqiUcq0i — Michael Novogratz (@novogratz) May 8, 2019 “BitPay is at the cutting-edge of blockchain-payment technology and has proven itself as a valuable partner to numerous companies and consumers globally. I believe that BitPay has the opportunity to be a game-changer in the financial technology and payment space as the use cases for blockchain payments grow around the world. I am very excited to be part of this journey and join the team.” Glen Braganza, BitPay Chief Financial Officer In 2008, US taxpayers were forced to bail out the banks by purchasing their toxic debt. In protest of that crisis, Bitcoin was born. In 2019, Bitfinex wants a bailout of their own. The difference is, they can't compel us to buy their IEO. I'm not here for the Bitfinex Bailout. — Jake Chervinsky (@jchervinsky) May 5, 2019 “Blockchain…very interesting development.” Prince Charles “I think the people who are professional traders that go into trading cryptocurrencies, it’s just disgusting. It’s like somebody else is trading turds and you decide, ‘I can’t be left out.'” Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger #Bitcoin is up 6% to its yearly high of around $6,000. Don’t be fooled, a 6% uptick is nothing after its huge plunge. Bitcoin in unreliable and susceptible to fraud, it is not a currency, but nothing more than a highly-speculative asset https://t.co/dDCgwtPu4r — Prof. Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) May 4, 2019 The post The blockchain/crypto week in quotes appeared first on Coin Rivet . View comments || Mark Zuckerberg Stole Facebook, Now He’s Stealing Bitcoin: ByCCN Markets: One day Bitcoin will occupy the same corner of internet nostalgia occupied by Nikola Tesla. So it goes: were it not for Thomas Edison’s superior resources, influence and propaganda, we could all be running our laptops on Mr. Tesla’s free energy right now.
Surveying the thunderous hype surrounding Facebook’s foray into the cryptocurrency game, one can’t quite shake the feeling that Mark Zuckerberg is in the process of pulling an Edison.
The analogies between the story of Facebook’s foundation and that of the upcomingLibra/Facebucks are striking. Call it inspiration, theft, or skilled reselling, but when Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2004, he was working with live clay. The groundwork of Facebook already existed in the Winklevii’s HarvardConnection/ConnectU. Zuckerberg reshaped it and sent it out to become the global juggernaut it is today – withlawsuits and settlementsin between.
Here, Zuckerberg resembles McDonalds tycoon Ray Kroc – a man with better salesmanship than his colleagues, and no moral scruples about taking their ideas and running with them. Like Kroc, Zuckerberg did not yet have any of that wealth, power and influence which would soon come his way.
Read the full story on CCN.com. || Bitcoin Logic: The Tactics Of Faketoshi Exposed by Craig Wright Himself: ByCCN Markets: Self-professed Bitcoin creator and ‘Faketoshi’, Craig Wright, continued to give himself away in a blog post where he details the logic of false argumentation. Specifically, Wright takes aim at those who would seek to hide behind ad hominem attacks, and use misdirection to avoid the question at hand.
That question, according to Wright, is the scaling of Bitcoin, which he states in between bouts of launching ad hominem attacks on everyone fromJulian Assange, toBinance, toJohn McAfee.
Here we have the manifestation of Wright’s logic in action. The real question is why he persists in the ruse that he is Bitcoin’s inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. Everything else, as Craig Wright says himself, is misdirection.
Titled “The Genetic Fallacy”, Wright’s latest blog post suggests (in meme form) that the reason people don’t believe his Satoshi claims is because he’s Australian. I resent this implication – as a Scotsman I’m proud of the genetic heritage that links mycriminal great-great-great-grandfatherto the founding members of the land down under. Wright states:
Read the full story on CCN.com. || Weiss Crypto Ratings Drops EOS Over Centralization Concerns but Who Cares: The Weiss ranking has downgraded EOS over 'serious' centralization concerns. | Source: Shutterstock By CCN Markets : Weiss Crypto Ratings on Friday announced that it is downgrading the technology score of EOS, a blockchain protocol developed and distributed by Block.one. eos, eos usd EOS Downgraded by Weiss Rating Over Centralization Issues | Source: Weiss Crypto Ratings The US-based economic research agency said EOS has “serious problems with centralization,” three months after it put the project among the top three blockchains alongside Ripple and Bitcoin. Weiss argued that Block.one has taken no necessary steps to improve the protocol, adding that not even the firm’s event last week, wherein it announced Voice, an upcoming social media platform taking on a behemoth rival in Facebook, did anything to alleviate the centralization issues. “It’s now up to ADA to launch a truly decentralized POS blockchain,” said Weiss. Weiss is Untrustworthy Weiss’ take on EOS, nevertheless, appeared drastic than well-researched. Earlier, the agency continuously placed the Block.one’s protocol atop other blockchain projects, calling it A-grade. The favorable rating came despite multiple reports/complaints finding the centralized nature of the EOS blockchain. Los Angeles-based Whiteblock, for instance, called EOS a glorified cloud computing service that lacked blockchain’s most essential features, like immutability. The Whiteblock report made to the wire in November 2018, four months before Weiss awarded EOS the top position on their best blockchain projects’ list. The scenario proves that Weiss hugely ignored certain fundamental aspects while rating EOS higher than other blockchain projects. Viktor Bunin, a protocol specialist at Bison Trails , believes no one should trust Weiss ratings on cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects because of it’s broken and opaque “proprietary” methodology. Read the full story on CCN.com . View comments || U.S. Stock ETFs Stumble as Trump Postpones Car Tariffs: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. U.S. markets and stock exchange traded funds pared some of its losses earlier in the session but struggled to maintain a solid footing after the Trump administration decided to hold off on broad car tariffs from major trading partners in the European Union and Japan. On Friday, the Invesco QQQ Trust ( QQQ ) dipped 0.3%, SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF ( DIA ) was up 0.1% and SPDR S&P 500 ETF ( SPY ) was down 0.1%. The White House said it would push off a decision to impose broad tariffs on cars for 180 days, citing national security concerns, the Wall Street Journal reports. The fact that we got this flexibility on auto tariffs is crucial because the market is trying to determine if both sides are taking a hardline approach, Jeff Sica, chief executive at Circle Squared Alternative Investments, told the WSJ. Some investors are viewing these concessions as a breaking of the stalemate. The Trump administration was also trying to reach a deal with Canada and Mexico that could end tariffs on steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., removing a major hurdle in the three countries' trade pact. Meanwhile, stronger U.S. consumer sentiment also helped bolster investment confidence over the health of the economy. According to the University of Michigan, American household sentiment increased to its highest level since 2004 in May on a more optimistic economic outlook. Nevertheless, uncertainty over trade remains a major overhang on the broader markets. Trade talks between the U.S. and China have stalled after Washington tacked on a 25% tariff on $200 billion in Chinese goods, and Beijing responded in kind with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. The recent tit-for-tat dampened hopes that the trade dispute was nearing a quick end. The renewed trade concerns also further exacerbated anxiety over a potential global slowdown. Its been really challenging as an investor to try and figure out which direction things are headed with the U.S.-China trade conflict, Timothy Chubb, chief investment officer at Girard, told the WSJ. Theres a lot of confusion. A lot of investors at this point are sitting on their hands looking to take some profits or rebalance their portfolios, but arent making a convicted move in one direction or another. Story continues For more information on the markets, visit our current affairs category . POPULAR ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM SPY ETF Quote VOO ETF Quote QQQ ETF Quote VTI ETF Quote JNUG ETF Quote Top 34 Gold ETFs Top 34 Oil ETFs Top 57 Financials ETFs Bitcoin, Stablecoin, Blockchain, Enterprise Ledger
WTF? So Many Retirement Idiots Columbia Threadneedle Makes Changes to its ETF Line Up Walmart Looks Into Expanding Home Office To Attract Talent President Trump Weighs Whether Or Not To Go To War With Iran READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || As Brazil’s Economy Risks Recession, Regulators and Banks Implement Blockchain: Brazil’s weak economic growth and inflationary pressure have led to more than 13 million Brazilians currently out of work. Theunemployment ratecurrently stands at 12.5%. While the country runs the risk of recession, cryptocurrency’s low barrier for entry and promise of large returns appeal to Brazilians. Bruno Peroni, chief sales officer at Atlas Quantum, told Cointelegraph:
“We have a higher number of people investing in crypto than on the local stocks markets. The most recent estimates show that there are 1.5 million Brazilians investing in crypto, whereas the local stock markets, called B3, has just reached 1 million investors.”
Adraft billrequiring public administrators to promoteblockchain, as Cointelegraph Brazil reported, was filed by a group of 10 federal officials from different political parties and states in the lower house of the National Congress of Brazil on June 11.
The newdraft bill, titled the Digital Provision of Public Services in Public Administration – Digital Government, requires federal and state government divisions to explore technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain to improve public services.
Federal Deputy Tiago Mitraud of the libertarian Brazilian political party called the New Party signed the bill, as well as officials from various other parties, including the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB). It’s not the only recent action by Brazilian authorities on the cryptocurrency and blockchain front.
The president of the Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies, furthermore,ordereda commission to consider cryptocurrency regulation for the country. The country is alsoestablishinga regulatory sandbox, according to reports from June 13.
Also, within a space of just a week, Brazil's Department of Federal Revenuepublisheda manual on June 18 that obliges all exchanges in Brazil to report 100% of user transactions to the supervisory.
In January of this year, the Financial Supervision Council of Brazilannouncedit would regulate cryptocurrencies using Brazil’s Anti-Money Laundering laws, including fines as high as $5 million for violators.
Brazilian merchants, meanwhile, are stilldealingwith a lack of regulatory clarity. There has been an ongoing dispute between banks and companies operating in the cryptocurrency space.
Banks closed the accounts of various brokerage firms with cryptocurrency ties. Fernando Furlan, president of the Brazilian Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Association (ABCB), told Universo Online, a Brazilian news website:
"We are competitors and we are also users of the banking system, banks can not act unilaterally, they claim that it is not possible to guarantee that there is no money laundering."
“While the government and the banks are always boasting about their projects involving blockchain technology, many crypto-related companies have their bank accounts closed,” he added.
Campos also adds that the focus of the crypto industry should shift in the near future, saying, “By following strict rules, we hope that the government understands that crypto is not a safe haven for criminals and that it should strive for Brazil to be a big player in this new era of decentralized finance.”
While regulators explore cryptocurrency regulations, the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB), the Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM), the Superintendent of Private Insurance (SUSEP) and the Ministry of Economy’s Special Secretariat for Finance are working todigitizethe financial, capital and insurance sectors of Brazil by integrating blockchain technology. The official statement said:
“The use of innovative technologies as distributed ledger technology, blockchain, robo-advisors and artificial intelligence has allowed the rise of new business models, reflecting a bigger offer and reach.”
Vice President of Brazil’s largest bank, Bradesco,revealedthat major banks will introduce a unique blockchain platform, which it is developing alongside distributed ledger consortiumR3, and the bank Itau. The platform is focused on foreign trade and insurance, as Cointelegraph reported on June 11. Bradesco told Cointelegraph in a written statement:
“Bradesco has been studying Blockchain/Distributed Ledger since 2015 and since then has carried out pilot projects in areas related to payments, Know Your Customer (KYC), fraud prevention and Certificate of Deposits (CDB). The platforms used so far are Corda, Hyperledger Fabric, Ethereum, and Ripple. Through these projects, we have tracked the evolution of technology regarding processing and reconciliation capacity for future large scale applications.”
The bank has also recently joined IBM's Blockchain World Wire solution for international remittances, the Marco Polo trade finance consortium and the National Financial System Network, the first Brazilian blockchain network, which is managed by the Interbank Payment Chamber (CIP).
Bradesco believes that blockchain and distributed ledger technologies could help “in terms of agility, security, transaction transparency, and costs in existing services, as well as enabling the development of new services.”
Keiji Sakai, the country head for Brazil at R3, told Cointelegraph in an emailed statement:
“While we are very excited about these projects, the potential for Corda stretches well beyond financial services. Corda removes costly friction in business transactions across every industry. It enables institutions to transact directly using smart contracts, while ensuring the highest levels of privacy and security. Its applications stretch from financial services and healthcare to oil and gas and we’re always looking to capitalise on those opportunities in Brazil and beyond.”
In early June, CIP launched its blockchain ID platform on Hyperledger Fabric through a partnership with IBM. Nine banks are participating in the project, called Device ID, which is designed to authenticate and verify digital signatures with mobile devices. The project is to beintegratedinto Brazil’s domestic clearing system, the Brazilian Payment System (SPB). Regarding this, Joaquim Kiyoshi Kavakama, director of Febraban, Brazil’s national banking association, told Cointelegraph:
“Brazilian banks have been studying blockchain technology applications for a long time, but they weren't all together. So we decided to create a group and unify all actions, which is very important to achieve standardization to all banks. We are now in the forefront when it comes to blockchain.”
In addition to the Device ID anti-fraud solution headed by CIP, Bradesco has projects related to international remittance, trade finance, insurance, investments, customer registration and payments, among others.
Ripple, an enterprise blockchain software company, recently opened an office in Brazil as a first step to expanding its footprint in South America. The company has already partnered with more than a dozen Brazilian financial institutions and money transfer companies — including Santander Brazil, international payment service BeeTech, Banco Rendimento, etc.
Ripple says its 2019 focus includes growing its presence in not only Brazil, but across South America, to countries like Chile, Peru and Argentina. The company is also working with Brazilian universities — such as the University of São Paulo and Fundação Getulio Vargas per its University Blockchain Research Initiative. Luiz Antonio Sacco, managing director for Ripple in South America, shared his thoughts with Cointelegraph:
“We believe that academic institutions will play a key role driving the blockchain industry forward. USPand FGV are innovative, forward-thinking institutions that are investing in blockchain research to explore new use cases and help prepare students for future jobs in this space.”
Peroni of Atlas Quantum says it’s hard to know the cause of Bitcoin’s growth in Brazil. “Our guess is that the low barrier to entrance and the prospect of exponential returns might be one of the reasons why so many Brazilian investors are gearing towards crypto,” he said.
• Brazil Authorities to Adapt Cross-Sector Regulations to React to Digital Transformation
• Ripple Launches Office in Brazil, Targets Further Expansion Across Latin America
• Firm Behind Zcash to Introduce New Version of Protocol With Sharding
• Grand Theft Crypto: The State of Cryptocurrency-Stealing Malware and Other Nasty Techniques || GBP/USD Daily Forecast – Sterling Recovers From Support: Friday’s price action across the majors was mostly as a result of a broadly weaker dollar. The US dollar index (DX) gained for four consecutive days last week until Friday’s turn wiped out most of the weekly gain.
On a daily chart, this has led to a bearish engulfing candle for DX. I consider it quite significant considering how much of the prior rally it wiped out.
GBP/USDstands to recover some earlier losses, but bear in mind, Sterling was the weakest among the majors in May. Perhaps there may be some better pairs to trade in order to take advantage of the current down momentum in the greenback.
One that will be on everyone’s radar will be US Non-Farm Payrolls which are scheduled for release on Friday. Also, the ECB meeting on Thursday stands to impact the dollar and therefore there could be a spillover effect in the majors.
For the session ahead, Manufacturing PMI figures will be released out of the United Kingdom in early European trading. Later in the day, the release of US manufacturing figures stands to impactGBP/USD.
The 4-Hour chart shows the recent upward momentum as indicated by the bullish engulfing candle. The candle was as a result of a rally after testing support at 1.2575.
A bullish engulfing candle is also seen on a daily chart, as a result of the same price action.
In early European trading, the upward momentum has died down a bit. A horizontal level at 1.2654 is in play and is holding the upside thus far. Recall that this level was significant last week and the pair was supported by it for quite some time in the early week.
Similarly, horizontal resistance at 1.2677 was also an important level last week. For that reason, I see these two levels as major upside resistance in the session ahead.
On an hourly chart, the 200 moving average is found near 1.2654 to create a confluence of resistance. A the moment, the pair is bouncing between the 100 and 200 moving averages.
• I think the pair could fall into a range between the moving averages over the short-term.
• There is upward momentum as a result of Friday’s price action. Also, price action in DX suggests the next main move will be higher for GBP/USD.
• I expect opportunities on both sides in the session ahead. I will be looking to sell a rally to 1.2677 as I expect the pair can pull back a bit from there. On a dip to 1.2624, I would be a buyer looking for a move to 1.2677. However, I think it’s important to get confirmation of the level holding on the smaller time frames.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
• EUR/USD Mid-Session Technical Analysis for June 3, 2019
• GBP/USD Daily Forecast – Sterling Recovers From Support
• Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 03/06/19
• NEM’s XEM Technical Analysis – Support Levels in Play – 03/06/19
• Oil Price Fundamental Daily Forecast – Will US Producers Cap Rigs to Stabilize Prices? Can Saudis Cut Further?
• E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM) Futures Technical Analysis – Major Weekly Target Zone at 24269 to 24122
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
🔷 El bitcoin traerá consecuencias devastadoras para el planeta en menos de 2 décadas https://t.co/fJbeLrXEaL || This team offers conditions at a first-class level. Best product I've ever experienced! #Shato || @Morehouse @RFS_Vista He's paying for their vacations, bitcoin investing and other stupidity. Nice guy. || 15Jamal knew he was devoted. Even though his light was small and far away from everyone else, it could still be seen. He whispers to himself, One only needs to look #Bitcoin #11Block Block:581111 || Installa il browser CryptoTab e inizia a guadagnare soldi extra semplicemente per usarlo. Finché guardi YouTube, leggi le notizie e utilizzi i social network come fai ogni giorno, ottieni Bitcoin veri. https://t.co/jNvtyqwxBy #cryptotab || Crypto Market Sentiment: Ethereum Joins Bitcoin in the Positive Zone https://t.co/JnLXCNVqNO || @CryptoGainz1 @redxbt Thanks for help sir. Having a great day since I market bought ETH x20 and BTCx25 this morning after ur tweets! Making $BTC while I’m fishing is the best thing I’ve ever done https://t.co/5v0NYvc4YE || Be part of the future App Store https://t.co/9YLkwJhPPV @dapp_com
⚡️Join $100,000 #airdrop with my link: https://t.co/AIai8HBDWu to catch the Last chance for free $DAPPT before listing 🚀 https://t.co/ARMRqk9cIO #BTC #Crypto #Blockchain #Airdrop lewat @Dapp_com || Let's go! || #WeAreAllSatoshi
|
Trend: down || Prices: 12573.81, 12156.51, 11358.66, 11815.99, 11392.38, 10256.06, 10895.09, 9477.64, 9693.80, 10666.48
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2017-04-06]
BTC Price: 1182.68, BTC RSI: 59.74
Gold Price: 1250.30, Gold RSI: 58.30
Oil Price: 51.70, Oil RSI: 60.09
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
USD/CNH Patterns to Watch after PBOC Talks on U.S.- China Relationship: DailyFX.com -
This daily digest focuses on Yuan rates, major Chinese economic data, market sentiment, new developments in China’s foreign exchange policies, changes in financial market regulations, as well as market news typically available only in Chinese-language sources.
- The USD/CNH is testing a major support. Watch key levels next.
- The PBOC Governor addressed on investment negotiations between China and the U.S.
-Looking for more trade ideas? Review DailyFX’s2017 Trading Guidesand watchDailyFX webinars.
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Yuan Rates
Prepared byMichael Boutros.
USDCNH is testing the monthly opening-range lows with key support seen at the 61.8% retracement of the January rally at6.8391. The pair has been trading within the confines of a well-defined descending pitchfork formation with the upper median-line parallel highlighting resistance & near-term bearish invalidation at6.8839-note that this level also converges on the February high.
The near-term focus remains weighted to the downside while below this region with a break lower targeting confluence support at6.8048where the 61.8% extension of the decline off the yearly high converges on the 50-line of the operative slope. Subsequent support targets at6.7765-6.7818(38.2% retracement & the 2017 opening-range low). From a trading standpoint we’ll favor fading strength while below the upper parallel with a break of the range lows targeting subsequent support objectives.
Market News
PBOCNews:China’s Central Bank.
-China’s Central Bank released the full text of Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s speech at Boao Forum this weekend. “China has been conducting negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty with the U.S., though some of the talks have been suspended. China is waiting for the new U.S. government to decide how to move forward on these talks”, according to the Governor.
Mr. Zhou also said that “if the U.S. adopts valued added tax [on imported goods], China welcomes; however, implementing a border adjustment tax is controversial.”
This indicates that the outlook of trade and investment between the two countries still has some uncertainty. This may not be good news for the Chinese economy, as it has already experienced slow growth in exports and imports.
- The PBOC announced on Monday that it has hosted a supervision work conference last week for cross-border Yuan business and set targets for the 2017: the regulator will guide the development of offshore Yuan markets and promote cross-border Yuan business to develop in a healthy way.
The Chinese regulator has been strengthening oversight on cross-border Yuan transactions and this is likely continue to be the case in 2017. As of March 27th, the “Big Three” Chinese Bitcoin trading platforms, BTCChina, OKCoin and Huobi, have not yet removed restrictions on Bitcoin withdrawals, which came into effect following a series of inspections on illegal cross-border transactions launched by the PBOC.
Sina News: China’s most important online media source, similar to CNN in the US. They also own a Chinese version of Twitter, called Weibo, with around 200 million active usersmonthly.
- In the first two months of 2017, China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) made a profit of 201.86 billion Yuan, rising +40.3% compared to the same period last year, according to China’s statistics bureau. In specific, oil, petrochemical, coal and steel industries that experienced major losses last year, all reported gains this January and February. This is likely driven by soaring energy prices. On the other hand, machinery and electricity companies reported significant drops in profits, likely led by the same reason -higher energy costs.
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original source
DailyFXprovides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets.Learn forex trading with a free practice account and trading charts fromIG. || Bitcoin Unlimited Futures Used to Extinguish Debt of Leading Bitcoin Public Company: VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 6, 2017 /First Bitcoin Capital Corp (OTC PINK: BITCF), in a related party transaction paid off approximately $200,000 in debt utilizing Bitcoin Unlimited Futures, making the Company 100% debt free.
Bitcoin Unlimited Futures is one of the latest cryptographic creations of the company and rides on the rails of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Released by the Company as a means of allowing speculators to predict the outcome of the forthcoming hard fork of Bitcoin Core into two distinct assets, Bitcoin Unlimited Futures trades under the symbols XBU on the decentralized OMNIDEX and the Company's subsidiary, COINQX.com as well as XB on the CCEX.com exchanges.
XBU or XB is not to be confused with competing efforts to presale actual Bitcoin Unlimited (BTU) prior to the hard fork, whereas in the case of XBU/XB our coin will not become BTU, instead, it will trade independently as a third currency. There is no relation of XBU or XB to the actual Bitcoin other than that it was created on and moves along the rails of the Bitcoin Blockchain using the Omni Layer Protocols.
BTU is trading at about half of the trading value of XBU/XB. Efforts by two competing exchanges to capitalize on the pending hard fork can be found here:http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-unlimited/
Due to the ephemeral nature of XBU/XB, the Company's creditor agreed to accept XBU at a discount from current illiquid market rates so that the company has paid 2,000 XBU/XT to settle this related party debt from its growing inventory of altcoins.
"Becoming debt free not only strengthens our balance sheet but is an important milestone for a development stage company which positions the company for a more rapid path to profitability."
The company is also conducting its first ICO (Initial Coin Offering) which is actively offered at a bonus to "early bird" participants. In order to participate in the company's recently announced AltCoin ICO, kindly review further details athttp://www.AltCoinMarketCap.com
About the company:
First Bitcoin Capital is engaged in developing digital currencies, proprietary Blockchain technologies, and the digital currency exchange- www.CoinQX.com. We see this step as a tremendous opportunity to create further shareholder value by leveraging management's experience in developing and managing complex Blockchain technologies, developing new types of digital assets. Being the first publicly-traded cryptocurrency and blockchain-centered company (with shares both traded in the US OTC Markets as [BITCF] and as [BIT] in crypto exchanges) we want to provide our shareholders with diversified exposure to digital cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. At this time the Company is developing several cryptocurrency related businesses and owns and operates the following digital assets.
www.CoinQX.comcryptocurrency exchange, registered with FINCEN.
www.iCoiNEWS.comreal time cryptocurrency and bitcoin news site.
www.BITminer.ccproviding mining pool management services.
www.2016coin.orgonline daily election coverage and home page for $PRES, $HILL, $GARY& $BURN -commemorative presidential election coins.
www.bitcannpay.comOpen Loop merchant services for dispensaries.
List of Omni protocol coins issued on the Bitcoin Blockchain owned by the Company:http://omnichest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=1FwADyEvdvaLNxjN1v3q6tNJCgHEBuABrS
Follow us on Twitter @First_Bitcoin $BITCF
About BITCOIN UNLIMITED
The Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) project seeks to provide a voice to all stakeholders in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Every node operator or miner can currently choose their own block size limit by modifying their client. Bitcoin Unlimited makes the process easier by providing a configurable option for the accepted and generated block size via a GUI menu. Bitcoin Unlimited further provides a user-configurable failsafe setting allowing you to accept a block larger than your maximum accepted block size if it reaches a certain number of blocks deep in the chain.
By moving the block size limit from the protocol layer to the transport layer, Bitcoin Unlimited removes the only point of central control in the Bitcoin economy - the block size limit - and returns it to the nodes and the miners. An emergent consensus will thus arise based on free-market economics as the nodes/miners converge on consensus focal points, creating in the process a living, breathing entity that responds to changing real-world conditions in a free and decentralized manner.
This approach is supported by the evidence accumulated over the past six years. The miners and node operators have until now been free to choose a soft limit which, as demand grew, has always been increased in a responsive and organic manner to meet the needs of the market. We expect miners to continue in this tested and proven free-market way by, for instance, coordinating to set a new generated block size limit of 2MB and reject any blocks larger than 2MB unless they reach 4 blocks deep in the longest chain. As demand increases, the limit can easily be increased to 3MB, 4MB, and so on, thus removing central control over the process of finding the equilibrium block size by allowing the free market to arrive at the correct choice in a decentralized fashion.
As a foundational principle, we assert that Bitcoin is and should be whatever its users define by the code they run, and the rules they vote for with their hash power.
Bitcoin Unlimited seeks to remove existing practical barriers to stakeholders expressing their views in these ways.
For more information, please visitwww.bitcoinunlimited.info
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors as may be disclosed in company's filings. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.Such forward-looking statements are risks that are detailed in the Company's filings, which are on file atwww.OTCMarkets.com.
Contact us viainfo@bitcoincapitalcorp.comor visithttp://www.bitcoincapitalcorp.com
SOURCE:First Bitcoin Capital Corp. || SEC Rejects Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF: It’s official. The Securities and Exchange Commission did not approve the Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF (COIN).
After sitting in the regulatory pipeline for more than three years, it’s back to the drawing board with the idea of putting the peer-to-peer digital currency in an ETF wrapper.
"We remain optimistic and committed to bringing COIN to market, and look forward to continuing to work with the SEC staff. We began this journey almost four years ago, and are determined to see it through. We agree with the SEC that regulation and oversight are important to the health of any marketplace and the safety of all investors," said Tyler Winklevoss, CFO, Digital Asset Services.
Going into this much-awaited decision, bitcoin prices had raced to a new record high above $1,300 in anticipation of a SEC “yes” to this fund. But following the news, bitcoin tanked to below $1,000, bleeding more than 18%.
The rejection hinged on the commission’s belief that the proposed fund and its listing on an exchange required more safeguards and more regulatory oversight. Bitcoin is traded on unregulated markets, which prevents the SEC from entering into “surveillance sharing” agreements that, among other things, help stomp out market manipulation, said Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital.
Prospects Grow Dimmer
The implication here, he says, is that because the disapproval centered on the bitcoin market structure itself—and not on any specific detail of the ETF design—prospects for other bitcoin ETFs to come to market just grew dimmer.
“The decision isn't that surprising,” Dave Nadig, CEO of ETF.com, added. “Ultimately this is less about what bitcoin is or isn't, and is about the underlying market structure for bitcoin itself. If the SEC doesn't know where the buck stops on a security, it's hard for them to get behind it. Honestly, the whole point of bitcoin is the buck never stops. It's unregulated by design.”
This was a big deal. The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust would have been the first ETF to offer investors everywhere easy, transparent access to this peer-to-peer, unregulated digital currency that has gathered quite a following since the financial crisis of 2008. That access would have been made possible to anyone without the need to create separate accounts with bitcoin exchanges.
Bogart said adoption and use of bitcoins and its network have already been growing rapidly without the help of the ETF wrapper. Still, a bitcoin ETF would accelerate the already-fast-growing footprint of bitcoins.
Why A Bitcoin ETF Matters
“A bitcoin ETF would be a significant catalyst for a few reasons,” Bogart said. “For one, it would open the gates of bitcoin to institutional capital. Among other things, this could have a profound impact on price.”
Most institutional investors have mandates that allow them to only invest in registered securities, and bitcoin isn’t one, he says. But in an ETF, it would fit that bill. If nothing else, having a bitcoin ETF approved would improve “public perception” and help manage some of the regulatory risk many associate with bitcoin’s unregulated status.
“In addition, retail investors would be able to get exposure to bitcoin directly from their brokerage accounts instead of establishing a separate account with a bitcoin exchange,” Bogart added. “The way to think about ETF approval is as a low-probability catalyst that could accelerate bitcoin’s already-rapid adoption growth.”
About COIN
COIN, led by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of Facebook fame, was first put in registration more than three years ago.
Designed as a grantor trust, COIN would do in-kind creations and redemptions much like a physical commodity ETF such as theSPDR Gold Trust (GLD), and the fund would use the Winklevoss’ own bitcoin exchange Gemini to set the price.
That comparison to gold has been often touted. In an interview two years ago, the Winklevoss brothers told an audience of advisors thatbitcoins are “better than gold”as a store of value, inflation hedging and access to a still-growing global ecosystem that’s the future of the payments industry.
That’s because the Winklevoss brothers see bitcoin as a commodity more than as a currency. “An investment in the bitcoin ETF is an investment in the future performance of bitcoin and the underlying bitcoin protocol, not an investment in a bitcoin company,” they said in aninterviewin 2014.
Bitcoin All About Global Commerce
Mike Venuto, head of Toroso Investments, argues that, to investors, the bigger picture is that bitcoin is all about global commerce.
In arecent blog, he offered this perspective:
In a recent white paper, Deloitte & Touche described bitcoin as an “Internet of value exchange.” The real value of bitcoin is about the utilization of the infrastructure on which it is based. The more bitcoins are mined, or “hashed,” the more a free encrypted version of the internet is expanded. This self-reinforcing infrastructure that becomes more dependable as more people participate, is called the “blockchain.” It can be used in a way to transfer securities, to create artificial intelligence, secure real estate or art transactions and, potentially, for all kinds of other transactions. Look at bitcoin this way: 20 years ago, the internet democratized access to information, and now the bitcoin blockchain is democratizing access to commerce.
For now, access to bitcoin in an ETF can be found in theARK Web x.0 ETF (ARKW), which has a small allocation to bitcoins obtained through publicly traded shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust(OTCQX: GBTC). That allocation currently sits around 5% of that portfolio.
But the launch of a strategy such as COIN would be “consequential,” Venuto says.
“In an age where asset allocation is its own asset class, a bitcoin ETF could have a place in many portfolios,” he said. “You can purchase bitcoins today. So, putting bitcoins into an ETF structure is not about making them accessible in a basic sense. It's about making bitcoins more accessible—that is, investable for any investor within a brokerage account.”
Contact Cinthia Murphy atcmurphy@etf.com
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Permalink| © Copyright 2017ETF.com.All rights reserved || Big Bitcoin ETF Decision Coming Today, Or Maybe Not: [Editor's note - Update:SEC Rejects Bitcoin ETF]
The much-awaited Securities and Exchange Commission decision on whether to approve or disapprove theWinklevoss Bitcoin ETF (COIN)may not actually come until Monday, March 13.
The deadline to rule on this ETF is officially tomorrow, but there’s a clause in the SEC’s policy that if a deadline falls on a weekend, it’s pushed to the next federal business day, according to Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital.
One more day of anticipation on whether the bitcoin ETF is a go wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that the industry seems to be able to talk about little else. In fact, Friday,bitcoin prices raced to a new record high above $1,300in anticipation of a SEC “yes” to this fund.
Here’s why this is such a big deal …
Bitcoin’s Big Moment
The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust (COIN) would be the first ETF to offer investors everywhere easy, transparent access to this peer-to-peer, unregulated digital currency that has gathered quite a following since the financial crisis of 2008.
That access would be made possible to anyone without the need to create separate accounts with bitcoin exchanges.
To be fair, as Bogart puts it, adoption and use of bitcoins and its network have already been growing rapidly without the help of the ETF wrapper. Still, a bitcoin ETF should accelerate the already-fast-growing footprint of bitcoins.
Why A Bitcoin ETF Matters
“A bitcoin ETF would be a significant catalyst for a few reasons,” Bogart said. “For one, it would open the gates of bitcoin to institutional capital. Among other things, this could have a profound impact on price.”
Most institutional investors have mandates that allow them to only invest in registered securities, and bitcoin isn’t one, he says. But in an ETF, it would fit that bill. If nothing else, having a bitcoin ETF approved would improve “public perception” and help manage some of the regulatory risk many associate with bitcoin’s unregulated status.
“In addition, retail investors would be able to get exposure to bitcoin directly from their brokerage accounts instead of establishing a separate account with a bitcoin exchange,” Bogart added. “The way to think about ETF approval is as a low-probability catalyst that could accelerate bitcoin’s already-rapid adoption growth.”
About COIN
COIN, led by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of Facebook fame, was first put in registration more than three years ago.
Designed as a grantor trust, COIN would do in-kind creations and redemptions much like a physical commodity ETF such as theSPDR Gold Trust (GLD), and the fund would use the Winklevoss’ own bitcoin exchange Gemini to set the price.
That comparison to gold has been often touted. In an interview two years ago, the Winklevoss brothers told an audience of advisors thatbitcoins are “better than gold”as a store of value, inflation hedging and access to a still-growing global ecosystem that’s the future of the payments industry.
That’s because the Winklevoss brothers see bitcoin as a commodity more than as a currency. “An investment in the bitcoin ETF is an investment in the future performance of bitcoin and the underlying bitcoin protocol, not an investment in a bitcoin company,” they said in aninterviewin 2014.
Mike Venuto, head of Toroso Investments, argues that, to investors, the bigger picture is that bitcoin is all about global commerce.
In arecent blog, he offered this perspective:
In a recent white paper, Deloitte & Touche described bitcoin as an “Internet of value exchange.” The real value of bitcoin is about the utilization of the infrastructure on which it is based. The more bitcoins are mined, or “hashed,” the more a free encrypted version of the internet is expanded. This self-reinforcing infrastructure that becomes more dependable as more people participate, is called the “blockchain.” It can be used in a way to transfer securities, to create artificial intelligence, secure real estate or art transactions and, potentially, for all kinds of other transactions. Look at bitcoin this way: 20 years ago, the internet democratized access to information, and now the bitcoin blockchain is democratizing access to commerce.
For now, access to bitcoin in an ETF can be found in theARK Web x.0 ETF (ARKW), which has a small allocation to bitcoins obtained through publicly traded shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust(OTCQX: GBTC). That allocation currently sits around 5% of that portfolio.
But the launch of a strategy such as COIN would be “consequential,” Venuto says.
“In an age where asset allocation is its own asset class, a bitcoin ETF could have a place in many portfolios,” he said. “You can purchase bitcoins today. So, putting bitcoins into an ETF structure is not about making them accessible in a basic sense. It's about making bitcoins more accessible—that is, investable for any investor within a brokerage account.”
Contact Cinthia Murphy atcmurphy@etf.com
Recommended Stories
• Why Small Cap ETFs Are Underperforming
• Fed Raises Rates, Maintains ‘Gradual’ Pace
• SEC Rejects Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF
• Swedroe: Political Biases Can Impact Your Investing
• Big Bitcoin ETF Decision Coming Today, Or Maybe Not
Permalink| © Copyright 2017ETF.com.All rights reserved || STOCKS REBOUND AFTER 'TRUMPCARE' VOTE PULLED: Here's what you need to know: (Google Finance)
Stocks shot up after Republican congressional leaders pulled the American Health Care Act from what looked almost certain to be a failed vote Friday.
All three major indices were tumbling lower near the end of the day, ahead of the scheduled vote. However, immediately after it was announced that the bill was pulled, stocks shot back up.
The Nasdaq finished up for the day, the S&P 500 was little changed, and the Dow was slightly in the red.
First up, the scoreboard:
• Dow:20,596.72, -59.86, (-0.29%)
• S&P 500:2,343.98,-1.98, (-0.08%)
• Nasdaq:5,828.74, +11.04, (+0.19%)
• US 10-year yield:2.418, -0.000
• WTI Crude:$48.10, +0.40, (+0.84%)
1.The GOP leadership has pulled the American Health Care Act from what looked almost certain to be a failed vote Friday.The move came as it became more clear that Republicans did not have enough votes to pass their bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.
2.The company behind the Keystone Pipeline just got a presidential permit to go ahead. The move overturns President Barack Obama'srejection of the $8 billion project. Following a wave of protests fromenvironmentalists, Obama said the project was against the long-term interests of the US.
3.Russia's central bank cut rates.The bank lowered its one-week repo rate by 25 basis points to 9.75% from 10.00%, and suggested that more cuts could be coming this year.
4.GameStop tanks after missing on sales and signaling it will close some stores this year.In its earnings release, the video-game retailer said its core category was weak, especially in the second half of last year, as the console cycle aged with a dearth of new hardware releases.
5.US oil rig count jumped for the 10th straight week, according to Baker Hughes.The US oil-rig count spiked by 21 to 652 this week — thehighest total count since the week of September 11, 2015.The gas-rig count fell by two to 155.
6.Bitcoin fell below $1,000.Aggressive selling on Friday morning had the cryptocurrency down 4.1% at $987 a coin as traders remain uneasy over its near-term outlook.
ADDITIONALLY:
Snapchat is more like Twitter than Facebook in one important area.
One of Wall Street's most steadfast bulls is worried about stocks.
Finish Line's explanation of its disappoint quarter perfectly captures the retail apocalypse.
NOW WATCH:7 mega-billionaires who made a fortune last year
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• STOCKS DO NOTHING: Here's what you need to know || SEC Rejects Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF: It’s official. The Securities and Exchange Commission did not approve the Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF (COIN). After sitting in the regulatory pipeline for more than three years, it’s back to the drawing board with the idea of putting the peer-to-peer digital currency in an ETF wrapper. "We remain optimistic and committed to bringing COIN to market, and look forward to continuing to work with the SEC staff. We began this journey almost four years ago, and are determined to see it through. We agree with the SEC that regulation and oversight are important to the health of any marketplace and the safety of all investors," said Tyler Winklevoss, CFO, Digital Asset Services. Going into this much-awaited decision, bitcoin prices had raced to a new record high above $1,300 in anticipation of a SEC “yes” to this fund. But following the news, bitcoin tanked to below $1,000, bleeding more than 18%. The rejection hinged on the commission’s belief that the proposed fund and its listing on an exchange required more safeguards and more regulatory oversight. Bitcoin is traded on unregulated markets, which prevents the SEC from entering into “surveillance sharing” agreements that, among other things, help stomp out market manipulation, said Spencer Bogart, managing director and head of research at Blockchain Capital. Prospects Grow Dimmer The implication here, he says, is that because the disapproval centered on the bitcoin market structure itself—and not on any specific detail of the ETF design—prospects for other bitcoin ETFs to come to market just grew dimmer. “The decision isn't that surprising,” Dave Nadig, CEO of ETF.com, added. “Ultimately this is less about what bitcoin is or isn't, and is about the underlying market structure for bitcoin itself. If the SEC doesn't know where the buck stops on a security, it's hard for them to get behind it. Honestly, the whole point of bitcoin is the buck never stops. It's unregulated by design.” Story continues This was a big deal. The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust would have been the first ETF to offer investors everywhere easy, transparent access to this peer-to-peer, unregulated digital currency that has gathered quite a following since the financial crisis of 2008. That access would have been made possible to anyone without the need to create separate accounts with bitcoin exchanges. Bogart said adoption and use of bitcoins and its network have already been growing rapidly without the help of the ETF wrapper. Still, a bitcoin ETF would accelerate the already-fast-growing footprint of bitcoins. Why A Bitcoin ETF Matters “A bitcoin ETF would be a significant catalyst for a few reasons,” Bogart said. “For one, it would open the gates of bitcoin to institutional capital. Among other things, this could have a profound impact on price.” Most institutional investors have mandates that allow them to only invest in registered securities, and bitcoin isn’t one, he says. But in an ETF, it would fit that bill. If nothing else, having a bitcoin ETF approved would improve “public perception” and help manage some of the regulatory risk many associate with bitcoin’s unregulated status. “In addition, retail investors would be able to get exposure to bitcoin directly from their brokerage accounts instead of establishing a separate account with a bitcoin exchange,” Bogart added. “The way to think about ETF approval is as a low-probability catalyst that could accelerate bitcoin’s already-rapid adoption growth.” About COIN COIN, led by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of Facebook fame, was first put in registration more than three years ago. Designed as a grantor trust, COIN would do in-kind creations and redemptions much like a physical commodity ETF such as the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) , and the fund would use the Winklevoss’ own bitcoin exchange Gemini to set the price. That comparison to gold has been often touted. In an interview two years ago, the Winklevoss brothers told an audience of advisors that bitcoins are “better than gold” as a store of value, inflation hedging and access to a still-growing global ecosystem that’s the future of the payments industry. That’s because the Winklevoss brothers see bitcoin as a commodity more than as a currency. “An investment in the bitcoin ETF is an investment in the future performance of bitcoin and the underlying bitcoin protocol, not an investment in a bitcoin company,” they said in an interview in 2014. Bitcoin All About Global Commerce Mike Venuto, head of Toroso Investments, argues that, to investors, the bigger picture is that bitcoin is all about global commerce. In a recent blog , he offered this perspective: In a recent white paper, Deloitte & Touche described bitcoin as an “Internet of value exchange.” The real value of bitcoin is about the utilization of the infrastructure on which it is based. The more bitcoins are mined, or “hashed,” the more a free encrypted version of the internet is expanded. This self-reinforcing infrastructure that becomes more dependable as more people participate, is called the “blockchain.” It can be used in a way to transfer securities, to create artificial intelligence, secure real estate or art transactions and, potentially, for all kinds of other transactions. Look at bitcoin this way: 20 years ago, the internet democratized access to information, and now the bitcoin blockchain is democratizing access to commerce. For now, access to bitcoin in an ETF can be found in the ARK Web x.0 ETF (ARKW) , which has a small allocation to bitcoins obtained through publicly traded shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC) . That allocation currently sits around 5% of that portfolio. But the launch of a strategy such as COIN would be “consequential,” Venuto says. “In an age where asset allocation is its own asset class, a bitcoin ETF could have a place in many portfolios,” he said. “You can purchase bitcoins today. So, putting bitcoins into an ETF structure is not about making them accessible in a basic sense. It's about making bitcoins more accessible—that is, investable for any investor within a brokerage account.” Contact Cinthia Murphy at cmurphy@etf.com Recommended Stories This Preferred Stock ETF Top Fixed Income Performer Why Small Cap ETFs Are Underperforming Fed Raises Rates, Maintains ‘Gradual’ Pace SEC Rejects Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Swedroe: Political Biases Can Impact Your Investing Permalink | © Copyright 2017 ETF.com. All rights reserved || Labor Dept. Seeks 60 Day Delay For New Fiduciary Rule: Washington (Reuters) – The U.S. Labor Department has taken a first step toward possible derailment or dilution of its controversial rule on retirement advice as it begins to re-examine it at the directive of President Donald Trump, according to a notice made public on Wednesday. The department proposed a 60-day delay of the fiduciary rule, which requires retirement advisers to put the interests of clients ahead of their own. It was slated to take effect on April 10, but Trump asked the department to review the rule one more time for its impact on investors. Industry analysts and consumer groups agreed it could be the first of multiple delays as the department begins a comprehensive review of the Obama-era regulation, after Trump in February issued an executive order directing the department to review the rule. ‘String Of Delays’ Possible "A 60-day delay is relatively short to undertake the type of economic and legal analysis that they're contemplating, which suggests to me that this isn't just going to be a 60-day delay, It's likely going to be a string of delays," said Micah Hauptman, with the Consumer Federation of America. The proposed delay should have a "calming" effect on the marketplace, which had been "hanging in limbo" ahead of the April 10 effective date, said Denise Valentine, a senior analyst with Aite Group, which advises the financial services industry on regulatory issues. "All along we've kind of known that the rule is very likely to be amended. I don’t think it will be killed," Valentine said. The public will have 15 days from the publication of the proposed delay in the Federal Register on Thursday to comment on the delay itself before the Labor Department can formalize it. There will also be a 45-day window to submit comments or information related to other aspects of Trump's memorandum. US Chamber Of Commerce Praises Delay The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has sued to kill the rule, on Wednesday praised the proposed delay. Story continues When former President Barack Obama's administration finalized the rule last year, it said it was a move to help Americans saving for their retirement. But critics in the financial services industry say the rule would limit the ability of advisers to service clients who cannot afford to pay for financial advice and must use products that carry commissions or other indirect costs. When Trump issued the executive order, White House spokesman Sean Spicer called the rule "a solution in search of the problem" at a briefing ahead of the signing. The move drew fire from Democrats and other critics, who said it showed the Republican White House was aligned with Wall Street, not middle-income Americans. Industry groups, however, praised the delay proposed on Wednesday. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said it would "allow the new administration an opportunity to review the rule’s impact on investors and the market." UBS Wealth Management Americas, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo declined to comment. Bank of America did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Recommended Stories Tuesday Hot Reads: Dividends Pile Up With This High Yield ETF Monday Hot Reads: The Future Of ETFs SEC Rejects Winklevoss Bitcoin ETF Big Bitcoin ETF Decision Coming Today, Or Maybe Not This Fallen Angel ETF Really A Rising Star Permalink | © Copyright 2017 ETF.com. All rights reserved || Bitcoin is surging – but that might not mean what you think: Bitcoin(Exchange: BTC=-USS)– the volatile digital currency that is used for a bevy of transaction, investment and value-storing purposes – is hovering around all-time highs, and its value has surged 175 percent in the past year.
But even though bitcoin is rising alongside gold, and it is often seen as an alternative "safe haven asset," this rally may actually be confirming the rally in stocks, rather than presenting a warning sign.
The currency has become more mainstream as additional companies accept bitcoin as a form of payment, Miller Tabak equity strategist Matt Maley said Wednesday on "Trading Nation." According to this thinking, demand for bitcoin will rise as economic activity increases.
Bitcoin was created in 2009 in the midst of the financial crisis as a brand-new currency and payment network, and remains somewhat in the Wild West of currencies, without universal regulation, no central authority and tracked by ledger-like blockchain technology maintained by different firms.
Companiesfrom MicrosofttoSubwayto popular blog platformWordPressnow accept bitcoin as a form of payment.
More recently, Switzerland's financial regulatory authoritygranted a bitcoin firm approvalto operate, Reuters reported, andin late 2016JPMorgan was reported to have been working on its own type of blockchain technology to support bitcoin. Perhaps boosting bitcoin activity, too, is the prospect of bitcoinexchange-traded fund creationand bitcoin storage providers.
In the past, bitcoin rallies have frequently been seen as signs that investors are turning away from conventional assets, and hunting for places to stash their money. But as bitcoin has developed more "mainstream" business uses, Maley argued, it has become more correlated with equities.
A look at bitcoin's performance relative to the S&P 500(INDEX: .SPX)'s over the last five years does not show any particularly close mathematical relationship between the two.
Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitzsaid in Januaryat the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that the United States moving toward digital currency would have meaningful benefits like curbing corruption and increasing transparency in global financial markets, two themes from this most recent meeting.
"There are important issues of privacy, cybersecurity, but it would certainly have big advantages," he said.
Bitcoin is not fiat currency, with no backing from a government that issues it, and the space is volatile given its lack of regulation. This month alone, bitcoin has risen 25 percent after dipping nearly 5 percent in January. It has climbed nearly 22,000 percent in five years while the dollar is up 28 percent in the same time period.
"The big fear around bitcoin is just one day when the governments come out and say, 'We're no longer going to allow this,' and we're going to shut it down. But in a world of Armageddon, where the world ends, currencies will go by the way of the countries; bitcoin, like gold, will still have value because of the blockchain-ing that goes on behind it," Dennis Davitt, portfolio manager at Harvest Volatility Management, said Wednesday on "Trading Nation."
The digital currency has a ways to go before becoming a full-on "mainstream" currency, but it's very much a real system of payment, Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at Convergex, told CNBC on Wednesday. Given bitcoin's volatility, every time investors buy the currency at new highs, "you kind of want to hold your nose," Colas said, given its volatile nature and all the hills and valleys that come along with it.
Mt. Gox, a Tokyo-based digital currency exchange,went bankrupt in 2014after substantial losses in the bitcoin space, sending the value of bitcoin tanking.
— CNBC's Alex Rosenberg contributed reporting. || Bitcoin steadies after biggest three-day tumble in over two years: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin regained its footing on Monday, having suffered its heftiest falls since early 2015 between Thursday and Saturday as investors sold the digital currency on worries about its future. Having soared to an all-time high of $1,350 on the Bitstamp exchange on March 10, on speculation that regulators could approve the first U.S. bitcoin exchange traded fund the following day, the digital currency then slipped back. Its falls began accelerating on Thursday and it hit a five-week low of $944.36 on Saturday. But bitcoin recovered a little on Sunday and built on those gains on Monday, climbing around 2.5 percent to roughly $1,050 by 1815 GMT. Bitcoin experts said its steep losses were driven by a longstanding, and intensifying, row over whether - and how - to increase the capacity of the "blocks" that bitcoin transactions are processed in, so as to make sure there are no delays in transactions being finalised. "The bitcoin scaling debate is a risk for the network and highlights core issues in terms of governance and this is where more nimble crypto competitors see advantages in fleshing out their capabilities sooner," said Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency analysis website Crytocompare, in London. At the same time that bitcoin was plunging, a newer, rival "cryptocurrency" was soaring: ether. The digital currency behind Ethereum - a project that some experts say holds more potential than bitcoin - has almost tripled in value this month, jumping to record highs of around $45. Some experts said traders were selling bitcoin and buying ether, which was exacerbating the falls in the original cryptocurrency. "Traders in the space are looking for better returns in the more risky and nascent cryptos such as Dash, Monero and Ethereum (and are) looking to replicate the extraordinary returns that bitcoin saw in its early days," added Hayter. U.S. regulators dashed Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss's bitcoin ambitions earlier in the month by rejecting their application to list an exchange-traded fund linked to the digital currency. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Alison Williams) || 4 Must-Read Strategies to Pay Off Your Bank Loan Without Losing Your House: If a person looked only at Hollywood depictions of Silicon Valley, it would be easy to assume that all startups are backed (or want to be backed) by venture capitalists. But VC has actually become less attractive since investors began scrutinizing prospects more closely and offering tougher terms. As a result, many entrepreneurs are turning tobank loans, preferring to take on debt instead of trading away equity.
In fact, Bloomberg reports that loans to startupsspiked by 19 percentin Silicon Valley last year.
Related:5 Things Startup Investors Look for Before Investing
While investor cash enables startups to grow quickly, many entrepreneurs have come to value control over time. They've come to prefer using their personal homes, bank accounts and other tangible goods to secure business loans over sacrificing even a modicum of control to investors.
The problem is, however, that if they lose the business, they also lose thepersonal assetsthey put up for collateral. Of course, if their companies don’t make money, they'll lose their possessions anyway -- or so the thinking goes.
But the calculation isn’t that simple. Sure, retaining control is desirable. But banks are in the business of creating wealth for themselves. Collateral guarantees they won’t lose money on business loans, and borrowers can be sure that if they don’t pay, the banks will collect.
Business loans are a win for banks. If borrowers fail to make timely payments, lenders can seize their homes or other assets and sell the properties torecoup the principal and then some. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurs have lost their businesses, houses and who knows what else.
But business loans aren't always a bad idea. If borrowers make their scheduled payments, they cultivate trust with lenders, making it easier to secure credit in the future. Once a loan is repaid in full, the bank will likely lend to the borrower again, possibly without requiring personal assets as collateral.
Related:5 Main Reasons Banks Turn Down Small-Business Owners for Loans
Another benefit is business credit. A loan repaid in good standing will boost the company’s score and make it easier to access credit lines and spending accounts. Businesses also tend to receive loans with lower APRs or fixed payments. The fact that the money is being used to grow a company gives lenders an incentive to offer competitive borrowing terms.
Entrepreneurs considering taking out bank loans can use the following guidelines to avoid critical mistakes in managing their business and personal finances:
Take a deep look atwhat the business needs. Tools such as theWorking Capital Needs Calculatorshed light on the true costs of expansion, as well as indicate which areas show promise and which are dragging the company down. Be realistic about how much is needed, and ask for that amount. Don’t live outside the business’s means.
Getting clear on the business’s financial situation can prevent a business from ending up with payments it can’t afford. The Pennsylvania-based Plaza group’s financial troubles should serve as a cautionary tale. The company missed a$67 million balloon paymenton a property loan, then had to scramble and renegotiate the terms to avoid default. This is a damning situation for any business, let alone a fledgling startup.
Resist the temptation to take the extra $10,000 the bank offers to tack on to a loan. The few hundred dollars it adds to monthly installments may seem manageable now, but those payments could become unwieldy. With a carefully planned budget, there's no reason to take more than the initial ask.
Here’s what happens to people who borrow more than they can afford. A 24-year-old woman was forced to the brink of bankruptcy after borrowing$6.5 million she couldn’t repay. The bank approved the financing despite the fact that her income didn’t match the loan and her investments carried considerable risk. The bottom line: Just because money is on the table doesn’t mean it's a good idea to take it.
Never co-mingle business and personal bank accounts. Separating finances helps you avoid headaches when categorizing expenses, so it’s smart practice from a bookkeeping perspective. But the separation also protects any personal assets during business loan disputes and shields personal finances from examination by banks, accountants and the IRS.
The IRS has significant power to examine personal accounts when auditing business and investment deals. The Bitcoin exchange Coinbase found this out when theIRS demanded dataon millions of customers who it believed were noncompliant. Coinbase resisted the IRS’s order, but the situation illustrates the importance of a clear separation of finances and stringent compliance practices.
The first bill to be paid each month should be the company loan installment, especially if there are any personal assets on the line. The company can do without some amenities for a month or two, but if a loan payment gets missed, the results could be disastrous. Going without a home is a lot more traumatic than having to go without cable.
Entrepreneur Jesse Genetknows this well: She repaid tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt while running a successful business. She prioritized her startup’s expenses over her own and admits to having struggled with mounting credit card during lean months. However, her aggressive saving and debt repayment strategy enabled her to bootstrap her company while paying off her debt -- a feat made possible by clear priorities and a disciplined approach to finance.
A business loan constitutes an enforceable contract, even when the collateral takes the form of a family home or vehicle. Losses may feel personal to the borrower taking the hit, but banks aren’t in the business of being personal. They give loans to make money.
Related:Why You Should Keep Your Personal and Professional Finances Separate
So, as long as entrepreneurs are clear on the stakes -- and prepared to make good on their loans -- they can earn from a bank relationship, as well.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
More money won't solve your debt problems,$200,000 monthly, bitcoin double multiply. http://ow.ly/CFT73092XCs || #Bitcoin $1 USD is equal to ฿0.00096561 BTC! #GoldCoinJar || MISSED BITCOIN, DONT MISS THIS
CRYPTO CURRENCY IS BOOMING :)
MILLIONAIRES BEING MADE #cryptocurrency #money
http://tcpros.co/5XhMx || which of the following is a short-term financial goal, bitcoin double multiply. http://ow.ly/IOdO3092Zq6 || Bitcoin Investor Roger Ver to Push for OKCoin Liquidation in Court #bitcoin today! http://bit.ly/1IAb8e4 || Order your secure and smart Bitcoin hardware wallet - Only 34.80 EUR https://www.ledgerwallet.com/r/4518?path=/products/1-ledger-nano … #bitcoin #btc 00:17 pic.twitter.com/7IrM0GcCER || 제 목소리는 들리시나요-? (간절한 얼굴로 말한다.) || Why Bigger Might Not Be Better For #bitcoin Scaling - CoinDesk http://bit.ly/2lUqRxB pic.twitter.com/TeXFfRjLYT || NH Lawmakers Advance Proposed Bitcoin MSB Exemption via coindesk http://ift.tt/2l2akJL pic.twitter.com/dHv2ugGfAM || can u cash bitcoin out directly from coinbank to bank account thanx
|
Trend: no change || Prices: 1176.90, 1175.95, 1187.87, 1187.13, 1205.01, 1200.37, 1169.28, 1167.54, 1172.52, 1182.94
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2020-09-24]
BTC Price: 10760.07, BTC RSI: 49.61
Gold Price: 1868.30, Gold RSI: 37.34
Oil Price: 40.31, Oil RSI: 50.35
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Fed Reserve Analysts Say Common Digital Currency Distinction ‘Problematic’: Financial experts at the New York Federal Reserve have taken a critical look the differences between a “common” distinction made between digital currency systems.
• In a WednesdayFed blog post, economists Rod Garratt and Michael Lee, analyst Brendan Malone and research exec Antoine Martin outlined the characteristics of “account-based” and “token-based” digital currency systems.
• According to the post, an account-based system requires verification of the identity of a payer, while a token-based system needs to verify if the “object” (i.e., token) used to pay is valid or not.
• The trouble, they write, is that some cryptocurrencies possess characteristics of both.
• In fact, the classification method is “problematic” because the systems are not mutually exclusive and can’t be broken down to provide “a taxonomic hierarchy of digital payment methods.”
• The authors citebitcoinas a prime example of a payment method possessing characteristics of both systems.
• Due to the way cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are constructed, the account-based system for digital currencies can be applied because of the nature of private keys and the alphanumeric string of numbers and letters that make up a bitcoin address.
• That is, their identity is verified using the private key and address.
• Yet, when a person wants to spend her bitcoin, the protocol verifies the payment’s validity by tracking its transaction history, making the crypto a fit for the token-based method.
• The authors note the difference among bitcoin, dollar bills and gold coins is whether a recipient of a payment can ascertain the validity of the payment unit with “reasonably high confidence.”
• While dollar bills contain security features making them hard to counterfeit, a crypto user cannot “independently” ascertain if their tokens are valid, they write.
• It’s worth noting that blockchains like Bitcoin’s ensure the validity of transactions with multiple confirmations from miners using powerful computing hardware, removing the need for independent verification of each unit.
• In conclusion, the authors argue, the distinctions between the two classifications have limited value.
• And while such classification systems can be a useful tool in organizing and communicating concepts, in this case they could impede understanding of the growing digital currency technology space.
• “Perhaps these terms should be retired to avoid further confusion,” they write.
See also:Federal Reserve Is Rushing to Get Its Instant Payments Offering Ready
• Fed Reserve Analysts Say Common Digital Currency Distinction ‘Problematic’
• Fed Reserve Analysts Say Common Digital Currency Distinction ‘Problematic’
• Fed Reserve Analysts Say Common Digital Currency Distinction ‘Problematic’
• Fed Reserve Analysts Say Common Digital Currency Distinction ‘Problematic’ || If Blockchain Can't Serve Gamers, It's Useless: Estimates indicate that by the end of 2021,2.7 billion peoplewill be regular players of video games. Stated another way, in the near future, gamers will make up more than one-third of humanity. More than one-third of humanity.
When it comes to ripeness for blockchain technology, gamers are almost comically well-suited. They’re already accustomed to in-game currencies, for starters, having an implicit understanding that digital tokens/credits are useful for buying and selling things online.
Additionally, they spend large swaths of time creating real economic value during gameplay — that is, value that other players are willing to pay real money for, like purchasable custom characters, weapons, and territories.
And gamers are also the most hurt in the event of corporate or technical disruptions of a given game, standing to lose potentially years worth of in-game earnings that can’t travel with them outside the game (imagine moving to Paris but being unable to trade in any of your existing money for euros?)
These unique characteristics mean that one-third of the world’s population is already primed for blockchain, a technology which (at least allegedly) can track, verify, store, and make globally transferable any and all in-game assets — complete with instant settlement, and for a fraction of a penny. Except, this hasn’t happened.
An Embarrassing Track Record
The gaming industry has not ignored blockchain. In fact, some of their biggest players have already adopted the technology, going out on a limb before their peers. And they got burned.
First there was Steam, an ultra-popular online distributor of over 34,000 games with 95 million active monthly users. In April 2016, Steam added blockchain payments (via Bitcoin) to its suite of accepted payment options, but then in December 2017, that option was abruptlyremoved.
Then there wasAmazon.com Inc(NASDAQ:AMZN)-owned Twitch, a livestream service where 15 million daily users broadcast themselves while gaming. Twitch was accepting blockchain payments via both Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash until early 2019, when they, too, abruptlydroppedthe payment option.
And let’s not forget hardware — there’d be no video games without desktop computers, mobile devices, and gaming consoles. Mega-manufacturersDell Technologies Inc(NYSE:DELL) andMicrosoft Corporation(NASDAQ:MSFT) both dabbled in blockchain payment acceptance, but (seeing a pattern?) dropped their support in2017and2018, respectively.
What Gives?
If the successful enterprises mentioned here have anything in common, it’s that they know how to scale. And it’s the ability to scale, or lack thereof, that likely led them to pull the plug on blockchain payments.
Steam explained their reasoning in apress releasestating “fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin).”
That’s a 10,000% percent increase in fees, for anyone wondering.
For more insight, we can look to other companies not mentioned above, like travel giantExpedia Group Inc(NASDAQ:EXPE) and payment favorite Stripe, both of which also stopped accepting blockchain payments in recent years. Stripe COO Claire Hughes Johnson went so far as to say that blockchain-based payment services are slow, impractical, and over-hyped.
And given the specific blockchain networks these companies were working with, these sentiments aren’t surprising; they’re downright sensible. Networks operating on first-wave blockchain technology — including Bitcoin Core/Cash/SV, Ethereum, and Litecoin — all utilize the same rudimentary governance model that so often leads to network slowdowns and wildly fluctuating fees that scared away these companies in the first place.
Add to this the fact that none of these first-wave blockchains can securely settle a transaction any faster than about six minutes (imagine waiting at a checkout counter for six minutes?), and it becomes pretty clear that they’re non-starters for payments in online gaming.
A Second Wave
Thankfully, there’s more than just the first wave.
Equipped with what’s referred to as “on-chain” governance, alternative networks like Bitshares, Dash, Tezos, Decred, and EOS are the second-wave in blockchain. These kinds of networks have inbuilt decision-making mechanisms that can and do thwart so many of the usability problems experienced by first-wave networks.
But on-chain governance alone isn’t enough. To offer a good blockchain product — one that enterprises might actually want to keep using in the long-term (gasp!) — it also takes a ripe market segment, and an optimized experience for the end user.
If gamers are the ripe market segment (they are) and on-chain blockchain governance is nothing new (it isn’t), then do any second-wave blockchain networks complete this trifecta by offering an optimized experience for the end user?
Gaming + (The Optimized) Blockchain Experience: A Match Made in Heaven
In 2015, the founder of Dash, Evan Duffield, did something radical: he asked his mom to send him a payment. “What are these addresses? How do they work? Is this dangerous?”
Duffield reported that his mother peppered him with questions like these for the next half hour. “People inherently think there’s something wrong with interacting with Bitcoin, because it just isn’t intuitive,” he concluded. But far from giving up on the technology as a plaything for technogeeks, Duffield decided that something could be done about it.
Fast forward to today, nearly five years later, and the Dash network is soon to become the first blockchain payment system that checks the third box: optimization for the end user. This means cryptographic addresses (i.e. XfMzzPdbJKAQcs9jF6Asx926yHeoxa42eR) will be replaced with human-readable usernames (i.e. babygiraffe), which is perfectly suited for identity-creation and even identity-crossover within games.
This also means the availability of the world’s first decentralized API (application programming interface), able to serve up network-stored and verified data about players’ in-game assets, earnings, and statistics in real-time — all without the need for a central third-party server.
And because Dash offers instant settlement of payments (yes, you read that correctly), this means it can become attractive for gaming enterprises to tokenize their players’ in-game earnings via the Dash cryptocurrency. Such a move would further enable players to spend their in-game earnings at any of the thousands of real-world merchants that already accept Dash, giving much greater use value to playing the game itself.
After all, if one third of the world’s population is willing to play games when their earnings aren’t spendable on outside goods, imagine how many more would be willing if they were?
First-Movers Proving the Use Case
Large enterprises are rarely the first to try anything new. It’s often smaller entities that can afford to take risks who first establish the use case for everyone else to come, and using the Dash blockchain for gaming is no exception.
Even prior to the release of usernames and the decentralized API, smaller gaming companies are already integrating Dash for blockchain payments. Game Companion and eSports host ReadyRaider recently integrated Dash as its exclusive form of payment.
“ReadyRaider is an eSports gaming tournament platform and we required payment functionality for certain match types. The only viable cryptocurrency payment solution would be one that has instant settlements,” said ReadyRaider Founder Jacob Ballou. “I really do love Bitcoin very much, but for this purpose it didn't make sense because of the higher fees and long wait times for transactions to complete. For pay to play gaming matches, when a player challenges another player, I need that transfer to be instant and secure with minimal fees. Players will not wait long periods of time for transactions to clear in order to play games with other players. It just didn't make sense for us to incorporate any other form of cryptocurrency payment, as Dash had everything we needed.”
And in Europe, customers of Whow Games, a social platform with 9 million registered users, can pay their subscription fees with Dash. Add to this the service 1UpCoin, a tipping service for gamers who stream on Twitch and YouTube, that also supports Dash among its blockchain payment options.
If all goes according to plan, the gaming companies above (and those who follow their lead) will keep utilizing Dash and other second-wave blockchain networks, and we’ll never have to see a headline about a gaming (or any other) enterprise dropping blockchain payments again.
Disclaimer: the writer of this article has no affiliations to the companies mentioned.
Photo by Fredrick Tendong on Unsplash
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© 2020 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || U.S. Congressman Tom Emmer says ‘Bitcoin ain’t going away’: U.S. Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN) predicted during a recent interview that the COVID-19 pandemic wouldn't dampen the long-term prospects for Bitcoin.
During the“Pomp Podcast”hosted by Anthony Pompliano, co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital, Emmer said the coronavirus pandemic is forcing people to look for new ways to store their assets — which will increase the use of Bitcoin.Decryptfirst covered Emmer's remarks following Pompliano's show.
“As we come out of the crisis, Bitcoin ain’t going away. It’s gonna get stronger,” he said in the August 3 interview.“You just watch, it has value, when something has value, people are going to take risks and it’s going to advance,” the congressman said.
Emmer also railed against centralized monetary systems during the interview, and pointed to Bitcoin as the future since it's more decentralized in comparison.During the interview he said he does support a governmental role in the crypto conversation, albeit a small one. Still, Emmer has added to the digital dollar conversations,callingfor more transparency from the U.S. Federal Reserve on its research and development efforts towards a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in June.
The Congressman has publicly called for the U.S. government to take advantage of crypto innovation, most recently bysigning a letteraddressed to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with a group of Congressional lawmakers calling for the U.S. tax agency to create a policy that supports proof of stake (PoS) technology.
However, some still see bitcoin as a tool used by scammers and nefarious actors, with the recent hacking of Twitter accounts for a bitcoin scam adding to that narrative. Emmer argued the blame doesn't lie with crypto. He tweeted his support of bitcoin in the wake of the hack, and doubled down on those comments during the interview.
"Twitter’s the problem. They are the ones that screwed up. Bitcoin didn’t screw up," he said.
© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. || Bitcoin News Roundup for Aug. 28, 2020: With bitcoin and gold reversing losses, CoinDesks Markets Daily is back for your latest crypto news roundup! For early access before our regular noon Eastern time releases , subscribe with Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocketcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Stitcher , RadioPublica or RSS . This episode is sponsored by Crypto.com , Bitstamp and Nexo.io . Todays Stories: Related: The Case for $500,000 Bitcoin Bitcoin, Gold Recover After Jerome Powell Speech Shakes Markets Bitcoin and gold are reversing losses seen on Thursday after the Federal Reserves announcement of a more relaxed approach to tackling inflation. Binances Bitcoin Bid-Ask Spreads Tighten as Cryptocurrency Markets Mature The narrowing gap between bitcoin buy and sell orders on big exchanges like Binance shows an increasing depth to cryptocurrency markets. Related: The End of an Era? Why Bitcoin and MMT Won the Week Chainalysis Report Shows Healthy Crypto Usage in Venezuela The Venezuelan governments push to create a cryptocurrency-centric economy appears to be working, but perhaps not in the way officials had hoped. Bitmain, Ebang Among 21 Bitcoin Mining Farms Stripped of Energy Perks in Inner Mongolia Affected mining centers in the area may see a notable increase in electricity costs. For early access before our regular noon Eastern time releases , subscribe with Apple Podcasts , Spotify , Pocketcasts , Google Podcasts , Castbox , Stitcher , RadioPublica or RSS . Related Stories Bitcoin News Roundup for Aug. 28, 2020 Bitcoin News Roundup for Aug. 28, 2020 View comments || Engadget The Morning After: Googles Pixel 4a will cost $350 and launches at the end of the month . After suffering from very detailed leaks as well as the companys own preamble and teases, there wasnt much left to the imagination or press release, for that matter. Google Pixel 4a (Engadget) Good job, then, that we have our own detailed review from Cherlynn Low ready to go it scored 91, more on that below. On top of that, we explain how the Pixel 4a came out so cheap and when you can expect a 5G version . Mat P.S. Dont forget to check us out at 10 AM ET tomorrow, when Samsungs virtual Unpacked event starts . Were expecting to meet the next Galaxy Note , plus a new Galaxy Fold and several other mobile devices. Pixel 4a review: The best $350 phone Home on the midrange. Google Pixel 4a (Engadget) Google proves, again, it is the ruler of midrange phones with the Pixel 4a. It offers flagship-quality cameras, fast performance and good battery life for just $350. It also offers helpful Pixel-only tools like Live Caption for Calls, Call Screening, Recorder and Personal Safety features, helping it to break from the pack . Though it only comes in one color option and just a single rear camera, the Pixel 4a still manages to be the best phone for the price. Check out Cherlynns full verdict, right here. Continue reading. PS4 game sales almost doubled during the pandemic And the vast majority of sales were digital. Ghost of Tsushima (Sucker Punch) In its financial earnings earlier, Sony reported it sold 91 million PS4 games during the three-month period leading up to June 30th, 2020. That's an 83 percent increase on the 49.8 million sales it reported for the same quarter last year. First-party exclusives sold impressively as well 18.5 million copies total buoyed by Naughty Dog's long-awaited sequel to The Last of Us. Sony also offered some PS5 updates for old peripherals and controllers . You can use your old DualShock 4 controllers with the new console, but only for older games. Your PlayStation camera will also work with the PlayStation 5 but will require a special adapter that the company says will be free of charge. Continue reading. Story continues Sponsored by Yahoo The Yodel: a daily rollup of news, sports, finance, and more going on in your world. A quick read that you'll finish before your first cup of coffee. Yahoo Virgin Galactic reveals its Mach 3 aircraft design Wait, have they even sent anyone to space yet? Virgin Galactic Mach 3 (Virgin Galactic) On Monday, Virgin Galactic unveiled the initial design concepts for its March 3 high-speed plane, a delta-wing aircraft that will carry nine to 19 people and fly at an altitude of 60,000 feet. The company also signed a non-binding memo with Rolls-Royce to collaborate on designing and developing engine propulsion technology for high-speed commercial aircraft. Continue reading. Microsoft redesigned the Xbox store ahead of Series X debut It'll roll out to all users this fall, but some beta testers can try it this week. Xbox store (Microsoft) And on the other side of the console avenue, Microsoft has pretty much redesigned the entire online Xbox store, ready for the Series X to land. The company claims the store is more than twice as quick than in the past and that it loads in under two seconds. You can easily see what games your friends are playing, and it should be a cinch to find out what sales and discounts are available. Microsoft will let some Xbox Insiders (aka beta testers) try the new-look store for themselves starting on Wednesday, with a gradual roll-out planned in the run-up to the Xbox Series X launch this fall. Continue reading. Masterbuilt Gravity Series 560 review A versatile smart charcoal grill. Masterbuilt Gravity Series 560 review (Engadget) This Gravity Series grill offers the familiarity and convenience of charcoal with a WiFi-connected setup that works well as both a smoker and a high-temperature searing machine. Lighting it properly will take some practice, and its missing a few features weve seen in other setups, but at $500 its half the price of a midrange Traeger model. Continue reading. But wait, theres more... Olympus' $699 E-M10 IV has a higher-res sensor and flip-down selfie screen Google invests in ADT to push Nest towards home security What's on TV this week: 'Star Trek: Lower Decks, Horizon Zero Dawn' Alleged Twitter hacker was previously caught stealing a fortune in Bitcoin Garmin reportedly paid millions to resolve its recent ransomware attack Impossible Burger continues its rapid expansion with Publix Google's latest Chrome extension shows detailed ad-tracking data || Jihan Wu Regains Upper Hand in Bitmain Co-Founder Fight: In a new twist in Bitmain’s ongoing power struggle, co-founder Jihan Wu has regained the legal representative status of the bitcoin miner maker giant.
China’s business registrationrecord updateon Sept. 14 shows Wu has again become the legal representative and executive director of Beijing Bitmain Technology, the operating entity of Bitmain.
Subsequently, Micree Zhan, the rival co-founder who was ousted last October by Wu but regained control earlier this year, is no longer the legal representative and executive director but remains a general manager of the firm.
Related:The Business of Geopolitical Competition
The role of a company’s legal representative in China has broad powers to act on a firm’s behalf and usually also holds the company’s official seal, a crucial element for signing company decisions into effect.
In an announcementpublishedSept. 15 via the WeChat account of Bitmain’s AntMiner brand, Wu reaffirmed the status update and said the company’s respect for Zhan “remains unchanged.”
The update suggests Bitmain’s internal power fight may have come to a short-term end although the two sides’ lawsuit in the Cayman Islands – where Bitmain’s parent holding entity resides – is pending for a final judgment.
Wu added in the announcement that Bitmain’s management now aims to work out sustainable solutions to solve all kinds of problems caused for employees, investors and customers due to the co-founders’ war of words.
Related:Bitcoin News Roundup for Sept. 10, 2020
“Since 2020, the management’s feud has damaged Bitmain’s market shares and its brand image. We have lost customers and employees were forced to take sides,” Bitmain said in the post. “Various breaking events and negative news even thwarted our plan to go public. Our equity option promised to employees almost became a useless piece of paper.”
Read more:Leaked Transcript Details Power Struggle Inside Bitcoin Mining Giant Bitmain
In an October coup last year, Wu removed Zhan’s role as Bitmain’s chairman, executive director and legal representative even though Zhan is the biggest shareholder of Bitmain. Wuallegedthat Zhan’s leadership during 2019 caused serious issues – including a significant drop in Bitmain’s bitcoin miner market share. Zhanfileda lawsuit in the Cayman Islands in December over the legitimacy of Wu’s move.
The event has quickly escalated to a yearlong power struggle. Earlier this year, Zhan regained his status as a legal representative after winning the local government’s favor and forcing his way into Bitmain’s Beijing office.
Read more:How Was It Possible for Bitmain to Oust Its Largest Shareholder Overnight?
Soon after that, Bitmain’s manufacturing business for bitcoin mining equipment was essentiallyhard-forkedinto two with each side trying to establish their own sales arms and factory supply chains.
As a result, Bitmain’semployeeswere forced to take sides and the stand-off caused significant shipment delays for Bitmain’scustomers, many of whom had to turn to rival miner makers such as Shenzhen-based MicroBT.
• Jihan Wu Regains Upper Hand in Bitmain Co-Founder Fight
• Jihan Wu Regains Upper Hand in Bitmain Co-Founder Fight || Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa's Angola-Based BTC Approaching a 20-Year Mark of Productive Corporate Citizenship: TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / September 18, 2020 / Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa is proud to announce that his company Barco Trading Company is approaching its 20 th year of productive corporate leadership. Tribert Ayabatwa is a Rwandan serial entrepreneur, business leader, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Barco Trading Company and the Pan African Tobacco Group. Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa established Barco Trading Company (BTC) in Lubango, Angola, in 2002. That was the year Angola achieved peace and began to build itself into the fourth-largest economy in Sub-Saharan Africa with a GDP of US$94 billion. With cumulative investments of $60 million USD and a projected of an additional US$10 million, BTC is the only manufacturer of tobacco products in Angola. BTC employs 416 full-time and seasonal employees in the manufacturing and supply chain. Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa envisions a bigger role for BTC by becoming a major exporter of made-in-Angola products. Ayabatwa is also keen to maintain the excellent relationship with the authorities and the people of Angola. This relationship includes BTC's corporate social responsibility recently demonstrated by the joint effort with the authorities in fighting COVID-19. BTC contributed a variety of foodstuff and sanitary materials. For Ayabatwa, business is about more than just making a profit. Contributing to the greater good is fundamental. "I am excited to see what the next 20 years hold for Barco Trading Company," says Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa. To learn more about Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa, visit https://www.ptg-hld.com/our-founder . About Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa is a successful entrepreneur, business leader, and philanthropist from Rwanda. Ayabatwa is the founder and controlling shareholder of the Pan African Tobacco Group, Africa's largest indigenous manufacturer of tobacco products. The company, which celebrated its 40 th year of operations last year, manufactures cigarettes in nine African countries including Nigeria, Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, and the United Arab Emirates. Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa is also one of Africa's leading philanthropists. He has helped communities uplift themselves in fields such as education, food security, afforestation, and water-access. Through his non-profit foundation, Ayababwa also strives to help young people to gain the practical engineering experience required to enter the job market in Africa. Story continues Contact: David Himbara PanAfrican Tobacco Group info@ptg-hld.com SOURCE: Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/606698/Tribert-Rujugiro-Ayabatwas-Angola-Based-BTC-Approaching-a-20-Year-Mark-of-Productive-Corporate-Citizenship || Energy Giant Equinor to Cut Gas Flaring With Bitcoin Mining: Report: Publicly traded petroleum multinational Equinor is moving to significantly reduce natural gas flaring by mining cryptocurrency, according to screenshots from Equinors intranet received by Arcane Research Friday. A new strategic partnership will see the firm implement Denver, Colo.-based Crusoe Energy Systems digital flare mitigation technology. This converts waste natural gas that would be otherwise released into the atmosphere into electricity at the well site. The operation will harness outflow at Equinors operations on the Bakken oilfield in North Dakota. Historically, industrys options for reducing flaring have been limited to costly measures like new infrastructure development or shutting in production, reads the memo shared internally at Equinor. Crusoes digital flare mitigation offers a win-win alternative for producers and investors alike, it continued. Mining cryptocurrency requires a lot of electricity to power computers, while a valuable commodity is wasted, and carbon emissions are created when we flare, said Lionel Ribeiro, manager sustainability at Global Unconventionals at Equinor. By connecting these inverse pains, we can satisfy both needs with no cost to market expense. In December 2019, the originally bootstrapped Crusoe announced $70 million in funding for expansion of its innovative flaring solutions. The round was led by Bain Capital and joined by Founders Fund, Winklevoss Capital and Polychain Capital. Before partnering with Equinor, Crusoe already operated flaring systems in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. Equinor is a state-owned multinational based in Norway and ranked as the 11th largest oil and gas firm globally. Also read: Bitmain, Ebang Among 21 Bitcoin Mining Farms Stripped of Energy Perks in Inner Mongolia Related Stories Energy Giant Equinor to Cut Gas Flaring With Bitcoin Mining: Report Energy Giant Equinor to Cut Gas Flaring With Bitcoin Mining: Report Energy Giant Equinor to Cut Gas Flaring With Bitcoin Mining: Report Energy Giant Equinor to Cut Gas Flaring With Bitcoin Mining: Report || Ocean Protocol and Balancer Want to Do for Data What Uniswap Did for Coins: Some tricks of the trade employed by today’s booming decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms are being used for a completely new paradigm: decentralized data marketplaces.
Announced Thursday, blockchain-based data monetization startup Ocean Protocol is teaming up with Balancer Labs to create the first automated market maker (AMM) for data.
Ocean Protocol is about helping peopleand businessesunlock data and monetize it, spreading the benefits of data and AI beyond the handful of organizations that hoard, control and get rich from it. Creating efficient data marketplaces is really the lynchpin of this, according to Ocean founder Trent McConaghy. Thus the collaboration with Balancer.
Related:BitGo Is Bringing DeFi-Friendly Wrapped Bitcoin to the Tron Blockchain
“Many people have tried to build data marketplaces in the past, but have been held back by issues of privacy and control. With blockchain and compute-to-data, Ocean is addressing this,” McConaghy said in an interview. “So our goal is to unlock this data economy with data marketplaces, connecting the buyers and sellers of data. These can be individual humans, families, small companies, large companies, cities, nations, etc.”
Ethereum-based Ocean creates data tokens, which can represent a particular dataset – be it an individual’s DNA or something much larger and more valuable, like all ofDaimler’sself-driving car data. The tokens act as an on-ramp to the data, which is stored elsewhere. The second part of the puzzle is establishing a marketplace where this tokenized data can be discovered, priced and traded using Ocean’s native token (OCEAN) or other cryptos like ether (ETH) or dai (DAI).
Pricing data is hard. Now, with the third version of Ocean, McConaghy has concludedAMMs like Uniswapdo the job best.
Read more:Mercedes Maker Daimler Tests Blockchain for Supply-Chain Data Sharing
Related:Uniswap Users Have Claimed $560M-Worth of UNI Tokens in a Week
Unlike an auction-based approach, AMMs continue to price throughout the asset’s lifetime. And unlike order books, they don’t need a lot of upfront liquidity and a double coincidence of wants. As such, AMMs – which have been instrumental in DeFi’s$13 billionascent – can be thought of as robots that are always ready to buy or sell.
The Balancer poolfunctions as a “self-balancing weighted portfolio and price sensor,” which means it behaves like an index fund – if a given asset out- or under-performs, it is respectively sold or bought to keep its value share of the total portfolio constant. But this is done in a decentralized manner without human intervention.
This is basically what DeFi application Uniswap does, but Balancer has the added advantage of allowing non-equal weights among tokens in the pool (e.g. 90/10 vs. 50/50). That means someone with lots of data tokens can offer these without having to tie-up a great deal of Ocean tokens or other cryptos.
McConaghy pointed to a trend where people are launching things on AMMs, and in the case of an Ocean data-token pool he has coined the term “initial data offering” or IDO.
“Our community has been really loving this term and using it a lot internally,” McConaghy said, adding:
“Basically it’s an example of liquidity mining for the people. Right now when people want to do liquidity mining on Balancer or other tools, they need to have assets. This works well for the whales, and it works even for some medium-sized folks, but the small guys are completely priced out because of gas prices. But we all have assets, as in our data assets; I have location data or whatever, and I’m going to start putting it up there and see what happens as the price gets automatically discovered.”
Read more:Following COMP’s Surge, DeFi Platform Balancer Begins Distribution of BAL Tokens
On the subject of the high gas costs associated with deploying pools on Balancer, the Ocean partnership has led to a useful tweak of Balancer pool contracts to use theERC-1167proxy pattern to reduce those costs.
“The idea of having millions of different tokens and pools wasn’t viable with today’s gas prices on Ethereum, so it’s very nice the way we have extended Balancer to make it cheap for the creation of new data pools,” said Balancer Labs CEO Fernando Martinelli, adding:
“It doesn’t cost a lot for someone to just put up their location data or their DNA data. It’s great because it’s shown us the need to create more efficient markets – something that’s going to be addressed in our version two.”
• Ocean Protocol and Balancer Want to Do for Data What Uniswap Did for Coins
• Ocean Protocol and Balancer Want to Do for Data What Uniswap Did for Coins || Bitcoin Breakout While Ethereum Consolidates: On Monday, September 14th, the pioneer cryptocurrency appears to have broken out of the consolidation pattern mentioned above. Although BTC opened Monday’s trading session hovering around the triangle’s hypotenuse at $10,366.72, it quickly began to trend up. A steady increase in buying pressure behind Bitcoin at around 1:00 UTC saw its price shoot up over 4% throughout the following 15 hours.
By 16:00 UTC,BTChad turned the x-axis of the ascending triangle into support, confirming the bullish breakout. Bitcoin was able to rise to an intraday high of $10,760.62 but suffered a small correction towards the end of the day. As Monday’s trading session came to an end, the bellwether cryptocurrency had retraced 0.73% to $10,679.95.
Due to the bullish price action, Bitcoin provided investors a daily return of 3.32%. Now, a further spike in demand could see its price surge towards $11,300, which is the target presented by the ascending triangle pattern. On-chain data reveals that there is no significant supply barrier ahead of BTC that will prevent it from achieving its upside potential.
Ethereum’s 1-hour chart shows its price seems to be contained within an ascending parallel channel since September 6th. Since then, each time the smart contracts giant rises to this technical formation’s upper boundary, it gets rejected and drops to the lower border. From this point, it tends to bounce back up, which is consistent with a channel’s characteristics.
Such price behavior was seen on Monday, September 14th.Ethereumkicked off the day at a high of $366.58 and quickly dropped to test the support provided by the lower boundary of the ascending parallel channel. This hurdle was able to hold, allowing prices to rebound, just like it has happened in the last eight days.
The rejection from this support level was followed by a 7.38% upswing that saw Ether rise to the parallel channel’s middle line. The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization was able to make an intraday high of $384.61. However, investors appear to have taken advantage of the rising price action to realize profits.
The spike in sell orders led to a 3.44% correction, pushing Ethereum back down to a low of $371.38. But as the day came to an end, ETH recovered some of the losses incurred and closed at $377.28. Investors were able to grasp a daily return of 2.92%.
While Bitcoin seems poised for a further advance to $11,300, things do not look optimistic for Ethereum. The parallel channel that the smart contracts giant has formed within its hourly chart looks to be part of a bear flag in higher time frames. The downswing at the beginning of the month created the flagpole while the ongoing consolidation period created the flag.
If this technical pattern is validated, Ether could be bound for a 35% downswing towards $230. Several on-chain metrics suggest that the $360-$370 support level may have the ability to hold since 650,000 addresses are holding over 10 million ETH around this price level. Although such a significant supply wall could absorb some of the selling pressure, slicing though it could be catastrophic for Ethereum.
Given the ambiguous outlooks that Bitcoin and Ethereum present, it is imperative to implement a robust risk management strategy to avoid getting caught on the wrong side of the trend.
For a look at all of today’s economic events, check out oureconomic calendar.
Konstantin Anissimov, Executive Director at CEX.IO
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: no change || Prices: 10692.72, 10750.72, 10775.27, 10709.65, 10844.64, 10784.49, 10619.45, 10575.97, 10549.33, 10669.58
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2018-07-03]
BTC Price: 6529.59, BTC RSI: 47.45
Gold Price: 1251.60, Gold RSI: 33.76
Oil Price: 74.14, Oil RSI: 69.49
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Price of Gold Fundamental Daily Forecast – Rising Rates, Euro Worries and Trade War Concerns are Today’s Market Drivers: Gold futures are trading lower early Friday, pressured by rising U.S. Treasury yields and a rebound in the U.S. Dollar. At 0950 GMT, June Comex Gold futures are trading $1286.40, down $3.00 or -0.23%. Daily June Comex Gold Renewed geopolitical tensions over North Korea may be encouraging some buying. Additionally, there are also worries over an escalation of tensions between the United States and China over trade issues. However, unless these stories lead to elevated concerns, rising interest rates will be the main driver of the bearish price action. Helping to support the climb in interest rates was a pair of strong U.S. economic reports. On Thursday, the Labor Department said new applications for U.S. jobless benefits increased more than anticipated, but the number of Americans on unemployment fell to its lowest level since 1973. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 222,000 for the week-ended May 12, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists were looking for a rise to 215,000 in the latest week. Also on Thursday, the Philadelphia Fed Index, a measure of manufacturing activity in the district, came in at 36.4 for April, higher than the 21.1 level expected by Wall Street economists. Gold was pressured on Thursday, when the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note and the yield on the benchmark 30-year Treasury bond rose to new multiyear highs as a streak of solid U.S. economic reports continued. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note climbed to 3.122 percent Thursday, its highest market since July 8, 2011, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond hit 3.248 percent, its highest level since July 13, 2015. Additionally, short-term rates also topped multiyear highs. The yield on the two-year Treasury note reached 2.598 percent, its highest since August 2008, and the yield on the five-year Treasury note hit 2.957 percent, its highest since June 2009. Forecast Besides rising U.S. interest rates, gold could be pressured on Friday by further weakness in the Euro. The single-currency is headed for its fifth successive weekly decline versus the dollar, in what would be a first for the currency since 2015, as political uncertainty in Italy continued to worry investors. Story continues Gold traders should also continue to monitor developments in U.S. – China trade negotiations. On Thursday, the two economic powerhouses kicked off the second round of trade talks in the hopes of averting a global trade war. There are no major economic reports today, but traders will get the opportunity to react to comments from FOMC members Mester and Brainard. Traders will be looking for comments on inflation, wage growth, the labor markets and expectations for further rate hikes including the timing and number. At this time, the markets are pricing in two more rate hikes this year. Three would send gold sharply lower. The daily chart identifies $1296.20 as resistance and $1247.20 as the next major downside target. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Oil Price Fundamental Daily Forecast – Short-Term Focus Shifts to U.S. Rig Count Report E-mini S&P 500 Index (ES) Futures Technical Analysis – May 18, 2018 Forecast Wal-Mart Stores Inc (NYSE:WMT)’s Q1 Results Beat Estimates As Online Sales Improve Price of Gold Fundamental Daily Forecast – Rising Rates, Euro Worries and Trade War Concerns are Today’s Market Drivers Bitcoin and Ethereum Price Forecast – BTC Prices Weak Commodities Daily Forecast – May 18, 2018 || Crude Oil Price Update – In Position to Cross to Weak Side of Major 50% Level: Crude oil futures fell sharply on Friday as investors prepared for next week’s key meeting between OPEC and a few major non-OPEC producers on June 22-23 in Vienna. Sellers returned to the market after several days of counter-trend buying on reports that Saudi Arabia and Russia will announce production hikes at next week’s meeting. August West Texas Intermediate crude oil settled at $64.85, down $1.84 or -2.84%. Helping to limit gains last week and perhaps add to the Friday’s selling pressure were continued concerns over rising U.S. crude production. Daily August WTI Crude Oil Daily Swing Chart Technical Analysis The main trend is down according to the daily swing chart. The downtrend resumed on Friday when sellers took out the main bottom at $64.15. The new main top is $67.03. A trade through this price will change the main trend to up. The contract range is $89.45 to $39.88. Its retracement zone is $70.51 to $64.67. This zone is controlling the longer-term direction of the market. Since June 4, WTI crude oil has been trying to build a support base at the lower or 50% level of this range at $64.67. Trader reaction to this level should set the longer-term trend of the market. Daily Swing Chart Technical Forecast Based on Friday’s price action and the close at $64.85, the direction of the August WTI crude oil market on Monday is likely to be determined by trader reaction to the major 50% level at $64.67. A sustained move over $64.67 will indicate the presence of buyers. If this creates some upside momentum, we could see a little short-covering drive the market back towards the main top at $67.03. A sustained move under $64.67 will signal the presence of sellers. This could drive the market through last week’s low at $64.09. This price is a potential trigger point for an acceleration to the downside since the next major target is the April 16 main bottom at $61.43. Watch the price action and read the order flow at $64.67 on Monday. Trader reaction to this price will tell us if the selling pressure is increasing or if aggressive counter-trend buyers have returned to try to prop up the market ahead of the OPEC meeting on June 22-23. Story continues This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: S&P 500 Weekly Price Forecast – S&P 500 very noisy during the week Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 17/06/18 Price of Gold Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Rising Rate Expectations Too Much for Gold Bulls Divergence Between Fed and ECB, BOJ Policies Drives Forex Volatility Bitcoin – $7,000 Remains Elusive as the Bears Hold On U.S Mortgage Rates – Upward Trend Resumes || For PayPal, the Choice Is Clear: When PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) reported its fourth-quarter earnings three months ago, the only thing investors seemed able to focus on was that PayPal's relationship with eBay would be drastically changing after its contract expired in 2020. Despite PayPal management's assurance that this change in relationship would not affect its mid- or long-term guidance, analysts still seemed to have a hard time digesting the news. The day the company reported its fourth-quarter earnings, PayPal's shares sank by a double-digit percentage and they have largely been trading sideways since. Lost in the eBay news was that the rest of Paypal's results were positively glowing: Net revenue, adjusted earnings, and payment transactions all grew well north of 20% year over year. When the company recently reported its first-quarter earnings , the strong growth continued; this time, there were no storm clouds overshadowing the results. Net revenue grew to $3.69 billion, a 24% increase year over year, while adjusted earnings per share rose to $0.57, a 29% increase year over year. The strong top- and bottom-line growth figures during the quarter were driven by a 15% increase in active customer accounts to 237 million, and a 25% increase in the number of payment transactions to 2.2 billion. Best of all, PayPal account holders are using their accounts more than ever before: Payment transactions per active account rose to 34.7, an 8% increase year over year. Metric Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Year-Over-Year Change Net revenue $3.69 billion $2.98 billion 24% Adjusted earnings per share $0.57 $0.44 29% Active accounts 237 million 205 million 15% Payment transactions 2.2 billion 1.8 billion 25% Data source: PayPal Holdings Inc. What is driving this robust user growth and engagement? While there are several factors contributing to PayPal's success, the one that stands out the most, after reviewing the company's first-quarter conference call , is its Customer Choice initiative. Let's take a closer look at how offering its account holders more choice has driven growth for the digital payments platform. Story continues Two Post-It notes, one blue and one yellow, each with the word WIN written on it PayPal's deals and partnerships are a true win-win, benefiting consumers, PayPal, and its partners. Image source: Getty Images. When the choice is clear Since being spun off from eBay in the summer of 2015, PayPal has announced dozens of partnerships with credit card networks, banks, and larger tech companies. These agreements benefit everyone involved, especially the account holders -- who can then use PayPal's platform in the ways that best suit them. Typically, these deals enable customers to use their own credit card's reward points on PayPal's platform, opening up a world of options for use of these rewards at merchants that were not previously available. For instance, earlier this year, JPMorgan Chase introduced PayPal as a quarterly rewards category for its popular Freedom credit card. PayPal's Customer Choice initiative allows consumers to easily pick which credit or debit card they want to use for each transaction, and it includes tokenization, which empowers offline and more-secure transactions. Since pushing customer choice options, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman says customer acquisition is up and overall churn is down, both reflected in PayPal's strong active user account growth. But it's not just PayPal's customers who love the increased options; the company's partners also seem enthusiastic about the new opportunities it offers them. In the conference call, Schulman said there has been a noticeable shift from the "uneasy frenemy environment" of two years ago to one in which its partners now see themselves as "close allies in ... the war on cash and the advancement of digitization." The benefits of partnerships When PayPal first began announcing its partnerships in late 2016, one of the primary concerns was that they would adversely affect the company's margins. More than a year into this strategy, that no longer seems to be a concern. In the first quarter, for example, PayPal reported an operating margin of 22.5%, the highest margin it has ever achieved as an independent company. While many factors drove this expansion, one is that the company's partners have provided low-cost means of acquiring new customers. In the conference call, chief operating officer Bill Ready said: [W]hat we're seeing is tremendous receptivity from our banking partners to really drive their customers into PayPal because it's a great source of digital transaction growth, which was the primary place where issuers were growing right now. And we've seen really good response from the programs that are out there, and they've been tremendous both for us as well as for our issuing partners. And so we're not committing any kind of unnatural acts to get those things to happen. In fact, our venue partners have found it very much to be in their interest to promote their customers to use PayPal. So we see that as something certainly indicative of a partnership ... Energized by enthusiasm for the digital gateway to growth offered by PayPal, its partners are pushing customers in PayPal's direction, making it easier than ever for consumers to sign on to the platform. This quarter, Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) introduced a streamlined option for its account holders to sign up for a PayPal account on its mobile and online channels. Choice goes international Nor is it only domestic partners embracing PayPal's Choice strategy: This quarter, the company announced a host of new partners from around the world. Schulman said: "We expanded the global rollout of Choice by launching in China and nine additional countries across Southeast Asia, and further expand[ed] into Europe by launching in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain." In Kenya, 28 million consumers can now seamlessly integrate their M-Pesa accounts with PayPal. In Spain, CaixaBank and Bankia both further integrated their online sites with PayPal. HSBC Holdings PLC (NYSE: HSBC) now allows corporate customers in the U.K. to pay distributions to beneficiaries through PayPal, a capability to be rolled out across Europe in the coming months. Barclays PLC (NYSE: BCS) announced a strategic partnership that enables its customers to more easily link their accounts to PayPal, and soon to use their reward points on PayPal's digital platform. Choice is driving PayPal's network effect With a growing line of ready and willing partners, PayPal is having no problem growing its ranks of active account holders. Deals with outside financial institutions and tech partners also make it easier for PayPal's existing customers to increase their engagement with the platform. The more PayPal's ranks grow, the more attractive the platform becomes to additional partners and merchants. This type of growth soon begins to drive itself, creating one of the more powerful economic moats : the network effect . Since being spun off from eBay almost three years ago, PayPal has trounced the S&P 500 index, returning about 108% to the index's 29%. With top- and bottom-line growth still going strong and fed by PayPal's growing network effect, I don't believe PayPal's market-beating days are even close to being finished. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Matthew Cochrane owns shares of JPMorgan Chase and PayPal Holdings. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends PayPal Holdings. The Motley Fool recommends eBay. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Why Five Below Inc. Stock Surged Today: Shares ofFive Below Inc.(NASDAQ: FIVE)were climbing today as the discount retailer posted astrong first-quarterearnings report, beating estimates across the board. As a result, the stock was up 19.8% as of 10:51 a.m. EDT.
Image source: Five Below.
The retailer, which sells only products for $5 or less, said that comparable-store sales in the quarter increased 3.2%, which -- combined with aggressive store openings -- led revenue up 27.2% to $296.3 million, easily topping expectations of $290.9 million. The company opened 33 stores in the quarter, as the store base has expanded by 19% over the past year.
Thanks to strong performance from new stores and the comparable-sales growth, gross margin increased 110 basis points to 32.8%. And the company gained operating leverage on the selling, general, and administrative line, as operating income nearly doubled to $24.7 million. Adjusted earnings per share surged 133% to $0.35, aided in part by a lower tax rate due to the new tax law. That result also beat analyst estimates of $0.32.
CEO Joel Anderson said he was very pleased with the performance and added: "Our consistent performance continues to reinforce our confidence in the 2,500-plus nationwide store opportunity we see for Five Below. We are making disciplined investments to support that future growth and are excited to announce our plans to build a new distribution center just south of Atlanta, which will provide us with capacity and flexibility as we continue to grow in the Southeast."
The company has just 658 stores today, meaning it still sees a long growth path ahead.
Looking ahead, management offered strong guidance, saying it expects revenue for the current quarter of $332 million to $335 million, or 17.7% growth from a year ago, on flat comparable-sales growth. It also sees EPS of $0.36 to $0.38.
For the full year, it expects revenue to increase about 18% to a range of $1.502 billion to $1.517 billion, on comparable-sales growth of 1% to 2%. And it projects EPS of $2.42 to $2.48. Those numbers are generally ahead of analyst forecasts.
Selling low-priced items like toys, home goods, and candy has given Five Below insulation against the e-commerce threat, allowing it to aggressively open new stores. With that unique business model, the stock should continue to thrive as long as the economy is strong.
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Jeremy Bowmanhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Five Below. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || The 1 Reason to Avoid 3M Company's Stock: The 16% year-to-date dip in the stock price of3M Company(NYSE: MMM)is naturally going to attract value investors toward the Dividend Aristocrat. After all, the company now sports a near 2.7% dividend yield, and more than60 years of dividend increasesattest to its history of delivering for investors. However, I think the stock is still worth avoiding. Incoming CEO Mike Roman's presentation at the recent Electrical Products Group (EPG) conference did little to dispel fears concerning the company's pricing power -- a key part of its business model. Let's take a look at why, as well as what was discussed at the event.
Image source: Getty Images.
3M has long prided itself on its ability to use research and development (R&D) in order to create differentiated products. In plain English, this means 3M's solutions aren't commodity-type offerings and therefore tend to have some pricing power. So, 3M should be able to grow revenue through increasing price without suffering significant drop-offs in volume while maintaining strong margin.
Outgoing CEO Inge Thulin was always keen to remind investors of 3M's business model, and Roman's EPG presentation followed a similar theme.
Indeed, 3M has demonstrated an ability to command margin, thanks to offering differentiated products. As you can see below, 3M's gross margin has been consistently superior to other leading industrial companies, including its best comparable multi-industrial peer,Illinois Tool Works.
MMM Gross Profit Margin (Annual)data byYCharts.
But here's the thing: There appear to be some cracks forming in 3M's business model. As you can see below, 3M has been increasing its R&D expenditures in the last decade on an absolute and relative basis.
MMM R&D; to Revenue (TTM)data byYCharts.
There's nothing wrong in this per se, but it needs to be backed up by demonstrable improvement in pricing power. Unfortunately, 3M appears to be losing ground on this issue.
For example, the chart below shows two things that should concern investors. First, although total company sales growth was good in 2017, it was largely due to volume improvements --3M particularly benefited from a cyclical improvementin its electronics and energy segment in 2017, rather than any improvement in pricing.
Second, the chart seems to show an inverse relationship between pricing and volume. This is the sort of relationship you might expect from commodity-type products that don't possess much pricing power -- as prices rise, volume falls. In other words, this is precisely the kind of outcome that 3M is trying to avoid by investing in R&D.
Data source: 3M Company presentations. Chart by author.
Moreover, 3M's less cyclical segments (healthcare and consumer) arestruggling to grow in line with management's mid-term guidance. The consumer segment has only grown in line with guidance in one of the last eight quarters, and the healthcare segment has only done this three times in the same period. The cracks are showing.
The issue of pricing came to the forefront at EPG, and Roman's response wasn't particularly convincing. In a nutshell, he said that in the first half of 2017, 3M was slow moving "into a higher growth marketplace," but in the second half, management adjusted and set the company up for stronger pricing. He cited the stronger pricing performance in the first quarter of 2018 as a sign of improvement.
Additionally, it's worth noting that on the first-quarter earnings call,CFO Nick Gangestad stated,"we expect price growth to remain strong, and that it will more than offset raw material inflation" for the remainder of the year.
Roman's argument and Gangestad's forecast are open to question for two main reasons. First, the first-quarter organic growth of 0.7% from pricing is not what you might expect from a company trying to take pricing in a growth environment. In fact, it's lower than any figure produced by 3M in 2015 -- recall thatU.S. industrial production was in recession during 2015-2016.
Second, going back to3M's second-quarter 2017 earnings call, Gangestad claimed 3M was making "selected price adjustments," but he expected "more normal price growth for 3M" in the second half of 2017. It didn't happen.
The reality is 3M didn't have anything like "normal" price growth in 2017. It could be argued that the strong volume growth in the second quarter was achieved because 3M didn't take aggressive enough action on pricing -- a sign that 3M doesn't have significant pricing power.
As you can see below, 3M stock has long commanded a premium compared to peers in its sector -- a large part of the reason why is its reputation for having products with pricing power.
MMM EV to EBITDA (Forward)data byYCharts.
Frankly, it's too early to tell just yet, but the warning signs are there. Management, for the second time in two years, is promising a better pricing environment in the second half of the year. However, I think cautious investors will want to hold off buying the stock in order to see if 3M will achieve this aim while also maintaining its --downwardly revised-- organic sales growth guidance of 3%-4% in 2018.
If 3M can't get back to demonstrating that it has pricing power -- a key part of its business model -- then investors have reason to question whether the stock continues to deserve its premium valuation rating compared to its sector.
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Lee Samahaowns shares of Honeywell International. The Motley Fool recommends 3M. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || 3 Growth Stocks That Could Put Facebook's Returns to Shame: Facebook(NASDAQ: FB)may have been one of the most hyped IPOs in history. But brave investors who bought on the first day of trading and held until today have enjoyed total returns of 377%. That's anincrediblyimpressive return, especially when considering that Facebook has been a public company for only about six years.
So, which stocks do we think can put up Facebook-like returns in the years ahead? We asked a team of top Motley Fool investors to weigh in, and they pickedShopify(NYSE: SHOP),Square(NYSE: SQ), andMercadoLibre(NASDAQ: MELI).
Image source: Getty Images.
Dan Caplinger(Shopify):Facebook has been an amazingly successful company, having found a way to build an impressive network of users and then make money linking its members to the goods and services they're most likely to want through advertising. Some users find that level of catering to individual tastes off-putting, but the amount of money available through e-commerce makes the demand for sales leads worth the potential reputational risk.
Shopify is looking to cash in on the same e-commerce growth, but it's looking to do so more actively by helping its clients build their own e-commerce presence. By doing so, Shopify is tapping into a growing entrepreneurial spirit in the global marketplace, as people with innovative products and services realize that the traditional route of finding a large-scale professional distributor or retailer is too competitive and fraught with potential pitfalls to be worth the risk in many cases. Shopify's tools let businesses establish themselves on the internet cheaply and efficiently, but they also have scalable capabilities that can grow along with a client's e-commerce business needs.
Shopify's most recent resultsshow that the company continues to grow fast. Some lingering concerns remain among high-growth investors that the e-commerce services provider won't grow fastenoughto justify its past share-price gains, but Shopify's core business remains strong. By giving clients a direct link to customers, Shopify could give e-commerce entrepreneurs the ability to bypass channels like Facebook -- while producing profits for itself in the long run.
Matt Frankel(Square):Square's stock price has more than quintupled over the past two years, but for good reason. And there could be lots of upside ahead.
First, Square's core payment processing business is a huge global opportunity, especially since Square focuses on smaller merchants for whom card acceptance has historically been prohibitively expensive. It's estimated that two-thirds of businesses around the world still don't accept card payments, and it's fair to assume that a disproportionately high percentage of these are at the smaller end of the spectrum -- Square's bread and butter. Worldwide card payment volume is expected to reach$55 trillion per yearby 2025, so to say this is a huge opportunity is an understatement.
As if this weren't enough, Square is leveraging its customer base to create a small-business ecosystem. Its fast-growing Square Capital business lending platform earns interest income by meeting customers' financing needs, the Caviar food delivery platform targets Square's restaurant customers, and most recently, theacquisition of Weeblywill allow Square's customers to develop their e-commerce presence without venturing outside of the company's ecosystem.
Finally, on the personal side, Square is emerging as a leader in the peer-to-peer payments business, as the Square Cash app is the No. 1 financial app in the App Store. Also, its recentbitcoin integrationcould grow into a big revenue driver if cryptocurrencies continue to grow in popularity.
In a nutshell, Square has several avenues of growth that fuel each other's success, and there is still lots of untapped potential to expand.
Brian Feroldi(MercadoLibre):MercadoLibre, which is known to many investors as the "Amazon&Ebay&Paypal& Craigslist of Latin America," recently reportedabysmal results. Sales "only" grew by 19%, which is far slower growth than investorsare used to seeingfrom the company. To make matters worse, this profitable company reported a net loss for the period. Those are tough numbers for growth investors to swallow. When combined with the crisis in Venezuela, it's no surprised to see that shares have fallen by more than 28% in the last two months alone.
So, is the bull case for owning this stock over?
I'm a firm believer that the answer to that question is "no." My reasoning is that the company's rotten first-quarter results are more of a reflection ofrecent changes to U.S. accounting standardsthan a sign that the business is under distress. What's more, this quarter also coincided with a large uptick in shipping costs in Brazil. If you strip away those factors, then revenue would have grown by 60%, and the company would have been profitable.
A quick look at the company's key operating metrics also shows that the platform remains as popular as ever. Registered users jumped by 22%, items sold increased by 50%, and payment transactions jumped 68%. These numbers are much more indicative of the overall health of the business because they are not impacted by accounting changes or currency movements.
Overall, I think investors have every reason to believe that MercadoLibre is as strong as ever and is built for long-term growth. With shares trading significantly below their 52-week high, I think right now is a fine time for growth investors to get in.
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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors.Brian Feroldiowns shares of Amazon, Facebook, MercadoLibre, Shopify, and Square.Dan Caplingerhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned.Matthew Frankelowns shares of PayPal Holdings and Square. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon, Facebook, MercadoLibre, PayPal Holdings, and Shopify. The Motley Fool owns shares of Square. The Motley Fool recommends eBay. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Tesla's Powerpack Empire Expands Into Europe -- and Beyond: Mission not-yet-accomplished. I dusted off my crystal ball earlier this year and made three (I thought not very) bold predictions about what investors could expect from Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock in 2018. As we approach the midpoint mark of the year, however, it looks like I'm batting only .333: Tesla has not , in fact, made a big stock sale , and continues to insist it has no plans to do so. (And please stop asking, grouses Elon Musk .) Nor has it greatly increased the rate at which it produces Model 3 electric sedans -- they're still coming off the assembly line at a rate of about 2,000 a week , 60% below targets. But my third prediction? The one about Tesla expanding its energy storage business in 2018? That prediction is playing out like crazy. Tesla energy storage project in Australia Where it all began: Tesla's 129 MW energy storage project in Australia. Image source: Tesla. Growth from down under The signal event signaling Tesla's energy storage ambitions took place last year. Elon Musk basically bet Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes $50 million that Tesla could build a 129-megawatt (MW) battery system to backstop South Australia's electric grid in under 100 days -- and he won that bet. A few months later, Musk parlayed this success into an even bigger project to build a separate, 250 MW " virtual power plant " comprising both solar panels and battery storage for their electricity, which could net Tesla as much as $800 million (Australian) in sales through completion. Now Tesla's backup battery farms are sprouting up like mushrooms. For example, last week, Tesla announced on Twitter that it's just completed an 18.2 MW Powerpack energy storage project in Belgium, designed for "balancing the European electrical grid" to cope with power outages. This followed the announcement of additional Australian projects, including one funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Victorian government to build a 25 MW energy storage system for energy generated by the Gannawarra Solar Farm near Kerang, Victoria, and a separate 20 MW battery farm located at the Bulgana Green Power Hub wind farm in Western Victoria. Story continues Other energy storage projects in the works or recently completed have been announced in the Philippines (2 MW installed to prevent power outages in the city of Paluan), New York (4 MW being planned for Orange and Rockland Utilities), Massachusetts (48 MWh under way for National Grid in Nantucket), Canada (with Nova Scotia Power), and Puerto Rico (a solar and battery project providing power to a children's hospital in San Juan). All of these energy storage projects have one thing in common: They're based on the Tesla Powerpack, a supersize, utility-scale version of the company's Powerwall batteries for home users. Each Powerpack contains 16 battery "pods," housed within an all-weather enclosure that can sit right out in the open -- no building required. Each Powerpack can store approximately 100 kW of "green energy," charging up when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing and then releasing it into the grid when demand is peaking, or to head off a looming blackout. Coming soon Musk also alluded on Tesla's recent earnings conference call to a potential gigawatt-scale battery warehouse, predicting, "I feel confident that we'll be able to announce a deal at the gigawatt-hour scale within a matter of months." Musk did not name Tesla's counterparty, but the language he used suggests he has a specific project in mind, and that negotiations are already under way. If and when it's announced, the project would dwarf Tesla's biggest project to date (the Australian virtual power plant) by a factor of four, and Tesla's marquee South Australian project by nearly eight times. How significant is the battery business to Tesla? Tesla reportedly built the South Australian battery project for $50 million. Assuming (for the sake of simplicity) relative parity in the cost of storage projects per megawatt around the globe, the upcoming 1 GW deal could be worth $200 million in revenue to Tesla, with the smaller projects bringing in a few millions apiece. What does this mean for investors? As part of Tesla's Energy Generation and Storage Segment, even Tesla's limited work in power storage to date is already contributing meaningful revenue -- and at gross profit margins (21.7% for full-year 2017) superior to what Tesla generates in its better-known automotive division (18.6%). The faster this business grows, the closer Tesla as a whole will come to turning profitable. With analysts still expecting Tesla to turn pro forma profitable by next year, the faster Tesla can get its energy storage projects built, the better. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Rich Smith has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Bitcoin’s High Price Last Year Might Have Been Artificially Inflated: That super high price we saw for Bitcoin last year might have been artificially inflated, according to new research from the University of Texas at Austin.
According toIs Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered?, a paper by researchers John M. Griffin and Amin Shams released Wednesday, price manipulation may have accounted for at least half of the increase in price for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies last year.
Using algorithms to analyze blockchain data and purchases made with the cryptocurrency Tether, the findings suggest that Bitcoin’s increase in price was caused by the actions of a few key players rather than a real demand for the currency from investors.
“We find that purchases with Tether are timed following market downturns and result in sizable increases in Bitcoin prices,” Griffin and Shams write. “Less than 1% of hours with such heavy Tether transactions are associated with 50% of the meteoric rise in Bitcoin and 64% of other top cryptocurrencies. These patterns cannot be explained by investor demand proxies but are most consistent with the supply-based hypothesis where Tether is used to provide price support and manipulate cryptocurrency prices.”
Last year,several industry experts expressed concernthat Bitcoin's high price was being driven, at least in part, by Bitfinex, a Bitcoin exchange that's registered in the Caribbean. Experts alleged that the exchange was pushing the price of the cryptocurrency up when it was declining in other exchanges, specifically using another cryptocurrency, Tether, which they allegedly used to buy up other cryptocurrencies.
Bitfinex executives have denied their exchange was part of any price manipulations.
Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered?is just the latest academic paper to look into the manipulation of virtual currency markets.
See original article on Fortune.com
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Following a late in the day rally on Thursday, Bitcoin saw a pullback through the early part of the day on Friday, falling through to a morning low $6,450 following a trend bucking, late morning intraday high $6,659.
In spite of the attempts at a run at the day’s first major resistance level at $6,823.63, the bearish trend continued through the day, with Bitcoin falling through the day’s first major support level at $6,356.63 to a late intraday low $6300.2, before moving back through the day’s first major support level to the day’s ending $6,378.6.
Falling well short of the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $7,026 and failing to test the day’s first major resistance level at $6,356.63 continued to support the extended bearish trend formed at early May’s swing hi $9,999, with Bitcoin now having failed to hit $7,000 levels for a 5thconsecutive day.
There was no particularly negative news to hit the wires through the day to bring about the reversal, with investors continuing to lock in profits in fear of another sell-off, which has continued to drive volatility across Bitcoin and the broader market.
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At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up 0.63% to $6,425, in what’s been a relatively range bound start to the day, Bitcoin rising to a morning $6,457.3 high off the back of a start of the day $6,378.6 low, the moves through the early hours leaving the day’s first major support level at $6,232.87 and first major resistance level at $6,591.67 untested.
For the day ahead, a move back through $6,445.93 would support a run at the day’s first major resistance level at $6,591.67, though for the Bitcoin bulls, breaking through the first major resistance level won’t be enough to begin reversing the extended bearish trend, the first target of $7,000 and the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $7,026 some way off when considering current sentiment across the cryptomarket.
Failure to move back through $6,445.93 could see Bitcoin take another hit through the day, with the day’s first major support level at $6,232.87 very much in play should the Bitcoin bulls not be able to make a move through the morning. As was the case on Friday, range bound moves through bearish trends tend to lead to pullbacks and, when considering the fact that Bitcoin’s losses through the week were mild relative to its peers, the Bitcoin bears could play catch up later in the day.
Elsewhere in the cryptomarket, it was a mixed start to the day, with Ripple’s XRP, NEO and Stellar’s Lumen bucking the trend in the early hours, the trio seeing red, while Ethereum and DASH had a solid start to the weekend, with gains of 1.65% and 1.61% respectively to lead the way amongst the majors.
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Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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The cofounder of Ethereum has the whitest white sneakers I’ve ever seen, so scuff-less and out-of-the-box smudge-less that my first question is justhow?We areoutside, after all. Wearing a solid navy blue baseball cap, tinted-blue hexagonal aviators and an equally white hoodie when we met this past Tuesday,Di Iorio explains: The secret is a travel shoe cleaning kit--plus a bottomless collection of white sneakers, permitting him to switch out for a new pair every month.
An ancient Mexican clock hangs on his necklace--a gift from EOS cofounder Brock Pierce. Surrounded by a small entourage that includes a bodyguard in a suit and coiled earpiece,Di Iorio, whose cryptocurrency fortune is estimated at as much as $1 billion, looks so much like a celebrity that a couple of tourists approach me after our lunch.Who was that guy I was interviewing--was he famous?they wanted to know. Not wishing to dox Di Iorio or his whereabouts to strangers, I simply replied, “Oh, he’s in the cryptocurrency industry.”
Just saying the words felt like a throwback to another time, another day when cryptocurrency prices weren’t plunging, when people weren’t talking aboutBitcoin exchange hacks,mining scamsandapp store bans. The following day, the Bitcoin price fell to its lowest point all year, $6,261.
And then it occurred to me: This weekend marks six months since Bitcoin hit $20,000 on December 17, 2017; we’ve now slid nearly 70% of the way back down. Even the memory of that exuberant run-up got a face full of cold water this week whenthe New York Timespublished the findings of a new study that attributed 50% of Bitcoin’s rise last year to market manipulation.
Not that Di Iorio, founder and CEO of blockchain company Decentral (which makes the Jaxx cryptocurrency wallet) is fazed. Nor does he have any shame in telling a reporter that he purposely pays little attention to news, though he observes that there’s been “a lot more negative sentiment in the media” this year, largely to do with regulatory threats to crack down on cryptocurrencies.
Di Iorio had spent part of last week on Capitol Hill, meeting with roomfuls of regulatory officials and lawmakers, trying to ease them away from black-and-white definitions for categorizing cryptocurrencies, and coaxing them to see things through his vision of the future. “To recognize the potential of this technology is going to be bigger than the Internet,” says Di Iorio. “Nothing’s going to stop it. The cat’s out of the bag.”
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Indeed, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seemed to rely partly on the cat-out-of-the-bag argument Thursday when it announced that it hadruled Ethereum out as a security, saving the cryptocurrency from a catastrophic regulated fate thatMarc Andreessen himself sought to prevent. Despite the resemblance between Ether’s original token sale to a securities offering, “the present state of Ether, the Ethereum network and its decentralized structure” make it virtually impossible to put it back in the bag, the SEC acknowledged: “As a network becomes truly decentralized, the ability to identify an issuer or promoter to make the requisite disclosures becomes difficult, and less meaningful.”
IfDi Iorio had any indication about the SEC’s plans, he didn’t let on--other than to take notice of a clue the night before: Coinbase had announced it wouldadd Ethereum Classic, forked out of the Ethereum blockchain, to its cryptocurrency exchange. Coinbase, which has been careful not to list any cryptocurrencies that might be a security, would likely only add Ethereum Classic if it was sure Ethereum and its kin had officially escaped the label.
Meanwhile, New York regulators also awarded their sixth-ever BitLicense to Xapo, the second such license issued in the span of a month--a new record pace for the agency, whosemolasses-like approval pipelineI wrote about in my last installment of this newsletter. My prediction then that more BitLicense approvals are on their way down the pike now seems to be coming to fruition.
And though it may be June,I can almost hear the jingle bells ringing again, harking back to the holiday season ’17 rally. I rememberedthe mug I’d orderedon on impulse while shopping for a birthday gift for a friend earlier this year (naturally, I went with theBitcoin money clip). It makes me happy every time I open the cabinet. “I’m dreaming of a crypto Christmas,” the mug says.
After all, for people likeDi Ioriowho bought into crypto before six months ago, it’s still been a holly, jolly, most wonderful year.
A version of this article originally appeared in theThe Ledger,Fortune's weekly newsletter on the intersection of finance and tech.Subscribe here.
See original article on Fortune.com
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Hard to get it right the first time. Our understanding of bitcoin has changed frequently and our understanding of L2 will change. There are so many moving pieces it is impossible to forecast how they will pay out. || Bitcoin - BTC
Price: $6,125.94
Change in 1h: -0.1%
Market cap: $104,820,267,109.00
Ranking: 1
#Bitcoin #BTC || #Australia’s First ‘Digital Currency Town’ Accepts #Bitcoin to Boost Tourism #1770 #QLD https://www.ccn.com/australias-first-digital-currency-town-accepts-bitcoin-to-boost-tourism/ … @cryptocoinsnews #crypto || Join crowd sale and get 10% extra bonus.
(if you invest $100 you will get 110 AQN.)
(1$ = 1AQN)
#BTC #ETH #ICO #AQUAOIN.IO || Events tomorrow!
#flash-token
#dero
#cashaa
#modum
#apr-coin
#block-array
#hydrogen
#tron
#bitcoin #ethereum
http://coinchiller.com || Nexus (NXS) news! On 06 June 2018, Binance will open trading for NXS/BNB, NXS/BTC and NXS/ETH trading pairs at 2018/06/06 10:00 AM (UTC). Users can now start depositing NXS. #NXS
https://www.binance.com/trade.html?symbol=NXS_BTC … || Thanks @getmorecoin for taking care of a $LGD holder. Great time at Hyde at Bellagio. Where’s my boy @22loops atpic.twitter.com/kmdptSaEAb || insanlara bitcoin al diye vesvese veriyorum. || Gana $45,00 Usd Por Afiliar, Quieres ganarte dólares con Bitcoin sin tanto esfuerzo? Es solo d ··· http://www.comerciocenter.net/ad/gana-45-00-usd-por-afiliar … - #España || “While many see XRP as a rival to bitcoin, Garlinghouse said it's not necessarily a case of one digital coin versus another.” https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/05/ripple-ceo-bitcoin-is-not-the-panacea-people-thought.html …
|
Trend: down || Prices: 6597.55, 6639.14, 6673.50, 6856.93, 6773.88, 6741.75, 6329.95, 6394.71, 6228.81, 6238.05
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2018-06-08]
BTC Price: 7624.92, BTC RSI: 43.53
Gold Price: 1298.10, Gold RSI: 45.14
Oil Price: 65.74, Oil RSI: 40.93
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Texas Regulator Hit Two Bitcoin Investment Schemes with Cease-and-Desists: The Texas State Securities Board has uncovered more suspicious activity from cryptocurrency businesses targeting residents in the state. The agency has most recently issued a pair of emergency orders against two separate entities that according to the regulators were scamming investors, including a bitcoin mining operation and a bitcoin foreign exchange investment fund. Both startups Bitcoin Trading & Cloud Mining Ltd. (BTCRUSH) and Forex EA & Bitcoin Investment LLC were promising outsized returns, among other alarming behaviors, and were issued cease and desist orders, bringing the tally of such requests issued by the Texas State Securities Board to nine. Joseph Rotunda, Director of the Enforcement Division at the Texas State Securities Board, told CCN that the latest emergency orders were part of a sweep that the agency launched at year-end 2017 when the bitcoin price was trading in the stratosphere. The sweep targets projects that raise red flags and that are promoting to Texas residents. The number of open investigations into cryptocurrency startups including ICOs has doubled since that time, from about 30 to approximately 60. Weve seen this before when a new market emerges and people want to get rich quick at the expense of others. They infiltrate the market we are trying to weed out those folks. Their schemes are very fragile, like a house of cards waiting to tumble. Something comes along to offers that gust of wind and everything collapses, Rotunda told CCN. In Texas, that gust of wind is increasingly taking the form of emergency cease-and-desist orders. Unrealistic Returns The two blockchain startups are accused of violating the Texas Securities Act for a lack of transparency in their management structure and investment philosophy in addition to not making plain the risks associated with cryptocurrency investing, not to mention attempting to lure investors with the promise of unrealistic returns. Story continues BTCRUSH is a UK-based cloud-fueled bitcoin and altcoin mining startup. It created a video that was supposedly comprised of the interiors and exteriors of a trio of mining facilities, Rotunda explained. The Texas securities agency was able to quickly decipher that the video was actually stock footage from the internet that was spliced. That led the regulators to realize that the company was not in compliance and to issue the emergency order. Rotunda told CCN: They werent just putting out a website and letting investors come to them. They werent just discussing investments on a message board. Their sales agents were specifically advertising and sending materials to Texas residents. They were communicating, come to our website, register an account, purchase an investment. According to the cease and desist order, BTCRUSH, which only became operational in March, says its been distributing 4.1% daily interest on a lifetime contract and they offer a 100% satisfaction guarantee along with the freedom to change the interest terms at will. The investment schemes offered heightened, unrealistic returns. New York-based Forex EA & Bitcoin Investment may not be based in the Lone Star State, but it was marketing its business to Texas residents. They allegedly used a Houston area code attached to their phone number even though the company isnt physically located in the region, which would deceive unsuspecting residents. According to the emergency order, My Forex Bitcoin Investment claims to run a $500,000 fund thats climbing. The startup is allegedly guaranteeing that a $5,000 investment will generate returns of $50,000 in about three weeks and any losses will be offset by the growing portfolio. But they fail to disclose their investment strategy to deliver these outsized returns and made no mention of any investment risks associated with investing in digital currencies, the emergency order alleges. Texas Prison Non-compliance with the cease and desist orders could result in up to a decade in a Texas prison. What I found in my experience is once we enter these emergency actions, it shakes things up. Companies collapse sometimes. Once word reaches the public, thats when the complaints come pouring in, Rotunda said. Cryptocurrency-related investigations are taking more of the agencys time of late, but not every situation ends with an emergency order. In some cases, the Texas securities regulator is able to communicate with the entrepreneur behind a blockchain-based startup and explain that theyre not doing things in accordance with securities law, after which time many individuals cooperate. As for the Texas Securities Board, Rotunda said they remain objective about the market. We want to foster business. And my concern is people will be turned off to cryptocurrencies when theres so much fraud out there. If we can get the bad actors out, the legitimate businesses can prosper, he said. Images from Shutterstock. The post Texas Regulator Hit Two Bitcoin Investment Schemes with Cease-and-Desists appeared first on CCN . || Bitcoin Poised to Make a Move, the Bulls in Search of $8,500: Bitcoin gained 2.34% on Friday, partially reversing Thursdays 3.37% fall, to end the week down 2.69% at $8,243.4. It was a particularly choppy day for Bitcoin, which had endured 4 consecutive days of losses ahead of Fridays open, with a start of the day intraday low and new swing lo $7,925 certainly not helping the cause. In spite of the early tumble, holding above the days first major support level at $7,864.27 led to a break back through to $8,000 levels, with a 2 nd rally through the afternoon seeing Bitcoin hit an intraday high $8,277.2 before a slight easing back through to the days ending $8,243.4. The new swing lo and failure to test the days first major resistance level to have a run at the 23.6% FIB Retracement Level of $8,415 affirmed the near-term bearish trend formed at 5 th Mays swing hi $9,999, the bears continuing to run the show in spite of Fridays gains. Good news for the Bitcoin bulls will be Bitcoins resilience through the bearish week however, the losses minor relative to its peers, with Bitcoin recovering some lost ground over crypto rival Bitcoin Cash. Get Into Cryptocurrency Trading Today At the time of writing, Bitcoin was down 0.27% to $8,216.8, with Bitcoin managing to recover from an early morning dip to an intraday low $8,164.1. With support and resistance levels left untested on Friday, the mornings low held above the days first major support level at $8,019.87, with the mornings $8,277.8 falling short of the days first major resistance level at $8,372.07, in what could be yet another day where Bitcoin fails to test major resistance levels, Bitcoin having last tested major resistance levels on Monday. For the day ahead, Bitcoin will need to move back through to $8,250 levels to support a run at $8,300 levels to bring the days first major resistance level at $8,372.07 into play, though the bulls will need to take control for Bitcoin to break through to $8,300 levels Failure to move through the mornings $8,277.8 high to $8,300 levels will likely lead to another slide to reverse Fridays gains, with the days first major support level at $8,019.87 a certain target for the Bitcoin bears, Bitcoin having managed to avoid closing at sub-$8,000 levels since 18 th April. Story continues For the bulls, a shift away from Fridays start of the day swing lo $7,925 should provide some support, while side lined investors find little cause to jump back in, a roll out of regulations in key jurisdictions expected at any time. Current levels may look attractive, but when considering Bitcoins 2018 sub-$6,000 low that came off the back of heightened regulatory risk, there could more red to come in the coming weeks before the dust settles and the bulls take control. Elsewhere, Bitcoin Cash continued to slide, down 2.32% at the time of writing, with NEMs XEM, Stellars Lumen and Monero also seeing notable losses, while DASH and NEO were one of a few to buck the trend, up 0.64% and 0.09% respectively in the early hours. BTC/USD 19/05/18 Hourly Chart Buy & Sell Cryptocurrency Instantly This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Crude Oil markets rallied during the week again making fresh highs GBP/USD Fundamental Analysis week of May 21, 2018 Silver markets have negative week to find support on uptrend line US dollar breaks out against Japanese yen during the week Alt coins continue to soften during the week USD/CAD Fundamental Analysis week of May 21, 2018 || Inflation Data Keeps the USD front and Centre ahead of Wednesday’s FOMC Decision: Economic data through the Asian session this morning was on the lighter side, but certainly not lacking influence, with key stats including April’s private sector PMI figures out of China, business confidence numbers out of New Zealand and new home sales and private sector credit figures out of Australia.
For the Kiwi Dollar, According to the ANZ Business Confidence survey, confidence eased in April, with a net 23.4% of businesses being pessimistic about the year ahead, down 3 points from March, with all sectors in the red.
While the services sector was the least pessimistic, the agriculture sector was the most, while managing to see some improvement from March.
The construction sector saw the greatest deterioration, falling from 33 to 9.1, the lowest level since 2008.
In addition to confidence taking a hit, own activity also slid, with employment indicators mixed and expected profitability sliding to the lowest level since 2009.
The Kiwi Dollar moved from $0.70868 to $0.70764 upon release of the figures, with both business and consumer confidence now having softened.
For the Aussie Dollar, new home sales fell by 2% in March, following February’s 0.7% decline to make it 3 consecutive months of decline, the declines coinciding with tighter lending restrictions.
The Aussie Dollar moved from $0.75761 to $0.75723 upon release of the figures, which coincided with the release of China’s private sector PMI numbers.
Out of China, April’s manufacturing PMI eased from 51.5 to 51.4, coming in ahead of a forecasted 51.3, while the service sector PMI rose from 54.6 to 54.8.
While the manufacturing PMI numbers was marginally softer, the continued expansion in the sector amidst the current trade spat between the U.S and China and Beijing’s attempts to curb debt and address pollution issues will have been taken as a positive, the only real concern in the numbers being softer exports in April.
While new home sales slipped in March, private sector credit increased by 0.5%, coming in ahead of a forecasted 0.4% rise, following February’s 0.4% increase.
Annual credit growth continues its downward trend, with tighter credit conditions weighing on investor housing credit, while business credit picked up, supporting the rise in March.
The Aussie Dollar moved from $0.75781 to $0.75706 upon release of the figures, as focus now shifts to the RBA’s interest rate decision and release of the rate statement tomorrow, disappointing inflation figures for the 1stquarter likely to leave the RBA in a holding pattern for the foreseeable future.
The dovish policy outlook left the Aussie Dollar down 0.25% to $0.7562 at the time of writing, the Kiwi Dollar doing somewhat better, down just 0.08% to $0.7079.
Elsewhere the Japanese Yen slipped 0.06% to ¥109.11 against the Dollar at the time of writing, easing geo-political risk and better than expected PMI numbers out of China supporting market risk appetite through the session, leading to a pullback in demand for the safe havens.
In the equity markets, the Hang Seng led the way, up 1.51%, with the ASX200 up 0.53%, China and Japan’s markets closed for the day.
For the EUR, economic data scheduled for release this morning includes retail sales figures out of German, together with prelim April inflation numbers out of Germany and Italy.
An expected bounce back in German retail sales at the end of the 1stquarter should provide the EUR with some support, though it’s going to boil down to the inflation numbers, as the market continues to look for signs of a pickup in inflationary pressure that could see policy divergence in favour of the Dollar narrow.
At the time of writing, the EUR was flat at $1.213, with market risk sentiment, today’s stats out of the Eurozone and a heavy set of stats out of the U.S later today key drivers.
For the Pound, there are no material stats scheduled for release, with focus this week being on April’s private sector PMI numbers. While 1stquarter GDP numbers were said to have all but removed the chances of a May rate hike, April’s PMI could confuse matters should the numbers impress. The softer 1stquarter had been attributed to adverse weather conditions through the 1stquarter, this week’s figures will confirm or deny the view and whether pricing out a rate hike in May left the Pound oversold.
At the time of writing, the Pound was up 0.02% to $1.3784, with Brexit and outlook towards monetary policy continuing to be the two key drivers, neither having been too supportive of the Pound of late.
Across the Pond, it’s another busy economic calendar, with stats out of the U.S this afternoon including the FED’s preferred March Core PCE Price Index figures, together with personal spending and pending home sales. Focus will be on the inflation figures, with anything in line with or better than a forecasted uptick to 1.8% supporting the Dollar, personal spending also expected to impress.
First quarter growth was certainly not as bad as some had feared, paving the way for a more hawkish FED this Wednesday should March’s inflation figures impress.
The Dollar Spot Index was flat at 91.54 at the time of writing, 10-year Treasury yields sitting at 2.96% ahead of today’s open and the release of today’s figures that could see yields bounce back to 3% this afternoon.
Across the border, the Loonie is also in action this afternoon, with March’s RMPI figures scheduled for release, though the stats are unlikely to see the Loonie recover recent losses, the Bank of Canada having managed to reverse the Loonie’s gains from earlier in the month.
At the time of writing, the Loonie was down 0.13% to C$1.2845 against the Dollar, with falling crude oil prices and today’s stats out of the U.S likely to drive market sentiment through the day.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• DAX Index Looking to Break Through || Bitcoin Cash is soaring as traders ready for another hard fork: Markets Insider
• Bitcoin cashis up more than 10% Friday.
• A hard-fork of the currency is expected May 15, which will form Bitcoin ABC.
• Track the price of Bitcoin cash in real-time here.
Bitcoin cashwas up more than 10% Friday, continuing its outperformance of other major cryptocurrencies, as a competinghard fork approacheson May 15.
The fourth-largest cryptocurrency, which split frombitcoinin a similar hard fork in 2017, is now up more than 30% in the past week. Bitcoin, by comparison, is up 5% over that time.
Bitcoin ABC, an acronym for Adjustable Blocksize Cap, will increase bitcoin cash's block size to 32 MB, a fourfold increase from the original 8MB and well above bitcoin’s 1MB block size. It’s set to roll out on May 15,the developers have said.
The fork will also remove theSegwit protocol, short for segregated witness, the process by which the number of transactions in a block can be increased by moving certain signature data from transactions to the end of the block.
Bitcoin cash has beenaccused of misleading investorsby piggy-backing off the bitcoin name. While the new cryptocurrency includes the history of the original bitcoin's transactions up until the split, since the fork, the two currencies are unrelated except for their shared history and name. Theoretically, anyone can create a fork from the original bitcoin source code.
Vocal bitcoin cash supporter Roger Ver, who ownsbitcoin.comvia an LLC registered at a Marriott resort on St. Kitts, and refers to the original bitcoin as "bitcoin core," has appeared on numerous internet talk shows, including the conspiracy-theory site InfoWars, to promote the coin.
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SEE ALSO:Bitcoin cash is leading crypto higher after Tax Day || 3 Top Stocks for the War on Cash: From prepaid cards to peer-to-peer payments to payment apps, there seems to be a war on cash these days. Over time, cash is becoming less and less a part of the U.S. economy, and it doesn't seem like this trend will end anytime soon. In this episode of Industry Focus: Financials , host Michael Douglass and financials specialist Matthew Frankel discuss three stocks that could be big winners. A full transcript follows the video. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This This video was recorded on May 21, 2018. Michael Douglass: Welcome to Industry Focus , the podcast that dives into a different sector of the stock market every day. It's Monday, May 21st, and we're doing a special episode on the so-called war on cash. Listeners, whenever you send in a question via email, Twitter, letter in the mail, really whatever, we try to either answer it in email or devote an episode to it. Cam from the U.K. asked, "What do you think are the three best stocks to own to benefit from the war on cash?" So, I figured we'd step back and think big picture for a minute. The so-called war on cash is this idea that the world is gradually transitioning away from cash, or, at least, that it will in the future. Certainly, there's plenty of data out there showing that increasing proportions of people are using non-cash methods of payment: debit cards, credit cards, mobile transfer services like Venmo and the like. In fact, the BBC reported last year that cash was used in under 20% of transactions in Sweden, for instance. So, certainly, we've seen this movement. But, the fact of the matter is, cash still reigns across the world. In fact, American Express recently highlighted this as an opportunity. They had this presentation in which they described just how much runway there is still to take over from cash. Story continues Matt Frankel: There's a common misperception among American investors and consumers that the credit card market is getting kind of saturated. AmEx came out with statistics that said the uncapped payment market is actually pretty huge. Right now, there's about $12 trillion in consumer payments going through cards, and they think that the addressable market is actually $29 trillion, so more than double the current size. The commercial side of things, it's even more of an opportunity. Right now, it's about a $2 trillion market, and they think it could be a $19 trillion market. So, there's still a lot of room to move toward a cashless society, is the takeaway there. Douglass: Yes. Even in Sweden, where it's roughly 80-20, there's still opportunity. But, in most places, we have a lot more going through in cash. The second piece then, of all of this, as we're thinking about this, is, what will they go to? If cash becomes less common, what are people going to spend with? Here in the U.S. and in Europe, the answer has been cash to debit/ credit cards to mobile payments in addition to debit/ credit cards. A lot of people argue in favor of the credit card stocks because they're expecting a similar move among other countries. Now, in my view, certainly, there's an opportunity for credit card companies, and there's reason to think that they have plenty of market to expand into. But it's increasingly clear to me that, particularly in the really high-growth emerging markets that we talked about last week, people are really moving straight to mobile payments from cash and bypassing credit cards to some extent. For example, according to Capgemini 's 2017 World Payments Report, 50% of Chinese smartphone users are expected to adopt proximity mobile payments by 2020. So, we're bullish on credit card companies, at least I am. Personally, I'm a MasterCard shareholder. But we don't actually really see them as the best way to play the specific war on cash. So, here, we've put together three of our favorite stocks. The first one is Green Dot Corporation (NYSE: GDOT) , ticker symbol GDOT. Frankel: Yeah. On that note, I'm an American Express shareholder myself, and they're not the best way, we feel, because credit cards are expensive. The trend in financial technology, as we discussed in an episode a few weeks ago, is toward no fees. So, we're looking at companies that offer low-fee payment solutions, Green Dot being the first one. They're a relatively small company. The market cap is just under $4 billion right now. And, in addition to a few other things, which we'll get to in a second, they're the leader in prepaid cards, where people have their paycheck directly loaded onto a prepaid card. You see all the prepaid Visa cards at the Walmart checkout, those are usually Green Dot products. Green Dot focuses on what are called the unbanked and underbanked segments of the population, meaning people who don't necessarily have a checking account. If you have, say, credit issues, you've defaulted on loans before, you've had charge-offs on checking accounts before, it can be really tough to get a bank account. These are the people who Green Dot focuses on. And a lot of the people who still use cash for everyday purchases are slowly transitioning to Green Dot product because it's getting less and less convenient to use cash. That's the best way I could sum up Green Dot -- it's a play on the inconvenience of cash over time. Douglass: Yes. And, as you pointed out, it does a lot of things with a lot of different cards. It's interesting. I was not familiar with Green Dot until Matt pitched it to me a couple of days ago. And when I looked at the company, a couple of things really jumped out. The first one is that they have just really diversified revenue streams. If you look at the most recent quarter, out of roughly $315 million in revenue, about $130 million came from card revenues and other fees, $100 million from processing and settlement services, and then about $85 million from interchange revenues. So, what you see there is that they're playing in related areas, but they don't have all of their revenue really tied to one place, which is a really good thing to see. The other thing is, you're seeing pretty impressive growth. Revenue last quarter grew by 16% on the organic side. Now, they actually had an acquisition which juiced revenue up further, but net of that, revenue grew by 16%. So, that's a really good sign that they've made a series of products that are really attractive to a lot of people. Frankel: Green Dot, in addition to being an issuer of its own products, sees itself as more of a technology platform, whereas other companies can go and use their technology to offer financial services that suit them. Just a couple of examples, Walmart MoneyCard is a big, big partner of Green Dot. More recently, Uber has started issuing the Uber Debit Card through Green Dot's platform. Most recently, in December, Apple announced that it's using Green Dot's technology for its Apple Pay Cash platform. Which, you can't really get a better partnership than that, as far as peer-to-peer payments. Douglass: Yes. It's interesting, because, the way Green Dot puts this is, it's banking as a service, or BAAS. You've probably heard of technology as a service, software as a service, etc. They're trying to comp themselves, I think, to a lot of these other companies. Essentially, what that means is, it's this mobile platform that can work in a lot of different areas. Now, whether or not you would really comp that to a tech stock is something that I think there could be a very healthy debate about. But, I think, what's very clear is, this is a company that's serving a historically underserved niche in the market and has really put together some really impressive growth with that. Frankel: Yeah. The other two companies we're about to talk about focus on markets where people could use credit cards and things right now, it's just, they want to make it more convenient and less costly. Green Dot is focusing on people who don't have many other options. It's not too much of a big deal right now to carry cash. It's getting inconvenient in certain places. But, over the next few decades, it's going to start getting very inconvenient to use cash for certain things. And that's really why I like Green Dot as a long-term way to play the war on cash. Douglass: Right. Alright, let's turn to our next stock, which is PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) . Everyone knows PayPal as, well, PayPal. [laughs] Sort of like how everybody knows Facebook for Facebook. But, like Facebook, PayPal is also invested in other properties that are not its namesake -- chief among them, of course, Venmo. Which, if you're a millennial or know a millennial, you've probably heard about Venmo and how great it is for basically helping people not have to split the bill at restaurants. Frankel: Yeah. I personally don't use Venmo, but I'm an older millennial. We'll chalk it up to that. I'm a millennial by about three months. [laughs] But, the statistics don't lie. Venmo payment volumes up 80% year over year. That's enormous growth. People think PayPal is kind of a mature company, but they're really not. Peer-to-peer payment volume, they're growing at a 50% year over year rate, and it's about a quarter of the total right now. So, PayPal is really not just eBay 's payment processor anymore, which is where they were years ago. PayPal used to be part of eBay, if people aren't familiar. But, they're really transitioning into a new jack-of-all-trades payment company. Douglass: Yeah. It's interesting. One of the things that PayPal execs always highlighted about Venmo -- and I had been skeptical about it -- is this idea that the social aspect is really a differentiator. If you use Venmo, basically, you send someone money, and you can give a reason that you're sending money. You can say rent, or brunch, or something completely ridiculous, if you want. And they really highlighted the social aspect of being able to see what other people are paying each other for as being a differentiator. I have been skeptical. But, I will note, John Rainey, PayPal's CFO, at a recent conference noted, and I'm quoting here, "The consumers that are using that are opening the app four and five times a week just to check the social feed." Now, I mean, is it just to check the social feed, or is it because they forgot what they were paying for? I don't know. But, it's certainly interesting to see that there's some data backing up that assertion. And, I mean, at the end of the day, a lot of people talk about different things like Zelle as potential competitors to Venmo. But the fact of the matter is, even with Zelle's launch, Venmo's growth has continued to accelerate, and they haven't seen any drawback. A big part of that is, Zelle, which underlies a lot of the banking, peer-to-peer payment apps, the average size of transactions on Zelle is a few hundred bucks, whereas for Venmo, it's more like upper 50s, low 60s, according to PayPal execs -- which is, again, a sign that you're using those apps for two different, complementary, things. So, they can both win in an increasingly mobile-first society. Frankel: Another good thing about PayPal is, not only is the peer-to-peer side of their business doing really well, but their core business is still growing quite rapidly. They added over eight million new accounts in the first quarter alone, 15% more accounts than they did this time last year. So, their core payment business is really doing well, and people who are using PayPal are using it more. Per account, the average PayPal customer uses their account almost 35 times a year. That's an increase of about 8% from last year. So, their core payment business is doing really well in addition to their peer-to-peer business. And the core payment business, at least for the moment, is where they're making their money. That's the big revenue driver. Douglass: Yeah, and that's one of the things that's sort of an opportunity and a danger for PayPal. At some point, they're going to want to try to monetize Venmo. And they've begun thinking about this a little bit with what's called pay with Venmo, which is essentially rolling things out so that people can use Venmo to pay merchants directly. So, certainly, there's some opportunity there. But, execs, I think very appropriately, have been very cautious in their outlook, and said, "Listen, we're not going to try to hit some amazing number on the revenue side with this and tank the whole experience," I think because they recognize that fundamentally, Venmo isn't a terribly sticky product. So, if you make things incrementally more difficult for really anybody in that chain -- from consumer-to-consumer to business -- then there may be a significant push to something else, whereas if you wait and allow that network effect to get stronger and stronger, it's going to become increasingly difficult for people to break away, and that's where there might be some monetization opportunity. But, that's years down the road. Frankel: One more little thought on the monetization of peer-to-peer payments -- bear in mind how young that industry is. It was only about five years ago, people didn't think Facebook would be able to monetize its business. The point is, this is still in its early stages of evolution. There could be many different avenues they could take it to monetize payments without charging fees or things like that. It's a very, very young industry still. Douglass: Yes, and a lot of opportunity there. Alright, let's turn to our third stock. By the way, I forgot to mention earlier, PayPal, that's ticker symbol PYPL. Square (NYSE: SQ) is our third one, which is ticker symbol SQ. Frankel: Square is, in many ways, similar to PayPal. It's about one-fifth of the market cap. In terms of payment volume, it's a lot smaller. It's about one-eighth of PayPal's payment volume right now. While PayPal started out focusing on consumers paying businesses, Square is more of a small business-centered company. You can't walk down a craft market in America right now without everybody taking credit cards with Square payment readers. But, they're turning into so much more than that. They're really building, they call it omnichannel commerce. It's kind of a whole one-stop payment ecosystem for businesses, consumers. For example, they have a Square Capital platform that lends to small businesses, the Square Cash app, which is kind of what we're talking about with the war on cash. Their peer-to-peer payment app is the No. 1 app in the Apple App Store. So, they really transformed themselves from just the small business payment company to a small business and consumer ecosystem of payments. Other integrated features are what they're going for, with their Caviar food delivery app. They just acquired Weebly, which allows people to make their own websites, integrating that into their process so their customers don't have to go elsewhere to build their own e-commerce sites. Just, a lot of potential, and it's still within the early stages of figuring out how much of the business environment they could capture. Douglass: Yeah. For me, I'm a Square shareholder personally because of the optionality. You look at Caviar, it's tiny compared to a GrubHub . It's distinctly possible that GrubHub or one of the various other food ordering services will continue to, pardon the pun, eat their lunch, because, you know, Caviar has a single-digit market share. But, long-term, maybe it can grow. Maybe it can differentiate. Maybe it can find some way to really succeed, particularly if they use it as an omni-channel, to use their terminology, cross-sell opportunity. They might charge a certain percentage to merchants who aren't using other Square services, but if they are using other Square services, maybe Caviar is free, maybe it's bundled, maybe it's a lesser percentage of revenue on the sold food that they're charging. So, there's a lot of opportunity, I think, if Square can really, really make entrepreneurship easy. And that's really what their goal is. Frankel: Another thing with Square is, out of the three stocks we're talking about, they're the ones who are really embracing the whole cryptocurrency trend -- more so than the other two, anyway. You can now buy Bitcoin through the Square Cash app, if you talk about the ultimate war on cash. It's kind of still a small part of Square's business, but it's getting there, and it could become a big part if it's integrated into their small business solutions, whereas you can hold Bitcoin in Square Cash and use it at Square payment terminals, that could be a game-changer for the cryptocurrency world. Douglass: Yeah, it's kind of a weird thing. It feels very different from pretty much everything else that Square is doing. But, again, this is a management that has unhesitatingly diversified, taken on opportunities. I think, in a lot of ways, they're just throwing a bunch of things out there and seeing what works. And that can be a bad strategy when it doesn't have a master plan behind it and an integrated experience that they're going for, or if it's just out of desperation. But Square has just been growing impressively. I think this is management's attempts to say, "OK, how do we take that growth, better monetize it, and build out that platform further and further, and stay ahead of the competition?" And thus far, Square really has done a good job of that. Frankel: Yeah. This was the thesis on IBM a long time ago, in that the more parts of a company's business they rely on you for, the higher the cost of switching is. So, Square is turning into a very sticky business, to borrow a Warren Buffett term. Douglass: Yes, indeed. Cool. Those are our three stocks, personally, my and Matt's favorite picks for the war on cash. Matt, of the three, is there one that stands out to you as your personal favorite? Frankel: I own Square and PayPal. I owned Square when it was about the size of Green Dot, and it's really been nice to see where it evolved. I see that it has a whole lot more potential to grow, ultimately, to the size of PayPal, I could see it getting. Not that it will, I'm not saying that it will. But, I could definitely see Square doubling or tripling in size, even from here. Douglass: Yeah. Square is the only one of these three that I personally own, so it's probably not surprising that it's the one I'm most bullish on right now. I usually try to buy companies that I like. [laughs] It sort of makes sense as an investor. Folks, that's it for this week's Financials show. Questions, comments, you can always reach us at industryfocus@fool.com . As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so, don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. This show is produced by Austin Morgan. For Matt Frankel, I'm Michael Douglass. Thanks for listening and Fool on! Matthew Frankel owns shares of AXP, AAPL, PayPal Holdings, and Square. Michael Douglass owns shares of AAPL, FB, MA, and Square. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends AAPL, FB, MA, PayPal Holdings, and V. The Motley Fool owns shares of Square. The Motley Fool is short shares of IBM and has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on AAPL and short January 2020 $155 calls on AAPL. The Motley Fool recommends AXP, EBAY, and GRUB. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Activision Blizzard's Growth Streak Continues: The first-quarter earnings release from Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI) had a little more drama than we would usually expect from a public company. Dow Jones "inadvertently" published some details of the earnings announcement, which caused the trading of shares to be halted and Activision Blizzard to release its quarterly results at about 3 p.m. EDT, an hour before the market closed. Shares were volatile when earnings started to leak, but luckily that volatility doesn't affect Foolish long-term investors, who care more about the direction of Activision Blizzard's business. So, let's get to the numbers. Man playing esports in a stadium. An esports player in a stadium. Image source: Getty Images. Activision Blizzard : The raw numbers Metric Q1 2018 Q1 2017 Year-Over-Year Change GAAP revenue $1.97 billion $1.73 billion 13.8% Net income $500 million $426 million 17.4% GAAP EPS $0.65 $0.56 16.2% Non-GAAP EPS $0.78 $0.72 8.3% Data source: Activision Blizzard Inc.'s Q1 2018 earnings release. What happened with Activision Blizzard t his quarter? At a high level, results were very strong. But when we dig into the segment operating metrics, we can see what exactly is working well for Activision Blizzard. Digital revenues accounted for 74% of total revenue in the quarter. That's down from 80% of revenue a year ago, but record revenue of $1.46 billion. Operating margin was 30% on a GAAP basis and 39% on a non-GAAP basis, down from 43% a year ago. Management said the decline in operating margin was because of investments in Overwatch League, the Major League Gaming (MLG) network, and Battle.net . Monthly active users (MAUs) were down across the board sequentially for Activision Blizzard . Activision MAUs were 51 million, Blizzard MAUs were 38 million, and King had 285 million MAUs. That compares to 55 million, 40 million, and 290 million respectively in Q4 2018. The decline was largely due to a lack of major new game releases in the first quarter. Despite the drop in users, net bookings increased 16% versus a year ago to $1.38 billion. Activision segment revenue was $312 million, and operating profit was $92 million on growth in Call of Duty's digital sales growth. Blizzard revenue was a record $480 million on World of Warcraft expansion presales and the newly launched Overwatch League. King revenue was $534 million, and operating profit was up 15% versus a year ago to $191 million. Overall, operating cash flow rose 29% from a year ago to $529 million, and free cash flow was up 28% to $498 million. On the balance sheet, Activision went from a net debt position of $1.17 billion a year ago to a net cash balance of $860 million. Story continues Esports was a big focus for Activision Blizzard in the quarter, with the launch of Overwatch League and continued growth of Call of Duty World League and the MLG network. Esports engagement is high, with the average Overwatch League viewer spending over an hour watching each day. New Overwatch League franchises are expected to be added by the end of the year. The expansion fees weren't disclosed, but the initial franchise fee was $20 million, and reports have new expansion fees at as much as $60 million. There wasn't much operational detail given on esports engagement or revenue, except to say that "millions" of people each week are engaging in esports leagues. What management had to say One comment during the conference call stuck out as indicating what management sees as the future of video games and esports. CEO Robert A. Kotick said: The Overwatch League continues to thrive, and our players are getting even broader recognition of their incredible talents in mainstream media. We see even greater opportunity with the playoffs and Grand Finals still to come. And we've begun sales of our next round of Overwatch League teams. And over time, we believe our esports initiatives could rival traditional sports for audience interest, advertiser interest, sponsors, ticket sales, and merchandise sales, both virtual and physical. The idea of building stadiums around the world for esports and people buying merchandise on a mass scale may sound crazy, but the Overwatch League is already moving in that direction. This could be the future of Activision Blizzard's business. Looking forward After another strong quarter, the focus for Activision Blizzard turns to Activision's May 17 reveal of Black Ops 4 , which will be released this fall. It's a highly anticipated launch and could set up the Activision segment for a strong second half of 2018. The other thing to keep an eye on is engagement in Overwatch League, which begins playoffs in June; $1 million in prize money will go to the champion, which should draw even more viewers than the 10 million who watched opening weekend . That's when we could see the real potential of esports for Activision Blizzard. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Travis Hoium has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Activision Blizzard. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Your Retirement Countdown: 5 Moves to Make Before Calling It Quits: If you're nearing retirement, you're most likely excited for what lies ahead. But before you say goodbye to the workforce, there are a few steps you'll need to take to ensure that you're ready for this giant milestone. 1. Assess your savings Unless you have a pension or another steady source of retirement income, once you stop working, you'll probably come to rely on your nest egg, coupled with Social Security, to pay the bills. Therefore, you'll need to make sure that you've saved enough to buy yourself the lifestyle you're hoping for. Senior couple sitting on the grass in front of a picnic basket Image source: Getty Images. Now, the tricky thing is that there's no magic savings number that guarantees a financially secure retirement. However, as a general rule, you can expect to withdraw about 4% of your nest egg's value each year without worrying about depleting it prematurely. This means that if you're sitting on $600,000, you'll have $24,000 a year to work with. If that, combined with your Social Security benefits (which you can estimate by looking at your statements or accessing your account online ), is enough to live on, then you're set. Otherwise, you might consider postponing retirement or figuring out other ways to generate more income during your senior years. 2. Decide when to claim Social Security Though your Social Security benefits are based on your earnings record, the age at which you first file for them could impact your ultimate payout. You get an eight-year window to claim benefits that begins at 62 and ends at 70 (technically, you don't have to file at that point, but there's no financial incentive not to). In the middle of that window is your full retirement age (FRA), which is when you're entitled to your full monthly benefit based on your earnings history. File before FRA, and you'll see your benefits reduced -- though you'll get to collect them sooner. Hold off past FRA, and you'll snag an 8% boost in payments for each year you delay, up until age 70. Story continues There's no right or wrong answer when it comes to choosing an age to take benefits, so your best bet is to determine the pros and cons of filing at various points during your eight-year window and seeing what makes the most sense for you. If you're relying heavily on those benefits to pay the bills as a senior, you might consider waiting until FRA or even beyond. On the other hand, if your savings are strong and you plan to use the money for leisure purposes only, you may want to get at it sooner. Think about the role Social Security will play in your retirement and pull the trigger accordingly. 3. Figure out your health coverage If you retire at age 65 or later, you're eligible to receive health coverage under Medicare . But because there are many services traditional Medicare doesn't cover (dental, vision, and hearing, to name a few), you may want to think about getting a Medicare Advantage plan instead. Furthermore, if you retire before reaching 65, you'll need to secure health coverage on your own, whether it's via COBRA or by purchasing a plan on the open market. Just make sure you have a policy in place because you don't want to kick off retirement with a costly medical expense that isn't covered. 4. Map out a retirement budget Unless you've saved really well for retirement, you'll probably experience a drop in income once your paychecks go away. Therefore, it stands to reason that the expenses you take on in retirement shouldn't necessarily mirror the ones you're paying for while you're still working. Before you make your retirement official, create a new budget that maps out your monthly spending, keeping in mind that while certain costs, like commuting, will go away, others, like leisure and healthcare, might climb. This way, you'll know how much you can afford and will be in a better position to evaluate your savings as per the point above. 5. Determine how you'll occupy your time There is a reason retirees are 40% more likely than workers to suffer from depression -- all that free time on your hands can easily lead to boredom and feelings of worthlessness. That's why it's crucial to figure out how you'll spend your days before leaving your career behind for good. Maybe you've always wanted to volunteer at an animal hospital, or you're eager to spend more time with your grandkids. It doesn't matter what you do with your time as long as you're confident you can fill it meaningfully. And if you can't, you may want to consider a partial retirement rather than go in full force. Retirement can be an unsettling period of life if you go in unprepared. As you gear up for this exciting stage, be sure to tackle these key items first. You'll be thankful you did. Video: Tips on Saving for Retirement More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Alphabet Discloses Nest Financials for the First Time: It's been quite a month for investor transparency. Not only didAmazon.comfinally confirm last week that it now hasover 100 million Prime members,Alphabet(NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL)shareholders are now getting a glimpse of subsidiary Nest's financial results for the first time, after the holding company reported first-quarter results yesterday evening.
The revelation is thanks toNest becoming part of Google againin a move intended to consolidate the company's growing hardware operations under one corporate umbrella. Google has emerged as the most viable competitor to Amazon's dominating lead in smart-home technology.
Image source: Nest.
Historically, Nest was part of Alphabet's "Other Bets" segment, and investors have long suspected that the maker of smart thermostats and other smart-home products represented the majority of that segment. With the corporate restructuring, Alphabet has provided restated financials for its Other Bets segment.
Comparing the figures as originally reported to the restated versions, shareholders can now see that Nest generated $726 million in revenue throughout 2017, while enjoying a nice seasonal bump over the holidays. When I think of stocking stuffers for the holidays, I don't tend to think of smart thermostats or smart smoke detectors, but maybe that's just me.
[{"Period": "Q1 2017", "Other Bets Revenue as Reported": "$244 million", "Restated": "$132 million", "Difference": "$112 million"}, {"Period": "Q2 2017", "Other Bets Revenue as Reported": "$248 million", "Restated": "$97 million", "Difference": "$151 million"}, {"Period": "Q3 2017", "Other Bets Revenue as Reported": "$302 million", "Restated": "$117 million", "Difference": "$185 million"}, {"Period": "Q4 2017", "Other Bets Revenue as Reported": "$409 million", "Restated": "$131 million", "Difference": "$278 million"}, {"Period": "Total", "Other Bets Revenue as Reported": "$1.2 billion", "Restated": "$477 million", "Difference": "$726 million"}]
Data source: SEC filings.
We can do the same exercise to calculate Nest's operating loss as well.
[{"Period": "Q1 2017", "Other Bets Operating Income/(Loss) As Reported": "($855 million)", "Restated": "($703 million)", "Difference": "($152 million)"}, {"Period": "Q2 2017", "Other Bets Operating Income/(Loss) As Reported": "($772 million)", "Restated": "($633 million)", "Difference": "($139 million)"}, {"Period": "Q3 2017", "Other Bets Operating Income/(Loss) As Reported": "($812 million)", "Restated": "($650 million)", "Difference": "($162 million)"}, {"Period": "Q4 2017", "Other Bets Operating Income/(Loss) As Reported": "($916 million)", "Restated": "($748 million)", "Difference": "($168 million)"}, {"Period": "Total", "Other Bets Operating Income/(Loss) As Reported": "($3.4 billion)", "Restated": "($2.7 billion)", "Difference": "($621 million)"}]
Data source: SEC filings.
The bad news is that this all appears to be a one-time peek. Going forward, Nest will be aggregated within "Google other revenues," which includes other hardware products like Pixel phones, Google Cloud, and digital content sold through Google Play. The search giant reported $14.3 billion in other revenues last year, and retroactively adding Nest's sales to that segment brings Google other revenues to just over $15 billion for 2017.
The widening operating losses are understandable within the context of Nest's growing portfolio of smart-home products, which require considerable R&D investments. The companydoubledits portfolio in September, introducing an alarm system (Nest Secure) and video doorbell (Nest Hello), among other devices. When you're competing with a rival that's willing toabsorb massive lossesto dominate a market, you might have to do the same to keep up.
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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors.Evan Niu, CFAhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), and AMZN. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Will You Wind Up Returning to Work After Retiring? Chances Are, Yes: Countless people look forward to retirement for one key reason: not having to endure the grind of maintaining a full-time career. But new data from Adecco suggests that some workers may be jumping the gun on retirement. In a recent survey , among the 17% of adults who returned to work over the past three years after being out of the workforce for at least 12 months, 13% were retirees who resumed their careers because they needed the additional income. This news is hardly surprising. The average household nearing retirement has a median savings of just $17,000, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, and in a more recent study by GOBankingRates, one-third of adults 55 and over were said to have less than $10,000 in a nest egg. Throw in the fact that loads of workers file for Social Security as early as possible , thereby reducing their benefits, and it's no wonder income, or lack thereof, is a problem for seniors. Older man in business suit working at a laptop IMAGE SOURCE: GETTY IMAGES. Of course, returning to work when the money starts running out is a smarter move than resigning oneself to an impoverished lifestyle. But let's face it: There's something demoralizing about the notion of thinking you're done in the workforce only to have to step back into it when times get tough. If you'd rather avoid this fate, you'll need to take an entirely different approach to retirement. How much money do you need to retire? Let's be clear: You don't necessarily need a $1 million nest egg to retire comfortably and avoid a scenario in which you end up having to return to work. But having little to no savings is hardly acceptable. That's because Social Security is in no way sufficient to sustain seniors on its own. Those benefits will replace about 40% of the average worker's pre-retirement income, but most retirees need double that amount to pay the bills. And that money therefore needs to come from somewhere, such as your savings. Story continues So how can you be sure you've really saved enough to retire? One way to tell is to use what's known as the 4% rule . The rule states that if you start by withdrawing 4% of your nest egg during your first year of retirement and then adjust subsequent withdrawals for inflation, your savings should, in theory, last for 30 years. It's not a perfect formula by any means, but it's a good way to get a handle on where you stand financially based on your current savings level. Imagine you estimate your senior living expenses at $3,000 per month, half of which will come from Social Security. This means you'll need to supply $1,500 a month, or $18,000 a year on your own. Multiply $18,000 by 25, and you get a $450,000 savings target. If that's what your nest egg looks like, you're probably in decent shape. But if you're looking at a much-lower balance, you'll need to rethink your plans. Making up for lost savings So what happens if you discover you're way behind on retirement savings late in your career? For one thing, you might consider postponing retirement, socking away some extra money during that period, and growing your Social Security benefits simultaneously. Imagine you're looking at a full retirement age of 66 for Social Security purposes, only instead of leaving your job and filing for benefits at 66, you wait until 68. Doing so will allow you to boost your monthly payments by 16%, so in the example above, a $1,500 monthly benefit would become $1,740 -- for life. Meanwhile, let's assume that you can work two extra years and max out a 401(k) during that period. Doing so adds $49,000 (including catch-up contributions) to your nest egg. Assuming zero investment growth, that translates into roughly $2,000 of additional income per year when we apply the 4% rule. But boosting your savings and Social Security benefits aren't the only options to consider if you're lacking in savings. While the idea of retiring and then going back to full-time work may not sit well with you, working part-time in retirement on your own terms is another story. If you find something you're passionate about, it'll not only serve as a means of occupying your time but also generate income. And if you go this route, you'll be in good company -- seniors 65 and older are more likely to be self-employed than any other age group, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Though transitioning from a full-time work schedule to retirement can be challenging in its own right, going from being retired to working full-time is unquestionably difficult. Be smart about assessing and building your savings, maximize your Social Security benefits, and plan for a part-time gig -- and with any luck, you'll never have to go through the process of returning to the workforce when you thought you were done with it for good. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || 4 Signs Google Wants to Bury GoPro: Three years ago, Alphabet 's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google partnered with GoPro (NASDAQ: GPRO) to bring VR videos to YouTube via a platform called Jump. Filmmakers would use the platform to deliver videos from Odyssey, a 16-camera rig co-developed by Google and GoPro, to YouTube. Many GoPro investors saw the partnership as a catalyst for the company. But GoPro didn't start shipping the Odyssey until a year later, and its $15,000 price tag ensured that it would remain a niche device. It then launched a "cheaper" alternative, the six-camera Omni, for $5,000. A GoPro camera. Image source: GoPro. Over time, GoPro started to talk less about its partnership with Google. Meanwhile, Google made several moves to compete against GoPro and aid its competitors. Here are four clear signs that Google wants consumers to forget about GoPro. 1. Partnering with Yi Technologies Xiaomi -backed Yi Technologies produces action cameras that sport specs identical to those of GoPro's cameras at much lower prices. That's why Google, likely realizing GoPro's $15,000 price tag on the Odyssey was too high, brought Yi onboard the Jump platform in late 2016. Yi's 16-camera rig was about $2,000 cheaper than the Odyssey. At the time, that made it the cheapest high-end VR filmmaking rig on the market. Last April, Google and Yi revealed the Halo, a 17-camera rig for shooting 8K VR videos on the Jump platform, for $17,000. Yet Google didn't work with GoPro to launch a second-generation Odyssey. 2. Opening up YouTube VR to GoPro's rivals GoPro had a first mover's advantage in the VR space, but many companies realized they needed to launch much cheaper stand-alone cameras to gain mainstream users. Standalone 360-degree cameras like Ricoh 's Theta, Samsung 's Gear 360, Garmin 's Virb 360, Insta360 's One, and Yi's 360 VR all addressed that demand, and Google opened up YouTube VR to those device makers. GoPro arrived much later to the party with the Fusion in late 2017. Story continues Google's embrace of rival VR devices notably pushed GoPro to launch its own VR channel and app, GoPro VR , but the move merely isolated its users from YouTube's much larger user base. 3. Launching the Clips Camera Last October, Google launched Clips, a wearable camera that constantly captures content without any user interactions. The camera, which can be clipped to clothes, held, or set down, uses Google's AI to recognize faces that matter to you, and automatically starts capturing pictures and short videos. Google's Clips camera. Google's Clips camera. Image source: Google. At the time, the $249 device seemed like a potential rival to GoPro's cameras. However, Clips videos lacked audio and only captured brief seven-second "clips". Luckily for GoPro, those bite-sized videos didn't appeal to its core users. 4. Co-developing Lenovo's Mirage camera In early May, Google and Lenovo (NASDAQOTH: LNVGY) revealed the Mirage camera, a $300 point-and-click camera for capturing 180-degree VR photos and videos. Its VR180 format directly integrates with Google Photos and YouTube. It also allows users to live stream content to a VR headset. Lenovo's Mirage camera. Lenovo's Mirage camera. Image source: Lenovo. Therefore, the Mirage looks like a compelling alternative to GoPro's Fusion, which has a 360-degree field of view but costs $700. Google and Lenovo are also promoting the Mirage camera as a companion device for its new Mirage Solo stand-alone VR headset. Should GoPro worry about Google? GoPro investors shouldn't worry about Google becoming its biggest direct competitor anytime soon. Other rival camera makers, like Samsung and Garmin, and better smartphone cameras pose bigger threats. Nonetheless, Google's moves strongly suggest that it doesn't think GoPro has a bright future. Neither do analysts or investors: Wall Street expects GoPro's revenue to slide 9% this year, and the stock tumbled 35% over the past 12 months. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Leo Sun has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), and GoPro. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
the crypto currency list of #Nasdaq
$BTC $ETH $XRP $BCH $LTChttps://investorplace.com/2018/05/20-cryptocurrencies-to-bet-the-house-on/amp/?__twitter_impression=true … || #GUARIUM #TokenSale #ICO #bitcoin #ethereum #crypto #cryptocurrency #ecommerce https://twitter.com/GuariumContact/status/1003533649856299008 … || May 27, 2018 05:00:00 UTC | 7,307.20$ | 6,268.80€ | 5,490.80£ | #Bitcoin #btc pic.twitter.com/YQov7Tu4CA || Google Trends выявил падение интереса к биткоину на 75%
#ETH #BTC #ICO #биткоин #криптовалюта #биржа
https://mycrypter.com/vinteres-k-bitkoinu-v-google-upal-na-75/ … || STREAMYCOIN (500 SC) Token AIRDROP (50 SC TOKENS POR REFERÊNCIA) RONDA 2 #AIRDROP #BTC #xrp #freetoken #Crypto #ETH #bounty #freetoken #airdrops #Blockchain #ripple #tron #trx #binance #huobi #airdrop #cryptogaming #SCTokenhttps://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfm5L8BOGIhOWEDmSjfpBBp3OYKSoQ_xHRCVrYISmJBL44lJQ/viewform … || Breaking News: Binance will be listing QKC( $QKC) soon #cryptocurrency #blockchain #bitcoin #crypto #btc #ico #eth #xrp #trading #CryptoNews || 手数料は一度だけので、ある程度は仕方ないかな。。と思っています。
ひろとさんもＦＢの認証使われてＢＴＣ－Ａｌｐｈａ開けられたのですか。 || ツイート数の多かった仮想通貨
1位 $BTC 500 Tweets
2位 $ETH 195 Tweets
3位 $KMD 107 Tweets
4位 $XRP 82 Tweets
5位 $XVG 79 Tweets
2018-05-20 04:00 ～ 2018-05-20 04:59
COINTREND いまTwitterで話題の仮想通貨を探せ！
https://cointrend.jp/ || Lowest 5M|15M|1H Average Stoch RSI:
1) $USDT/USD 0.52
2) $BTC/USD 4.17
3) $GAM/BTC 8.1
4) $DCT/BTC 8.61
5) $DGD/BTC 8.66
6) $LUN/BTC 9.09
7) $LGD/BTC 9.72
8) $GTO/BTC 10.55
9) $MAID/BTC 11.96
10) $XMY/BTC 13.86
11) $RCN/BTC 15.59
12) $ERC/BTC 15.73 || Bounce now pls $BTC
#btc #bitcoin #crypto $eth $ltc $bchpic.twitter.com/S4I0LRXXkM
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Trend: down || Prices: 7531.98, 6786.02, 6906.92, 6582.36, 6349.90, 6675.35, 6456.58, 6550.16, 6499.27, 6734.82
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Binance Ditched a Bunch of Stablecoins. Even a Newly Banished Issuer Was OK With It: While some market participants were initially shocked that the worlds largest crypto exchange by volume ended its support of a slew of stablecoins, others are praising the move including the issuer of the largest stablecoin thats getting ousted. Binance announced Monday that USD coin ( USDC ), Paxos dollar ( USDP ) and trueUSD (TUSD) will no longer be traded at the exchange, and deposits will automatically be converted to Binance USD ( BUSD ) the exchanges own token starting in late September. The decision touches a core part of the crypto ecosystem. Traders use stablecoins cryptocurrencies whose prices are anchored to an asset such as the U.S. dollar as a bridge between traditional government-issued (fiat) currencies and blockchain-traded digital assets. The combined market capitalization of stablecoins mushroomed to $160 billion from less than $20 billion two years ago. In the last 24 hours, four-fifths of all bitcoin (BTC) and three-fifths of all ether (ETH) traded on exchanges were done against U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins, according to data compiled by CryptoCompare . Read more: What's the Point of Stablecoins? Understanding Why They Exist With some $20 billion in average daily volume over the past month, the Binance exchange is roughly eight times larger than its nearest competitor, FTX, in terms of transactions, according to Coinranking . Thus, its announcement stirred some controversy at first, interpreted as the exchanges attempt to use its heft to prop up its own $19 billion stablecoin and simultaneously favoring Tethers USDT , the largest stablecoin, worth $67 billion, over its challenger, the $52 billion USDC. While it seems counterintuitive, Jeremy Allaire, chief executive officer of Circle, the firm that issues USD coin, tweeted that the change will likely lead to more USDC flowing to Binance. As crypto traders dont really use BUSD outside of Binance itself, this will likely benefit USDC usage as the preferred cross CEX [centralized exchange] and DEX [decentralized exchange] stablecoin rail, Allaire added. With consolidated dollar books, it will now be easier and more attractive to move USDC to and from Binance for trading core markets. Story continues A Binance spokesperson said the firms goal with reducing the number of tokens trading at the exchange was to concentrate stablecoin liquidity. The decision was agreed upon with Circle and other third parties in advance. The co-founder of Wintermute, a major crypto trading firm, agreed that USDC will benefit. This is positive for USDC (and TUSD and others), Evgeny Gaevoy tweeted . Its not USDC delisting, its another big step towards tether (USDT) losing ground to U.S.-native stablecoins. For the users own good? Binances move to slash trading pairs carries advantages for its customers, too. Paxos Trust Co., which issues both USDP and Binances newly favored BUSD, claimed there were security improvements for users. This is a positive development for the safety of Binances customers, Rich Teo, co-founder and CEO of Paxos Asia, told CoinDesk, citing that BUSD is under the supervision of the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) and its backing reserves are kept in a bankruptcy remote trust which offers greater consumer protections. Crypto trading with USDC, TUSD and USDP have relatively little volume compared with both USDT or BUSD on Binance, Clara Medalie, research director at crypto market research firm Kaiko, pointed out in a tweet . Low trading volumes mean that trading with these stablecoins carries significantly higher spreads, essentially incurring hidden costs for users. #Binance is removing $USDC , USDP and TUSD denominated pairs from the platform, with deposits/withdrawals to be auto-converted to #BUSD . How significant is this move? All 3 stablecoins have relatively little volume compared with #USDT /BUSD. pic.twitter.com/xQgq1BAofB Clara Medalie (@Clara_Medalie) September 6, 2022 While controversial, this move will likely improve price discovery and overall liquidity on Binance, Medalie said. Downsides (for some) are further centralization of market activity on Binance and growing dominance of Binance-issued products. Even though the verdict on Binances move seemed mostly positive, Circle criticized the exchanges approach to unilaterally convert existing customer assets. While optimizing dollar liquidity on the worlds largest exchange may carry benefits, the paradigm does raise potential market conduct questions, a Circle spokesperson told CoinDesk. || Bitcoin hashrate slumps to lowest in over five months amid 100-degree-plus weather in Texas: Bitcoins hashrate dropped by more than 27% in 24 hours to 159.41 exahashes per second (EH/s) on Wednesday, the lowest since February this year, according to data from BTC.com . See related article: Bitcoin miners in Texas halt operations amid heat wave Fast facts Multiple crypto miners in Texas, a mining hub in the U.S., have stopped operations as the demand for power surges amid a searing heat wave. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is appealing to homes and businesses to limit peak-time consumption as temperatures surge above 100 degrees in most of the states major cities. Bitcoins mining difficulty , an indicator of how hard a miner would have to work to verify transactions in the blockchain to mine a Bitcoin, was at 29.153 trillion on Wednesday, falling 3.7% from a month earlier. The level of computing power used per second for mining, otherwise known as the mining hashrate, is linked to adjustments in crypto mining difficulty. This comes as Bitcoin hovers around the US$20,000 mark, trading up 3.4% over the past 24 hours to US$20,144.56 in afternoon trading in Asia, according to CoinGecko . See related article: Will Mt. Gox Bitcoin eruption smother hopes of rapid crypto recovery? || El Salvador Builds Giant Prison Complex for 40,000 Gang Members: (Bloomberg) -- El Salvador is building a giant prison with space for 40,000 gang members, President Nayib Bukele said Thursday. Most Read from Bloomberg VW Billionaire Clan Plotted CEO Ouster as He Was on US Trip Sergey Brin Ordered Sale of Musk Investments After Affair: WSJ Fed to Inflict More Pain on Economy as It Readies Big Rate Hike Worlds Key Workers Threaten to Hit Economy Where It Will Hurt Teslas Bitcoin Dump Leaves Accounting Mystery in Its Wake The so-called Terrorism Confinement Center will be ready within 60 days, Bukele said in a post on Twitter, accompanied by a video of construction work at the site. El Salvador declared a 30-day state of emergency in March, granting the government special powers by loosening arrest rules following a spate of killings by gangs. Congress this week extended it for a fourth time, for an additional 30 days. More than 46,000 alleged gang members have been detained since it began. The gangs engage in extortion and drug trafficking, and their frequent turf wars have made El Salvador one of the worlds most violent countries. A poll by Cid Gallup in April showed that 91% of those surveyed supported Bukeles crackdown on the gangs, though human rights groups have criticized the lack of due process and deaths in custody. Read more: Morgan Stanley Says Buy Salvadoran Bonds Battered by Bitcoin Bet If youre a shop owner who gets extorted by gangs, you may see this and say, well, good, said Adam Isacson, of the Washington Office on Latin America, which studies human rights in Latin America. But if youre anyone who holds opinions, beliefs, or identities that Nayib Bukele doesnt like, this video must terrify you. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek The $260 Swatch-Omega MoonSwatch Is Reviving the Budget Brand Postmortem Sperm Retrieval Is Turning Dead Men Into Fathers The US Has Lost Its Way on Computer Chips Ghosts of 2012 Haunt Europe as Rate Hikes Begin Sam Bankman-Fried Turns $2 Trillion Crypto Rout Into Buying Opportunity ©2022 Bloomberg L.P. || Bitcoin miner PrimeBlock ditches SPAC listing plan: Bitcoin miner Prime Blockchain Inc., also known as PrimeBlock, has dropped its public listing plan via a blank-check company merger valued at US$1.25 billion, joining a number of crypto firms that have delayed or canceled similar listing plans.
See related article:Markets: Bitcoin, Ether fall; Dogecoin outperforms, Cardano edges higher
• PrimeBlock and 10X Capital Venture Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), have agreed to mutually terminate the merger on Aug. 12, according to afilingwith the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
• The pairformed the listing planin April with a timeline to complete the deal in the second half of this year, according to anotherSEC filing.
• The SPAC company did not specify the reason for ditching the merger plan. PrimeBlock did not immediately respond toForkast’srequest for comment.
• A number of crypto SPAC deals have beendelayed or terminatedin the past few months amid market downturns. In July, equities and crypto trading platform eToroterminatedits SPAC merger.
See related article:Bullish delays $9B SPAC merger, awaits SEC approval || The biggest Ponzi scheme in history: This CEO warns that the Feds strategy has created a big bubble in housing. Heres what he likes for protection: The biggest Ponzi scheme in history: This CEO warns that the Feds strategy has created a big bubble in housing. Heres what he likes for protection The Fed is tasked with a dual mandate: to ensure price stability and aim for maximum employment. But according to Dan Morehead, CEO of crypto hedge fund giant Pantera Capital, theres a third thing that the Fed has been doing running a Ponzi scheme. In his latest Blockchain Letter , Morehead says that the Feds manipulation of the government and mortgage bond markets is the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. The expert investor even issued a warning on CNBC recently, saying that its likely that a recession is coming. Lets take a closer look at what he means. Dont miss Mitt Romney says a billionaire tax will trigger demand for these two physical assets get in now before the super-rich swarm Bill Gates just won legal approval to buy this tough-to-access asset and people are 'livid' about it Warren Buffett likes these 2 investment opportunities outside of the stock market Federal funds rate Morehead argues that the Fed made a big policy mistake by keeping the federal funds rate too low. The difference between inflation (their mandate) and their policy tool (fed funds) is much larger than at any point in history including the disastrous 1970s, he writes. They left rates at zero. Fed funds were 1.55% before the pandemic. Theyve just gotten overnight rates to back where they were before the pandemic policy eruption when inflation was only 2.30%. As we know very well by now, inflation is no longer at 2.30% . The latest Labor Department report showed that consumer prices rose 9.1% in June from a year ago, marking the biggest increase since November 1981. And even that official reading was not accurate because it does not measure housing inflation in real time, argues Morehead. Instead, the official CPI measures housing inflation using something called owners equivalent rent how much it would cost a homeowner to live in their home if they were renting and that metric only went up 5.1% year over year in May. If youve been in the market to buy or rent a property , youd know prices have gone up way more than that. The government says it uses owners equivalent rent because its only trying to measure the change in the cost of shelter while removing the investment aspect of homebuying. Story continues Morehead instead looks at the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, a leading measure of U.S. residential real estate prices that can be viewed as a barometer of the housing market. It jumped 20.6% year over year in May, and Morehead says that if we use that instead of owners equivalent rent to calculate inflation, CPI would have gone up 12.5%. To tame spiking inflation, Morehead says that the Fed still needs to raise interest rates by three or four hundred basis points. Manipulation of the bond market While the low interest rate policy was a mistake, Morehead says, it is dwarfed by the Feds manipulation of the government and mortgage bond markets. He suggests that previously, the Fed let free market actors like pension plans, mutual funds and insurance companies do the lending but things changed in 2020. [W]hen the Fed got into the mortgage lending business, they really went for it. They completely crowded out all other lenders. And that led to a huge increase in housing prices. They forced 30-year mortgage rates to hit 2.68%, basically daring people not to buy a house (or two or three), which would obviously create a bubble in housing, which itself contributed to a labor shortage as two million Americans retired early or otherwise left the workforce. Officials argue that the Feds purchases of securities were essential to keep markets working during the pandemic and convey to the public that the Fed stands ready to backstop important parts of the financial system. But when you can borrow money at 2.68% to buy properties that are going up 20% in value per year on average, both homeowners and investors are going to go for it, explains Morehead. Over the past two years the Fed bought government and mortgage bonds equivalent to over 200% of all mortgage lending in the U.S. While that doesn't match the exact definition of a Ponzi scheme, Morehead argues that the Feds easy money policies has created a huge housing bubble. Crypto to the rescue? All of that does not bode well for the U.S. economy. Plenty of experts including Morehead are calling for a recession. But investors are already feeling the pain. With the S&P 500 down 20% year to date, many stocks are already in a bear market. The Fed, on the other hand, is more optimistic. Last month, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. economy is in strong shape and overall the U.S. economy is well positioned to withstand tighter monetary policy. Morehead expects interest rate hikes to impact bonds, stocks and real estate. But there are asset classes that are less correlated with the interest rate markets. I can easily see a world in, say, a year when stocks are down, bonds are down, you know, real estate's down, but crypto is rallying and trading on its own very much like gold does, or soft commodities like corn, soybeans all doing very well. Moreheads Pantera Capital specializes in blockchain technology. It launched the first cryptocurrency fund in the U.S. in 2013. That said, Morehead did note that crypto is very correlated with risk assets. Bitcoin the worlds largest cryptocurrency is down 54% year to date but has still returned over 900% over the past five years. What to read next Sign up for our MoneyWise newsletter to receive a steady flow of actionable ideas from Wall Street's top firms. US is only a few days away from an absolute explosion on inflation here are 3 shockproof sectors to help protect your portfolio Theres always a bull market somewhere: Jim Cramers famous words suggest you can make money no matter what. Here are 2 powerful tailwinds to take advantage of today This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. || Celsius says users can settle for cash at a discount or go long on crypto: In a presentation on Monday, embattled crypto lender Celsius Network presented a plan of action as it enters Chapter 11 proceedings to restructure and stabilize its business in an effort to placate stakeholders. See related article: Celsius says it owes its users US$4.72B amid a US$1.19B balance sheet deficit Fast facts The firm expects to use minted Bitcoins from its mining subsidiary to boost its balance sheet and fund mining operations, the presentation said. At the bankruptcy hearing, Pat Nash, Celsius’ lead attorney, said the firm’s mining division currently mints 14.2 Bitcoins a day and expects to increase operations to mine 10,100 Bitcoins in 2022. Even if Celsius mints 10,100 Bitcoins, at a price of US$21,900 , the minted Bitcoins will be valued at more than US$221 million — far below Celsius’ deficit of US$1.19 billion. A sale of the mining unit would also help Celsius raise money. In the presentation, Celsius added that it is also exploring “asset sales and third-party investment opportunities” to meet its liabilities. According to the bankruptcy filings , Celsius has assets worth US$4.3 billion, although most assets are illiquid, and liabilities amounting to US$5.5 billion, out of which US$4.7 billion are user liabilities. Celsius customers could either choose to receive a discounted cash settlement or remain “long” on crypto, the presentation said. But with Nash arguing in court that Celsius customers handed over custody of digital assets to the lender and are, therefore, unsecured creditors, Celsius users may have to face the brunt of its collapse. See related article: Celsius files for bankruptcy after closing DeFi loans || What is the Latest INFI MultiChain Launchpad to be Released by INFI All About? Let’s Explore!: Inverted Investment Inverted Investment is going to introduce INFI Multichain Launchpad that Includes 5 New Projects in NFT and Metaverse Investment along with an INFI Stablecoin. SZOMBATHELY,HUNGARY, Aug. 19, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Inverted Investment is a crypto investment Project, providing a safe and transparent platform for founders and investors. It supplies Web3 layer-based dApp facilities to make investors’ lives easier with highly secure dApp projects. Inverted Investment Finance will be headquartered in Hungary, Europe, as a legally registered Company, as confirmed by CEO Odon Oszkar Horvath. INFI is soon launching a brand new INFI MultiChain launchpad, with many NFT and Metaverse investment projects already in the pipeline. INFI is also planning to release the first ever INFI Stablecoin, called “IUSD,” once the current released INFI MultiChain Launchpad (IDO dApp) has reached its milestone. As a crypto investor and looking to collaborate with a reliable company, look nowhere besides INFI, as Inverted Investment have covered everything what's needed, plus 10% BTC rewards! What else can one need? On top of that, one can also get 10% passive income from INFIFUNDWH in stablecoins, upon becoming an INFI holder with Inverted Investment . This leading company comprises of some of the best leaders like Odon Oszkar Horvath, CEO of INFI from Hungary,, marketing Leader from USA and Web designers from Sweden, and an extraordinary team of Devs from India and Singapore. Some of the key features of INFI are as follows, INFI plans to start its Web3 and Blockchain services with business locations in Europe and expand it to more partnerships from other parts of the world. The first business location is supposed to be in Vienna, Austria. This presents a great opportunity for European investors to come and collaborate. It is a MultiChain project supported by a mixed DEX and CEX exchange with 10% BTC rewards so that investors enjoy the DEX market freedom while keeping the investments safe as a CEX exchange. INFI holders will get a straight 10% profit on passive income. Also, INFI holders will get automated allocations in all upcoming projects' private sales, as well as the INFI Wallet and Cross-Chain for more efficient use and safer storage for crypto assets. INFI will be locking upcoming project liquidity with the biggest liquidity provider companies, keeping investors' money in safe places. INFI will be partnering with trusted call agencies so that the investors are protected from scams and frauds. Additionally, INFI will use DEX Aggregator dApp and Swapping dApp for easy swapping and giving the best rates across Decentralized exchanges. Story continues These characteristics are enough to motivate any investor to join this distinguished company. This is a long but definite roadmap to make life easier for common people to use everything digitally. However, one thing is sure; the coming soon INFI Blockchain, will bring a revolution in the crypto investment industry by bringing real-life services into Blockchain in real estate, healthcare, education, and other sectors. CONTACT: Odon Oszkar Horvath Inverted Investment. info at invertedinvestment.com || The 3 Best High-Yield Monthly Dividend Stocks to Buy Now: There are a lot of factors to consider when choosing the best high-yield monthly dividend stocks. However, there are three key considerations: the company’s history of paying dividends, the size of the dividend, and the current yield. Before purchasing any shares, it’s important to consider a company’s history of dividends-paying. This is important because it shows that the company is committed to paying shareholders and is likely to continue doing so in the future. Second, you want to check the dividend’s size. A large dividend is great, but it may not be as attractive if the stock price is also high. Another smart thing to do when looking at dividend stocks is to check the current yield. A higher yield will often mean more cash for you to use in other ways. InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips With these considerations in mind, here are three of the best high-yield monthly dividend stocks: EPR EPR Properties $42.50 PSEC Prospect Capital $7.44 PBA Pembina Pipeline Corp. $34.62 EPR Properties (EPR) A hand dipping into a bowl of popcorn, representing entertainment industry; eating while enjoying entertainment. Entertainment stocks. Source: Iuliia Pilipeichenko / Shutterstock Annual dividend yield: 7.84% EPR Properties (NYSE: EPR ) is a specialty triple-net REIT that owns and operates entertainment and recreation venues across the United States. Total assets are more than $6.4 billion and are spread liberally across 44 states in the U.S., including movie theaters, golf courses, family entertainment centers, and water parks. EPR’s properties are leased to a diversified group of tenants, including major national and regional operators. EPR’s experience in the entertainment and recreation industry and its strong relationships with tenants and operators provide EPR with a unique competitive advantage in the marketplace. The company’s revenue is largely dependent on movie theatre operations. Last year, the pandemic caused a severe decline in EPR’s income. However, as vaccination rates increase and restrictions lift, movie theatre attendance is getting healthier . Story continues EPR’s stock price has already started to recover. As the company’s business returns to normal, investors can expect continued growth. EPR is a well-positioned company for the post-pandemic era, and its stock is an attractive investment for those looking to benefit from the recovery of the entertainment industry. In addition, EPR owns and operates ski resorts, restaurants, and other attractions. So, its portfolio comes with properties from several industries. Although holdings are skewed in favor of movie theatres, the company is far from a one-trick pony. EPR will continue opportunistically deploying capital to strategically grow its portfolio through development projects and acquisitions while returning excess cash flow to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. It had to halt dividend payouts in May of 2020. However, in July 2021, the company resumed payments. In February, EPR hiked its monthly dividend to 27.5 cents per share, which translates to an annualized dividend of $3.30 per share, a hike of 10% over the previous yearly distribution. Prospect Capital Corp. (PSEC) stock market ticker screen with the word "dividends" appearing in large text Source: iQoncept/shutterstock.com Annual dividend yield: 9.78% Prospect Capital (NASDAQ: PSEC ) is a leading capital provider to middle market companies and has a track record of delivering strong returns to investors. The company’s portfolio includes companies in various industries, such as healthcare, energy and software. These investments play a pivotal role in PSEC’s history. The total direct capital it has invested in these companies is $18.7 billion spread across different industries, with an impressive portfolio of 127 currently active companies. This company is all about dividends. It pays out some of its earnings in the form of money but mostly tries to invest back into more companies and generate even better returns for investors. Prospect Capital earns money in interest income, dividends and capital gains or losses. In announcing its results for its fiscal quarter and year ended June 30, the company reported a net investment income of $0.21 per share , surpassing the $0.18 per share dividend distribution. BDCs have similar features to that of REITs or real estate investment trusts. Both, for example, distribute at least 90% of their taxable profits back to their investors as payouts. In return, these companies aren’t taxed at the corporate level. Both of these investment vehicles are ideal for income investors. This list is about the best high-yield monthly dividend stocks, so ultimately, the payout is what matters. Prospect’s focus on special situation investing has been particularly beneficial during market turmoil. The company’s solid performance during the Covid-19 pandemic has reaffirmed its status as a leading alternative asset manager. Overall, the company is in a great position to continue delivering strong results for investors. Pembina Pipeline Corp. (PBA) Source: Shutterstock Annual dividend yield: 5.54% Pembina Pipeline Corp. (NYSE: PBA ) is one of North America’s leading energy service providers. Not only does it offer tailored transportation and midstream services, but Pembina Pipeline also offers a wide range of other equipment and support services to this industry. It can do so because of its widespread distribution capacities and strong financial position. The company’s operations focus on developing and operating strategic energy infrastructure, including pipelines, gas processing plants and oil sands facilities. Pembina Pipeline is doing well this year. The stock price continues to rise exponentially as the world struggles with high oil prices due to the Russia-Ukraine war. Under these circumstances, the company will continue to do well in the foreseeable future. If you factor in a monthly dividend of 21 Canadian cents, you’ll see why this stock is on the list of best high-yield monthly dividend stocks. Keep in mind that in this financial quarter, Pembina Pipeline Corp. plans to increase its monthly dividend by 0.75 Canadian cents to 21.75 Canadian cents per share once a joint venture deal with KKR (NYSE: KKR ) is finalized. Under the terms of the agreement, KKR and Pembina Pipeline are combining with Western Canadian natural gas processing assets to form a new joint venture company. The new company will be 60% owned by Pembina and 40% by KKR’s global infrastructure fund. It is a key development you must keep an eye on this quarter. On the publication date, Faizan Farooque did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines . Faizan Farooque is a contributing author for InvestorPlace.com and numerous other financial sites. Faizan has several years of experience in analyzing the stock market and was a former data journalist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. His passion is to help the average investor make more informed decisions regarding their portfolio. More From InvestorPlace Buy This $5 Stock BEFORE This Apple Project Goes Live The Best $1 Investment You Can Make Today Early Bitcoin Millionaire Reveals His Next Big Crypto Trade “On Air” It doesn’t matter if you have $500 or $5 million. Do this now. The post The 3 Best High-Yield Monthly Dividend Stocks to Buy Now appeared first on InvestorPlace . || US Digital Dollar Project to work with Ripple on CBDC technical sandbox: The U.S.-based Digital Dollar Project said it will work with Ripple and a few other digital asset firms to launch a technical sandbox program to further study a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC).
See related article:CBDCs better poised for cross-border payments than Bitcoin, stablecoins: ECB study
• The non-profit initiativeannouncedon Wednesday that the program is set to start in early October, with an initial focus on cross-border payments.
• The program will undergo two phases — an education phase and a pilot phase. The results of the studies will then be “shared and used to inform private and public sector stakeholders on how advancing technical solutions can unlock business value in a transformative way.”
• The Digital Dollar Project was formed by information technology consultancyAccentureand the Digital Dollar Foundation, a public education and advocacy group.
• In April, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, one of the largest financial service providers in the U.S., partnered with the Digital Dollar Project and launched“Project Lithium”to test CBDC infrastructure.
• In March, U.S. President Joe Bidenissued an executive orderthat placed “highest urgency” on the research and development of a potential U.S. CBDC.
See related article:Biden pushes the U.S. on CBDCs in sweeping crypto executive order || First Mover Americas: Bitcoin Has Best Day in a Month, but Ether’s Getting Even More Love: Good morning, and welcome to First Mover. I’m Lyllah Ledesma, here to take you through the latest in crypto markets, news and insights. Price Point: Crypto markets were suddenly looking bullish on Monday as bitcoin had its best day of the year, and ether, the second-biggest cryptocurrency, posted even bigger gains, amid speculation that a rally might be in the making ahead of the Ethereum network’s upcoming " Merge." Market Moves: Omkar Godbole looks at the Merge's market impact in depth and ETH's staked derivative on Lido finance called stETH. This web version of today's First Mover newsletter was produced by Sage D. Young. Price Point Bitcoin (BTC) was trading up 5% on the day, hitting its highest level in over a month. The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has not traded above $22,000 since June 16, 2022. BTC/USD Daily Chart (Trading View) BTC traded as low as $18,800 last week and has made significant gains since, trading up 11% over the last seven days. But the big story of the day in crypto markets was ether (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency, which is picking up momentum in advance of a big upgrade now expected in September. Ether has accelerated its rally Monday morning, outperforming bitcoin, perhaps an indication that the market is starting to take the network’s upcoming “ Merge ” seriously. ETH was trading up 10% over the last 24-hours at $1,477. On Friday, a member of the Ethereum community tweeted an outline of dates for the long-awaited Merge and prior events. The Merge is set to take place on Sept. 19, 2022. “The upcoming Merge is definitely a case for the hype in ETH,” said Laurent Kssis, head of Europe at crypto asset manager Hashdex. Kssis noted that short ETH liquidations were triggering buy orders which also accelerated the positive price movement. Over the last seven days there has been a general catch up for altcoins , with Polygon’s MATIC up 62%, AVAX by 37% and NEAR by 24%. In traditional markets, U.S. stock futures rose after Goldman Sachs posted a stronger-than-expected second quarter profit. Futures tied to the S&P 500 rose 1.1%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures added 1% while technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures gained 1.3%. Story continues Biggest Gainers Asset Ticker Returns DACS Sector Polygon MATIC +17.8% Smart Contract Platform Avalanche AVAX +12.0% Smart Contract Platform Ethereum ETH +10.5% Smart Contract Platform Biggest Losers There are no losers in CoinDesk 20 today. Market Moves By Omkar Godbole Renewed clarity about the timeline of programmable blockchain Ethereum's highly-anticipated "Merge" upgrade, dubbed Ethereum 2.0, seems to have galvanized investor interest in ether and its staked derivative on Lido finance called stETH, offering a reprieve to the battered cryptocurrencies. On Thursday, the Ethereum Foundation member Tim Beiko suggested Sept. 19 as the provisional launch date for the Merge, which will see the world's biggest smart contract blockchain transition from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a more environment-friendly proof-of-stake mechanism. Since Beiko's announcement, ether has rallied roughly 22%, hitting a one-month high of $1,475, according to CoinDesk data. The token registered a 15% gain in the seven days to July 17, the biggest jump since March. The staked ether's discount relative to the price of ether has narrowed to 0.98 from 0.96 since Thursday, per data source CoinMarketCap. The token representing an equivalent amount of ether staked in Lido Finance is supposed to trade at a price closer to ether. stETH's price fell into a discount of 0.93 to ETH following the collapse of Terra in May and has not been able to recover since. Lido Finance is a liquid staking protocol allowing users to stake coins while retaining liquidity and bypassing the burden of owning a minimum of 32 ETH to become a staker. Users can redeem staked ETH for ETH only after transfers are enabled on Ethereum 2.0. "ETH has undergone a rapid change in narrative over the past week with speculators purely focused on the upcoming 'Merge' as a catalyst for appreciation," said Matthew Dibb, COO and co-founder of Stack Funds. "Adding to this, we believe that there is a significant amount of sidelined capital that has been waiting on bullish momentum to establish new positions." Several observers consider Ethereum's impending transition equivalent to three bitcoin halvings – a programmed code that halves the per block BTC supply every four years – and leading to a 90% reduction in ether's annual issuance. Simply put, the transition is likely to bring a store of value or deflationary appeal to ether. The upgrade has been long pending. Like other market participants, ether investors tend to factor in bullish developments in advance. For instance, ether rallied over 60% to $2,800 in the three weeks leading up to the London hard fork , or code modification, implemented on Aug. 5, 2021. The hard fork activated a mechanism to burn the portion of fees paid to miners. The Ethereum 2.0 upgrade has been long overdue and has seen several delays. However, the recent successful merges of the Ropsten and Sepolia testnets and the Goerli testnet's planned transition to proof-of-stake on for Aug. 11 has raised hopes for the mainnet merge in September. Read the full story here: The 'Merge Trade' Has Begun, Experts Say, as Ether Surges and stETH Discount Narrows Latest Headlines The 'Merge Trade' Has Begun, Experts Say, as Ether Surges and stETH Discount Narrows : "ETH has undergone a rapid change in narrative over the past week, with speculators purely focused on the upcoming 'merge' as a catalyst for appreciation," one observer said. A ustralian Central Bank Chief Believes Regulated Private Tokens Could be Better Than CBDCs, Reuters Reports : Governor Phillip Lowe spoke at a panel discussion at the G20 finance officials' meeting in Indonesia on Sunday. Coinbase Secures Regulatory Approval in Italy : Coinbase joins Binance in securing approval from Italian regulator Organismo Agenti e Mediatori (OAM). Indian Finance Minister Echoes Central Bank's Crypto Ban Call, but Says Global Collaboration Is Required : Finance Mister Nirmala Sitharaman made her comment in answer to a series of written questions from a member of parliament about cryptocurrency legislation. Binance Fined Over $3.3M by Dutch Central Bank : The fine was issued as the exchange continued to offer services in the Netherlands without proper registration.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 22370.45, 20296.71, 20241.09, 19701.21, 19772.58, 20127.58, 19419.51, 19544.13, 18890.79, 18547.40
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
5 Things to Know in Crypto Today: BTC Rises Towards $21,000 as Markets Pare Fed Hike Bets: Key Points Major cryptocurrencies have been rallying with Bitcoin nearing $21,000 and Ethereum back above $1,200. Fed policymakers reiterated support for a 75bps rate hike despite this weeks inflation figures, easing fears of a 100bps move. UNI surged after Robinhood announced it was listing the token on its platform. Cryptocurrencies Rally as Fed Tightening Bets Pared Cryptocurrency markets have been on the front foot over the past three days, despite Wednesdays hotter-than-expected US Consumer Price Index figures for June. Bitcoin was last trading in the $20,800s, after breaking above its 21DMA at $20,400 on Thursday and testing the $21,000 level on Friday. Since Wednesdays sub-$19,000 lows, the cryptocurrency has bounced over 10% and is up about 5.5% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. Ethereum is up around 12% in the last 24 hours above $1,200 and has bounced over 20% since Wednesdays lows near $1,000. The cryptocurrency is once again eyeing a test of recent highs in the $1,280 area, a break above which could open the door to a quick run higher. Traders cited comments from Fed policymakers on Thursday as boosting risk appetite in cryptocurrency markets. Feds Christopher Waller and James Bullard both reiterated their support for a 75 bps rate hike later this month, despite the latest inflation surge. This resulted in markets pulling back on bets for a 100 bps rate hike at the upcoming July Fed meeting. According to the CMEs Fed Watch Tool, whether the Fed goes with a 75 or 100 bps rate hike is now seen as a coin toss. UNI Surges on Robinhood Listing News UNI , the native token that powers the largest decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap, surged on Thursday after Robinhood announced that it had listed UNI for trading on its popular platform. UNI/USD was last trading just below $7.0 on Friday, close to its highest level since early May and last up about 10% in the past 24 hours. UNI has been in a technical uptrend since mid-June. Story continues Crypto Winter: OpenSea Lays off 20% of Workforce, CoinFLEX Partially Restarts Withdrawals Devin Finzer, CEO of the largest Non-fungible Token ( NFT ) marketplace OpenSea, announced on Twitter on Thursday that the company has laid off roughly 20% of its workforce. Finzer cited an unprecedented combination of crypto winter and broad macroeconomic instability, and said that we need to prepare the company for the possibility of a prolonged downturn. OpenSea joins a growing list of other crypto firms, including the likes of Coinbase, Gemini and Crypto.com to have downsized recently. Elsewhere, CoinFLEX announced on Thursday that it is allowing depositors to withdraw up to 10% of their account. However, users will not be able to withdraw flexUSD, the platforms own stablecoin, until further notice, CoinFLEX said. CoinFLEX was one of many crypto lending platforms to have halted customer withdrawals last month , with the most high profile being Celsius Network. Celsius has a $1.2B Balance Sheet Hole Speaking of Celsius Network, the company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection earlier in the week and, in its filing, revealed that it has a $1.2 billion hole in its balance sheet. The companies staggering financial woes have deterred potential buyouts, with FTX reportedly walking from acquisition talks last month. Ryan Preston Dahl, a restructuring lawyer at Ropes & Gray LLP, told CoinDesk that Celsius is entering uncharted territory in filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. There is no precedent for a crypto firm like Celsius in navigating through a reorganization process rather than liquidation, he said. Circle Releases Detailed Report on Assets Backing USDC USDC has been growing in market cap in recent months while other stablecoins have suffered outflows, with many investors favoring Circle Internet Financials (USDCs issuer) comparatively transparent approach towards reserve management. Circle released a detailed report on Thursday detailing the assets it holds to back USDC. The report showed that Circle holds $42.1 billion in short-term US government bonds with a maturity of fewer than three months and $13.6 billion in cash. That adds up to $55.7 billion, slightly more than the $55.4 billion worth of USDC tokens in circulation. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Silver Price Forecast Silver Markets Form a Potential Reversal Signal End of Libyan oil blockade to be announced shortly, two tribal figures say Gold Price Forecast Gold Markets Have a Quiet Friday Back-to-school spending to set record on pricier supplies report Autopsy shows Ohio police shot unarmed Jayland Walker 46 times Judge in Twitter v. Musk made rare ruling: ordering a deal to close || Cryptoverse: The funds making moolah from messy markets: By Lisa Pauline Mattackal and Medha Singh (Reuters) - The crypto market's a hot mess, leaving many investors struggling to turn a buck. Enter the arbitrageurs. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have either been shackled to ranges or in decline since January, leaving your regular buy-and-hold investor with little option but to sell or to wait for the elusive rally. One class of seasoned investors is faring better, though: the arbitrageurs, players such as hedge funds who thrive on exploiting price differences between different geographies and exchanges. "In May when the market collapsed, we made money. We are up 40 basis points for the month," said Anatoly Crachilov, co-founder and CEO of Nickel Digital Asset Management in London, referring to their arbitrage strategy. "Arb trading" involves buying an asset in a cheaper venue and simultaneously selling it elsewhere where it's quoted at a premium, in theory pocketing the difference while being neutral on the asset. It's certainly not for everyone, and requires the kind of access to multiple markets and exchanges, and often the algorithms, that only serious players like sophisticated hedge funds can secure to make it a profitable endeavour. Yet for investors who meet the bar, it's proving attractive. Such "market neutral" funds have become the most common strategy among crypto hedge funds, making up nearly a third of all currently active crypto funds, according to PwC's annual global crypto hedge fund report published last week. K2 Trading Partners said its high-frequency trading crypto arbitrage fund, which is algorithmically driven, had returned about 1% this year through to the end of May, even as bitcoin slumped 31% in the same period. Meanwhile Stack Funds' long/short trading fund with exposure in liquid cryptocurrencies saw its single biggest monthly loss of about 30% in May, while its arbitrage-focused fund shed 0.2%. YOUR FUNDS FROZEN Story continues While arbitrage has long been a popular strategy in many markets, the young crypto sector lends itself to the approach as it boasts several hundred exchanges across a world with inconsistent regulation, according to participants. Hugo Xavier, CEO of K2 Trading Partners, said arb trading benefited from a lack of interconnectivity among crypto exchanges: "That's good because you have different prices and that creates arbitrage opportunities." For instance, bitcoin was trading at $27,493 on Coinbase on Monday, versus $28,067 on Bisq. Bitcoin is down 44% this year, and at December 2020 lows. Yet market watchers also point to the possible pitfalls, including technical snafus on exchanges slowing or freezing-up transactions, potentially robbing arb traders of their edge. Some lightly regulated venues in smaller countries, which offer many good arb opportunities, pose extra risks. "It's normal for an exchange go offline," Xavier added. "Your funds can be frozen for some reason." STRESS SITUATIONS Price discrepancies have typically arisen because of the less experienced retail traders who make up the bulk of crypto trades, particularly in the derivatives market. And, while arbitrage strategies are direction-neutral, they tend to perform better when bullish markets attract more retail participation. "Of course, you want to have retail traders on the same exchange that you are when you're doing arbitration because you will have less smart money. When there's a bullish market, retail volume comes back," Xavier said. "If the markets are moving sideways or going down, retail traders cool off. Opportunities are fewer because most of people there are market makers and they are efficient." Markus Thielen, chief investment officer at Singapore-based digital asset manager IDEG said that there had been a shift in recent months, with arbitrage opportunities mostly appearing during "market stress situations". "So the market structure has fundamentally changed on the arb side," he said, adding their arb strategy generated returns of 2% in the last eight weeks. Yet Katryna Hanush, director of business development at London-based crypto market maker Wintermute, said arb trading ultimately had a limited shelf life because inconsistent pricing across different exchanges was bad for investors. "As more institutional players come into the space, the arb opportunities will be eliminated." (Reporting by Medha Singh and Lisa Mattackal in Bengaluru; Editing by Vidya Ranganathan and Pravin Char) || A CEO Change Means Vroom Is About to Turn a Corner: • Vroom’s(VRM) recently posted financial stats aren’t perfect, but they offer hope to patient investors.
• Meanwhile, a C-suite change should shake things up at Vroom in a good way.
• Investors should take a small stock position in VRM stock as the company attempts to stage a major turnaround.
Source: Tada Images / Shutterstock.com
Based in New York, digital car-buying platformVroom(NASDAQ:VRM) offers a modern alternative to old-school automotive shopping experiences. VRM stock isn’t in great condition and is definitely a fixer-upper, but if Vroom can successfully reinvent itself, the potential for upside is strong.
Car buying and e-commerce: it’s a perfect combination, right? This makes sense in theory, but in practice, Vroom’s long-term investors are still waiting to break even.
Also, the investors are undoubtedly hoping that Vroom is steering toward profitability. Thankfully, the company’s fiscal data offers hope while a new chief executive could put Vroom back on track.
InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
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Taking it back to the beginning, Vroomwent public at $22 per shareand soon shot up above $50. After that quick burst of enthusiasm, however, it was all downhill from there.
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Not long ago, the Vroom share price touched the $1.50 level, leaving investors to wonder whether $5 or $10 was just a fantasy. These price targets could become a reality, though, as Vroom has announced a major change.
Reportedly, Tom Shorttis replacingPaul Hennessy as Vroom’s CEO. Shortt previously served as Vroom’s Chief Operating Officer (COO).
Vroom Board Chair Robert Mylod called Shortt a “transformational leader,” which is exactly what the company needs now. Mylod added that Shortt “is now relentlessly focused on putting Vroom on a path that will yield significant operating efficiencies through increased automation.”
There’s also a new plan afoot, which, asInvestorPlacecontributor Mark R. Hake reported, involves “right-sizing the organization through aworkforce reduction.”
It’s unfortunate that some employees will probably lose their jobs due to “increased automation,” but Vroom’s bottom line could benefit from this type of cost cutting.
Furthermore, Vroom’s stakeholders should be glad to know that the company’sfirst-quarter 2022 resultsshowed some improvement. Specifically, Vroom reported e-commerce revenue of $675.4 million, up 60% year-over-year.
Turning to the bottom line, Vroom recorded a Q1 2022 net earnings loss of 71 cents per share. Losses aren’t typically regarded as a good thing, but there’s a silver lining here. Notably, Vroom’s result beat the analysts’ consensus estimate of a $1.03 per share loss.
In a perfect world, Vroom would have reported a profit in 2022’s first quarter. This didn’t happen, but the company’s better-than-expected result should offer some encouragement.
Besides, Vroom’s transitional period is just getting under way. So, investors should be patient and consider holding VRM stock as it zooms ahead with a new CEO — and, we can hope, strong results in the near future.
On Penny Stocks and Low-Volume Stocks: With only the rarest exceptions, InvestorPlace does not publish commentary about companies that have a market cap of less than $100 million or trade less than 100,000 shares each day. That’s because these “penny stocks” are frequently the playground for scam artists and market manipulators. If we ever do publish commentary on a low-volume stock that may be affected by our commentary, we demand thatInvestorPlace.com’s writers disclose this fact and warn readers of the risks.
Read More:Penny Stocks — How to Profit Without Getting Scammed
On the date of publication, David Moadeldid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The postA CEO Change Means Vroom Is About to Turn a Cornerappeared first onInvestorPlace. || 7 Stocks to Buy If You Have $1,000 to Invest: There’s been a lot made of stock prices recently. Much of the chatter has revolved around stock splits and why lower prices make better stocks to buy.
Many of the big tech firms have been doing them.Amazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) andAlphabet(NASDAQ:GOOG) are just two recent examples. Their management all seem to say the same: “We are doing the split to provide greater access to a larger group of investors.”
In reality, fractional shares make share prices irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what the price of a stock is. If you likeTesla(NASDAQ:TSLA) at $650 and you only have $100 to invest, you buy 1/6th of a TSLA share.
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All seven of these stocks to buy have solid balance sheets and good prospects, and they’re diversified among seven different sectors.
Happy Investing!
[{"EA": "NKE", "Electronic Arts": "Nike", "$128.54": "$107.34"}, {"EA": "RJF", "Electronic Arts": "Raymond James", "$128.54": "$87.50"}, {"EA": "ISRG", "Electronic Arts": "Intuitive Surgical", "$128.54": "$192.08"}, {"EA": "AOS", "Electronic Arts": "A.O. Smith", "$128.54": "$53.11"}, {"EA": "CTVA", "Electronic Arts": "Corteva", "$128.54": "$53.22"}, {"EA": "ADBE", "Electronic Arts": "Adobe", "$128.54": "$360.79"}]
Source: Konstantin Savusia / Shutterstock.com
It seems like it’s only a matter of time beforeElectronic Arts(NASDAQ:EA) gets acquired. It’s big enough to be attractive to large-cap technology and asset management firms but small enough to be easily digestible by its prey.
The video game publisher’s stock did well in May, gaining almost18%in the month.
Part of its resurgence was due to healthy Q4 2022 numbers, including a17.5%increase in net bookings during the quarter. However, it also had to do with persistent rumors that its management held buyout meetings with several prominent tech players such asApple(NASDAQ:AAPL) andAmazon.
Electronic Arts finished Q4 2022 with$3.06 billionin cash and short-term investments and $1.88 billion in long-term debt. That’s net cash of $1.18 billion.
Source: mimohe / Shutterstock.com
Whenever you’re as big asNike(NYSE:NKE), you’ve always got a target plastered on your back.
The latest candidate to want to take down the athletic footwear and apparel giant is none other thanAdidas(OTCMKTS:ADDYY).Adidasfileda federal lawsuit against Nike on June 10 that claims Nike infringed on nine of Adidas’s fitness app tech patents.
“Adidas claims that the Nike Run Club, Training Club, and SNKRS apps infringe its patents related to features like audio feedback during workouts, GPS tracking, training plans, integration with third-party accessories like heart rate monitors, and the ability to reserve and buy limited-edition sneakers,”The Vergereported.
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Adidas wants the courts to force Nike to stop infringing on its nine patents. If Adidas were successful, it would have wide-ranging consequences for Nike and the fitness tracker industry.
Fortunately for Nike shareholders, the company has a sound balance sheet. It finished Q3 2022 (Feb. 28 quarter-end) with$13.47 billionin cash and short-term investments, $9.42 billion in long-term debt, and net cash of $4.05 billion.
Source: JHVEPhoto / Shutterstock.com
I spent a couple of years writing about the financial advisor channel in Canada. As a result, much of my time was spent interviewing and speaking with advisors. My view ofRaymond James’(NYSE:RJF) Canadian advisors was highly positive. I doubt it’s much different in the U.S.
On June 1, Raymond Jamescompleted its acquisitionof TriState Capital Holdings. The$1.1 billioncash-and-stock deal gives Raymond James a bank that serves middle-market businesses and high-net-worth individuals. It does this through TriState Capital Bank and investment management clients through Chartwell TSC Securities.
In the company’s monthly report for April, Raymond James noted that its assets under administration (AUA) for the month increased5%over April 2021, to $1.18 billion. Unfortunately, due to weak markets, its AUA fell 6% from March 2022.
While business was softer during the month, overall, Raymond James remains rock-solid. At the end of April, it had$5.72 billionin cash and cash equivalents, baking it among the more stable stocks to buy for the long run.
Source: michelmond / Shutterstock.com
Like many stocks in 2022,Intuitive Surgical(NASDAQ:ISRG) is down more than 45% year-to-date. Trading $7 from its 52-week low of $188.81, ISRG hasn’t been at these levels since July 2020.
In May, the maker of robotic surgical systems and accessories got someexcellent newsfrom the courts.
A U.S. appeals court sided with Intuitive in its two disputes withJohnson & Johnson(NYSE:JNJ) regarding surgical cutting and stapling patents. The fight has been carried on for nearly five years. Were Intuitive to lose these disputes, it would jeopardize the importation of its SureForm staplers and reload cartridges.
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Outside the courtroom, Intuitive’s business is still solid.
In Q1 2022, its revenues increased 15% year over year to$1.49 billion. On the bottom line, its non-GAAP net income was down slightly to $413 million from $427 million a year earlier. It finished the quarter with $8.4 billion in cash, zero debt, and net cash of $8.4 billion.
Source: Shutterstock
One of my favorite stocks to buy just got further involved with the water treatment industry in North America.
On June 8,A.O. Smith(NYSE:AOS), which got its start in water heaters many years ago,acquiredFlorida-based Atlantic Filter Corporation, a manufacturer of water treatment equipment for commercial and residential markets.
“The acquisition of Atlantic Filter further expands our capabilities in Florida and beyond. A. O. Smith is committed to growing our water treatment business as part of our strategy to deliver innovative, differentiated solutions that heat and treat water,” said Kevin J. Wheeler, president and chief executive officer.
The acquisition is the company’s fifth water treatment acquisition since 2016. While the company’s water treatment product sales are low —$56.8 millionin the latest quarter — A.O. Smith continues to chip away at this business.
A.O. Smith finished the first quarter with $574.9 million in cash and marketable securities, long-term debt of $288.6 million, and net cash of $286.3 million.
Source: Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock
Corteva(NYSE:CTVA) is one of theworld’s largestseed and crop protection providers.
With inflation and food scarcity crushing consumer sentiment globally, this is a business that ought to profit handsomely by helping solve the world’s food crisis.
“We remain excited about what we view to be high-quality characteristics and fundamental improvements that permeate Corteva’s business, not the least of which include its pricing power,” wrote Independent investment management firm Aristotle Capital in itsMay investor letter.
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In Q1 2022, Corteva’s net sales grew 10% year over year to$4.6 billion. Its operating EBITDA increased 15% to $1.04 billion and quarterly sales increased 15% to $2.0 billion. Its crop protection business in North America had a 54% increase in sales during the quarter. They accounted for almost 18% of its global business.
In 2022, it expects sales and operating EBITDA of at least $16.7 billion and $2.8 billion, respectively, which puts it among the best stocks to buy for the long term. It finished the quarter with cash and marketable securities of$2.3 billion, long-term debt of $1.15 billion, and net cash of $1.15 billion.
Source: Tattoboo / Shutterstock
Until November,Adobe(NASDAQ:ADBE) was on quite the five-year run. In June 2017, its stock was $138. By November 2021, it peaked at $699.54. Down 47% from its November highs, Adobe stock is a much better value today.
However, if analysts are correct, I probably wouldn’t buy until after earnings. Several analysts have recentlycut their price targetsfor the stock. One big concern is that growth from Adobe’s Creative Cloud will slow.
That said, they’re still higher than where it’s currently trading.
Adobe finished the first quarter with cash and marketable securities of$4.70 billion, long-term debt of $3.63 billion, and net cash of $1.07 billion. Its free cash flow remains very healthy at $1.67 billion.
The further Adobe stock falls, the greater the long-term opportunity for investors.
On the date of publication, Will Ashworthdid not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to theInvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The post7 Stocks to Buy If You Have $1,000 to Investappeared first onInvestorPlace. || First Mover Americas: Bitcoin, Ether Plunge Anew as Celsius Halts Withdrawals: Don't miss CoinDesk'sConsensus 2022, the must-attend crypto & blockchain festival experience of the year in Austin, TX this June 9-12.
Good morning, and welcome to First Mover.I’m Bradley Keoun, here to take you through the latest in crypto markets, news and insights. (Lyllah Ledesma is off.)
• Price point:Bitcoin tumbles to $23,000 as fears mount of fresh systemic risks, with financial markets still under threat from the Federal Reserve's campaign to stamp out inflation.
• Market moves:The crypto lender Celsius jolted traders with the news that it was pausing withdrawals due to "extreme market conditions."
Bitcoin (BTC) suffered one of its worst price declines of the year, tumbling alongside ether (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies as a fresh wave of panic struck traders just one month after theTerra blockchain's meltdown.
As of press time, bitcoin was down 11% to about $23,900, extending a losing streak that has now stretched to seven straight days.
Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, plunged 16% to $1,232. The overall market capitalization of cryptocurrenciesfell below $1 trillionfor the first time since January 2021.
The latest sell-off came as fears emerged of a new potential systemic threat to digital-asset markets, after the crypto lending service Celsiusannouncedin a blog post that it was pausing withdrawals amid "extreme market conditions."
The price of Celsius'CELtoken fell over 50% after the news came out.
Analysts alsocitedgrowing concern that the Federal Reserve may have to step up its campaign to tighten monetary conditions after a report Friday showed the U.S. inflation rateunexpectedly accelerating to a new four-decade high. Cryptocurrencies, like stocks, have come under harsh downward price pressure this year from the central bank's push to withdraw excess liquidity from financial markets.
In traditional finance, U.S. stock futures were down, pointing to a dismal start to the week as signals appeared in the bond market thatrecession risk is rising.
Read More:Bitcoin Plunges Below $25K, Lowest Level Since December 2020
Nexo Proposes Celsius Buyout as Rival Lending Platform Halts Withdrawals - by Oliver Knight and Nikhilesh De
Cryptocurrency lending platform Nexo expressed interest in buying certain assets from rival Celsius after Celsius said it wasfreezing withdrawals and transfersbecause of extreme market conditions.
In aletter to Celsiuson Monday, Nexo said it was particularly interested in Celsius’ collateralized loan portfolio. Nexopublicized the letter, which didn't mention a price, in a tweet. The letter was from a business entity named Nexo AG in Zug, Switzerland, though Nexo's operations are based out of Sofia, Bulgaria, according to executives at the firm.
Nexo said it was looking to acquire assets “mostly or fully of collateralized loan receivables secured by corresponding collateral assets, as well as brand assets and the customer database."
Celsius wrote earlier in ablog postthat "We are working with a singular focus: to protect and preserve assets to meet our obligations to customers.”
“Our ultimate objective is stabilizing liquidity and restoring withdrawals, Swap, and transfers between accounts as quickly as possible," Celsius wrote. "There is a lot of work ahead as we consider various options. This process will take time, and there may be delays."
Link to full story:Nexo Proposes Celsius Buyout as Rival Halts Withdrawals
• Solana, Dogecoin Lead Plunge in Majors as Traders Warn of ‘Severe Losses’ Ahead. Higher inflation will continue forcing higher interest rates, in a potential negative for economic growth, one analyst said.
• Silvergate Capital Could Benefit From Institutional Crypto Adoption, Wells Fargo Says.The Wall Street bank initiated coverage of the stock with an "overweight" rating and a $120 price target.
• Michael Saylor's Microstrategy Leads Plunge in Crypto-Related Stocks. Bitcoin has tumbled below $24,000 for the first time in 18 months, and ether dropped to a 15-month low.
• Goldman Sachs Executes Its First Trade of Ether-Linked Derivative: Report.London-based Marex Financial was the counterparty for the trade.
• Crypto Market Cap Falls Below $1T for First Time Since Early 2021. Bitcoin lost some 13% of its value in the past 24 hours.
• Binance.US Accused of Misleading Investors in Class Action Lawsuit Over Terra. A class action lawsuit againstBinance.UShas been filed on behalf of investors in connection to the collapse of terraUSD (UST).
• Nexo Proposes Celsius Buyout as Rival Halts Withdrawals. Celsius said it also paused its swap and transfer products and did not provide a timeline for resuming withdrawals.
• Bitcoin Plunges Below $25K, Lowest Level Since December 2020. A weak macroeconomic environment and systemic risk from within the crypto space have caused nearly 12 successive weeks of losses for the asset.
• Crypto Lending Service Celsius Pauses Withdrawals, Citing 'Extreme Market Conditions.'The company will also pause its swap and transfer products, according to a blog post. It did not provide a timeline for resuming withdrawals.
• How Much ETH Does Joe Lubin Hold?As Ethereum gears up for the switch to proof-of-stake, how the network’s tokens have been distributed comes back into focus.
Today’s newsletter was edited by Bradley Keoun and produced by Parikshit Mishra. || Global Bitcoin Market Segment by End user Vertical Type ; by Application and Region – Global Analysis of Market Size, Share & Trends for 2019 – 2020 and Forecasts to 2030: Product Overview Bitcoin is a digital currency that enables transactions to be conducted without a federal reserve. Bitcoins can be used to buy goods and services as a payment method from suppliers.
New York, June 03, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Bitcoin Market Segment by End user Vertical Type ; by Application and Region – Global Analysis of Market Size, Share & Trends for 2019 – 2020 and Forecasts to 2030" -https://www.reportlinker.com/p06191817/?utm_source=GNWThe use of peer-to-peer technology from the network can be used to conduct business bitcoins with other bitcoins. Their structure and regulation are open to everyone due to they are open source. The central bank manages traditional currencies and bitcoins are not controlled by any government, but by an online community. Bitcoin is not a national currency, owing to this reason, international payments can be more economically and productively carried out. It is used to protect money transfers, monitor the development of additional units, and significant transfer of assets as a medium of exchange with data encryption.Market HighlightsGlobal Bitcoin is expected to project a notable CAGR of 30.32% in 2030.Global Bitcoin market to surpass USD 5481.36 million by 2030 from USD 753.36 million in 2020 at a CAGR of 30.32 % in the coming years, i.e., 2021-30. Some of the variables that increase consumer growth globally are low ownership costs, safer, and increased efficiency. Moreover, it is further expected that minimum exchange rates, interest rates or charges for all international transactions will fuel the Bitcoin market over the forecast period. Increased adoption of bitcoins in developing countries, greater investment in blockchain technology, and increased demand for secure international-border transactions are alleged to provide favorable prospects for advances in the Bitcoin industry.Global Bitcoin: SegmentsBFSI segment to grow with the highest CAGR during 2020-30Global Bitcoin is segmented by End-user vertical Type into Media & Entertainment, BFSI, E-Commerce, and Hospitality. During the projected timeline, BFSI is expected to have the highest market share. Payment by bitcoin in many nations is significantly quicker, cost-effective, safer, and less volatile. It can thus be used for the storage of values in these nations, in addition to paying for many products and services worldwide and on the Internet. The usefulness of Bitcoin is that financial transactions are no longer central and are authenticated, cleared, and settled instantly. Bitcoin technology looks like an innovation promising major changes in capital and other financial services marketplaces. Banks are interested in reducing the transaction fees and paper volume processing by taking the opportunity. By significantly lowering operational costs Bitcoin can possibly save banks billions of dollars.Payment segment to grow with the highest CAGR during 2020-30Global Bitcoin is divided by Application into Peer-to-Peer Payment, Retail, Trading, Remittance, E-commerce, and Payment. The benefits of Bitcoin payments include improved transactional security, security from fraud, a decentralized system, low fees, and consumer protection fees, and rapid international transactions. These variables help to increase crypto-currency adoption rates.Market DynamicsDriversBlockchain reduces the cost of ownershipThe principle of blockchain and cryptography is used by Bitcoin transactions. Bitcoin greatly reduces cost of ownership, and transfers are much faster and more reliable. These dimensions are projected to increase worldwide market growth. In addition, the Bitcoin market is anticipated to enhance in the coming years at minimum exchange rates, interest rates, and charges for all international transactions.Distributed LedgerDistributed ledger systems allow a decentralized model of paying for a digital currency system by eliminating the requirement for centralized intermediary processing. Distributed headline technology enables tracking of financial transactions. It provides virtual tracking and trading of any value by generating digital money. Blockchain offers a robust information-sharing platform. Blockchain is a kind of distributed ledger system that provides greater security in real time for the digital economic process. In coming years, such parameters could influence the crypto-currency market.RestraintLack of RegulationThere is still no regulation of the Bitcoin market. The lack of regulations and instability about it are currently one of the main restrictive factors of crypto-monetary adoption. While financial regulators all over the globe work to develop common cryptocurrencies guidelines, regulatory recognition continues to be one of the major hurdles for Bitcoin adoption. Since distributed leader technology is still in its infancy, it raises numerous issues at national and international levels for regulators and policymakers.Global Bitcoin Market: Key PlayersBitfinexCompany Overview, Business Strategy, Key Product Offerings, Financial Performance, Key Performance Indicators, Risk Analysis, Recent Development, Regional Presence, SWOT AnalysisBitPay IncBitfury Group LimitedUnocoin Technologies Private LimitedOKExBitstampCoinbase Inc.Circle Internet Financial LimitedRipple Labs Inc.BitGoOther Prominent PlayersGlobal Bitcoin Market: RegionsGlobal Bitcoin is segmented based on regional analysis into five major regions. These include North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. During the projected timeline, APAC ought to have the highest share in the total market for Bitcoin. This market has been segmented into China, Japan, South Korea and APAC’s Rest (Ro APAC). Ro APAC contains Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, India, New Zealand, and Australia. China is the nation’s biggest APAC market. The market in China is anticipated to be the biggest in APAC given the low power bills, the good weather, the existence of major mining enterprises, and the accessibility of venture capital funds.Global Bitcoin is further segmented by region into:North America Market Size, Share, Trends, Opportunities, Y-o-Y Growth, CAGR – United States and CanadaLatin America Market Size, Share, Trends, Opportunities, Y-o-Y Growth, CAGR – Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Rest of Latin AmericaEurope Market Size, Share, Trends, Opportunities, Y-o-Y Growth, CAGR – United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, NORDIC, Russia, Turkey, and Rest of EuropeAsia Pacific Market Size, Share, Trends, Opportunities, Y-o-Y Growth, CAGR – India, China, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, and Rest of APACMiddle East and Africa Market Size, Share, Trends, Opportunities, Y-o-Y Growth, CAGR – North Africa, Israel, GCC, South Africa, and Rest of MENAGlobal Bitcoin market report also contains analysis on:Bitcoin Segments:By End User:Media & EntertainmentBFSIE-CommerceHospitality TypeBy ApplicationPeer-to-Peer PaymentRetailTradingRemittanceEcommercePaymentBitcoin Market DynamicsBitcoin Market SizeSupply & DemandCurrent Trends/Issues/ChallengesCompetition & Companies Involved in the MarketValue Chain of the MarketMarket Drivers and RestraintsRead the full report:https://www.reportlinker.com/p06191817/?utm_source=GNWAboutReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.__________________________
CONTACT: Clare: clare@reportlinker.com US: (339)-368-6001 Intl: +1 339-368-6001 || Bitcoin falls 7.03% to $20,969.32: (Reuters) - Bitcoin dropped 7.03% to $20,969.32 at 20:04 GMT on Thursday, losing $1,585.95 from its previous close.
Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, was down 56.5% from this year's high of $48,234 on March 28.
Ether, the coin linked to the ethereum blockchain network, dropped 10.71% to $1,104.76 on Thursday, losing $132.47 from its previous close.
(Reporting by Shubhendu Deshmukh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli) || Celsius Looks Sloppy in New Lawsuit, but So Does the DeFi Legend Suing It: Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we angle to offer 18% APR on crypto deposits. A lawsuit filed Thursday in New York State’s Supreme Court claims an asset manager that deployed customer funds for troubled crypto-lending platform Celsius Network has not been paid for its services. The suit contains extremely troubling (if unsurprising) allegations about trading and risk management practices at Celsius as the firm worked to generate the huge returns it promised depositors. The lawsuit, alongside a recent research report, also cast new light on a pseudonymous Twitter account, @0x_b1, that became highly influential with the 2020 rise of decentralized finance, or DeFi , tools. The account was regarded as a “whale,” or large crypto holder, but was not widely known to, in fact, be managing assets for Celsius. As the suit was filed, the account “doxed” itself as a group including a DeFi trader and staking strategist named Jason Stone. This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the top stories in crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here . Stone was one of the founders of KeyFi, a firm that agreed in August 2020 to deploy customer funds to DeFi and staking protocols on behalf of Celsius. This in and of itself was one of the overlooked red flags at Celsius, which premised its initial yield strategy on institutional lending but soon began to chase riskier returns through DeFi. That led in at least one instance to multimillion-dollar hacking losses – and it’s increasingly unclear that it generated any real revenue. In the filing, KeyFi claims it has not been paid money owed from profits generated from its trading activities on Celsius’s behalf. According to the lawsuit, KeyFi was promised “7.5% of ‘Net Profits’ for all staking activity and 20% of Net Profits for DeFi activity.” Crucially, the agreement purportedly specified “profits” as denominated in U.S. dollars. The suit reinforces some things we already strongly suspected about Celsius’s operation. Most notably, it presents examples of sloppy internal controls and serious disregard for risk to Celsius customer funds. The suit claims, for instance, that in one case “Celsius improperly [accounted] for certain payments owed to customers, resulting in a $200 million liability the company did not even understand how or why it owed.” Story continues Even more dramatically, KeyFi alleges Celsius misled it about hedging activities that shaped trading strategies. KeyFi claims Celsius said it had hedges in place against the risk that the U.S. dollar price of crypto assets owed to customers would rise, but did not in fact have such hedges in place. As described by KeyFi, this meant trading activities that generated profits in dollar terms but involved trading away or locking up crypto assets could still wind up underwater when depositors decided they wanted their ETH or BTC back. Stranger still, KeyFi claims Celsius denominated profits in dollars under the trading agreement, while Celsius’s obligations to customers were denominated in tokens. That kind of asset/liability mismatch can present extreme and unpredictable risk in finance, and it appears to be the root of the current dispute. According to the KeyFi suit, Celsius cited token-denominated rather than U.S. dollar metrics to claim KeyFi didn’t actually generate any returns that would merit promised royalty payments. Celsius has not yet publicly responded to the suit. What the suit leaves out It’s vital to keep in mind that allegations made in a lawsuit like this are just that – allegations, unvetted by anyone other than the plaintiff’s legal team and framed to look good for the plaintiff. The KeyFi suit, as it happens, arrived on the heels of a report from analytics firm Arkham Intelligence that seems to challenge several elements of KeyFi’s account. Most notably, the Arkham report undermines the suit’s claim that “KeyFi’s investment strategies were extremely profitable.” Instead, according to Arkham’s analysis, dollar returns on KeyFi’s strategies relied entirely on rising values of the underlying assets. In fact, Arkham concludes Celsius would have generated better returns simply by holding customer deposits. “Had Celsius held these assets instead of sending them to 0x_b1,” Arkham concludes, “their value would have been $1.52 billion – close to $400 million more than what 0x_b1 appears to have returned.” If true, that’s a bombshell in itself. 0x_b1 has for years now been something of a standard bearer for DeFi as a whole. If the group’s returns were illusory, it could cast doubt on at least some aspects of the entire DeFi project. And as even KeyFi describes in its own suit, the circumstances are extremely strange. In a traditional finance setting it would be inconceivable for a trading desk to operate merely on assurances that someone, somewhere, was tracking and appropriately hedging its activities. Hedging is so granularly intertwined with trading that such separation makes little sense on its face, and agreeing to such an arrangement does not paint KeyFi in a particularly professional or sophisticated light. Even leaving that aside, though, Arkham found that KeyFi/0x_b1’s returns began to falter when markets turned against the team. 0x_b1 was repeatedly liquidated on margin longs as the price of ether (ETH) and other assets dropped in early 2021. Arkham claims $61 million of “what appears to be Celsius money” was lost in liquidations against 0xB1. That strongly suggests an alternate narrative about Celsius and the 0xb1/KeyFi's breakup. Via the lawsuit, KeyFi claims it terminated its relationship with Celsius in March 2021 after discovering and contesting perceived mismanagement. But given that the KeyFi traders’ strategies appeared to fail in the then-slumping market, it wouldn’t be surprising if the team’s real motivations were a bit less altruistic, and a bit more about protecting their own reputation as DeFi deities. || Are Stock Splits Bad for Investors?: A stock split is similar to cutting your chocolate into four pieces only because you can’t eat eight. Your chocolate remains the same regardless of whether it’s four pieces or six. This is how a stock split works. When a company breaks each share into several new shares and it does not affect its market capitalization or your position in the company, it is known as a stock split. Many investors wonder whether stock splits are bad for investors. In simple words, no, stock splits are not bad for investors.
Stock splits are a good move for present and future shareholders. They’re also a sign of progress for a company.
There have been a few stock split announcements recently, including splits inAmazon(NASDAQ:AMZN) andGameStop(NYSE:GME) shares. EvenTesla(NASDAQ:TSLA) has requested shareholders toapprove a stock splitand we might get to hear about it soon.
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With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at whether stock splits are bad for investors.
If you look at the bigger picture, stock splits don’t change anything for investors. They just make shares easier to purchase. It is mostly regarded as a good thing for investors and it eventually boils down to the price of shares.
If a share is trading at $50, more investors will be able to afford it compared to a share that is trading at $3,000. Due to the high prices, most investors cannot buy stocks and a stock split can change it. If you hold 1% in the company, you will continue to hold the same once the stock splits.
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Stock splits are good for investors as they provide them with opportunities to get ownership in companies they have been eyeing for a long time. With a drop in stock price, investors will be able to buy shares that were once out of reach. It decreases the value of every share and increases the number of shares outstanding. Whenever the share price rises, invetors enjoy higher returns.
As mentioned earlier, a stock split is also a sign that a company is growing. If you already own the stock, there will be a small impact on your holding. You now hold more shares, however, each share will show a smaller percentage of holding in the company. But you may notice a boost in the stock price after a split since it becomes more affordable and there will be more interest in the stock.
Investing in a stock after the stock split is a good move. The per-share value is lower and you can invest in more shares. As an example, without the Amazon stock split, AMZN would be trading at $2,447 today but it is currently trading for $125, making it accessible for everyone. If you want to invest in a company, making the move post stock split is a good time to do so.
On the date of publication, Vandita Jadeja did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The postAre Stock Splits Bad for Investors?appeared first onInvestorPlace. || Cryptocurrency is worthless: ECB Christine Lagarde: European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde said cryptocurrencies are “worth nothing” on a Dutch television program aired Sunday, calling for greater regulation over what she described as “highly speculative assets.” See related article: EU to introduce bill next year to plan a digital euro Fast facts “My very humble assessment is that [cryptocurrency] is worth nothing. It is based on nothing, there is no underlying assets to act as an anchor of safety,” Lagarde said. Lagarde’s comments come amid a highly volatile period in the crypto market; Bitcoin’s price has fallen roughly 20% in the last month while the total crypto market cap is down almost 30%. The French economist did distinguish between cryptocurrencies and the planned digital Euro project — which could be launched within four years — saying the latter’s value is backed by the ECB itself. Lagarde also discussed interest rates, saying the ECB is looking at a 25-basis point rise in July, downplaying the more radical 50-basis point increase floated by other European central banks. Bitcoin gained 3.5% to trade above the US$30,000 mark overnight in Asia and was sitting at US$30,337 at press time. See related article: European Central Bank appoints 30 members to digital euro market advisory group
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
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Trend: up || Prices: 20779.34, 22485.69, 23389.43, 23231.73, 23164.63, 22714.98, 22465.48, 22609.16, 21361.70, 21239.75
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
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[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Tesla and Skype Investor Tim Draper Predicts Bitcoin Will Hit $250,000 in 4 Years: How high can Bitcoin rise? Well, according to venture capitalist and Bitcoin bull Tim Draper, get reading for the cryptocurrency to reach $250,000 in four years. Serious winds (of change) at our block (chain) party last night, the founder of Draper Fisher Jurvetson wrote on Twitter regarding his Thursday cryptocurrency celebration, Blockparty. I predicted $250k in 2022, he added in a follow-up tweet after mistakenly posting $25k in an earlier one. Serious winds (of change) at our block (chain) party last night. Predicting bitcoin at $25k by 2022. Tim Draper (@TimDraper) April 13, 2018 Oops! I predicted $250k in 2022. My tweet last night was missing a zero. $250k is the number! Tim Draper (@TimDraper) April 13, 2018 The investor even had the prediction memorialized in a poster he unfurled at the party, placing it in front of his entrepreneurship program, Draper University : This is a typo!!!! pic.twitter.com/4PlGuME57U Al Solano (@GetRichOrDie) April 13, 2018 The investor, who led investments in Skype, Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX, is known to have purchased $30,000 worth of Bitcoin from the U.S. government in 2014. Those funds fell into government hands after an exchange that heavily used the cryptocurrency, Silk Road, was shuttered . According to Draper, he was attracted to the idea of a digital currency not tied to a government. So when Bitcoin showed up, I was all over it, he told Fortune in January . DFJ also holds investments in other cryptocurrency-linked companies, such as exchange Coinbase. The prediction comes as the price of Bitcoin rises 17% to about $8,000. The cryptocurrency has struggled since the start of 2018, with investors worrying about signs of regulatory crackdowns from governments including that of South Korea . Even now, the value of Bitcoin remains below its price at the start of the year, at about $14,000. Story continues Its unclear how exactly Draper calculated a price of $250,000 by 2022. Some investors, such as Murray Stahl of Horizon Kinetics, hypothesize that Bitcoin is worth the value of all the currency in the worldabout $361,000 per Bitcoin, by Barrons estimates . That figure though assumes Bitcoin is indeed set to one day become a worldwide currencya thought that even some cryptocurrency supporters, such as Mark Cuban, question. Investors and critics alike remark that as it stands now, Bitcoin does face scalability issues. The Bitcoin network is currently handling about 8 transactions during a second . Visa meanwhile says it can handle about 65,000 transactions per second at maximum . And while the cryptocurrency community has at times tried to address the issue, its also divided the group. Take the creation of Bitcoin Cash as an example. Bitcoin Cash forked off of Bitcoin in mid-2017 following a bitter dispute about the future of the cryptocurrency. In an attempt to lower transaction fees while speeding up the process, some developers proposed doubling the size of the blocks containing the record of transactions. Though other developers argued that the proposed change would undermine the decentralized basis of Bitcoin. And even now, the debate between Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin still continues, with early Bitcoin believer Roger Ver now batting for Bitcoin Cash. Bitcoin Cash is Bitcoin, the investors wrote in a Twitter post, asserting that Bitcoin Cash is what Bitcoin shouldve been. || Crypto Assets Offer New Opportunities for VCs on a Global Scale: Crypto Assets Offer New Opportunities for VCs on a Global Scale As institutional capital in the crypto space increases regularly, the need for blockchain technology and related enterprise support is at an all-time high, and several companies are working hard to provide both as the arena expands. One of those companies is Coefficient Ventures , a crypto fund set on financing blockchain systems worldwide. Thus far, the company has made over 25 investments in companies and applications like Filecoin for decentralized storage; Raiden for scalability; and Zeppelin to improve smart contract capabilities. Speaking with Bitcoin Magazine , founding partner Chance Du described how she sees a central role for blockchain investment across all sectors of the global economy. The global financial industry features significant flaws in its current design. Two billion of the world’s people have virtually no access to financial services, while an additional four billion have very limited access. Du says she began investing in blockchain technology in 2017 because she believes it can remove these barricades and allow for a “more accessible and democratized” financial infrastructure. “The internet has been an extraordinary conduit for uploading, exchanging and disseminating information,” she explains. “However, until 2009, if you wanted to go and exchange value online, there was no way to do that. Whether it was data, money, the title to your car or home, you had to do it in a way that didn’t involve legacy institutions such as banks, governments and clearing houses. With blockchain technology, people can have bank accounts in their pockets. They no longer need these legacy institutions that have kept so many consumers out. Blockchain technology offers a value protocol which allows for the frictionless exchange of value.” Hoping to assist businesses that can remove financial pain points from our monetary systems, Coefficient Ventures also offers extensive start-up support. Its current advisory portfolio includes projects like TomoChain , which seeks to build blockchain and crypto-based partnerships between national markets; IoTeX , a decentralized network for the Internet of Things; and Havven , a payment network and stable coin system based in Australia. Du says the next step involves collecting capital from accredited investors to fund these projects and incentivizing contributors to “build tools and services” to facilitate them. Story continues As with all business enterprises, challenges have emerged that have made it hard for start-up VCs to stay on track. Du notes that the financial industry is a relatively saturated space, with hundreds of crypto funds and traditional VC funds joining the “ICO investing race” every day. Competition is extremely fierce, and carving out the right business strategies isn’t always easy. Regulation and the constant changes it presents has also made things difficult. Du says one of her main goals is to see the cryptocurrency arena thrive and she recognizes the necessity to adhere to ever-changing regulations in order to bring further legitimacy to the space. “We must keep a close eye on every country’s regulatory environment and adjust our strategies accordingly,” Du says. “Token exchange listings, for example, are directly affected by regulatory shifts. Many exchanges are not allowed to list any new tokens during strict regulatory days, and we’ve had to find alternatives for fund liquidity.” One strategy that has worked for Du involved turning to decentralized exchanges or DEXs. Users’ own wallets are utilized to transfer and collect funds, and transactions are published directly on the blockchain, thus eliminating several risks one might encounter through centralized platforms. “We are also considering tokenizing our own fund, but we must be cautious to remain in compliance with the SEC,” she continued. “I think the whole world is watching the moves of the SEC. They’ve proven quite adequate when it comes to dealing with emerging technologies like cryptocurrencies. I believe once the SEC has figured out how to treat crypto, other countries will mirror its moves, but right now, governments don’t seem to understand them well enough yet.” While hostility still seems to exist toward digital assets, Du suggests legislative systems will eventually adapt to become more accepting. She even compares cryptocurrency to Uber, which in the beginning, she states, was the object of speculation amongst those who felt it was breaking certain legal barriers. “Uber got tons of legal challenges in the beginning, and it drove regulation once it was adopted by the masses,” she explained. “The demand of Uber from the public was so high that the local laws were forced to adapt. The same will happen for cryptocurrency.” In the end, Du believes that blockchain and digital assets present advantages often missing from traditional finance mechanisms. “Traditional VCs have burdens in the new game because of the old investing philosophies they carry,” she says. “Things don’t work the same way, anymore. Compared to traditional VCs, new crypto funds move fast and understand the underlying value of crypto projects.” This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine . || 3 Things to Watch When Energy Transfer Partners LP Reports Q1 Results: Energy Transfer Partners (NYSE: ETP) is among the highest yielding companies in the MLP space at nearly 13%. That's mainly due to the market's fears that the company's distribution isn't sustainable because of its weaker financial metrics. While those numbers have improved in recent quarters , they still have a way to go. Three areas in particular stand out as those that need to show continued improvement when the company reports its first-quarter results later this week. A group of pipelines. Image source: Getty Images. Check out the distribution coverage ratio One reason investors are worried that Energy Transfer might need to reduce its distribution is that the company barely generates enough cash flow to support it without the help of its parent Energy Transfer Equity (NYSE: ETE) . In 2017, Energy Transfer Partners produced $4.19 billion in distributable cash flow and would have paid out $4.15 billion to investors if it wasn't for the fact that Energy Transfer Equity relinquished its rights to $656 million of that cash. While that support boosted the distribution coverage ratio from a tight 1.0 times to a more comfortable 1.2 times, it was only a temporary fix since Energy Transfer Equity's support will diminish significantly in 2018 before declining further in 2019 and 2020. On a more positive note, Energy Transfer Partners' coverage ratio was a much stronger 1.3 times in the fourth quarter of 2017, including 1.09 times after adjusting for Energy Transfer Equity's support. A further improvement in that number during the first quarter would show that the company can adequately support its current payout level with cash flow. See if the leverage ratio improved Another reason why investors remain concerned about the long-term sustainability of Energy Transfer Partners' distribution is due to its elevated debt level. At the beginning of last year, Energy Transfer's debt-to-adjusted EBITDA stood at a concerning 5.54 times. However, thanks to a combination of asset sales, equity issuances, and incremental earnings from expansion projects, that number had improved to 4.27 times by year-end. Story continues Energy Transfer aims to get that number down to a more comfortable 4.0 times this year. Given that goal, investors should see how close it came to that target in the first quarter. Natural gas pipelines and valves with an oil pump in the background. Image source: Getty Images. Look for more clarity on the long-term funding situation Energy Transfers Partners is in the midst of a major expansion phase that will see the company invest $10 billion into projects that should come online through the middle of next year. Funding those growth projects has been a challenge given the company's tight coverage ratio and elevated leverage metrics. However, the pipeline giant has managed to stay out in front of these needs by creatively financing projects through joint venture transactions, asset sales, and other outside-the-box transactions. In fact, it has pre-funded the majority of its capital needs in 2018. The concern, however, remains on whether Energy Transfer can continue finding creative ways to access the capital it needs to fund expansion projects without resorting to reducing the distribution or issuing more equity when its valuation remains depressed. Because of that, the company needs to develop a long-term funding solution to help improve investor confidence in the distribution. Fellow MLP Enterprise Products Partners (NYSE: EPD) provided one potential roadmap when it announced that it would slow the pace of its distribution rate growth through the end of this year to increase its retained cash flow going forward. That strategy will enable Enterprise Products Partners to self-fund the equity portion of a $2.5 billion annual investment program (or about $1.25 billion assuming a 50-50 debt and equity split) by next year. By eliminating the need to secure equity financing for a significant portion of its capital spending going forward, Enterprise Products Partners made it less likely that a shift in market conditions will impact its ability to pay its distribution to investors while still growing its business. If Energy Transfer hints that it's considering a similar strategy, it will help reduce investor concerns about the company's ability to meet its long-term funding needs while still paying a lucrative distribution to investors. Watch for more evidence that a turnaround is under way While investors have concerns about the long-term sustainability of Energy Transfer Partners' distribution due to its weaker financial situation, those numbers have started turning around in recent quarters. The hope is that they continued heading in the right direction during the first quarter. That would help lift some of the weight that has been holding down the company's valuation, which pushed its yield to its current sky-high level. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Matthew DiLallo owns shares of Enterprise Products Partners. The Motley Fool recommends Enterprise Products Partners. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Comcast's Bid to Buy Sky Overshadows a Big Q1 Beat: In this segment of theMarketFoolerypodcast, host Chris Hill andHidden Gems' Abi Malin tune in for a big news week fromComcast(NASDAQ: CMCSA). It scored major wins in the first quarter thanks to the Olympics and the Super Bowl, but it has set its sights on a big new prize: U.K.-based entertainment and broadcast majorSky.
Foxalready had a deal in the works to turn its minority stake into a full acquisition, which has been upended. There's a complex -- and expensive -- dance occurring here among Fox, Comcast andDisney(NYSE: DIS). The Fools discuss.
A full transcript follows the video.
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This video was recorded on April 25, 2018.
Chris Hill:Comcast. Some pretty nice numbers in the first quarter for Comcast. Profits and revenue came in higher than expected. They had the Super Bowl, they had the Winter Olympics. It seems like both of those paid off in a big way.
Abi Malin:Yeah, adding $1.6 billion in revenue for the quarter.
Hill:That's a lot of zeroes.
Malin:It's a lot of zeros.
Hill:This is an interesting company to me because they had this great quarter, and this actually takes a backseat to the other headline from Comcast, which is that Comcast has made a $31 billion bid -- I think I have that number right -- for Sky, the U.K.-based broadcaster. As a result of that bid, Sky has withdrawn its recommendation of a takeover bid from 21st Century Fox. So, interesting to see the chess moves that Comcast is making, because Disney had made the bid for Fox's movie studio assets, and Comcast had made a competing bid for that. But, it seems like once we got the details on that bid, it really didn't seem as compelling as Disney's. What do you make of this move to take over Sky?
Malin:I think it's interesting. I've talked with Mike Olsen a lot, who follows Comcast pretty closely here. We've both been confused by this. I think that's a talented management team, and I think they're playing three steps ahead. But I do, a little bit, question the move, especially at that price.
Hill:So, it's not so much the move, it's the price. Or, is it both? Is it the move and the price tag?
Malin:It's both. I think Comcast is a little bit of a misunderstood business. I think people like to think that its fate is ultimately tied up with the media broadcasting. But, in my head, I think it's a little bit more of a utility company. Their advantage is really that they own that final mile stuff of the internet transmission, think, like, pipes, for lack of a better term, cable and fiber, the fastest networks, things like that. So, as long as people continue to increase consumption of data, which they have been historically, I don't think Comcast's business is necessarily at risk, and I think it's sort of tangential to what I think their future opportunities are.
Hill:It's interesting, because you go back a few years, you mentioned Comcast to the average person, and you were probably going to get a negative response because for a good stretch of time, it had one of the worst customer service ratings of any consumer-facing business.
Malin:It's the ultimate sign of utility and/or monopoly, when you can have terrible ratings and continue to be so prominent.
Hill:Yes, so prominent and a good stock. Like, for all the hating on Comcast from a customer standpoint, that was a stock that continued to do well for shareholders. But, they started to make these moves to compete more with the Walt Disney Company in terms of, not just broadening their broadcast and cable offerings, but also studios as well and theme parks and that sort of thing. And I have to say, they were more successful in that endeavor than I thought they were going to be.
Malin:I think that goes back to that being a very talented management team. I acknowledge that they are thinking three steps ahead. I can't tell what the steps in between are, but I acknowledge that it's probably something strategic. And like you said, they have done a really good job with what they've attempted to do so far, so I have to give them credit for that.
Hill:I'm just thinking out loud here, but maybe they are looking, in part, at whatCostcodid with their dividend and thinking, "We have the money, and we don't want to do that. The attempt to outbid Disney, that didn't work, so we have to throw money at something. If we have to pay more than we want to, maybe it's still worth it."
Malin:I think, also, a demand for programming isn't going away, it's just the medium in which it's being consumed. NBCUniversal has the scale, the resources and the brand to deliver. So, I can see why expanding that sort of section of the business could be opportunistic.
Hill:I don't know why, but it always makes me smile any time I'm watching CNBC and they are talking about Comcast. And of course, they have to give the disclosure, "This is our parent company." And to their credit, they're not fawning, necessarily, over Comcast as a business just because it happens to be the parent company.
Abi Malinowns shares of Walt Disney.Chris Hillowns shares of Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Walt Disney. The Motley Fool recommends Comcast and Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || The British pound rallies against the Japanese yen after initial fall this week: The British poundinitially fell during the week, but then rallied significantly as we tested the bottom of the uptrend line that had previously formed. By doing so, it shows that we do in fact have a bit of resiliency left in this market, and I think if we can break above the weekly candle for this past week, the GBP/JPY pair will be free to go to the 155 handle. Ultimately, this is a market that is going to be very noisy and highly influenced by what’s going on between the United States and China. I think that the volatility of course will be a major issue, as headlines coming out of both of those countries could cause problems.
Breakdown below the weekly candle would be very negative, perhaps sending the market down to the 145 handle. That’s an area that should be supportive, but quite frankly if we rollover I would anticipate that this market should rollover rather hard and go much lower. The 155 level above makes a significant target and could lead to a nice little move. If we break above there, then the market is free to go to the 160 handle. I believe that this market is going to continue to be noisy in general, but if you can build up your position slowly, you might have a nice trade present itself.
Pay attention to the stock markets in general, because they do tend to drive this market as well. I believe that if indices around the world rally, that should push this market higher as well as money will fly from Japan and into other markets.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
• DAX falls initially during the week but find buyers
• Silver markets pulled back a bit during the week, and then rallied again
• Crude oil markets have a negative week
• FTSE 100 pulls back during the week only to find more buying pressure
• Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 07/04/18
• Technical Outlook of Gold, Silver & WTI Crude Oil: 06.04.2018 || CBOE Saw Its Highest-Ever Bitcoin Futures Volumes Yesterday: Two major markets for bitcoin futures contracts saw a major boost in volume on Wednesday.
Available market datashows that CBOE saw its highest-ever volume for bitcoin futures since it first debuted the contractsback in December. 18,210 contacts for the May futures were traded, along with 703 for the June contract and 87 for the July contract. No volume was reported for the exchange's August-dated contract.
CBOE Options Institute senior instructor Kevin Davitt, in a social media video posted on Thursday, said that "[the] average daily volume (ADV) runs about 6,600 in XBT Bitcoin Futures. Yesterday's volume was nearly three times ADV."
Cboe Exchange Wants to Lower Its Bitcoin Futures Prices
He went on to explain:
"Yesterday was the highest daily volume for bitcoin futures since their introduction here at CBOE nearly five months ago. The lead month May futures traded 18,210 contracts, and across the term structure a total of 19,000 bitcoin futures traded here yesterday. The previous high-volume session was January 17 with just less than 15,500 contracts traded."
Wednesday's volume was an outlier among the past several days, as well as the results seen during Thursday's session. On Monday, XBT Bitcoin Futures traded at 3,881, rising to 6,653 on Tuesday. OnThursday, volume was reported at 5,634 contracts as of press time.
CME, according to market data, also saw a big trading day on Wednesday.
OKEx Denies Manipulation Claims After Bitcoin Futures Rollback
The exchange saw the volume of its bitcoin futures contracts market double on Wednesday from the day before, shooting past 11,000 contracts. Unlike CBOE, it was CME's April 2018 contracts which saw the bulk of the spike, according to itswebsite.
The spike in January's volume coincided with the expiration of the first set of contracts, Davitt said. However, Wednesday's volume did not, nor did it have a 15-20 percent range in futures Davitt would otherwise have expected, he added.
"We will certainly be watching to see if this is a volume aberration or if more and more institutional types are moving into crypto," he said. However, he noted that "the overall bullish sentiment continues in XBT Bitcoin Futures."
Marketsimage via Shutterstock
• Riot Blockchain Acquires Futures Brokerage After Crypto Pivot
• Exchange OKEx to Roll Back Trades After Futures Plunge || Who Blinked? Who Cares?: By:Blaine RollinsHarvest ExchangeMay 22, 2018
May 21, 2018
Just end all this tariff nonsense and let’s get back to business. Farmers have soybeans to plant and Campbell’s urgently needs cheaper can prices. The steel workers will be upset, but from the looks of their stock prices they were about to lose volumes to imported finished goods anyway, as end customers shifted to cheaper solutions. We can only hope that the pause of this trade rift with China will lead to calmer heads in other trade negotiations (NAFTA and the EU).
While global trade wrinkles meet an iron this weekend, a few other articles need to find a steam press. First there is Venezuela which is unraveling further after the world turns against their sham Presidential election on Sunday. As planet Earth turns away from buying Venezuelan oil, prices will go higher. Global energy stores are exhausted and even a small supply disruption will elevate prices. But Venezuela is more than a small producer. U.S. and Iran angst only adds to oil price uncertainty. Hope that you locked in your summer airfare prices, or are soon taking delivery of your Tesla.
The continued rise in U.S. interest rates and the U.S. dollar is putting significant pressure on Emerging Market currencies. And forex pressure is causing investment outflows which of course is negatively impacting EM stocks and bonds. Capital outflows is the last thing that Argentina, Turkey and others need right now. Investors will need extra thick stomach lining to hang onto their EM investments this year if the U.S. dollar continues to strengthen.
While the markets will wrestle with higher oil prices and increasing troubles in Emerging Markets, I’d expect any return to normal on global trade to help U.S. stock prices for the time being. The direct beneficiaries of multi-national industrial and material companies, as well as anything touching grains, fruits and vegetables will see the most benefit. Those names that were hurt the most during the trade war will now see the most relief. This shift will throw a small wrench in the summer portfolio plans of several active funds. The environment also gets a bit better for credit which remains under the microscope for many of us. So, maybe it will end up being a good summer after all for investors…just like it will be for soccer fans because the World Cup begins in less than five weeks!
The good trade news update on Sunday…
The U.S. and China declared a truce in their trade dispute over the weekend, but that will prove temporary if the world’s two largest economies fail to deliver on their vague commitments to re-balance trade.
“We’re putting the trade war on hold,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday after the two sides released a joint statement a day earlier. “Right now, we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold while we execute the framework.”
For now, Mnuchin’s cease-fire declaration will soothe the nerves of investors worried that the world’s two biggest economies were on the verge of an all-out trade conflict. President Donald Trump had threatened to slap tariffs on up to $150 billion in Chinese imports, and Beijing vowed to respond in kind.
(Bloomberg)
No company more excited to see the metal tariffs stop than Campbell’s Soup which fell -12% after their earnings report last week…
Looking for maximum business uncertainty? Try being a grain farmer in 2018…
Tom Giessel is cutting back on plantings this year on his farm in central Kansas as he reckons with a drought, a glut in global grains supply and trade tensions between the United States and China.
About 200 miles away in the northwestern part of the state, farmer Janet Bear swapped the sorghum seed she ordered for corn, after top importer China slapped steep anti-dumping investigation into U.S. sorghum. The action pushed down U.S. prices and made the crop less profitable.
China dropped its probe on Friday, retreating from a dispute that had upended global grains markets.
Beijing separately threatened last month to slap an aggressive 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybeans, the single most valuable U.S. agricultural export to China, worth about $12 billon annually….
The conflict between the world’s two largest economies has sown uncertainty in the U.S. heartland about what crops will be profitable come harvest. Some farmers have changed from one crop to another. Others have decided to leave some land fallow rather than risk growing a money-losing crop.
Nationally, U.S. farmers are set to plant the fewest acres with crops in seven years, according to the most recent farmer survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency’s forecast for 318 million crop acres is down just 0.4 percent from 2017, but it signals curbs in plantings of everything from corn and soybeans to sugar beets and sunflowers.
The trade dispute adds another layer of complexity to U.S. farmers’ decisions as they wonder whether one of the biggest buyers in global agricultural markets, China, will want to import U.S. produce and in what volumes.
(Reuters)
A good review of which commodities could win as trade with China resumes…
Commodities were a big casualty of the escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, but are now set to be a major beneficiary of Beijing’s pledge to import more American goods.
(Bloomberg)
One commodity winner according to the White House will be energy…And as new IEA data shows, crude inventories are now below their five-year average.
(WSJ)
The airlines are clearly betting that Stephanie will spend a minimum of $2,500 on in-flight magazine purchases…
Emerging Market currencies are getting smoked…
(WSJ/Daily Shot)
The strong U.S. dollar and interest rates have wrecked Emerging Market Bonds…U.S. high yield credit has held in well. Will it continue?
(@HumbleStudent)
Important Fed comment…
Fed’s Bostic says his “job” is to prevent curve inversion. “I have had extended conversations with my colleagues about a flattening yield curve and the risks of it inverting…we are aware of it. So it is my job to make sure that doesn’t happen”
(Bloomberg)
As U.S. rates move higher, lots of talk about where the tipping point lies…
(@jsblokland)
Italians have decided on a populist government…So there goes government spending and interest rates.
(WSJ/Daily Shot)
Italy is now the new fly in the EU’s ointment. And the Euro is not happy…
(WSJ/Daily Shot)
And European financial stocks need to be admitted to the hospital…
For the week, Small Cap stocks continued to lead the markets due to the surge in the U.S. dollar…And emerging market equities did the opposite.
(5/18/18)
Among sectors, Energy stocks led while Bond proxies lagged…
(5/18/18)
Go get ’em Wall Street Journal…Theranos was just a warm up to what they will find in the land of crypto.
Hundreds of technology firms raising money in the fevered market for cryptocurrencies are using deceptive or even fraudulent tactics to lure investors.
In a review of documents produced for 1,450 digital coin offerings, The Wall Street Journal has found 271 with red flags that include plagiarized investor documents, promises of guaranteed returns and missing or fake executive teams.
“Jeremy Boker” is listed as a co-founder of Denaro, an online-payment project. In investor documents for a public offering in March, which claimed to have raised $8.3 million, Mr. Boker boasted of his cryptocurrency startup’s “powerhouse” team. In his biography, he noted a “respectable history of happy clients” in consulting before he launched Denaro.
In fact, Mr. Boker’s bio image was a stock photo, there is no evidence he exists and the rest of his team appears to be fictional, except for two freelancers who said they were paid by people unknown to them to market the project, the Journal found.
(WSJ)
You have seen how this story ends…
Thanks to barely there government oversight and a gold-rush mentality surrounding bitcoin, people have flocked to start their own copycat coins which, they hope, will be the next big thing.
“It’s perplexing,” said David Tran, a VP of marketing at Coinberry, a trading app that hopes to continue bringing cryptro-currencies to the mainstream and to shed its image as mainly being used by drug dealers. “It feels like the 1990s internet.”
As a partygoer asked Tran about his company, another attendee sidled up and shouted, “Coinberry!” — wrapping his arm around Tran.
“I love Coinberry,” said the man who was suddenly Tran’s best friend. “I’m, like, a criminal, and I got verified [cleared to trade on Coinberry] right away.”
As the yacht — with its 30,000 square feet of party space — pulled out of Pier 81 on Manhattan’s West Side, scores of young women wrapped in form-fitting black party dresses paired off with boyfriends or just mingled among schlubby guys in T-shirts or Wall Street pros.
Dudes with neck tattoos got into the scene — as a guy wearing a space helmet floated around the dance floor.
(NY Post)
Everyone thought that launching futures on bitcoin was a good idea…
If you are still a long-term believer in Bitcoin, then this is how your investment might play out…
Kroger decides to go out fighting rather than to get completely run over by Amazon and Wal-Mart…
U.K. online supermarket Ocado announced a deal Thursday to share its technology exclusively with Kroger, which trails only Walmart in the $650 billion U.S. grocery market. Online grocery delivery is expensive and inefficient, and Ocado may be the world’s leader in automating the process, which could give Kroger a boost against its rivals. Ocado’s most modern warehouse in South East England uses robots to pick groceries from a giant hive of boxes—a high-tech, high-spec solution that is expensive to set up but promises huge savings versus human pickers once operated at scale.
Kroger is committing to roll out this technology across up to 20 warehouses over three years. In exchange Ocado will stop discussions with Kroger’s rivals. The two partners will hammer out the finer details over the coming year. The agreement is cemented by a shareholding: Ocado will issue roughly $250 million worth of new stock to Kroger, increasing its stake to 6% from 1%.
(WSJ)
Seattle is such an interesting place…
Twenty cities are competing for Amazon’s second headquarters. Then there’s Seattle, Amazon’s current headquarters, which the city apparently wouldn’t mind driving away.
Seattle’s city council on Monday unanimously approved a $250 “tax” per full-time employee on businesses with more than $20 million in annual revenue. Progressive council members had originally proposed a $500 jobs tax that would have turned into a 0.7% payroll tax in 2021, but then Seattle’s businesses revolted.
Amazon suspended two building expansion projects. More than 100 large businesses including Expedia, Alaska Airlines and Redbox wrote a letter warning that the tax sends the message “to every business: if you are investing in growth, if you create too many jobs in Seattle, you will be punished,” which “will cause far greater damage to Seattle’s growth prospects than the direct impact on the businesses being taxed.”
Three hundred or so small businesses also warned that “continuing tax increases and regulations will only hurt the small business community and will vastly change our city.” Even trade unions begged the council “not to tax our jobs away.”
(WSJ)
What a great sports story down in Atlanta…
As in much of the American South, the sports landscape in Atlanta is dominated by football, both professional and college. But for transplants like Riddle without a tie to an existing franchise or university, true sports love can be hard to find. The Braves’ long run of success in Major League Baseball in the 1990s and early 2000s is now a memory, and last year the team moved to the suburbs. The Hawks of the N.B.A. have rarely drawn well, and two N.H.L. hockey teams have come and gone.
Last year, Atlanta United eagerly stepped into that pro sports void, smashing attendance records, dominating M.L.S. merchandise sales and leading the league in scoring. Six months after it first kicked a ball, it became only the fourth team in league history to qualify for the playoffs in its inaugural season. This year, its upward trajectory has continued unabated: Attendance has continued to grow, to about 50,000 fans a game, and the team is again competing for the league’s best record.
A year after the team first took the field, Atlanta United flags now fly in front yards and from porches in many neighborhoods. Sports talk radio shows devoted to soccer have found an audience, and it is increasingly difficult to spend a day in downtown Atlanta without seeing someone in one of the team’s jerseys.For a long time, “Atlanta was known for traffic, sprawl and the airport,” said Michael Tavani, 38, another transplant and entrepreneur who works downtown. “It wasn’t cool to be from Atlanta.”
But in the last five years, he said, he has sensed a growing pride in the city, especially among its younger residents. “This generation of people,” Tavani said, “want to create a special place.”
(NY Times)
With the World Cup less than five weeks away, UBS picks Germany…
If you think that you can do better, join the361 Capital World Cup Challengethe winner will receive a team jersey. Pro tip: Don’t pick Italy.
With the start of the World Cup in Russia less than a month away, UBS deployed a team of 18 analysts and editors, and ran a computer simulation of the tournament 10,000 times, in an effort to predict the likely winner of the tournament.
It’s a familiar game for UBS and other banks, many of which run competing models to predict the quadrennial World Cup. While the simulations might sounds impressive, they’re not always accurate: In 2014 UBS said hosts Brazil would prevail, only to see the team humiliated in a 7-1 semifinal loss to Germany, the eventual winner.
(Bloomberg)
Finally, the magazine cover of the year…
(@NatGeo)
Originally Published at:Who Blinked? Who Cares? || How to Invest -- in Stocks, Bonds, Retirement Accounts, and More: If your retirement plan is to be financially secure and you don't have generous pension income coming to you, you'll probably want to learn how to invest, which for most people means moving beyond a savings account and certificates of deposit to stocks and bonds, establishing a strategy and using investment vehicles such as Roth IRAs . Taking control of your financial future can make your retirement much more comfortable and less stressful. Here's a guide to what you need to know about how to invest. yellow lined paper, on which is written investing 101 Image source: Getty Images. Are you ready to invest? First things first, though: Not everyone is quite ready to invest. Here's a handy checklist to review before investing -- make sure the statements below apply to you: You're not currently saddled with high-interest rate debt, such as credit card debt . If you are, pay that off first. You have a fully loaded emergency fund , or you know how you'll be able to handle an unexpected big expense. Don't put the only extra dollars you have in the market, as you might need them for emergencies. You understand that the value of your holdings will fluctuate and that sometimes you'll lose money. The stock market will occasionally stagnate or head south for a while, and bond prices rise and fall in relation to the economy, too. You're willing to do some math. For example, it's good to be able to know what portion of your portfolio each holding represents and to notice as the proportions change. You won't need any of the money you invest in the stock market for at least five years, if not 10 or more. That type of time frame is important so that you can ride out any downturn and won't have to sell when prices fall. You can tell the difference between a balance sheet and an income statement -- and you know where to find them. If you want to choose individual stocks in which to invest, you'll need to be able to make sense of each company's financial statements to see how healthy and promising they really are. (If you opt for simple index funds , you don't need to learn all this.) You know that it's much more important to understand and follow a business than to just follow stock prices each day. After all, you're buying part of these businesses. You have a long-term investment horizon, aiming to hold on to your stocks for years, as long as they remain healthy and growing. It's tempting to chase a quick buck, but that's not how most fortunes are built. You know to compare your performance to a benchmark such as the S&P 500 index. If you're not beating your benchmarks, you need to rethink your strategy or opt for simple index funds -- more on them later. Story continues Your investing checklist Before investing in any company, you should: Know the company's major products, services, and competitors. Be able to explain exactly why you're buying stock in the company and what would make you sell it. Understand its competitive advantages . Be familiar with its risks and challenges. Have studied its financial statements and assessed various measures (such as profit margins). Have multiple sources of information about it. Expect to continue monitoring the company, including by reading its quarterly reports. Opening a brokerage account for investing in stocks and bonds A brokerage account is what you will need to trade stocks -- and you can very likely buy and sell bonds and bond funds with it, too. You can also buy newly minted bonds directly from the government through its TreasuryDirect site, and you can buy shares of some stocks directly from their companies or their agents, as well, through dividend reinvestment plans or direct investment plans (sometimes referred to as "drips"). With most major brokerages these days, you can open an account online, over the phone, or in person. Once you have an account, you can fund it with money and then proceed to buy and sell stocks, funds, or other securities. When you're ready to open an account, choose your brokerage firm carefully, selecting one that best suits your needs. You might take into account considerations such as the trading commissions charged (many charge $7 or less per trade these days), the breadth of mutual funds available, the range of research products available, the minimum initial deposit, and whether you need a brokerage with brick-and-mortar locations or are OK with a solely online one. How to invest -- the easy way Most people don't have the time, energy, or interest in becoming a hands-on investor, carefully studying companies and deciding when to buy and sell various stocks. That's perfectly fine. For most people, it's best to invest in an inexpensive broad-market index fund , such as one based on the S&P 500 that will deliver roughly the same returns of the overall stock market. Investing profitably doesn't have to be complicated. You can simply opt for one or more low-fee, broad-market index funds. Each tracks a particular index, giving you the approximate return of the index, minus fees, which can be kept extremely low with certain funds. The Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX), for example, tracks the S&P 500 index, which is made up of 500 of America's biggest companies that together represent about 80% of the entire U.S. stock market's value. You can go even broader with the Vanguard Total Stock Market Fund (VTSMX), which encompasses all of the U.S. stock market, including small companies, or the Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund (VTWSX), to invest in the world market. These are examples from Vanguard, but there are several other brokerages or fund families offering low-cost index funds, too -- very possibly including some available to you via your brokerage or workplace. You can also opt for exchange-traded funds, or ETFs , that focus on the same indexes -- such as the SPDR S&P; 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: SPY) , Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (NYSEMKT: VTI) , and Vanguard Total World Stock ETF (NYSEMKT: VT) . You can balance out your portfolio with bonds via index mutual funds and ETFs, too. The Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (NYSEMKT: BND) is one such option. The beauty of index fund investing is that it's easy, cheap, and delivers returns that beat many more expensive alternatives. Plunk your money regularly into index funds and, voila, you're done. It's the perfect kind of investing for most of us. If you're wondering just how effective index fund investing can be, know that the stock market has averaged long-term annual gains of close to 10%, though over your investing period, you might achieve more -- or less. The table below shows how much you can accumulate at different growth rates when you make annual investments of $10,000. Growing for Growing at 4% Growing at 8% Growing at 10% 15 years $208,245 $293,243 $349,497 20 years $309,692 $494,229 $630,025 25 years $433,117 $789,544 $1.1 million 30 years $583,283 $1.2 million $1.8 million Calculations by author. If you want to profit from the growth of America's economy and build wealth in stocks, using index funds is a powerful way to do so. Some other mutual funds can make sense as well. These include "target-date" or "lifestyle" funds, which distribute your money across various stock and bond index funds according to when you aim to retire, adjusting the allocation (reducing your stock exposure and increasing your bond exposure) as you approach retirement. There's a good chance your 401(k) or another retirement plan work offers them. If not, you can invest in them either through a brokerage or a mutual fund company that offers them. How to invest -- the more complicated way If you'd like to aim for higher returns than the market average, you'll want to add some individual stocks to your portfolio . You'll need to know how to buy and sell them through your brokerage, too. Two of the most common kinds of orders you might place with your brokerage are the "market" order and the "limit" order . A market order tells the brokerage that you want to buy or sell the specified stock at the current, best-available price, whatever that is. With a limit order, you have more control, as you get to specify that the stock must be bought for no more than a certain price, or sold for no less than a certain price. Of course, if the stock doesn't rise or fall into your desired range, the trade won't be executed. With most big, often-traded stocks, market orders are fine and will typically be filled within seconds. For less-frequently traded stocks or ones that can be volatile, limit orders can be useful. Limit orders are also good if you know that you want to buy or sell a stock, but not at the going price. Some other kinds of orders can be helpful when selling, too. The "stop" or " stop-loss " order, for example, lets you put a rule into effect to sell a specified number of shares of a stock that you own if it hits a certain level. So if you own shares of a stock that's trading around $80 per share, you might place a stop order to sell them at $70. That way, if you're not paying attention (perhaps if you're on vacation or you just tend to not keep up with your investments) and the stock starts falling, you'll get out of it before you lose too much. Be careful, though, because if you set the stop too close to the current price, normal volatility might get you ejected from a healthy company that you wanted to own long term. Many great stocks can be volatile from day to day, while rewarding long-term investors handsomely. What to look for in stocks For the best results as you study any stock of interest, ask yourself these two questions: 1. Is this a strong, high-quality company? 2. Is its stock priced attractively right now? If you don't address both questions, you might end up buying significantly overvalued shares of a wonderful company, or you might buy into a troubled business at what seems like a bargain price. Investors have lost many dollars doing either or both of those things. The first question is much easier to answer than the second. Companies such as Costco , CVS Health , and Boeing have solid reputations and growth prospects. But at what price is each a good buy? Conveniently, most measures used to evaluate companies are related to either quality or price. Quality-related measures reflect a company's profitability, growth, and health. They include sales and earnings growth rates, profit margins, return on equity (ROE), return on assets (ROA), inventory turnover , market share, and management quality, among other things. Price-related measures help you determine whether the stock is overpriced, underpriced or priced just right. They address a company's valuation or stock price and include its market capitalization , enterprise value , price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio , and price-to-sales ratio . Of course, it's much easier said than done to figure out what a company is worth. The simplest of measures that investors use to get a handle on a stock's valuation is its P/E ratio. The lower the P/E, the more attractive the stock – in general . It's important to remember that P/Es vary by industry, so a car stock might be a bit pricey with a P/E of 16, but a faster-growing software company would be more attractively priced with a P/E of 16. Keep in mind, too, that if a stock falls for good reason, its P/E will drop, too. Not every low P/E is a bargain, and some companies with seemingly steep P/Es can be great values. The more you learn about a company, and the more measures you evaluate, the more effective an investor you'll likely be. Some investors believe that as long as you've got a great company, the price isn't that important. They figure if an overvalued company keeps growing, it'll eventually grow into and surpass its price. This can happen, but it can take a long time. And sometimes it doesn't happen; the stock may instead fall closer to its fair value. Even if the stock grows, it might not do so very briskly, if it's already overvalued. Most successful investors recognize that buying at an attractive price is vital to reduce risk and maximize gain. They call it seeking a margin of safety . When to sell stocks Be sure to have a handle on when to sell a stock , too, as it's not enough to just buy a great stock. You should aim to hold for the long term, but sometimes selling is best. After all, profits are only reaped when you sell, and holding on to a stinker for too long can hurt you. So when should you sell ? Well, don't sell just because a stock or the market is falling, or you've heard some rumors, or someone tells you to sell. Here are some times when selling can be the right thing to do: If you can't remember why you bought it. If you don't know exactly how the company makes its money. If the reason you bought a stock is no longer valid. Maybe it's no longer growing briskly, or it's moving in a new direction that doesn't seem promising. If it has some persistent troubling characteristics, such as shrinking profit margins or management that doesn't inspire confidence. Short-term problems can be OK, but keep an eye out for long-term ones. If the stock has become significantly overvalued relative to what you think it's worth. But consider the tax consequences, and if you expect continued growth for a long time, you might want to hang on. If you find a much more attractive place to invest your money. If your calculations suggest that a holding is now fairly valued and another stock appears to be undervalued, you stand to gain more in the other stock. Also, this rule isn't rigid: If the fairly valued stock is likely to keep growing at a good clip, while the undervalued one isn't likely to grow too briskly, you might want to consider keeping it and enjoying more growth. Consider tax effects. The IRS will be after any gains but you can also be strategic in offloading any losses to reduce your tax bill, this is often called tax loss harvesting . If a stock is your only holding. Portfolios should be diversified , but not over-diversified. For many people, eight to 15 stocks are about right. If one holding grows to represent more than, say, 30% of your portfolio, consider selling some of it. If you'll need that money within five (or even 10) years. In that case, it should be in a less volatile place than the stock market, such as a money market account or CD. If you're only hanging on to the stock for emotional reasons, such as because you love the product or your grandfather worked for the company. Bond basics Stocks have handily outperformed bonds over most 20- and 30-year periods. Between 1802 and 2017, for example, stocks averaged annual post-inflation gains of 6.8%, while bonds averaged just 3.5%, according to the research of Jeremy Siegel. It can still make sense to include some bonds in your portfolio for diversification, especially if you're in or near retirement. Here's a quick introduction to bonds. Bonds are essentially long-term loans. If a company or government issues bonds, it's borrowing cash and promising to pay it back at a certain rate of interest. Bonds sold by the U.S. government's Treasury Department are called Treasuries. State and local governments issue municipal bonds, while businesses issue corporate bonds. So-called "junk bonds" are those issued by not-so-solid companies that have to offer generous interest rates in order to draw investors willing to bear the risk that they'll default. If you buy a $1,000 bond with a coupon rate of 5%, you'll receive $50 per year in interest payments. When the bond matures you'll be repaid your principal (the sum you originally loaned, the bond's par value). Most corporate bonds have a par value of $1,000, while government bonds can run much higher. Bond investing doesn't necessarily mean that you only buy a bond when it's first issued and then hold it to maturity, for several years or decades. Instead, bonds are often traded between investors, with their prices rising and falling in reaction to prevailing interest rates. When rates fall, people tend to bid up bond prices. After all, if banks are offering 2%, a 5% bond will be appealing. When interest rates rise, newer bonds with higher interest rates will be more appealing than older bonds with lower rates. If you hold a bond to maturity, you'll generally experience little to no volatility, but if you're dealing with bond mutual funds or are buying or selling bonds in the secondary market, know that their prices can indeed rise and fall, and meaningfully. If you're looking for investment income, consider dividend-paying stocks as well as bonds. (More on them below.) Silver gears up close, with the words financial strategy stamped on them Image source : Getty Images. Investment strategies Finally, let's review some investment strategies. Two approaches you'll often read about are growth investing and value investing. Growth investors favor fast-growing companies and are willing to pay a lot for stock in them. They'll often ignore steep valuations, (such as when a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is way above the market, industry, or company average) expecting the stocks' values to keep rising as the companies keep growing. This approach is risky, as the stocks or the overall market might pull back sharply. And not all companies keep growing, either. Value investing , on the other hand, demands a margin of safety, as investors seek bargains, aiming to buy stocks for significantly less than their estimated worth. These investors focus on fundamentals of companies, such as free cash flow, profit margins and dividends, and the growth rates of each, and will often crunch a lot of numbers to get a sense of whether a company is fairly valued or under- or over-valued. You might also be a dividend investor , favoring companies that pay their shareholders a portion of profits every month or quarter. Dividend-paying companies tend to be larger and more stable than others, because they've committed to giving their investors regular payouts. If you build a portfolio of strong dividend payers, they can deliver cash infusions during your retirement. (You can just reinvest the dividends until retirement.) A $400,000 portfolio with an average dividend yield of 3% will generate $12,000 annually -- and dividends tend to increase over time, too. Note that some companies can reflect two or more of the qualities above. A rapidly growing stock, for example, may be undervalued significantly at some points -- and might even offer a dividend. Another smart investing strategy is to make use of tax-advantaged retirement accounts such as IRAs and 401(k)s. There are traditional and Roth varieties of each. With a traditional IRA or 401(k) account, you contribute pre-tax money, reducing your taxable income for the year, and thereby reducing your taxes as well. For example, if you have taxable income of $50,000 and make a $5,000 contribution to a traditional IRA or 401(k), your taxable income shrinks to $45,000 for the year. The money grows in your account and is taxed at your ordinary income tax rate when you withdraw it in retirement. Many of us will be in lower tax brackets in retirement, so not only is the tax bill postponed, but it's often reduced. A Roth IRA, on the other hand, has the potential to be much more powerful. You contribute post -tax money to a Roth IRA, so your taxable income isn't reduced at all in the contribution year. (Taxable income of $50,000 and a $5,000 contribution? Your taxable income remains $50,000 for the year.) Here's why the Roth IRA is a big deal, though: If you follow the rules, your money grows in the account until you withdraw it in retirement -- when it's yours tax-free . Spend some time reading up on investing strategies and see which ones make the most sense for you, given your goals, temperament, and preferences. And finally, remember that one of the most important pieces of advice about investing for beginners is this: Just get started. Don't be intimidated, because you can stick with simple investments such as index funds. They can help you sleep well at night while making your retirement more secure. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Selena Maranjian owns shares of Boeing and Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool is short shares of SPDR S&P; 500 and has the following options: short January 2019 $285 calls on SPDR S&P; 500 and long January 2019 $255 puts on SPDR S&P; 500. The Motley Fool recommends Costco Wholesale and CVS Health. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Safety Insurance Group: Winter Weather Weighs on First-Quarter Earnings: Safety Insurance Group(NASDAQ: SAFT)reported that winter weather activity and an accounting change were drags on its first-quarter results, though a lower tax rate was a net positive to the Massachusetts-based insurance company.
Here's what shareholders should know now.
[{"Metric": "Combined ratio", "Q1 2018": "103.4%", "Q1 2017": "99.2%", "Year-Over-Year Change": "4.2 ppt"}, {"Metric": "Net income", "Q1 2018": "$9.1 million", "Q1 2017": "$12 million", "Year-Over-Year Change": "(24%)"}, {"Metric": "Diluted EPS", "Q1 2018": "$0.60", "Q1 2017": "$0.79", "Year-Over-Year Change": "(24%)"}, {"Metric": "Book value per share", "Q1 2018": "$44.85", "Q1 2017": "$44.54", "Year-Over-Year Change": "(1%)"}]
Data source: Safety Insurance Group.
Here are some things shareholders should know about Safety's first quarter.
• Earnings need some adjustments: In prior periods, Safety's unrealized gains or losses on its investment portfolio didn't flow through to its net income line. Now they do, thanks to an accounting change that affects financial companies of all types, from insurers to banks. Backing out gains and losses on its investment portfolio, Safety earned $0.71 per share, down slightly from $0.72 per share it earned on the samenon-GAAPbasis in the year-ago period.
• Lower taxes helped: Safety's effective tax rate declined to 18.5% from 27.8% in the year-ago period, due to theTax Cuts and Jobs Act. The company's tax rate is lower than the new statutory corporate tax rate (21%) because some of its investment income is derived fromtax-exempt securities.
• Losses increased: Safety reported a loss ratio of 71.7% this quarter, up from 67.7% in the year-ago period. The company said in its quarterly filing that "winter weather-related activity" was to blame for a higher loss ratio. Thecombined ratio, which measures losses and operating costs as a percentage of earned premiums, jumped to 103.4%, up from 99.2% in the first quarter of 2017. (A lower combined ratio is better.)
• Benefiting from conservatism: Safety said its first-quarter results included $14.2 million of prior-year favorable development, which occurs when an insurer reduces its loss assumptions for contracts underwritten in earlier periods. A long record of reportingprior-year favorable developmentsuggest that Safety Insurance Group makes very conservative estimates about losses, which is exactly what you want to see in an insurance company. It's better to have surprises to the upside than to the downside, to be sure.
Safety Insurance Group doesn't host conference calls, and only infrequently updates qualitative information about its business in quarterly and annual filings. As the company moves through a new year, it's a good time to review how Safety Insurance makes its money and where it competes for business.
Image source: Getty Images.
Safety Insurance Group is primarily an auto insurance company, as it generates more than 70% of its direct written premium volume from personal and commercial auto insurance policies. Homeowners policies make up the vast majority of the balance, though it also has small exposures to dwelling fire, umbrella, and business owner policies, which are included as "other" insurance in the chart below.
Data from Safety Insurance Group's 10-Q. Figures are from 2017. Chart by author.
Though the company competes in New Hampshire and Maine (markets it entered in 2008 and 2016, respectively), it derives a very small percentage of its premiums from these two states. It's most dominant in Massachusetts, where it generates more than 97% of its premiums from independent agents.
[{"Insurance Line": "Commercial auto", "Rank inMassachusetts": "No. 2", "Market Share in 2017": "15.6%"}, {"Insurance Line": "Personal auto", "Rank inMassachusetts": "No. 4", "Market Share in 2017": "9.3%"}, {"Insurance Line": "Homeowners", "Rank inMassachusetts": "No. 3", "Market Share in 2017": "7.3%"}]
Data source: Quarterly report.
The "legacy" business in Massachusetts remains its bread-and-butter business. Founded in 1979, its Massachusetts business has a multidecade head start on its operations in New Hampshire and Maine. The company generates virtually all of its business from relationships with 892 independent agents located in the three states in which it operates.
Safety Insurance Group has proven conservative in managing its risks and adequately pricing its policies, though it shows in tepid premium growth. Direct written premiums increased by only 2% in the first quarter compared to the year-ago period. Since 2013, direct written premiums have grown at a compounded rate of less than 2% per year.
Like any property and casualty insurer, Safety Insurance should benefit from rising interest rates over time. The company noted that its investment portfolio now yields about 3.3%, up from 2.9% last year. Given its investments have duration of less than four years, it is most exposed to interest rates on the short end of the curve.
In other words, Safety shareholders should root for more rate increases by the Federal Reserve, as rate increases will quickly pay dividends in the form of higher interest income on its $622 million bond portfolio.
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Jordan Wathenhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Safety Insurance Group. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Chipotle Mexican Grill Has Bigger Problems Than Its HQ Location: Hiring Brian Niccol as CEO ofChipotle Mexican Grill(NYSE: CMG)washailed as a smart movebecause of his success in transforming Taco Bell into an innovative, modern fast food chain.
However, uprooting the fast-casual company's corporate home of 25 years to appease the incoming executive at a time when the business is still in a precarious situation may be a sign he will not integrate as seamlessly with the company as expected.
Chipotle Mexican Grill posted a better than expected first quarter earnings report in late April and Niccol was able to preside over a conference call with analysts that allowed him to lay out a strategy for the future. The response from the market was to send the stock soaring 24% and with the gains it has made in the weeks since, Chipotle shares are now up 75% since his hiring in February.
Data source:YCharts.
That's a lot of betting that Niccol will be able to work his magic again, but it's still a tall order. Chipotle has yet to leave the shadow of itslate-2015 E. coli outbreak, and while comparable store sales were up for the quarter, that was mostly the result of price increases. Profit margins were also higher but on weak comparisons as the bar was pretty low after years of dismal results.
The more important metric -- guest traffic -- fell yet again, down 3.3% for the period, and winning back that customer loyalty remains a challenge..
Niccol laid out a roadmap on the earnings call of melding the menu with a digital presence to drive home to young consumers that Chipotle's "accessible food done fast" is still appealing. But he's also made sure the company is going to be distracted with other priorities, namely moving the company headquarters to his hometown.
Even though Denver has been Chipotle's home since its founding in 1993, and despite having signed in December a 15-year lease to occupy a brand new office tower in downtown Denver, the restaurant recently announced it was moving its headquarters to the upscale city Newport Beach in California where Niccol lives.
The move also impacts Chipotle's New York offices, which will be permanently closed and relocated to California, though support staff will be consolidated into offices in Columbus, Ohio. The relocation affects roughly 400 employees in Denver and New York as only some will be given relocation and retention packages.
The upheaval will be spread out over six months despite the fact that this is a time Chipotle should be working to reestablish itself as the country's premier fast casual restaurant. The move is an unnecessary distraction and indicates Chipotle is putting the needs of its CEO over that of its employees.
New CEO risks causing a tumult by relocating Chipotle's corporate headquarters so he can work close to home. Image source: Chipotle Mexican Grill.
In the press release announcing the move, Niccol said the transition "will help us drive sustainable growth while continuing to position us well in the competition for top talent."
The reality is more likely Niccol didn't want to move and relocating the offices was probably a condition of his accepting the position. Taco Bell headquarters, where he worked since 2011, is located in Irvine, less than 15 miles from Newport Beach.
While a number of other fast food chains are located in the southern California area, including Del Taco, In-n-Out Burger, and of course Taco Bell, the idea Chipotle needs to locate there as well for business reasons seems specious. The disruption to employees and operations is a much larger concern.
Chipotle was supposed to be occupying some 126,000 square feet of space across five floors of the new 40-story office building, but now it will be responsible for subleasing the space or finding a new tenant.
Because of Niccol's background in marketing, and his success in using that skill to change the perception around Taco Bell, we'll likely see a much higher profile for Chipotle Mexican Grill. Those increased costs will eat into profits, particularly if its new delivery service continues growing as it did last quarter. The deal with DoorDash will also swipe profits from the restaurant, though obviously the hope is Chipotle will be making up in volume what it's losing on each order.
Chipotle Mexican Grill isn't Taco Bell, however, and it's not quite clear that what worked with fast food can have similar results in the fast casual space, which continues to lag behind other segments of the restaurant industry.
One quarter does not make a trend and feeling Niccol was the only person that could lead the turnaround so that already-set plans should be disrupted suggests the new CEO might not be the neat fit to the corporate culture he was originally believed to be.
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Rich Dupreyhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Chipotle Mexican Grill. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin - BTC
Price: $6,852.33
Change in 1h: -0.45%
Market cap: $116,290,118,117.00
Ranking: 1
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#ICO #airdrop #bounty #BTC #xrp #ftoken #Crypto #ETH #NEO #Blockchain #ripple #trx #tron #trx #binance #crypto #airdrops #token #cryptocurrency #freetoken #mew #erc20 || gl || #BitCoin Vs #Ripple ( #BTC vs #XRP ) - a side by side comparisonhttp://crwd.fr/2HT3cI9 || Bitcoin & Altcoins bei Deutschen als Geldanlage beliebt http://bit.ly/2Lig646 || If you're willing to make 1% daily for the next 200 days on your bitcoin, then use this link. You don't need to be well educated in bitcoin before you join. You can use Mobile money (for Ghanaians). Other nationals can... https://www.facebook.com/Theo2pm/posts/1764158963622432 … || $BTC is now worth $9,084.00 (-0.20%) #BTC || I would like to thank you if one BTC gathered.Terima Sebaik sahaja anda telah berkumpul 1BTC.
Terima Setelah anda mengumpulkan 1BTC.Please l || on attend la suite de leur api strike ! mais good job ! #api #bitcoin #LightningNetwork #javascript || Protecting Our Future, Volume 2, completes the comprehensive exami http://bit.ly/1LL79J5 #Cybersecurity #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/VH2Qm39WIM
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Trend: down || Prices: 7514.47, 7633.76, 7653.98, 7678.24, 7624.92, 7531.98, 6786.02, 6906.92, 6582.36, 6349.90
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
The Crypto Daily – The Movers and Shakers 02/07/19: Bitcoin saw red for a 3 rd consecutive day to kick off the 3 rd quarter on the back foot. Bitcoin fell by 1.48% on Monday. Following on from a 9.33% slide on Sunday, Bitcoin ended the day at $10,640. A relatively bullish start to the day saw Bitcoin rise from a morning low $10,641 to an early morning intraday high $11,231. While falling well short of the first major resistance level at $11,806, Bitcoin came up against the 23.6% FIB of $11,275 before hitting reverse. An afternoon sell-off saw Bitcoin slide to an early evening intraday low $10,088 before finding support. The reversal saw Bitcoin fall through the first major support level before recovering to $10,600 levels. The Rest of the Pack Across the rest of the top 10 cryptos, it was a sea of green across the crypto-board. Leading the way on the day was EOS, which rallied by 4.96%. Close behind was Bitcoin Cash ABC, which rose by 4.11%. Binance Coin and Ripple’s XRP also saw solid gains, rising by 3.86% and by 3.49% respectively. Bitcoin Cash SV (+1.00%), Ethereum (+1.25%), and Stellar’s Lumen (+2.04%) saw more modest gains on the day. With Bitcoin bucking the trend to see red on the day, Bitcoin’s dominance fell back to 60% levels. A choppy day for the crypto majors led the total crypto market cap to sub-$300bn levels before a late recovery. At the time of writing, the total crypto market cap stood at $303.56bn. Following a bullish month for Bitcoin, the pullback from $12,000 levels to test support at $10,000 will test investor resilience. It wouldn’t be the first time that Bitcoin slid back from a momentum driven rally… This Morning At the time of writing, Bitcoin was down by 3.44% to $10,274.4. An early morning high $10,719 came up short of the first major resistance level at $11,796 before hitting reverse. Bitcoin fell to a morning low $10,263 before steadying. In spite of the pullback, Bitcoin held above the first major support level at $10,075. Story continues It was a sea of red across the crypto majors. Litecoin and Binance Coin were alongside Bitcoin at the time of writing. The pair were down by 3.26% and $3.14% respectively. Bitcoin Cash SV saw a modest loss of just 0.48% through the early hours. For the Day Ahead Bitcoin would need to move back through to $10,700 levels to support a broad-based crypto market rebound. A move through to $10,700 levels would bring $11,000 levels into play before any pullback. Barring a broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level at $11,218 and 23.6% FIB of $11,275 would likely limit any upside. In the event of a rebound, Bitcoin could test the second major resistance level at $11,796 before any pullback. Failure to move back through to $10,700 levels could see Bitcoin struggle through the day. A slide through the morning low $10,263 would bring the first major support level at $10,075 into play. Barring a crypto meltdown, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$10,000 support levels on the day. In the event of a meltdown, the 38.2% FIB of $9,734 and second major support level at $9,510 should limit the damage. Get Into Cryptocurrency Trading Today This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Safe Haven Assets Restore Gains as Risk Appetite Falters Despite US-China Trade Truce USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis – July 3, 2019 Forecast USD/CAD Daily Forecast – Bearish Rising Wedge Pattern Set into Action Economic Data, Brexit and Carney Line Up Against the Pound Asian Shares Lower, but Australian Market Bucks the Trend Ethereum Analysis – Support Levels in Play – 03/07/19 || Binance launches bitcoin-pegged token on Binance Chain: Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges by volume, is issuing a bitcoin-backed token, the firm announced in a blog post on Monday. Named BTCB, the tokens are reportedly 100% backed by bitcoins held in a reserve address, and will be issued by the exchange's native blockchain network, Binance Chain. BTCB's launch is part of a larger move by the exchange to boost the selection of tokens available for trading on Binance DEX, Binance's recently-launched decentralized exchange. BTCBs will be available for trading via a BTCB/BTC trading pair on Binance's main platform, and can then be transferred to Binance DEX for trading. "With the increase in the selection of tokens available on Binance DEX, there should be an increase in trading volume and liquidity, This would further increase the utility value of Binance DEX," the firm stated. There are plans to have multiple crypto-pegged tokens in the future. || Bitcoin Cash ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis 17/06/19: Bitcoin Cash ABC Touches $440 Bitcoin Cash ABC gained 2% on Sunday. Following on from a 0.36% rise from Saturday, Bitcoin Cash ABC ended the week up 13.6% to $430.0. A bullish morning saw Bitcoin Cash ABC rally from an early intraday low $421.08 to late morning intraday high $440.0. Steering clear of the major support levels, Bitcoin Cash ABC broke through the first major resistance level at $427.96 and second major resistance level at $433.43. Relatively choppy through the remainder of the day, Bitcoin Cash ABC slid to $422 levels in the late morning and late evening before recovering to $430 levels. At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash ABC was down by 0.7% to $427.00. A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin Cash ABC rise from a morning low $426.0 to a high $432.61 before sliding back. Bitcoin Cash ABC left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. For the day ahead, a move back through to $430 levels would support a run at the first major resistance level at $439.64. Barring a broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Sundays high $440 would likely limit any upside. In the event of a crypto rally, Bitcoin Cash ABC could take a run at the second major resistance level at $449.28. Failure to move back through to $430 levels could see Bitcoin Cash ABC slide deeper into the red. A fall through to $425 levels would bring the first major support level at $420.72 into play. In the event of a broad-based sell-off, the second major support level at $411.44 would likely prevent a visit to sub-$410 levels. Litecoin in Recovery Litecoin fell by 1.05% on Sunday. Partially reversing a 4.36% gain from Saturday, Litecoin ended the week up 19.3% to $137.0. A relatively choppy day saw Litecoin rise to a mid-morning intraday high $139.14 before hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $141.38, Litecoin fell to a mid-morning intraday low $133.07. Litecoin fell through the first major support level at $133.95 before striking an afternoon high $137.63. Story continues A choppy afternoon saw Litecoin fall back to $134 levels before finding support to cut the deficit on the day. At the time of writing, Litecoin was down by 0.91% to $135.76. A bearish start to the day saw Litecoin fall from a morning high $137.4 to a low $134.99 before finding support. Litecoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. For the day ahead, a move back through to $136.5 levels would signal a recovery. Litecoin would need to move through to $138 levels, however, to bring the first major resistance level at $139.74 into play. Barring a broad-based crypto rally, Sundays high $139.14 and the first major resistance level would likely pin Litecoin back from a break out to the second major resistance level at $142.47. Failure to move through to $136.5 levels could see Litecoin fall further back. A fall through the morning low $134.99 would bring the first major support level at $133.67 into play. Barring a crypto meltdown, the second major support level at $130.33 would likely limit the downside on the day. Ripples XRP Makes a Move Ripples XRP rallied by 4.07% on Sunday. Following on from a 2.01% rise from Saturday, Ripples XRP ended the week up 11.2% to $0.42838. Bearish through much of the day, Ripples XRP rallied from an early intraday low $0.40787 to a late afternoon intraday high $0.44400. Steering clear of the major support levels, Ripples XRP broke through the 23.6% FIB of $0.4164 and major resistance levels. A pullback to $0.41 levels was short-lived, with Ripples XRP managing to end the day at $0.42 levels. At the time of writing, Ripples XRP was up by 0.44% to $0.43028. In the early hours, Ripples XRP rose from a morning low $0.42807 to a high $0.43343 before easing back. Ripples XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. For the day ahead, a hold above $0.4270 levels would support upward momentum in the day ahead. Ripples XRP would need support from the broader market, however, to take a run at the first major resistance level at $0.4456. Barring a broad-based crypto rally, Ripples XRP would likely come up short of $0.44 levels on the day. Failure to hold above $0.4270 levels could see Ripples XRP slide back to sub-$0.42 levels before any recovery. Barring a broad-based crypto sell-off, the first major support level at $0.4095 would limit any downside on the day. Please let us know what you think in the comments below Thanks, Bob This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis Weekly Chart Strengthens Over 7551.00, Weakens Under 7439.75 Fed Messaging the Key Focus for Week Ahead Natural Gas Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast Price Action Suggests Traders Pricing in Return of Hot Temperatures Price of Gold Fundamental Weekly Forecast Euro Will Exert More Influence on Prices than Fed The UK Leadership Race, Trade, Monetary Policy, Iran and U.S Stats in Focus European Equities: Geopolitics and Monetary Policy in Focus || 20-year-old crypto millionaire: Facebook Calibra is going to be ‘huge’ for crypto: Facebook (FB)finally announcedits long-awaited cryptocurrency offering Calibra this week, and one Bitcoin (BTC) millionaire thinks it will be huge.
The social network on Tuesdayofficially unveiled Calibra, a cryptocurrency system launching in 2020 that includes a stablecoin called Libra, as well as a digital wallet inside Messenger and WhatsApp that will let users store, send and receive Libra. Pegged to a basket of government-issued currencies to avoid pricing volatility, Libra will launch with at least 29 partners, including Visa (V), Mastercard (MA), Uber (UBER), and Spotify (SPOT), and be governed by an independent council. According to 20-year-old Bitcoin millionaire Erik Finman, Calibra is an “amazing” product that will help legitimize cryptocurrency and bring mainstream attention to the overall space.
“This is going to be huge for the cryptocurrency space — it’s a huge deal,” says Finman, founder of the bitcoin investing platform CoinBits. “If cryptocurrency wasn’t obvious before, it’s really obvious now. It’s here to stay, and it’s here forever. This isn’t just a project anymore or something that’s in the gallows of the internet.”
Finman carved out a reputation among crypto enthusiasts for investing in Bitcoin (BTC) back in 2011 at $12 a coin using $1,000 his grandmother gave him. The 20-year-old’s investment ballooned to $4 million during Bitcoin’s all-time high in 2017, earning him the nickname “the teenaged bitcoin millionaire.” Incidentally, Finman also won a bet with his parents: if he became a crypto millionaire before he turned 18, he could skip college.
But as exciting as Calibra sounds, it also raises some “scary” possibilities, Finman adds.
“There’s a part of me, again, that says that [Calibra] is great for the credibility of cryptocurrency,” Finman emphasizes. “And while that’s probably the best thing from Mark Zuckerberg’s point of view, it could also be the worst thing depending on how Calibra evolves. Look at all the crazy stuff Facebook’s been doing with your privacy and security.”
Besides using Facebook user data towards its sophisticated advertising products, the social network has also come under fire over the last 18 months for incidents regarding user privacy. The Cambridge Analytica scandal from March 2018, for instance, resulted in voting firm Cambridge Analytica gaining access to the information of up to 87 million Facebook users without their consent. Indeed, Facebook anticipates paying a $3 billion to $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission for its privacy lapses.
In itswhite paperpublished this week, Facebook added that Calibra will be independently governed by the Libra Association Council, based in Geneva. And while the group will serve as the entity through which the Libra Reserve—a reserve of "financial assets" for backing Libra — is managed, Finman indicates this more “centralized” model could be used for Facebook’s benefit. After all, Libra will be stored in digital wallets hosted by Facebook-owned services such as Messenger and WhatsApp.
“That's very much against the mood in which cryptocurrency was invented, which was, you know, freedom, decentralization, no one to shut it down, and no centralized control,” Finman contends. “The Libra Association and Facebook basically control the development of Calibra. It’s scary, inherently, because it’s run by a massive giant entity, and it’s scary, especially with the reputation Facebook has.”
Only time will tell whether Finman’s fears are founded.
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• SF landlords dropping big cash to garages into pricey apartments || BitFlyer Launches ‘Simple’ Bitcoin Buying and Selling Service for EU Market: The European arm of Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange bitFlyer has launched a bitcoin buying and selling service aimed to be easier to use than spot trading exchanges.
BitFlyer Europe announced the news on Tuesday, saying the new trading platform targets people wanting “a simple way to buy and sell bitcoin, from total beginners to experienced traders.” Until now, the firm offered only a pro-trader service, dubbed Lightning, as its euro-bitcoin marketplace.
Available via the bitFlyer Europe website, the “bitFlyer Buy/Sell” service allows users to exchange bitcoin for euros, with a maximum of 20 BTC per transaction.
Related:Bitcoin’s Largest Wallet Blockchain Just Launched Its First Crypto Exchange
According to its website, the service is not an order book exchange and users will pay no fees on sales or purchases of bitcoin. Presumably, in that case, bitFlyer is making its money on the spread between its own buying and selling prices.
Indeed, while the global average price for bitcoin displayed on crypto data service CoinMarketCap is €8,526 at time of writing, bitFlyer is offering sales at €8,727.
On sign-up, new users are expected to check a box indicating they are not residents of the U.S. Standard know-your-customer procedures request personal details such as address and phone number, as well as an identity documents like a passport or driving license.
The firm describes itself as the “only” crypto exchange to be licensed in Japan, the U.S. and the EU.
Related:Crypto Exchange and Custodian Smart Valor Goes Live in Switzerland
Andy Bryant, co-lead and COO of bitFlyer Europe, said:
“bitFlyer Buy/Sell is a virtual currency exchange for everyone – with simple two-click buy and sell capability. Not only is bitFlyer Buy/Sell easy to use, but with us users have the confidence that they are using a trusted, regulated platform with long-standing global heritage.”
Euros and bitcoinimage via Shutterstock
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• Crypto Exchanges Are Benefiting from Algorithmic Trading: Here’s How || Crypto News: Bitcoin Plunges, Coinbase Suffers Outage: The crypto marketplace is like the Wild West of the financial world -- and it's been even wilder than normal over the past 24 hours.
Here's a recap of some notable events that took place over the past day.
Bitcoin's volatility is back. After surging more than 300% from its lows near $3,200 back in December, the world's most valuable cryptocurrency has seen its price sink by more than 20% from its recent highs near $13,800 in the past 24 hours.
Other cryptocurrencies -- including Litecoin, Ripple's XRP, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash -- are also down more than 15%. Overall, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies at large fell by roughly $75 billion over the past day.
Image source: Getty Images.
Some traders are chalking up Bitcoin's fall to a simple technical correction after being "overbought," alleging that traders are taking gains after the cryptocurrency's huge recent upward move.
Others say the vicious drop was amplified by excessive leverage in the marketplace. Some crypto exchanges offer margin services that allow traders to leverage their bets by as much as 100 times. "The presence of leverage exacerbates the moves in both directions and affects the speed dramatically," Genesis Global Trading CEO Michael Moro toldCNBC.
One thing is for sure: Bitcoin's notorious volatility has returned. Where it takes the popular cryptocurrency's price next remains to be seen.
Popular crypto exchange Coinbase experienced a service outage on Wednesday. This was likely another factor that contributed to price declines for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, as exchange problems tend to reduce investor confidence and overall market sentiment.
Bitcoin's recent surge has brought many traders back into the marketplace. Exchanges such as Binance, Bitstamp, and Coinbase have experienced record-high trading in Bitcoin and other digital currencies in recent days. While this is profitable for the exchanges, it appears such activity may have placed a strain on Coinbase's systems. Coinbase's site was down "for a short period of time due to high volume," a company spokesperson toldCNBC.
Coinbase wasn't the only trading service that experienced issues during the day. Popular trading app Robinhood was also rendered inaccessible for a brief period of time, according toCoindesk.
These trading platform outages highlight one of the many risks inherent in the crypto markets: You may not be able to access your investments when you want to. Traders should plan accordingly, and factor the possibility of additional exchange outages into their strategies.
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Joe Tenebrusohas no position in any of the cryptocurrencies mentioned. The Motley Foolhas no position in any of the cryptocurrencies mentioned.The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Bitfinex Swears It’s Trying Super Hard to Block US Bitcoin Traders: Beset with allegations that it is flouting regulations by allowing US bitcoin traders to access its platform, cryptocurrency exchange giantBitfinexpromised that it’s tryingsuper hardto stop that from happening.
In anofficial announcement published on Friday, Bitfinex confirmed a report fromThe Blockthat a New York resident had managed to open an account called “ImaNYresident.”
After sneakily evading Bitfinex’s security restrictions – read: checking a box that says they pinky-swear they’re not a US resident – ImaNYresident was able to use the bitcoin exchange freely.
It’s not a good look for Bitfinex, which hascome under legal scrutinyfor allegedly serving US bitcoin traders. The New York Attorney General claims that Bitfinex, along with stablecoin issuerTether, has offered unlicensed cryptocurrency services to New York residents up to and including 2019.
But the firm promises it’s working super-duper hard to keep its exchange squeaky-clean: “we remind United States persons that they are not welcome on our platform,” the announcement read.
Read the full story on CCN.com. || Australia’s Central Bank: Cryptos Will Not Receive Wide Acceptance in the Near Future: Cryptocurrencieswill not receive wide use inAustraliaas long as the localfinancialsystem is efficiently working, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) stated in an officialdocumentissued on June 20.
According to the notice authored by analysts from RBA’s payments policy department, there is "little likelihood of a material take-up of cryptocurrencies for retail payments in Australia in the foreseeable future" due to a number of reasons.
In the document, authors outlined the so-called "scalability trilemma,” which means that crypto can at best solve only two out of the three basic features such asdecentralization,scalability, andsecurity. The paper states that cryptos will always lack some of the features in some way, which purportedly makes this type of asset less attractive. The document reads:
“In practice, these trade offs are incremental; increasing the scalability of a blockchain does not require it to become entirely centralised or insecure, but more centralised or less secure.”
Another obstacle to the wide acceptance of crypto assets is increasedvolatility, the RBA said in the document. In this regard, the authors also cited the much-discussed crypto project by social media giantFacebook, which was officially unveiled on June 18. Built as astablecoinbacked byfiatcurrencies, Facebook’slibrais expected to solve the volatility issue, the authors wrote, while still losing in terms of decentralization by relying on a central body to buy and manage the assets that back the stablecoin.
In the document, the RBA cited particular cases of attempted stablecoin launches in Australia, claiming that stablecoins’ use for payments “has been very limited” as “has the supply of Australian dollar-linked stablecoins.” The financial authority cited the first Australian dollar (AUD)-pegged stablecoin AUDRamp, which went live in September 2018 but completely lost its worth after 137tokenswere issued. The authors also cited theTrueAUDstablecoin, launched in April 2019 by TrustToken, claiming that “no tokens appear to have been issued” to date.
The RBA authors conclude that cryptocurrencies have not developed enough to represent a “compelling proposition that would lead to their widespread use in Australia” as long as the Australian dollar provides a “reliable, low-inflation store of value.” They write:
“Developments to date have also not added sufficiently to the overall reliability, functionality and credibility of cryptocurrencies to make them an attractive alternative to established payment systems for everyday payments for the population at large.”
Recently, Australia’s securities regulatorreleasednew initial coin offering and cryptocurrency guidelines, considering cryptocurrency to be a financial product, which requires involved parties to get an Australian financial services license.
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• Litecoin Foundation to Release Physical Cryptocurrency Debit Card || Your Old Baseball Cards Are a Better Store of Value Than Bitcoin: One of the primary arguments in favor ofbitcoinis that it is a “store of value.” It makes sense on the surface, but when one digs into the meat of this claim, it comes up with less beef than a Beyond Meat burger.
The category of “investment commodity” refers to things that people buy that represent a store of value because of their end use,aesthetic, historical, and/or emotional value.
Baseball cards, and other collectibles like art and rare coins, are such examples. People are willing to pay for these items for these reasons.
So what makes bitcoin different?
Todd J. Zywicki is aSenior Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He points out:
Read the full story on CCN.com. || Litecoin Could Blast Off Due to Halving and Wave Two of Bull Run: Litecoin halving is a few days away as rudimentary Elliott Wave analysis reveals that it ended wave two of its bull run. | Source: Shutterstock The Litecoin halving is just a few days away. Even with this bullish catalyst on the horizon, the No. 4 cryptocurrency appears to be struggling against bitcoin . Litecoin (LTC/BTC) has posted four consecutive red candles on the monthly chart against bitcoin. The slump saw the coin’s value drop from the 2019 high of 1,893,900 satoshis in April down to lows of 797,600 satoshis this month. That’s plunge of over 57 percent in three months. The good news is that the end of the correction might be in sight. Litecoin is printing multiple bullish signals against bitcoin. If our analysis is correct, the LTC/BTC market could skyrocket by over 60 percent in the next few months as the market ends wave two. Rudimentary Elliott Wave Analysis Reveals That Litecoin May Have Ended Wave Two of Its Bull Run While everyone’s busy predicting what bitcoin’s next move will be, Litecoin made a series of moves showing the correction has finally come to its end. A rudimentary Elliott Wave analysis of the daily chart shows that the market completed wave one when it climbed as high as 1,893,900 satoshis on April 3. It then entered wave two and painted a corrective A-B-C wave. Typically, the corrective A-B-C wave drives the price down by 60 percent . The downward spiral to 797,600 satoshis on July 16 meets this requirement. Litecoin WAVE Counts If our wave counts are accurate, this means that the cryptocurrency appears ready to blast off. Wave three is the longest wave up. In other words, Litecoin could surpass the 2019 high of 1,893,900 satoshis. Read the full story on CCN.com .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
$EPAZ's Bitcoin Sharing & Blockchain Social Media App Webbeeo Is In Alpha Testing Phase https://www.owltmarket || Crypto is my job and I take lots of time to investigate various projects. This project is the most top-drawer in my rating. #Shato || $EPAZ's Bitcoin Sharing & Blockchain Social Media App Webbeeo Is In Alpha Testing Phase https://www.owltmarket || You ought to Take your time to check this! The most gorgeous ever! #Shato || 1 #BTC = 10111.076 #CHF
1 #ETH = 222.3182 #CHF
1 #DOGE = 0.0028951296474 #CHF
sources: @cryptonatorcom @bity || $EPAZ's Bitcoin Sharing & Blockchain Social Media App Webbeeo Is In Alpha Testing Phase https://www.owltmarket || To all the folks who seeing $BTC maxies laughing at $ALTS right now; be patient, it will come :)
#bitcoin #altcoins #MarketMovers || @DxnvxrW I need to keep buying to make up for the huge losses i'm probably going to take with these bad altcoin trades lol, got just under 3 months for alts futures to rally against BTC or i'm mega rekt || You ought to Take your time to check this! The most gorgeous ever! #Shato || BTCちゃん３/１７に予想してたパターン来るか？
指値はまだ刺さらず
明確な上髭もなし
|
Trend: down || Prices: 11382.62, 10895.83, 10051.70, 10311.55, 10374.34, 10231.74, 10345.81, 10916.05, 10763.23, 10138.05
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2022-07-19]
BTC Price: 23389.43, BTC RSI: 61.24
Gold Price: 1710.00, Gold RSI: 27.39
Oil Price: 104.22, Oil RSI: 48.68
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
3 Biotech Stocks to Buy Before They Boom: Biotech stocks have never really managed to recreate the success they had in 2020 amid the Covid-19 outbreak. For a second year in running, the sector is caught in a rut, underperforming the beaten-down broader market.
TheSPDR S&P Biotech ETF(NYSEARCA:XBI) and theiShares Biotechnology ETF(NASDAQ:IBB) are down about 40% and 25%, respectively, year-to-date. The steeper pullback of the former shows more pain in the mid-cap space, given the heavy weighting of the stocks in the index.
It may not be status quo for long. Research and development (R&D) momentum is continuing to accelerate, as companies, both big and small, work on improved treatments and branch out into new therapeutic areas. Thetotal number of products in active development number around 6,000, up 68%from five years ago, data provided by healthcare analytics companyIqviashows.
InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
Mergers & acquisitions, another indicator of vibrancy in the space, has also picked up pace after a period of lull in 2021. Earlier this month,Pfizer(NYSE:PFE) announced adeal to buy migraine drug makerBiohaven(NYSE:BHVN) for $11.6 billion. Ahead of this,GlaxoSmithKline(NYSE:GSK)agreed to buySierra Oncology(NASDAQ:SRRA) for $1.9 billion.
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Over and above fundamental factors, the protracted weakness renders biopharma stocks as ideal candidates for a bounce back.
[{"KYMR": "KZR", "Kymera Therapeutics, Inc.": "Kezar Life Sciences, Inc.", "$14.23": "$5.06"}, {"KYMR": "PTGX", "Kymera Therapeutics, Inc.": "Protagonist Therapeutics, Inc.", "$14.23": "$8.79"}]
Source: Mongkolchon Akesin / Shutterstock.com
Watertown, Massachusetts-basedKymera Therapeutics(NASDAQ:KYMR) is a clinical-stage biopharma developing small-molecule therapeutics that selectively degrade disease-causing proteins. Its primary claim to fame is its proprietary targeted protein degradation platform called Pegasus.
Kymera’s unique-selling proposition is that its therapeutic candidates can be used in areas that cannot be drugged or are inadequately drugged. The company currently focuses on therapeutic areas such as immunology-inflammation and oncology. Down the line, it has plans to expand into other areas as well.
The most advanced drug in Kymera’s pipeline is KT-474, which is being evaluated for multiple immune-inflammatory conditions, including hidradenitis suppurativa, atopic dermatitis and rheumatoid arthritis. The company has an ongoing R&D collaboration withSanofi(NASDAQ:SNY) for the investigational therapy, with the latter agreeing to take over the clinical development from the Phase 2 stage.
Initial safety and proof-of-mechanism data from the Phase 1 study of KT-474 is due in the second half of 2022. This data is key for Sanofi to decide whether it should proceed with the Phase 2 study.
Kymera last reported having$523 million in cash, which it reports should provide a cushion until 2025.
Source: Shutterstock
Kezar Life Sciences(NASDAQ:KZR) has a catalyst coming up as early as June. The South San Francisco, California-based clinical-stage biopharma focuses on immune-mediated and oncologic indications.
The company’s lead compound, KZR-616 is being developed in two separate Phase 2 studies for lupus nephritis as well as dermatomyositis/polymyositis. Topline data from the lupus nephritis study is due in June. The data assumes importance as Kezar’s stock took a big hit in early May, when it announced that KZR-616 failed to meet the primary endpoint with statistical significance in the dermatomyositis/polymyositis study.
If Kezar manages to turn in positive data from the lupus nephritis study, the stock could recover the lost ground and rally from thereon.
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Kezar’scash and cash-equivalents stood at $242.6 millionat the end of the first quarter.
Source: Shutterstock
Newark, California-basedProtagonist Therapeutics(NASDAQ:PTGX) has a peptide technology platform that has been used to develop drugs that stimulate or inhibit receptors. The company’s lead drug – rusfertide – is in mid-stage development for multiple indications. Preparations are ongoing for the start of the Phase 3 study in polycythemia vera (PV), a rare type of blood cancer. Enrollment into the study will close in the first half of 2023.
Data from a second Phase 2 study of rusfertide in PV will be presented at the ASCO meeting scheduled for June 3-7. The company is also working on potential next steps for the candidate in hereditary hemochromatosis.
It has two more Phase 2 candidates, codenamed PN-943 and PN-235. The former is being evaluated for ulcerative colitis and the latter for plaque psoriasis. The company is exploring potential collaborations with big pharma companies to support global registrational studies and commercialization of the former. For the latter, Protagonist has an ongoing collaboration withJohnson & Johnson’s(NYSE:JNJ) Janssen unit.
Protagonist’scash position at the end of the first quarter was $305.3 million, providing it cash runway through the end of 2024.
On the date of publication, Shanthi Rexaline did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The post3 Biotech Stocks to Buy Before They Boomappeared first onInvestorPlace. || Crypto Exchange Nonfinite to Sell Their 3000 BTC at 1 to 5% Lower Price Than the Market Price: Nonfinite has offered their 8 years stock of 3000 BTC to soft launch their crypto exchange platform. Vilnius, June 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The current shake in the cryptocurrency market has led many companies and investors to reconsider their investment strategies. However, web 3.0-based platforms like Nonfinite have taken this opportunity to introduce their unique crypto exchange, selling BTC at a 1 to 5 percent lower price than the market price. The Nonfinite exchange allows users to buy, sell, and trade crypto at tier-one pricing at the lowest trading fees, as low as 0.07%. The founders of the highly secure and hidden platform have brought out their 8 years stock of 3000 BTC, valued at 66 million. By selling these Bitcoins on its crypto exchange Nonfinite , the company aims to help big traders and whales to regain some profit while generating market momentum. The company will offer BTC at 1-5% lower price than the current market price, making it lucrative for investors to utilize the unique platform. Talking about their motive behind offering 66 million worth of BTC with a 1-5% lesser market price, Nonfinite CEO stated, “it's a good opportunity for many investors.” As the crypto market has reached its record low, Nonfinite CEO advises everyone to remain calm despite the current market condition affected by the unexpected inflation data. Quoting an example of the pro-crypto company, MicroStrategy, Nonfinite CEO said, “we need to stay calm, even MicroStrategy's CEO was calm too.” MicroStrategy is the top crypto asset holder globally per their corporate balance sheet. The company CEO Michael Saylor is among the top influential individuals in the crypto industry. Despite the current crypto market plunge on Monday, Saylor remained positive as he tweeted , “In #Bitcoin We Trust.” Despite Saylor’s positive sentiment, MicroStrategy’s stock plummeted dramatically as the market opened. The stock lost 25% of its value, the biggest one-day plunge, driving it to the lowest level since October 2020. Story continues However, MicroStrategy's CEO still plans to hold Bitcoin "through adversity." As per Bitcoin Treasuries, a monitoring resource, the company’s stack of 129,218 BTC is currently at a $1.2 billion loss , computing almost two-thirds of MicroStrategy’s 100 percent market cap. Despite the current scenario, Saylor is sure about his Bitcoin approach. Answering concerns about MicroStrategy’s future, the CEO wrote on Twitter , “When MicroStrategy adopted a Bitcoin Strategy, it anticipated volatility and structured its balance sheet so that it could continue to HODL through adversity.” Agreeing with MicroStrategy’s CEO, Nonfinite CEO agrees on staying calm. To prove his agreement with Saylor, the Nonfinite team will be soft-launching their web 3.0 crypto exchange platform , offering features like spot trading, staking, trading bots, hybrid wallet, and more. In addition to its discounted 1-5% Bitcoin price and low trading fees, the platform offers advanced security, allowing users to bypass internet censorship. Along with such unique offerings, the Nonfinite also limits its user intake to 10,000 each year, offering the best and limited service. To know more about Nonfinite, please visit the website: https://nonfinite.com/ CONTACT: info@nonfinite.ws || How to Keep Your Portfolio From Getting Burned by Red-Hot Inflation: Do you remember the childhood story about Chicken Little? An acorn falls on Chicken Little’s head, and he jumps to the conclusion that the sky is falling. This reminds me a bit of the financial media and market pundits these days, especially regarding this week’s consumer and wholesale inflation data. So, in today’s Market360 , we’re going to take a further look into this week’s numbers and what they mean for the market. InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Inflation Runs Hots On Wednesday, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for June was released — and the headline number was ugly. The Labor Department reported that the CPI rose 1.3% in June and 9.1% year-over-year (or YOY), which put inflation back at 40-year highs. Economists had forecast a 1.1% month-over-month jump and an 8.6% YOY increase. Once again, gasoline, shelter and food accounted for the majority of the increase, with the energy index rising 7.5% month-over-month in June and the gasoline index rising 11.2%. Now, it’s important to note that core CPI, which excludes food and energy, came in at 5.9%. While this was still above economists’ projections for a 5.7% increase, it was down below the 6% rise in May. So, core inflation is declining, and it’s another sign that inflation did peak in March. Then this morning, the Labor Department shared the Producer Price Index (PPI) for June — and the financial media jumped at the top-line number again. For June, the PPI increased 11.3% YOY, well above economists’ estimates for a 10.7% YOY rise. Month-over-month, PPI climbed 1.1%. This was also above economists’ estimates for a 0.8% increase. Energy was the biggest factor behind the jump. Energy rose 10% from May, and gas prices rose 18.5%. On the surface, the reading isn’t good. However, if you dig a little deeper, there were a few positives. For example, the PPI’s 11.3% YOY increase is still down from the record 11.6% YOY increase in March. I should also add that the core PPI, which excludes energy, food and trade services, rose 6.4% year-over-year and 0.3% month-over-month. This is down from the 6.8% gain in May. And the 0.3% increase from May was also below economists’ expectations for a 0.5% increase. Stay Focused on Earnings There are also signs that the consumer is still alive and well. Take PepsiCo ‘s (NASDAQ: PEP ) second-quarter results on Tuesday: Earnings increased 8.1% YOY to $1.86 per share, up from $1.72 per share in the same quarter of last year. Analysts were calling for earnings of $1.74 per share, so PEP beat analysts’ expectations by 6.9%. Story continues Revenue climbed 5.3% YOY to $20.23 billion, up from $19.22 billion in the same quarter a year ago, which slightly topped analysts’ revenue estimates. Organic revenue growth came in at 13%, compared to organic growth of 12.8% in the second quarter of 2021. For full-year 2022, company management anticipates organic revenue will increase 10%, versus previous expectations for 8% organic revenue growth. Company management commented, “Our updated full-year guidance reflects the strength and resilience of our categories and consumer demand trends, as well as the impact of higher than expected input and operating cost inflation for the balance of 2022.” Now, I know there was a lot of doom and gloom today following some of the Big Banks’ reports and their comments on the U.S. economy, but don’t let that deter you from the stock market. (I’ll talk more about the Big Banks’ earnings results in Saturday’s Market360, so keep an eye on your inbox for that!) The fact of the matter is that fundamentally superior companies — companies that can continue to grow their sales and earnings — will prevail in this inflationary environment. This especially holds true for my oil and energy plays, which I expect to post record earnings in the coming weeks. As I mentioned last month , FactSet reported that analysts have lowered second-quarter earnings estimates for seven of 11 sectors, but analysts have upped energy earnings estimates by a whopping 29.4%. And early this week Axios reported energy will drive second-quarter earnings growth: Axios continues: Earnings per share — the key gauge of profits on Wall Street — for S&P 500 companies are expected to be up by between 5% and 6% overall. According to Credit Suisse analysts, EPS for the index’s energy companies will be up a tidy 243% in the second quarter, compared to last year, thanks to exploding oil and gas prices. The kicker: Excluding energy companies, S&P profits would actually be down nearly 3%. Bottom line: Right now, energy stocks are holding up the market. So, don’t listen to the Chicken Littles and negative Nellies in the financial media. The reality is, oil is king , and I predict it’s going to remain king for at least the next two decades. In fact, I believe, we’re at the start of a new, inevitable oil bull market. It’s why I released a new special report called 5 Stocks for the New Oil Age . In this report, I review the three catalysts that will keep oil prices surging and reveal the five best oil stocks that can protect your portfolio in the coming years. ( For details on how to gain access to this report, go here . ) The fact of the matter is my Growth Investor stocks continue to profit from inflation, and they should remain an oasis in the current chaotic environment. It’s why my Growth Investor stocks are now characterized by 61.6% average annual sales growth and 429.2% average annual earnings growth and why the analyst community has increased earnings estimates for my average Growth Investor stock by 19.9% in the past three months. If you want to position your portfolio to prosper, join me at Growth Investor today . You’ll have full access to all of my recommendations, as well as my Weekly Updates, Monthly Issues, Special Market Podcasts, special reports, and much more. Click here for more information on how to join and receive my top five energy stocks today . The Editor hereby discloses that as of the date of this email, the Editor, directly or indirectly, owns the following securities that are the subject of the commentary, analysis, opinions, advice, or recommendations in, or which are otherwise mentioned in, the essay set forth below: PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP) More From InvestorPlace $200 Oil Sooner Than You Think – Buy This Now The Best $1 Investment You Can Make Today Early Bitcoin Millionaire Reveals His Next Big Crypto Trade “On Air” It doesn’t matter if you have $500 in savings or $5 million. Do this now. The post How to Keep Your Portfolio From Getting Burned by Red-Hot Inflation appeared first on InvestorPlace . View comments || Dow soars 516 points and Nasdaq climbs over 2% as strong earnings drive relief rally: • US stocks soared on Thursday after a string of better-than-expected earnings results from retailers.
• Thursday's strong rally sets the S&P 500 up to end its seven-week losing streak, and the Dow Jones eight-week losing streak.
• Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Macy's soared more than 10% after reporting better-than-expected results.
US stocks soared higher on Thursday, extending gains from Wednesday's relief rally as investors seek to end a seven-week losing streak in theS&P 500and an eight-week losing streak in the Dow Jones.
The move higher on Thursday came as investors continue to weigh the possibility of an economic recession againststrong earnings resultsfrom retail companies likeDollar Tree,Dollar General, and Macy's which all soared more than 10% in Thursday trades after beating analyst estimates. The strong results relieved some fears investors had lingering from last week's earnings-related decline in Walmart and Target.
First-quarter GDP was revised slightly lower on Thursday, to a contraction of 1.5% from its initial reading of a 1.4% decline, but retail consumption data was revised higher, signaling that consumers did not slow their spending in the first quarter despite rising inflation and higher interest rates.
Here's where US indexes stood at the 4:00 p.m. ET close on Thursday:
• S&P 500:4,057.88, up 1.99%
• Dow Jones Industrial Average:32,637.19, up 1.61% (516.91 points)
• Nasdaq Composite:11,740.65, up 2.68%
Recession worries have yet to show up in weekly jobless claims,which fell 8,000 in the week ending May 21to 210,000. That's about the same level weekly jobless claims were at prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. Most economic recessions usually occur after a spike in weekly jobless claims.
Tech stocks continue to experience heightened volatility, on full display today afterNvidiareleased its first-quarter earnings results. The company beat expectations but gave lower second-quarter guidance due to the Russia-Ukraine war and disruptions amid China's COVID-19 lockdown. Nvidia fell by about 5% in early Thursday trades before it erased those losses and moved up 5%.
Twitterstockrose more than 5% on ThursdayafterElon Musk fronted more of his own wealth to fund his $44 billion buyout offer. Musk will put up another $6.25 billion of equity for the deal, lifting the total to $33.5 billion from an initial $27.25 billion, according to anSEC 13D filingon Wednesday.
Meme-stocks saw renewed interest from investors on Thursday, withGameStop extending its two-day rally to as much as 67%.The surge came just a couple days after the video game retailer launched a crypto and NFT wallet.
West Texas Intermediate crudeoil rose as much as much as 3.38% to $114.06 per barrel.Brent crude, oil's international benchmark, rose as much as 2.96% to $117.41.
Bitcoin fell as much as 5.28% to $28,230. Ether prices fell as much as 9.31% to $1,765.
Goldrose as much as 0.23% to $1,850.60 per ounce. The yield on the 10-year Treasury was flat at 2.75%.
Read the original article onBusiness Insider || SEC Chair Gensler Aims for CFTC Collaboration to Oversee Cryptos: • Gary Gensler, the SEC Chair, was back in the news as the battle to oversee the digital asset market intensified.
• In recent months, lawmakers have not only questioned SEC tactics but also sided with the CFTC to regulate the space.
• On Friday, Gensler talked to the FT about his plans to work with the CFTC to ensure both agencies deliver the regulatory oversight to protect investors.
Earlier this month, we discussed a likely battle between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
The US agencies are vying for the responsibility to regulate the digital asset market, which is currently in its nascency compared with other asset classes.
Winning approval to regulate the digital asset market would be a feather in the cap for either agency. While currently worth less than $1 trillion, the evolution of Web3 and recovery from the crypto winter could eventually see the digital asset space sit alongside the US equities and commodities markets.
Lawmakers would also have to give the SEC or the CFTC the necessary budget to deliver the regulatory framework and oversight capabilities.
Until now, SEC Gary Gensler has taken a tough stance on the crypto market. Some lawmakers even contacted the SEC chair,questioninghis tactics and how the SEC approach could stifle innovation.
Consequently, the CFTC has the upper hand in receiving the authority to regulate the digital asset market.
On Friday, SEC Chair Gary Genslerspoketo the FT about digital assets and regulatory oversight.
According to the FT, Gensler aims to form an alliance with other financial agencies to ensure that crypto platforms don’t fall through the regulatory cracks.
Gensler is reportedly talking with the CFTC about an agreement to ensure that crypto trading has the appropriate safeguards and transparency.
The latest Gary Gansler move follows the introduction of the Lummis and Gillibrandbillthat looks to give the CFTC sweeping powers to oversee the digital asset space.
The successful passage of the bipartisan bill would materially reduce the SEC’s powers over the digital asset space.
Gensler said,
“I’m talking about one rule book on the exchange that protects all trading regardless of the pair – (be it) a security token versus security token, security token versus commodity token, commodity token versus commodity token to protect investors against fraud, front-running, manipulation as well as providing transparency over order books.”
The SEC is currently in a long-lasting battle with Ripple over theXRPand whether XRP is a security.
For the crypto market, the SEC, and the CFTC, the outcome of the SEC’scaseagainst Ripple Lab could decide who oversees the space.
The SEC Chair has frequently vocalized the view that cryptos should fall under the SEC. However, CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger thinks otherwise.
This month, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Commissioner Summer Mersingerreportedlysaid that US lawmakers and crypto developers were looking to place the authority to regulate digital assets with the CFTC.
Currently, the CFTC regulates the crypto futures, which are limited to Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) futures.
The decision on who oversees the digital asset space could have a material bearing on the sector.
At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) was down 0.09% to $21,200.
A range-bound start to the day saw BTC fall to an early low of $21,116 before striking a high of $21,363.
Bitcoin left the Major Support and Resistance Levels untested early on.
Avoiding the $21,152pivotwould test Friday’s high of $21,529 and the First Major Resistance Level at $21,596.
BTC would need plenty of support to move through to $21,500.
An extended rally would test the Second Major Resistance Level at $21,965 and resistance at $22,500. The Third Major Resistance Level sits at $22,779.
A fall through the pivot would bring the First Major Support Level at $20,779 into play. In case of another extended sell-off, bitcoin could test the Second Major Support Level at $20,342 and support at $20,000.
The Third Major Support Level sits at $19,531.
Looking at theEMAsand the 4-hourly candlestick chart (below), it was a bearish signal. Bitcoin sat on the 50-day EMA, currently at $21,118. Today, the 50-day EMA narrowed to the 100-day EMA. The 100-day EMA eased back from the 200-day EMA, bitcoin price negative.
Another bitcoin pullback from the 50-day EMA would test support at $20,000.
A move through to $22,500 would bring the 100-day EMA, currently at $22,800, into play. A breakout from the 100-day EMA would then support a run at $25,000.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Ukraine stands with Moldova against threats from Russia – foreign minister || World Central Bank Blockchain Digital Currency (CBDC) and Cryptocurrency Reserves Research Report 2022: Electric Vehicle Implementation is Anticipated to Add $114 Trillion to the Economy by 2028: Company Logo Dublin, June 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Central Bank Blockchain Digital Currency (CBDC) and Cryptocurrency Reserves: Market Shares, Market Strategies, and Market Forecasts, 2022 to 2028" report from Wintergreen Research, Inc has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Electric vehicle implementation is anticipated to add $114 trillion to the global economy by 2028 over and above what is part of the world economy now. That will create demand for more cross border settlements - faster, cheaper, more efficient cross-border settlements. The growth that comes from replacing the entire installed base of gas driven vehicles is a once in a lifetime event, providing an enormous boost to the global economy. It makes the US national debt of $30 trillion pale in comparison to what is added to the economy by just this one industry, one of many driven by AI and energy storage implementation. Worldwide central bank digital currency markets are poised to achieve continuing growth as the advantages brought by using new materials are used to decrease the cost of producing lithium-ion batteries. The customization achieved by reducing the quantity of cobalt proportionally inside the cathode is a significant market growth driver. Rapid response to global warming is the primary growth driver. CBDC will support faster and cheaper cross-border payments. The settlement process moves from two days to several seconds, creating a less costly, more efficient cross border settlement process. The CBDC is the pin-ultimate digital advance, digital currency. The aim is to create a stable value digital currency that can be used for cross border settlements. Strong Growth of the US and World GDP pushes the need for CBDC, making it more immediate. Governments have never had a monopoly on the provision of money. Private systems - unbacked by the government or deposit insurance - regularly sprang up in the past, often to service discrete communities. In the US in the 1800s, for example, railroad and canal companies paid workers in paper "scrip," redeemable for goods at sponsored stores. Solid State Batteries drive Economic Growth and the Adoption of Central Bank Digital Currency Electric vehicles are but one aspect of the new industrial revolution. Silicon carbide replaces silicon. Robots replace much of human manufacturing labor. AI, CBDC, autonomous vehicles, robots, air taxis, and a range of new technologies are going to push economic growth far beyond what is even dreamed of today. The problem is how to distribute wealth to everyone so they can participate in the economy and drive continuing economic growth. Education of everyone, ongoing education becomes significant, giving everyone enough to eat and have healthcare is significant, as is pushing solutions to combat environmental warming. All this is discussed in the context of CBDCs, creating a digital asset that the central banks can control as a stable currency. The assumption is that commercial banking will go on as before, lending and serving industries, companies, and people. The Central bank CBDC will manage payments and cross border transactions. Key Topics Include: Story continues Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Cryptocurrency Reserves Digital Money Blockchain Tokens Cryptocurrency Value Crypto Decline Fluctuating Values of Cryptocurrency BitCoin Stability of the Currency Commercial Banking Digitization Cross-Border Settlements Cross Border Payments Global Economy Electric Vehicles Digital Currency Settlement Reducing Tax Evasion Key Topics Covered: 1. Digital Currency for Transaction Settlements 1.1 Blockchain as an Electronic List of Connected Records 1.2 US CBDC Instant Payments Operation 1.3 4th Industrial Revolution 1.4 CBDC Digital Financial Revolution 1.5 Implications of CDBC for New Industrial Revolution 1.6 Central Bank Digital Currency 1.7 Commercial Banking Market Description 2. CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency Market Shares and Market Forecasts 2.1 Central Bank Digital Currency CBDC Market Driving Forces 2.1.1 Value of CBDC Digitization of Cross-Border Settlements Payments 2.1.2 CBDC Market Driving Forces 2.2 Central Bank Digital Currency CBDC Blockchain Market Shares 2.3 Central Bank Digital Currency CBDC Market Forecasts 2.3.1 Improvements In Payment Systems 2.3.2 Central Bank Monetary Policy 2.4 Global Economy and Selected Market Segments 2.4.1 Auto Manufacturing Companies 2.4.2 Global Corporates Move $23.5 Trillion Across Countries Annually 2.4.3 US Central Bank Money: Most Trusted 2.4.4 Cryptocurrency Value Decline 2.4.5 Token-Based CBDCs 2.5 Digital Currency CBDC Regional Market Segments 2.5.1 US 2.5.2 US Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Executive Order: Research a Matter of Urgency 2.5.3 China 2.5.4 CBDC for China 2.5.5 India 2.5.6 IBM Blockchain Platform for Supply Chain Financing and Security in India 2.5.7 Japan 2.5.8 UK 2.5.9 Switzerland 2.5.10 Bahamas and Cambodia 3. Global Economy, CBDC, Blockchain, and Stable Currency 3.1 Shifts In Financial Markets, Countries Seek to Further Embrace Digital Technology for Fiscal Control and Cross Border Settlements 3.1.1 Wealthy US Customer Base Assures Leadership In the 4th Industrial Revolution 3.1.2 Fundamental Strength of The US Economy 3.1.3 Elite Players Orchestrate the World Economy 3.2 Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Digital Currency Initiative 3.2.1 US To Issue a Digital Currency CBDC 3.2.2 CBDC Brings Change in Money Supply 3.3 Central Bank of Bahrain and JPMorgan to Work on Digital Currency Settlement Pilot 3.3.1 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 3.4 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Core CBDC Technology Options 3.5 Reducing Tax Evasion, Money Laundering, and Fraud with Cryptocurrency 3.5.1 US Cryptocurrency Whole-of-Government Approach Executive Order: 3.5.2 Identifiers Reducing Tax Evasion, Money Laundering, and Fraud 3.6 Bitcoin and Crypto Currencies 3.6.1 Digital Cryptocurrencies 3.6.2 Bitcoin, Ethereum and Other Cryptocurrencies 3.6.3 US Central Bank Crackdown on Digital Currency 3.7 Volatility of the Bit Coin and Similar Crypto Currency 3.7.1 Fluctuating Values of Crypto Currency 3.8 Blockchain Simply Can't Scale 3.8.1 L4S TapestryX 3.8.2 Consistency Issues with Blockchain 3.9 Stable Currency 4. Central Banking Industry - Central Bank Digital Currency 4.1 CBDC Enhances Cross Border Settlement Efficiency 4.2 CBDC Transaction flow 4.3 Blockchain Comparison: Corda, Fabric, and Quorum 4.4 Shift To Digital 4.5 GDP to Debt Gap 4.5.1 AI in Central Banking 4.6 Web 3.0 4.7 Move to Automation: AI and Quantum Computing 4.7.1 Innovation and industry transformation 4.8 Electric Vehicles, Solid State Batteries, and Energy Storage 4.9 Central Banks Adopt Banking as a Service 4.9.1 Hyperledger Fabric Transaction Flow 4.9.2 Hyperledger Fabric vs. Hyperledger Sawtooth 4.10 Banking Regulations 5. Blockchain Banking and Financial Technology Company Profiles 5.1 Accenture 5.2 Ackee Blockchain 5.3 Applied Blockchain 5.4 AWS 5.5 Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 5.6 Bitfury 5.7 Block.One 5.8 DBS Bank 5.9 The Digital Dollar Foundation 5.10 EOS 5.11 European Union Blockchain Observatory & Forum 5.12 Facebook Libra 5.13 Global Blockchain Association GBA 5.14 Goldman Sachs 5.15 Influxdata 5.16 Infosys 5.17 Intel, BMW, and Nielsen: Tribe Accelerator 5.18 JPMC 5.19 IBM Hyperledger Fabric 5.20 JP Morgan Chase (JPMC) 5.21 Microsoft 5.22 World Health Organization Collaborated with Oracle and IBM to create a digital ledger 5.23 Partior/JP Morgan, DBS Bank, and Temasek 5.24 Quorum 5.25 R3 5.26 Ripple 5.27 SAP 5.28 Swift 5.29 L4S/TapestryX 5.30 Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) 5.31 Wipro 6. Selected Description of Banks 6.1 The Commercial Banks 6.2 JP Morgan Chase 6.2.1 JPMorgan Onyx 6.3 Barklays 6.3.1 Digital Money 6.3.2 Private Platforms Can Be Risky 6.3.3 'Fedcoin' Features 6.3.4 Barklays CBDC Analysis For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/mvu7w6 CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900 || Morning Crypto Briefing: BTC Slumps Back Below $30K, ETH Eyes Key Support As Bears Regain Control: • The bears regained control on Tuesday sending total crypto market cap back under $1.20 trillion.
• Bitcoin subsequently fell back under $30K and Ethereum to the mid-$1,700s, where it eyes key support.
• But crypto prices remain mostly within recent ranges ahead of key macro events later this week.
The crypto bears regained control during Asia Pacific trade on Tuesday, with some citing a larger than expected rate hike from Australia’s central bank as sparking fears about global central bank tightening ahead of this week’s European Central Bank meeting, where the bank is expected to outline rate hike plans for the months ahead.
Total cryptocurrency market capitalization shed more than $55 billion or around 4.5% on Tuesday to fall back to around $1.20 trillion, having at one point been as high as $1.28 trillion on Monday. But the big picture hasn’t changed much for crypto in the last couple of weeks.
Total crypto market cap has largely remained in the upper-$1.10s to mid-$1.30s trillion range since the early May tumble. Crypto investors remain anxious about a worsening, increasingly stagflationary global economy (with the Russo-Ukraine war and recent China lockdowns having worsened things in recent months), as well as about a global tightening of financial conditions that make crypto a comparatively less attractive investment.
But at the same time, growing evidence of US inflation has peaked, meaning an easing of uncertainty regarding how much the US Federal Reserve will tighten monetary policy (the Fed is by far the most important central bank for crypto traders to watch) has helped calm things in recent weeks.
The outlook for US inflation and Fed policy will be in focus on Friday with the release of the May US Consumer Price Inflation report. But until Friday, there aren’t many by way of major scheduled economic events/potential catalysts to spur macro-induced price action in the crypto market.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will be giving remarks at 1500BST on Tuesday which will be worth watching, while CoinDesk’s Consensus 2022 crypto conference begins on Thursday and will likely provide plenty of commentary/talking points for crypto enthusiasts to sink their teeth into.
For now, it would be unsurprising to see crypto markets continue to swing within a $1.15-$1.35 trillion market cap range and, in doing so, remaining not too far from the 21-Day Moving Average (currently at $1.233 trillion).
Bitcoinwas last trading down about 6.0% on Tuesday near the $29,500 level, having slumped back from Monday’s highs in the $31,700s. As with the broader market, bitcoin continues to largely trade well within recent ranges ahead of key macro events later this week.
The latest slip in prices has seen bitcoin’s market cap drop back to around $560 billion, while its crypto market dominance remains close to recent multi-month highs of around 47%.
Fidelity’s director of Global Macro Jurrien Timmer, who is widely followed within the crypto space given his high-quality bitcoin commentary, was out with another thread on bitcoin on Monday. Timmer presented three different models that track the supply of bitcoin over time plus the adoption rates of the internet and mobile phones, which forecast that bitcoin’s price should be somewhere in the region of $47,700 – $144,750 by the beginning of 2025.
“Assuming the mobile phone curve is a more viable analog, its curve suggests a strongly growing network for Bitcoin in the years ahead,” Timmer stated, before caveating that “the more asymptotic internet curve raises the possibility that perhaps Bitcoin’s growth curve is more mature than my models have assumed”.
“I remain bullish on Bitcoin as an aspiring store of value in a world of ongoing financial repression,” he noted. “But the above exercise is a good reminder that we should always revisit our assumptions, especially when the price action deviates from expectations”.
Turning toethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap was last trading lower by about 5.5% on the day in the $1,750 area and once again eyeing key resistance in the low $1,700s. The technicals are not looking good for ETH/USD, with the crypto pair having consistently posted lower highs since mid-May and with the 21-DayMoving Average(currently at $1,880) having consistently provided strong resistance since going all the way back to early April (with the most recent rejection coming on Monday).
Turning now to the other major altcoins, the biggest overnight story is that theUS Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into Binance’s Initial Coin Offering (ICO)ofBNBback in 2017 as a potential unregistered securities offering. Of the major altcoins, BNB was one of the underperformers on Tuesday and last trading with losses of about 9.0% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data.
News of the SEC’s probe into Binance’s ICO come when the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange had already been in the headlines this week. On Monday, Reuters released an article claiming that Binance’s exchange has been used to launder illicit funds, citing the findings of a partnership with blockchain analytic firms Crystal Blockchain and Chainalysis. Binance has since hit back against such claims in a lengthy blog post.
Meanwhile, Cardano’sADAwas last trading lower by 8.0% in the last 24 hours, Solana’sSOLwas last down about 12%, while dop-meme inspiredDogecoinandShiba Inuwere last down around 5.0%, with the latter failing to muster much of a lift in the face of its listing on crypto exchange Bitstamp. Ripple’sXRPwas last down around 4.5% over the same time period with the ongoingRipple vs SEC lawsuit still in focus.
In the latest indication that the crypto industry remains in contraction (or the so-called “crypto winter”), crypto custody and asset management firm BlockFi will see its valuation sink to around $1 billion in an upcoming funding round, The Block reported.
Last March, the firm raised a cool $350 million in funds that put its valuation at around $3 billion. BlockFi was reportedly even close to raising another $500 million in July which would have valued it at over $5 billion.
The sharp pullback in crypto prices since last November as macro risk appetite worsens as the US Federal Reserve tightens financial conditions in order to address multi-decade high US inflation has weighed heavily on the valuations of crypto firms and seen many pause hiring and let go of employees in recent weeks.
US Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lummis released their much anticipated, bipartisan crypto regulation bill on Tuesday. In terms of some of the key features of the bill, it would reduce a barrier to the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the US as a means of everyday payments by making all purchases worth under $200 tax-free (i.e. no capital gains to be paid by selling the crypto).
Meanwhile, the bill also borrows from Senator Pat Toomey’s recent proposal for new stablecoin rules to increase investor protection and promote adoption. The bill would also see lawmakers give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) authority over the spot markets in crypto commodities and seeks to define the difference between crypto commodities and crypto securities.
Analysts said that the comprehensive regulations bill is seen as more of a starting point for dialogue on crypto regulations in Washington and likely won’t lead to any big legislation passing Congress before 2023.
Separately, a draft US bill concerning cryptocurrency regulations was leaked on Twitter on Tuesday. The bill included policies intended to require all crypto platforms/service providers to legally register in the US if they are to operate there, including DAOs and DeFi protocols.
Elsewhere, Japan is considering new laws that would add it to the list of the major economies to have given themselves the legal authority to seize illegally obtained crypto, according to a report in the local Japanese press on Tuesday. The report said that current laws in Japan do not reference the treatment of illegally acquired digital assets, creating a potential loophole for criminals.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Gold Price Prediction – Gold Rebound on Dollar Weakness || The Best Days Are Over for Netflix: Source: wutzkohphoto / Shutterstock.com
Once a high-growth stock,Netflix(NASDAQ:NFLX) is going through a difficult period. After losing subscribers, it has a lot to work on. Consequently, NFLX stock has seen a massive dip over the past six months. The stock was once as high as $700 and is now down to $195. It lost more than 70% of its value over the past six months and I believe the dip will continue.
While the company saw the highest subscriber additions in 2020, it saw the highest dip in 2021. Investors are not happy with the quarterly results and there is an overall negative sentiment around the business. This will continue to impact NFLX stock throughout the year.
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InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
Netflix has shown exponential growth over the past decade and was at the top of the streaming industry. But the loss of200,000 subscribersin the first quarter is a sign that the company is doing something wrong.
• The 7 Best Stocks to Buy for June 2022
This was the first drop in subscribers in a decade, and not something investors expected. It is believed the company will lose another 2 million in the current quarter.
There was a time when there was less or no competition for Netflix, and this is when it thrived. The only other option was traditional cable TV, and users were happy to do away with that. But now, there is ample competition in the industry and a price war.
Viewers have endless choices, and the only way Netflix can set itself apart is through content. This is what drew subscribers in the past, but the rising competition has made it hard for Netflix to stand out. Rising prices haven’t helped the company, either. It has driven users to different platforms.
The company will have to spend heavily on content and produce great shows to attract subscribers. It can become expensive to work with top directors and producers, and Netflix will have to carefully plan out its programming since rivals are looking to do the same. If the members are not growing, the company will not have positive cash flow and this will hamper the content development budget.
Netflix has the opportunity, but there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the business. It will not be easy for the company to gain subscribers and investors. It will have to improve several factors, including its content, and a quick fix won’t work. MyInvestorPlacecolleague Patrick Sanders shares the sameopinion about NFLX stock.
Investors who bought it before the pandemic had a chance to make the most of the benefits, but now is not the time to put your money in NFLX stock. The company needs a lot of work and it will take some time before we see its shares soaring. Until then, it might not hit all-time highs anytime this year and there could be a further dip.
On the date of publication, Vandita Jadeja did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to theInvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.
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The postThe Best Days Are Over for Netflixappeared first onInvestorPlace. || MicroStrategy Bulls Unfazed by Double Dose of Pain: (Bloomberg) -- Shares of MicroStrategy Inc. have been hit hard this year as its once-winning approach of being a tech company that also holds billions of dollars in Bitcoin sends investors rushing for the exit. Analysts are holding fast in their bullishness. Most Read from Bloomberg Russia Slips Into Historic Default as Sanctions Muddy Next Steps Big Tech Sinks Stocks Bruised by Recession Jitters: Markets Wrap China Cuts Travel Quarantine in Biggest Covid Zero Shift Yet Tesla Lays Off About 200 Autopilot Workers, Most of Them Hourly Michael Burry of ‘The Big Short’ Fame Warns Fed May Alter Course Three of the four brokerages that follow the software company recommend buying the shares, with an average price target that’s more than triple where the stock closed Wednesday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Under Chief Executive Officer Michael Saylor, MicroStrategy has spent about $4 billion on tokens as of March 31. While that was a hot strategy in the pandemic-fueled market boom -- when tech stocks and Bitcoin surged to record heights -- MicroStrategy is now mired in the historic selloff that’s hitting both areas, slumping 69% this year. That’s deeper than the Nasdaq 100 Index’s 29% decline and Bitcoin’s 55% drop. “MicroStrategy provides equity investors in particular with not only exposure to Bitcoin, which currently they don’t have many efficient ways to access,” said Mark Palmer, an analyst at BTIG with a buy rating. The company also offers an operating business that generates cash with which to buy more Bitcoin, he said. This isn’t MicroStrategy’s first rollercoaster ride. Its shares soared more than 3,400% during the dotcom bubble and subsequently wiped out all those gains during the collapse. The Covid-19 pandemic, which saw the rise of the retail trader, evoked memories of a similar rally thanks to Bitcoin’s surge: At one point, its shares were up more than 1,200%. Now, they are on pace for their worst year since 2000, fueled by the crypto rout and bear-market plunge in tech. The Federal Reserve triggered the decline in both by aggressively raising interest rates to cool inflation, fueling concern that the economy is headed for a recession. Just last week, the world’s largest cryptocurrency plunged below $20,000 for the first time since late 2020. Story continues The crypto crash generated losses for Saylor of about $3.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His 2.36 million MicroStrategy shares and options peaked in February 2021, when they were worth nearly $3 billion. They’ve since plunged 86% to $355 million. Meanwhile, the Bitcoins he said in October 2020 that he owned are worth $350 million, down 71% from their $1.22 billion peak. Palmer’s share-price target of $950 is the highest among analysts covering the stock, more than five times MicroStrategy’s closing price of $170.91. He also estimates that Bitcoin will more than quadruple from its current level to hit $95,000 by 2023. Brent Thill of Jefferies is the only non-bull on MicroStrategy, rating the stock hold with a $180 price target. Management needs to focus on the core software business, which declined 3% in the first quarter, Thill wrote in a June 16 note. Still, it’s hard to ignore the potential multibillion-dollar writedowns that the company could be facing. Total impairment charges on MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin holdings already reached roughly $1 billion at the end of the last quarter. The company has also come under scrutiny due to the possibility that it could face a margin call on a $205 million loan it took out this year to buy more Bitcoin. Saylor, however, told investors this month not to worry about a potential margin call, saying the company has ample collateral to pledge if necessary. Tech Chart of the Day Apple Inc. and Saudi Aramco have been tightly contesting the title of the world’s most valuable company as major forces shake up the global economy. In May, the crude producer overtook the iPhone maker, helped by the surge in oil prices while concerns around rising inflation triggered multiple routs in technology stocks. Apple shares were trading higher on Thursday, putting the stock on course for its best week in June. Top Tech Stories Uber Technologies Inc. explored options for its Indian ride-hailing business, including a sale, but suspended discussions after tech startup valuations cratered, people familiar with the matter said. Elon Musk said Tesla Inc.’s new plants in Germany and Texas are losing “billions of dollars” as the electric-vehicle maker tries to ramp up production. SumUp has achieved an 8 billion euro ($8.4 billion) valuation in its latest funding round, raising 590 million euros in a deal split between debt and equity in a bid to develop new products and gain clients. Toshiba Corp. shares jumped Thursday after Reuters reported bidders are considering offering up to 7,000 yen per share to take the company private, which would value the deal at about $22 billion. JPMorgan Asset Management is doubling down on China tech stocks after enduring a tumultuous selloff, betting that an easing of regulatory crackdowns and attractive valuations will pay off well. Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said he expects people will eventually spend “hundreds of dollars” each buying digital goods in the metaverse, including things like clothes for their virtual avatars. SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son is used to praise and encouragement from shareholders. But the company’s loss of $34 billion in market value over the last year is a test for even his most faithful admirers when they gather for the annual shareholders’ meeting on Friday. (Adds stock move in last paragragh.) Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek Moving to Ban Juul, the FDA Delivers a Blow to Big Nicotine Why You Should Quit Your Job After 10 Years You Can Give People What They Want. Or You Can Give Them Web3 ADT Is Betting Google Can Drag It Into the Future A Sci-Fi Novel’s Eerily Accurate Predictions About Today’s Tech ©2022 Bloomberg L.P. || Bill Gates just won legal approval to buy 2,100 acres of North Dakota farmland worth $13.5M — and people are ‘livid’ about it all across the state: Bill Gates made his fortune in tech, but he’s now betting big on something completely different: farmland.
Last week, Gates secured the legal approval for purchasing 2,100 acres of farmland from northeastern North Dakota potato growers Campbell Farms.
Of course, this isn’t first time Gates has invested in the asset class. Having amassed nearly 270,000 acres of farmland across dozens of states, Gates is already the largest private owner of farmland in America.
Let’s take a closer look at the approval.
• Mitt Romney says a billionaire tax will trigger demand forthese two physical assets— get in now before the super-rich swarm
• Stocks are down, but “cash is not a safe investment,” says Ray Dalio —get creative to find strong returns
• Warren Buffett likes these 2 investment opportunitiesoutside of the stock market
Gates’ purchase of farmland in North Dakota initially raised concerns because of a Depression-era law that prohibits corporations and limited liability companies from owning farmland in the region.
North Dakota’s Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring previously told KFYR-TV — a television station in Bismarck, North Dakota — that many people weren’t thrilled about the news.
“I’ve gotten a big earful on this from clear across the state, it’s not even from that neighborhood. Those people are upset, but there are others that are just livid about this,” Geohring said.
However, the anti-corporate farming law does allow individual trusts to own farmland if it is leased to farmers — and that’s what Gates’ firm plans to do.
On Wednesday, North Dakota’s Attorney General issued a letter saying that the purchase complied with the law.
You don’t need an MBA to see the appeal of farmland.
Markets can go up or down, but no matter what happens, people still need to eat.
That makes farmland intrinsically valuable.
And it just so happens that Gates’ good pal Warren Buffett also likes the asset.
In fact, Buffett bought a 400-acre farm in Nebraska back in 1986. “I needed no unusual knowledge or intelligence to conclude that the investment had no downside and potentially had substantial upside,” Buffett later wrote.
At Berkshire’s annual shareholders meeting earlier this year, Buffett mentioned farmland again as one of the two assets he’d buy instead of Bitcoin.
“If you said, for a 1% interest in all the farmland in the United States, pay our group $25 billion, I’ll write you a check this afternoon,” he said.
While the ultra-rich have been acquiring farmland, you don’t need to be a billionaire to get a piece of the action.
Publicly traded real estate investment trusts — that specialize in owning farms — allow you to do it with as little money as you’re willing to spend. You don’t need to know how to work the farm, either — just sit back, relax, and enjoy the dividend checks rolling in.
Gladstone Land (LAND), for instance, owns 164 farms totaling 113,000 acres. It pays monthly distributions of $0.0454 per share, giving the stock an annual dividend yield of 2.5%.
Then there’s Farmland Partners (FPI), a REIT with a farmland portfolio of 185,000 acres and an annual dividend yield of 1.8%.
If you are looking for options outside the stock market, there areinvesting servicesthat allow you to invest in farmland as well.
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This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 23231.73, 23164.63, 22714.98, 22465.48, 22609.16, 21361.70, 21239.75, 22930.55, 23843.89, 23804.63
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2016-05-09]
BTC Price: 460.48, BTC RSI: 61.98
Gold Price: 1265.60, Gold RSI: 52.79
Oil Price: 43.44, Oil RSI: 55.22
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin experts are baffled that one of their star scientists thinks he’s solved the Bitcoin mystery: Warning: getimagesize(): php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /home/sites/www.businessinsider.com/releases/20160428201955/models/Post.php on line 1606 Warning: getimagesize(http://static3.businessinsider.com/image/57270233910584716f8bfe88/craig%20wright.png): failed to open stream: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Temporary failure in name resolution in /home/sites/www.businessinsider.com/releases/20160428201955/models/Post.php on line 1606 Warning: Division by zero in /home/sites/www.businessinsider.com/releases/20160428201955/models/Post.php on line 1610
(REUTERS/David McNew)This is what we once thought Bitcoin "Satoshi Nakamoto" looked like.
The world, particularly the geek world, can't stand a mystery. That's why there's been so much attention paid to trying to find out who invented Bitcoin, a form of money that lives only on the internet and is created through a complicated set of cryptography security rules.
Bitcoin's creator is known as "Satoshi Nakamoto" only no one knows for sure who Satoshi Nakamoto is.
On Monday morning, the controversy erupted again when Australian businessman Craig Wrightwrote a blog post claimingto be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Wright has been labeled the Bitcoin creator before, in a widely readexpose by Wired in 2015. Wired later admitted it might have fallen for"an elaborate, long-planned hoax."
The problem is, that the proofWright offered in his blog post on Monday, as well as the proof in earlier investigative reports on Wright, has been largely discredited.
On some levels, the proof isn't that complicated to show. Satoshi Nakamoto owns a unique key. Coded, encrypted messages sent to Satoshi Nakamoto's known public address can only be opened with this key.
Although Wright's blog post talked a lot about cryptography and keys, experts who looked at the post said it was at best inconclusive. At worst, they believed it was a charlatan's trick to fool someone without the technical sophistication to understand it.
(Screenshot Via BBC)This is Craig Wright, the guy claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, but almost no one believes him.
Or, ascryptography expert Drew Blas wrote: "Wright's post is flimflam and hokum which stands up to a few minutes of cursory scrutiny, and demonstrates a competent sysadmin's level of familiarity with cryptographic tools, but ultimately demonstrates no non-public information about Satoshi."
Another crypto expert, Dan Kaminsky, examined the proof, andlabeled it "intentional scammery."
And based on this stuff, anybody who's anyone would likely dismiss Wright's claims but for one thing:
One of the most respected public figures in the Bitcoin world, Bitcoin Foundation chief scientist, Gavin Andresen, believes Wright.
Andresen published hisown blog post on Mondaywhere he said Craig Wright is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto and that Wright proved it to him. Andresen didn't share the technical proof.
Peopledon't understand why Andresen believes Wrightwhen there's evidence that directly contradicts Wright's claims.
People then started wondering if Andresen'sblog and accounts were hacked.
(Gavin Andresen)Respected Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen believes Craig Wright is "Satoshi Nakamoto."
And then the Bitcoin community took the shocking move ofbanning Andresen from directly contributing code to the Bitcoin project,at least for now.
They blocked his Github account from being able to add new code to the Bitcoin project.
ThenAndresen said in a public talk on Monday that, no,his accounts were not hacked.
He really believes Wright is the father of Bitcoin.
And the stalemate continues. One of the smartest guys involved in Bitcoin thinks Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto while most of the other smart people involved do not.
As Dan Kaminsky wrote in hispostabout it all: "UPDATE: *facepalm*"
Andresen has not yet responded to a request for comment.
NOW WATCH:ASSAULT RIFLES AND BATH SALTS — John McAfee tells the inside story behind his outrageous viral video
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York state has approved the application of Gemini Trust Company, founded by investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, to trade digital currency ether on its bitcoin exchange, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Thursday.
Ether, an alternative currency that differs from bitcoin, is a token or digital asset of the Ethereum platform, a blockchain, or public ledger of all ether transactions. The platform uses ether to execute peer-to-peer contracts automatically without the need for intermediaries. The currency is often used by software developers.
"With robust regulatory oversight, we are maintaining our status at the forefront of this technological revolution and ensuring that users have a safe and secure experience," Cuomo said in a statement.
The approval by the New York State Department of Financial Services marks the state's first consent for a digital currency-related service beyond bitcoin.
Trading on ether will begin on Monday, May 9, said Cameron Winklevoss, Gemini's co-founder and president, in an interview with Reuters. Customers will be able to store their ether from Thursday until it starts trading on the exchange on Monday.
Winklevoss also said the brothers' investment firm Winklevoss Capital is a "significant" holder of ether.
"We started buying ether at the beginning of the year," Winklevoss said. "Ethereum Foundation has a set number of ether that they have set aside over a period of time..(and) the proceeds from that go to the funding of the foundation and the developers to further the protocol."
The Winklevoss twins chose ether to trade on their exchange because of its "unique capabilities" that are different from bitcoin.
"There is a place for ether on our platform. It does what bitcoin doesn't do," Winklevoss said. "So that is the sort of criteria: that it is different enough from bitcoin and the proposition is great enough that this makes sense for us to include it in our platform."
According to coinmarketcap.com, ether is trading at $9.97 on late Thursday, with a market capitalization of about $795 million, the second largest behind bitcoin. Bitcoin currently has a market cap of $6.9 billion. Daily volume for ether is around $20 million.
Ether trades on other exchanges as well, but Winklevoss said those exchanges are unregulated or unlicensed.
"It's pretty clear that in the U.S. if you're an exchange, you are required at the minimum a money transmission license in each state," Winklevoss said. "Anybody who's operating an ether exchange doesn't have a license and is on borrowed time."
Demand for ether has steadily increased since its launch last year.
"Most of the people who work on ether right now are (software) developers developing applications for smart contracts on Ethereum and you need ether to do that," Winklevoss said.
Aside from developers, British pop artist Imogen Heap has put her music on the Ethereum platform. "She (Heap) created smart contracts on Ethereum whereby if you send enough ether to the address on the contracts, you can download her songs," Winklevoss said.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by David Gregorio and Andrew Hay) || Benton Capital Acquires Lithium and Graphite Projects and Changes Name of Company: THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Apr 20, 2016) - Benton Capital Corp. (TSX VENTURE:BTC) ("Benton" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that the Board of Directors have unanimously agreed to refocus the Company's efforts toward a 100% green-energy exploration and development company. The main focus will be the acquisition and development of high quality Lithium and Graphite projects which the Company considers to be the necessary metals of the future as demand and growth continues worldwide driven by green technology. This includes lithium ion batteries used in electric cars, smart phones, tablets, and home and industrial power storage along with many other applications. Companies such as Tesla launched their home storage lithium-based Powerwall battery system which sold out in August 2015 and Tesla has said it will aim to source raw materials locally in North America where responsible mining laws are in effect which will reduce the environmental footprint. Pursuant to this new direction and subject to regulatory approval, Benton will subsequently change its name to Alset Energy Corp. and in is the process of applying for a new trading symbol. Given the Company's new focus it would also like to announce that it has acquired by staking a 100% interest in the Wisa Lake Lithium deposit located 80km east of Fort Frances, Ontario. The property is connected to Highway 11 (Trans Canada) located 65 kilometres north via an all weather paved road that crosses the centre of the project. The property is comprised of 2 claims totaling 30 units and covers the Wisa Lake deposit that is host to a historical resource of 330,000 tonnes grading 1.15% Li 2 O (Lexindin Gold Mines Ltd., Manager's Report, 1958; Ontario Geological Survey, Open File Report 6285, Report of Activities 2012). In 1956 Lexindin completed a total of 20 drill holes (packsack and AQ-sized core) over a strike length of 335m and to a depth of approximately 65m to outline the Wisa Lake lithium mineralization. The diamond drill log of the most easterly hole intersected 6.4m containing 20% of the lithium-bearing mineral spodumene suggesting the mineralization is open at depth and to the east. It should be noted that the historical resource estimate for the deposit was calculated prior to CIM National Instrument 43-101 guidelines and as such should only be considered from a historical point of view and not relied upon. A qualified person has not completed sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as current mineral resources. Further diamond drill programs are required to bring the mineralization into a proper NI 43-101 compliant category. Story continues The Company has also agreed to acquire a 100% interest in the Champion Graphite project from Benton Resources Inc. (TSX VENTURE:BEX) (a company related by common directorships) for a payment of 1 million shares to Benton Resources Inc. and subject to a 2% NSR. Benton Capital will have the option to buy back 1% of the NSR for $500,000. The Champion Graphite project represents a non-core asset of Benton Resources Inc. and the related party directors of each of the respective companies abstained from voting to approve the acquisition. The retained NSR provides Benton Resources Inc. with the opportunity to participate in any future success of the project. The Champion Graphite project is located north of Kenora, Ontario and consists of 29 units in 2 claims. The ground covers a large concentration of airborne electromagnetic anomalies hosted in metasediments. The airborne survey was conducted by Dighem Surveys & Processing Inc in 1989 on behalf of Champion Bear Resources Ltd. Dighem describes the anomalous area as consisting of numerous sub-parallel bedrock conductors of variable strength associated with a highly complex magnetic unit (MNDM assessment files). A year prior to the airborne geophysical survey, historical trenching was conducted by Bellwether Resources Ltd. in 1988. The trenching uncovered graphite occurrences where channel samples returned weighted average grades of up to 1.76% carbon over 25.0m (MNDM assessment files). Stephen Stares, Company President and CEO stated "we are excited to embark on this new strategic course aimed at providing shareholder value and growth. The importance of exploration and development of metals used in green technology cannot be understated and Benton looks forward to acquiring and developing quality assets in this space". All of the above transactions are subject to TSX.V and regulatory approvals. Benton Capital is well funded with approximately $1 million in cash. Clinton Barr (P.Geo.), V.P. Exploration for Benton Capital Corp., is the qualified person responsible for this release and has reviewed and approved all scientific and technical data and disclosures in this release. On behalf of the Board of Directors of Benton Capital Corp, Stephen Stares, President THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE. The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to gold price and other commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections. || Bitcoin has a governance problem, no matter who created it: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - As one would-be father of bitcoin falls by the wayside, squabbling among the web-based currency's lead developers is exposing a fundamental flaw: it must evolve to meet growing demand, but may lack a governance structure to achieve this. The latest bickering erupted after Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright promised to prove he was the mysterious creator of bitcoin - which allows users to move money across the world quickly and anonymously - but then said on Thursday he could not provide further evidence to back this up. Wright stopped short of reneging on his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who launched the digital cryptocurrency in 2009. However, he apologised for damaging the reputations of bitcoin experts who had believed him. Many members of the bitcoin community reckon this is all a distraction and agree with Wright when he said that the identity of Nakamoto "doesn't, and shouldn't, matter". "Satoshi's biggest achievement was to create a system that doesn't require his participation to run," said Peter Todd, one of bitcoin's core software developers. "That's what makes all this stuff kind of funny. It's like searching for the creator of a system that's designed not to require a creator." While grey-suited central bankers print conventional currencies and commercial banks control transactions in them, no one person or entity is in charge of bitcoin. Instead it runs on a decentralised system of shared trust without any third-party verification of transactions - one reason why many people are attracted to it. Critics, however, say it needs a "benevolent dictator" or at least some "adults" to manage the expansion that it needs to cope with the increasing number of transactions. Someone, or some group, must decide how to meet users' requirements, they say. Trades are handled by thousands of "mining" computers around the world which validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. Story continues The first computer to solve the puzzle clears the transaction and is currently rewarded with 25 new bitcoins, now worth around $11,250. (BTC=BTSP). This is how the computers' owners cover their costs - largely power bills - and make a profit. The system also ensures there is no single point in the system that might fail. CIVIL WAR In practice, there do appear to be people who can make decisions, but it is also possible to be excluded from this magic circle. One of the bitcoin experts who initially believed Wright's claim is Gavin Andresen. Nakamoto handed control of bitcoin's software to Andresen when he stepped aside in 2011, a transfer that kept the creator's identity a mystery as it was conducted in cyberspace without human contact. Andresen later shared that control with others. But when he stated publicly he believed Wright, sceptical developers responded by revoking his "commit access" to a shared repository of bitcoin rules. Initially, these developers justified their move on security grounds, saying his computer must have been hacked - something Andresen denied. When Reuters asked Todd whether Andresen's access would be reinstated, he responded: "Heck no", saying a belief in Wright amounted to "inexcusable incompetence". Andresen admitted to bewilderment over whether he still believed Wright's claims. "Ask me in six months; I don't trust my own judgement right now after all the drama," he said on Twitter. The squabbling is not new. One of the lead developers, Mike Hearn, stood down from bitcoin in January because of a power struggle nicknamed the "bitcoin civil war". Hearn and Andresen had proposed increasing the size of the blocks in which transactions are processed but the other developers opposed this. In quitting, Hearn said that "what was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked systemically important institutions" had now become "a system completely controlled by just a handful of people". Many investors and start-up firms remain optimistic about bitcoin and are making money from it. But Emin Gun Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said the appearance of internal conflict was undermining it. "For bitcoin to retain its value, it's important to have hope that there's good management in charge, that there are adults in charge," Sirer said. "When we see opportunistic moves, that's a problem." BENEVOLENT DICTATORS But Sirer also said that any open-source project such as bitcoin, which runs using software that anyone can access, change, and distribute, faces the challenge of governance. "Is it a pipe dream to expect to be able to build a currency system that is completely decentralized and free of any control whatsoever? The short answer to that is yes, but that's not what anyone should have expected anyway," he said. Sirer added that he was concerned that his brightest young students at Cornell were being deterred from getting involved with bitcoin because of the in-fighting and the appearance that developers were unable to agree on change. One other digital currency system which is attracting bright young minds is Ethereum, created in 2013 by Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin when he was just 19. It works with the "benevolent dictator model", as Sirer calls it, with Buterin holding the decision-making power. "Over the last couple of years it's become apparent that having a static protocol is just not a viable approach," Buterin told the Consensus bitcoin conference in New York earlier in the week. "Software has to evolve ... and there has to be some mechanism for agreeing on how software is going to upgrade." Most, however, reckon that even if Nakamoto were to be found, the other developers - many of whom have written more code than he ever did in the seven years since bitcoin was launched - would not accept his having ultimate power. "(Nakamoto) would be thanked for creating this amazing thing, but if there comes a time when there's a technical debate over whether we should go one way or the other, his opinions would only be persuasive, not controlling," said Jerry Brito, executive director of bitcoin advocacy group Coin Center. (Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; editing by David Stamp) || BTC to Provide Prepaid Electricity: NASSAU, BAHAMAS--(Marketwired - Apr 13, 2016) - Metered and prepaid electricity will soon become a reality as the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) has started testing the service in Spanish Wells, Eleuthera. Prepaid metering allows customers to better manage their electricity use and bills via BTC's 4G LTE data network. BTC CEO Leon Williams said, "With this accomplishment, BTC will become the first Telecommunications Provider in the Caribbean region to leverage its network to provide smart-grid services to the utility industry. BTC's prepaid service eliminates monthly bills, disconnections, and visits to the utility office, while providing the tools necessary to save money on utilities. It's also a step ahead for utility companies who can reduce accounts receivable and transition the management of accounts to the customer." CEO at St. George's Cay Power Limited, Morris Pinder said, "We have been using the BTC prepaid metering solution for about a month now, and thus far everything is going well. In Spanish Wells we have several business owners that operate rental units and prepaid metering will be beneficial as renters will be responsible for their power usage. I'm certain that it will also be beneficial for persons that may have problems paying for electricity." Prepaid metering provides an added layer of flexibility for customers. This tech-savvy solution will use BTC's 4G LTE data network, and will allow customers to top up their accounts using their existing mobile wallet, wherever BTC top-up is available, online and via the BTC Call Center. Consumers will have the ability of monitoring their usage using their smart devices. The prepaid metering system provides notifications, letting customers know when their balances are low and prompting them to top up again. The system can also be customized to allow customers to also pay down on their existing bills. Over the next several months, BTC expects to complete its POC and extend the opportunity to local utility providers. Later this year, BTC will also work with a provider to spearhead a prepaid metering concept for water usage. Story continues About BTC BTC is the national leader in communications services in The Bahamas. The Company offers a full suite of landline, broadband and mobile solutions for residential and enterprise customers. BTC is the 2015 winner of the globally renowned sales and business development Stevie Awards. The Company captured the Silver Award for the National Sales Executive of the Year and the Bronze Award for Sales Team of the Year. BTC is also the 2015 winner of the Gold and Silver medals in the regional Association of Directory Publishers (ADP) Awards. BTC won two First Place Gold Medals for 'Excellence in Cover Design & Art - Product Branding' and 'Excellence in Cover Design & Art - Print'. The company captured the Second Place Silver Medal for 'Excellence in Print Directories'. The Company is also committed to community building and in 2015 alone has been title sponsor of several national initiatives including One Bahamas, The High School Nationals, CARIFTA Swim and Track & Field Teams, IAAF/BTC World Relays and the Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2992119 Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2992121 || Banks, tech companies move on from bitcoin to blockchain: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - As a debate raged across the internet Monday over whether the mysterious founder of the bitcoin digital currency had finally been identified, executives at a major bitcoin conference in New York had a simple message: we've moved on. That's because bitcoin, the digital currency, has largely been supplanted by blockchain, the technology that underlies it, as the main interest of investors, technology companies and financial institutions. "If there is a 100 percent opportunity in the blockchain, bitcoin, or the currency, is only 1 percent of it," said Jerry Cuomo, vice president, Blockchain Technologies at International Business Machines Corp. "So there is a whole 99 percent that has broad applications across the broad industries." Over the past year numerous Wall Street firms, led by Goldman Sachs, have declared their commitment to pursuing blockchain as a potential revolutionary technology for tracking and clearing financial transactions. The blockchain technology works by creating permanent, public "ledgers" of all transactions that could potentially replace complicated clearing and settlement systems with one simple ledger. Still, bitcoin is by far the largest implementation of blockchain technology and there is considerable debate as to whether one can truly develop without the other. "Bitcoin is still the only blockchain-enabled, cross-border large scale, provable application that's actually in production," said Joseph Guastella, a principal at Deloitte Consulting in New York. "Bitcoin as a currency may not be as relevant as it was in many ways, but it actually is relevant as a proof case for the blockchain technology." Bitcoins are created through a "mining" process, in which specialized computers solve complex math problems in exchange for bitcoins. One bitcoin is equivalent to $444.75 late on Monday and trade on various exchanges around the world. But bitcoin transaction volume has been in decline over the past six months amid a bitter split over technical changes in the protocol that are needed to increase the capacity of the system that produces them. Because the cryptocurrency has no formal governance, it relies on a core group of developers for direction - and they are sharply divided over the changes. But that debate was of relatively little concern to the Blockchain enthusiasts gathered in New York. Australian tech entrepreneur Craig Wright identified himself on Monday as the creator of controversial digital currency bitcoin. "It's irrelevant because his announcement doesn't solve a problem or resolve a conflict," said Bharat Solanki, managing director at Cambrian Consulting in New York. Story continues "It probably helps to determine the origins of bitcoin but only for recognition," Solanki said. For Naoki Taniguchi, a global innovation expert at The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd in San Francisco, he does not really care about who created bitcoin. "It's all about the blockchain," he said. View comments || Excitement Builds for Flow CARIFTA Games: ST. GEORGE'S, GRENADA--(Marketwired - Mar 24, 2016) - The excitement is steadily building in the Spice Isle, as the crème de la crème of junior track and field descends on Grenada for the highly anticipated 2016 Flow CARIFTA Games this weekend. Already, teams from Anguilla, Antigua, the Cayman Islands, Guyana, St. Lucia, Suriname, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the US Virgin Islands, and Trinidad and Tobago have arrived in St. George's to compete in the 45 th edition of the Caribbean's premier athletics meet. "We know that a lot is expected of us, and as we showcase our Caribbean youth, we want to provide them with an experience that will encourage them to continue in sport. My heart is filled with joy to see that we have reached this point," said Veda Bruno-Victor, Chairperson of the Local Organising Committee. Flow, the region's leading telecommunications provider, has signed a three-year partnership with the North American, Central American and Caribbean Athletics Association (NACAC) to be the exclusive broadcast partner and title sponsor of the CARIFTA Games. It means that for the first time in the history of the CARIFTA Games, the event will be broadcast live in High Definition (HD) across the entire Caribbean. "I am also very grateful that Flow has become our title sponsor for the 2016 CARIFTA Games and for the following two Games to come. We want our young athletes to be seen and remembered, because if they are not in Rio, they will definitely be in Japan (2020 Olympic Games). We want our people to say 'I remember that boy or girl' and it is with great expectation that we look forward to the coming of the CARIFTA Games," added Bruno-Victor. Flow, which is also the region's exclusive broadcast partner for the upcoming Rio 2016 Olympic Games, has contracted an international production team that will capture, package and present more than twenty hours of live coverage from the River Road venue on the Flow Sports Channel (Channel 190 in Barbados). Story continues "This is a triumphant moment for Caribbean athletics and we very proud to be the exclusive broadcast partner and title sponsor of the 2016 Flow CARIFTA Games," said Denise Williams, Senior Vice President of Communications, Cable & Wireless Communications. "Since its launch last year, Flow Sports has already become one of the Caribbean's leading sports networks and our partnership with the CARIFTA Games builds upon Flow's other initiatives across the region. In addition to lending financial support, we are also very excited that our partnership with NACAC will allow us the opportunity to broadcast the Games across multiple platforms including our very own Flow Sports." The 2016 Flow CARIFTA Games will inaugurate Grenada's new National Stadium which was recently redeveloped following the passing of Hurricane Ivan in 2004. More than 650 athletes and officials will attend the Games from countries including Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Bonaire, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Dominica, French Guiana, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Maarteen, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the United States Virgin Islands. About Cable & Wireless Communications Plc Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) is a full service communications and entertainment provider, operating in Latin America and the Caribbean. With annual sales of over US$2.4 billion, it operates both mobile and fixed networks, supported by submarine and terrestrial optical fibre backhaul capacity. CWC delivers superior high-speed mobile data, broadband and video services. It has leading market positions in Mobile, Fixed Line, Broadband and Video consumer offers. Through its business division, CWC provides data centre hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customised IT service solutions, utilising cloud technology to serve business and government customers. The Group also operates a state-of-the-art subsea fibre optic cable network that spans more than 48,000 km -- the most extensive in the region -- as well as 38,000 km of terrestrial fibre providing wholesale and carrier backhaul capacity. CWC has more than 7,300 employees serving 6.4 million customers (Mobile 4.1m; Fixed Line 1.1m; Video 470k and Broadband 690k) across 42 countries. The Group's leading brands include; LIME and Flow in the Caribbean; BTC in The Bahamas; Mas Movil in Panama; C&W Business and C&W Networks. CWC is the market leader in most products offered and territories served. It is a major contributor to local communities through its corporate social responsibility programmes. Cable & Wireless Communications Plc's shares are quoted on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker CWC. The Group is headquartered in London with its operational hub located in Miami, within close proximity to the Caribbean and Latin America. For more information visit: www.cwc.com . Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2983620 || After hospital ransomware attack, time for some blunt talk about cybersecurity: Your standard medical drama is supposed to end with a “how it happened” scene, in which doctors explain what really went wrong with the patient and how they solved it. But it doesn’t look like therecent ransomware episodeatMedStar Healthwill get that traditional resolution.
We know fromwell-sourced reportsthat the mid-Atlantic hospital chain got hit with a strain of ransomware that locked up some of its files. (In such attacks, miscreants encrypt a victim’s files and demand payment — often in the form of Bitcoin — for the decryption key.) We know that containing the problemknocked many of the hospital’s computer systems offlineandforced doctors and nurses to communicate via paper and fax.
But we don’t know how the attack happened or what MedStar did to fix it. And the Columbia, Md., company doesn’t plan to tell us.
“Based on the advice of IT, cybersecurity and law enforcement experts, MedStar will not be elaborating further on additional aspects of this malware event,” reads astatement posted on its site last week.“This is not only for the protection and security of MedStar Health, its patients and associates, but is also for the benefit of other healthcare organizations and companies.”
MedStar’s case is not unique, and neither is its subsequent silence.
In February, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angelessuffered its own ransomware attack. The hospitalacknowledged that it was ransomwareand even specified the sum demanded (40 bitcoin, or about $17,000). But itprovided no hint as to how it got hackedor what it has done to thwart future attacks.
Cybersecurity experts know this secure-it-and-shut-up routine well.
“The industry status quo is not to reveal the cause of breaches,” emailedKatie Moussouris, a Washington-based security consultant. “Disclosure often only happens when action must be taken externally to apply the defense” — that is, somebody outside the organization has to change a password, patch a server, or take a system offline.
“I can’t think of any company that’s been transparent about it,” said Ars Technica’s veteran security reporterSean Gallagherin a Twitter direct message.
It’s not that corporate leaders don’t realize the importance of working with their peers: They do, but still would rather not reveal the ugly details of attacks. A recent survey of 700-plus C-suite executives by IBM Security found that while 55 percent favored more industry collaboration,68 percent were reluctant to share incident informationoutside their own firms.
Meanwhile, attackers have fewer hang-ups about talking about their tactics. “The bad guys are always better at sharing than the good guys,” emailedJeremy Epstein, a security scientist with SRI International.
Other industries aren’t as opaque in documenting their mishaps. For a particularly dramatic contrast, you could look to commercial aviation.
Any serious accident spurs an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, and even something as relatively minor asa flight attendant breaking a passenger’s foot with a beverage cartwarrants an NTSB writeup. The idea is to publicly identify what went wrong so nobody ever does it again — and it’s made flying an incredibly safe way to travel.
Epstein noted that this culture of safety owes something to government influence: “Airlines have more regulatory requirements to disclose.” In other business sectors, that influence is less pronounced.
But, he added, airlines themselves can still clam up about cybersecurity issues that don’t directly affect flight safety. He cited a run of flight cancellations last year that wereapparently the result of fake flight plans that pilots immediately flagged, but which airlines later vaguely labeled as “unanticipated technical problems.”
Companies and organizations are supposed to be able to share confidential information, including details of unpatched vulnerabilities, in private forums such as industry-specificInformation Sharing and Analysis Centers. For instance, airlines can team up at theAviation ISAC, while medical facilities can collaborate privately atHealthcare Ready.
So is MedStar at least documenting what went wrong in that health care forum? The hospital won’t even say that. Said spokeswoman Ann Nickels in a text message: “I have nothing further to add.”
The immediate benefit of disclosure — after you’ve patched your shop and helped peers with equally sensitive systems secure their own — is education for everybody else who might not be in the same line of work but who might be running software with the same vulnerability.
“The best way to educate the public on how to not make the same mistakes is to publicly disclose the cause of a breach,” Moussouris said. But organizations don’t have much motivation to take that first step.
And until more of them do, hopelessly vague cybersecurity storylines imply that hacks just happen — they don’t — and that we must blindly trust large corporations to fix these apparently inevitable problems. That leaves us not just unaware of security flaws that might be lurking on our own computers, but generally powerless in the entire cybersecurity debate.
Moussouris, who has helped organize such collaborative vulnerability-research initiatives asthe Defense Department’s “Hack the Pentagon” project, suggested it would take either regulation — “which can be more damaging than helpful in some cases” — or pressure from customers.
But if I or somebody in my family needs urgent care, and the closest hospital is a MedStar facility, am I going to complain about their infosec? Absolutely not. So this problem isn’t going away anytime soon.
EmailRobatrob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at@robpegoraro. || The Market In 5 Minutes: May, She Will Stay: Below is a tool used by the Benzinga News Desk each trading day -- it's a look at everything happening in the market, in five minutes. Apply for daily AM access by clicking here or email minutes@benzinga.com. Macro Focus Asian stocks were mostly lower , led by another selloff in Japanese equities. Japan's Nikkei index tumbled 3.11 percent, adding to Thursday's 3.61 percent loss (Japanese markets were closed on Friday for a national holiday), after the country's currency realized its largest two-day gain against the U.S. dollar since 2008. Oil prices were trading lower Monday morning. As a reminder, OPEC said on Friday its April export activity rose to 32.64 million barrels per day (from 32.47 million in March) - close to the highest level in recent history. Crude futures for June delivery were lower by 0.7 percent at $45.60 a barrel, while Brent crude for June delivery was lower by 1.1 percent at $46.84 a barrel. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced Puerto Rico's government won't make nearly $370 million in bond payments due Monday after a failure to restructure or find a political solution to the U.S. territory's spiraling public debt crisis. Nearly all the bonds are held by a variety of U.S. hedge funds and mutual funds. BZ News Desk Focus Upcoming earnings highlights include reports from two leading specialty retailers -- CVS Health (NYSE: CVS ) and Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFM ) -- as well as two major pharmaceutical companies -- Merck (NYSE: MRK ) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE ). Ford Motor (NYSE: F ) CFO Bob Shanks joined the PreMarket Prep broadcast this morning. Check back soon for updates from the call, such as Ford having the largest fleet of autonomous vehicles in the world. Find out what's going on in today's market and bring any questions you have to Benzinga's PreMarket Prep . Sell-Side Themes A handful of analysts weighed in on Seagate (NASDAQ: STX ) following its earnings miss and subsequent stock fall late last week. Brean even admitted it was wrong on the stock. Sell-Side's Most Noteworthy Calls Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL ) raised to Neutral at Goldman. Starz (NASDAQ: STRZA ) upgraded to Outperform from Underperform at CLSA. L-3 Communications (NYSE: LLL ) raised to Buy at Goldman. Vale (NYSE: VALE ) upgrade from Hold to Buy at BB&T. Seagate (NASDAQ: STX ) cut to Sector Perform at RBC Capital. Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN ) downgraded to Underperform at RBC Capital Markets. Time Warner (NYSE: TWX ) cut to Sector Weight at Pacific Crest. TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO ) downgraded to Hold at Topeka Capital. United Technologies (NYSE: UTX ) cut to Neutral at Goldman. Story continues Buy-Side Pernix Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTX ) shares rose 69.31 percent to $1.270 in pre-market trading following Friday's report of a 5.8 percent Stake by Point 72. Deal Talk Halliburton (NYSE: HAL ) and Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI ) announced over the weekend that the companies have terminated their proposed merger agreement, which was proposed back in November 2014. Halliburton proposed to acquire Baker Hughes in a transaction valued at $28 billion. However, regulatory and competitive concerns prompted antitrust officials to heavily scrutinize the deal. Apollo Education (NASDAQ: APOL ) says it's received a revised buyout offer of $10 per share from a consortium led by Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO ), notes it represents "an excellent outcome for shareholders." In The News Warren Buffett has some sage advice for youngsters who one day may invest in the stock market: "A lot of problems are caused by envy. You don't want to get envious. Follow your own course." Attention Twitter (NYSE: TWTR ) and it shareholders: Digital-video ad spending in the US is expected to grow 28.5 percent this year to $9.84 billion, according to eMarketer. "Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright has publicly identified himself as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. His admission ends years of speculation about who came up with the original ideas underlying the digital cash system," BBC reports. "Mr. Wright has provided technical proof to back up his claim using coins known to be owned by Bitcoin's creator. Prominent members of the Bitcoin community and its core development team have also confirmed Mr Wright's claim." Is another tech bubble bursting? Despite record amount of money flowing into venture capital, funding for startups is drying up. Blogosphere After a scary start to the year, bond investors holding the riskiest debt will have been relieved to have ended April 5.3 percent ahead. If history is any guide, returns were to be expected. Whether May will bring a similar result is a coin-toss, and Gadfly's Christopher Langner says there's one certainty: more volatility. Philosophical Economics: Does index investing make markets and economies more efficient? Trending NUGT ACAD PTX DUST GLD GDX APOL BHI BIDU VALE GOLD HAL JNUG OPWR JCP [StockTwits] In his final run as comedian-in-chief at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday, President Barack Obama closed his speech with "Obama out," and a mic drop before receiving a standing ovation from Washington's bigwigs and Hollywood. Meanwhile, featured comedian Larry Wilmore has received some mixed reactions for his part. See more from Benzinga The Market In 5 Minutes: You're Not Your Job The Market In 5 Minutes: Thumbs Up The Market In 5 Minutes: Sour Apples And Greek Goddesses © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || The Market In 5 Minutes: May, She Will Stay: Below is a tool used by the Benzinga News Desk each trading day -- it's a look at everything happening in the market, in five minutes. Apply for daily AM access by clicking here or email minutes@benzinga.com. Macro Focus Asian stocks were mostly lower , led by another selloff in Japanese equities. Japan's Nikkei index tumbled 3.11 percent, adding to Thursday's 3.61 percent loss (Japanese markets were closed on Friday for a national holiday), after the country's currency realized its largest two-day gain against the U.S. dollar since 2008. Oil prices were trading lower Monday morning. As a reminder, OPEC said on Friday its April export activity rose to 32.64 million barrels per day (from 32.47 million in March) - close to the highest level in recent history. Crude futures for June delivery were lower by 0.7 percent at $45.60 a barrel, while Brent crude for June delivery was lower by 1.1 percent at $46.84 a barrel. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla announced Puerto Rico's government won't make nearly $370 million in bond payments due Monday after a failure to restructure or find a political solution to the U.S. territory's spiraling public debt crisis. Nearly all the bonds are held by a variety of U.S. hedge funds and mutual funds. BZ News Desk Focus Upcoming earnings highlights include reports from two leading specialty retailers -- CVS Health (NYSE: CVS ) and Whole Foods (NASDAQ: WFM ) -- as well as two major pharmaceutical companies -- Merck (NYSE: MRK ) and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE ). Ford Motor (NYSE: F ) CFO Bob Shanks joined the PreMarket Prep broadcast this morning. Check back soon for updates from the call, such as Ford having the largest fleet of autonomous vehicles in the world. Find out what's going on in today's market and bring any questions you have to Benzinga's PreMarket Prep . Sell-Side Themes A handful of analysts weighed in on Seagate (NASDAQ: STX ) following its earnings miss and subsequent stock fall late last week. Brean even admitted it was wrong on the stock. Sell-Side's Most Noteworthy Calls Colgate-Palmolive (NYSE: CL ) raised to Neutral at Goldman. Starz (NASDAQ: STRZA ) upgraded to Outperform from Underperform at CLSA. L-3 Communications (NYSE: LLL ) raised to Buy at Goldman. Vale (NYSE: VALE ) upgrade from Hold to Buy at BB&T. Seagate (NASDAQ: STX ) cut to Sector Perform at RBC Capital. Groupon (NASDAQ: GRPN ) downgraded to Underperform at RBC Capital Markets. Time Warner (NYSE: TWX ) cut to Sector Weight at Pacific Crest. TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO ) downgraded to Hold at Topeka Capital. United Technologies (NYSE: UTX ) cut to Neutral at Goldman. Story continues Buy-Side Pernix Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PTX ) shares rose 69.31 percent to $1.270 in pre-market trading following Friday's report of a 5.8 percent Stake by Point 72. Deal Talk Halliburton (NYSE: HAL ) and Baker Hughes (NYSE: BHI ) announced over the weekend that the companies have terminated their proposed merger agreement, which was proposed back in November 2014. Halliburton proposed to acquire Baker Hughes in a transaction valued at $28 billion. However, regulatory and competitive concerns prompted antitrust officials to heavily scrutinize the deal. Apollo Education (NASDAQ: APOL ) says it's received a revised buyout offer of $10 per share from a consortium led by Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO ), notes it represents "an excellent outcome for shareholders." In The News Warren Buffett has some sage advice for youngsters who one day may invest in the stock market: "A lot of problems are caused by envy. You don't want to get envious. Follow your own course." Attention Twitter (NYSE: TWTR ) and it shareholders: Digital-video ad spending in the US is expected to grow 28.5 percent this year to $9.84 billion, according to eMarketer. "Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright has publicly identified himself as Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. His admission ends years of speculation about who came up with the original ideas underlying the digital cash system," BBC reports. "Mr. Wright has provided technical proof to back up his claim using coins known to be owned by Bitcoin's creator. Prominent members of the Bitcoin community and its core development team have also confirmed Mr Wright's claim." Is another tech bubble bursting? Despite record amount of money flowing into venture capital, funding for startups is drying up. Blogosphere After a scary start to the year, bond investors holding the riskiest debt will have been relieved to have ended April 5.3 percent ahead. If history is any guide, returns were to be expected. Whether May will bring a similar result is a coin-toss, and Gadfly's Christopher Langner says there's one certainty: more volatility. Philosophical Economics: Does index investing make markets and economies more efficient? Trending NUGT ACAD PTX DUST GLD GDX APOL BHI BIDU VALE GOLD HAL JNUG OPWR JCP [StockTwits] In his final run as comedian-in-chief at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday, President Barack Obama closed his speech with "Obama out," and a mic drop before receiving a standing ovation from Washington's bigwigs and Hollywood. Meanwhile, featured comedian Larry Wilmore has received some mixed reactions for his part. See more from Benzinga The Market In 5 Minutes: You're Not Your Job The Market In 5 Minutes: Thumbs Up The Market In 5 Minutes: Sour Apples And Greek Goddesses © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Ocakypa has won a round in a playground (Faucet) and won 0.00005000 BTC, join @ChopCoin and earn BTC (23:20UTC) || 1 MUE Price: Bittrex 0.00000065 BTC YoBit 0.00000078 BTC Bleutrade 0.00000063 BTC #MUE #MUEprice 2016-04-18 18:00 pic.twitter.com/LO0pncSsHy || One Bitcoin now worth $424.95@bitstamp. High $426.67. Low $421.00. Market Cap $6.556 Billion #bitcoin || poopmachine has won a round in a playground (Faucet) and won 0.00005000 BTC, join @ChopCoin and earn BTC (00:11UTC) || Current price: 367.84€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2016-03-29 19:00:07 CEST || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 17 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $159.79 #bitcoin #btc || 0Hyser: RT BTCtoEUR: Current price: 371.81€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2016-03-17 03:00:10 CET #bitcoin || LIVE: Profit = $342.27 (4.24 %). BUY B19.53 @ $420.00 (#VirCurex). SELL @ $430.80 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || Current price of Bitcoin is $420.00 via Chain || Bitstamp: $422.87/BTC - last trade of USD/BTC at https://www.bitstamp.net/ (high: 425.00, low: 420.32) #bitcoin #BTC http://bitcoinautotrade.com
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Trend: down || Prices: 450.89, 452.73, 454.77, 455.67, 455.67, 457.57, 454.16, 453.78, 454.62, 438.71
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
The Beer Business Is Looking Gloomy: The beer industry keeps shrinking. Drinkers haven't been bellying up to the bar for years, and last year sales volumes were down another 1.2%. But while megabrewers like Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD) and Molson Coors (NYSE: TAP) continue to see overall sales shrink, craft beer at least can say its business is still growing. While the heady double-digit growth rates of the past decade are probably a thing of the past, sales volumes still rose 5% in 2017 for craft brewers, and small and independent brewers account for nearly 13% of the total market by volume, according to a report in The Washington Post . That's cold comfort for Boston Beer (NYSE: SAM) , the second-biggest craft brewer and arguably still the face of the craft beer industry. Even as it reports growth in sales of its hard cider, tea, and seltzer, its flagship Samuel Adams brand hasn't posted a single quarter of higher depletions in over three years. (Depletions are an industry benchmark for consumer demand that measures sales to distributors and retailers.) Unfortunately, it doesn't look like things are going to get any better for beer overall this year, and craft beer's fortunes may soon take a turn for the worse, too. Female bartender pouring beer from tap Image source: Getty Images. Less drinking, but bigger sizes A recent series of tweets from the chief economist of the Beer Institute brewing trade association, Michael Ulrich, suggests how trends are working against the industry. While beer is still the alcoholic beverage of choice in the U.S., at 49.7% of servings versus 15.4% for wine and 34.9% for hard liquor, it is the lowest share of servings it has ever commanded, according to the Beer Institute's 2017 state of beer presentation. More worrisome is that the only beer segment that actually did better in 2017 than the year before was the "economy" segment, and that was only because brewers engaged in discounting and rolling out larger pack sizes. The 15-pack case is increasingly becoming a favored size for craft brewers, and though still small at the moment, it has the potential to one day replace the 12-pack as the industry standard. But with the larger size comes a lower price per unit, which could serve to lower brewer revenue and pressure profits. Story continues Boston Beer founder and Chairman Jim Koch said last year on a conference call with analysts that he didn't think there would be a price war among craft brewers given their limited ability to absorb price cuts. "... I think the primary downward pressure on pricing at this point is the advent of 15 packs into craft beer ... And the consumer may or may not look at that as price degradation because they may be looking at the cans and thinking, well, that's kind of equivalent to a 12-pack bottles except I'm getting three free beers." Even the megabrewers are getting in on it, with MillerCoors transitioning all of its economy brands to the new size, but also moving its Blue Moon brand to it as well. Anheuser-Busch says it will utilize 15-packs as well as 18-pack cases, which of course, with its greater financial resources, allows it to push prices even lower. Tapping into the new trend Ulrich tweeted that even though U.S. consumer spending on beer grew 0.7% last year, it was much lower than in recent years and shows resistance to the price hikes brewers -- including Boston Beer -- made in the first quarter. A bigger problem for craft beer may be where its growth is coming from. The Brewers Association trade group for "small and independent craft brewers" notes there were more than 6,370 breweries operating last year, almost all of them craft, up 16% from the 2016 number. Ulrich noted that taprooms and brewpubs -- on-premises locations where breweries sell their beer -- and other direct sales counted for all the growth in volume that the craft industry experienced last year. There are now over 2,250 brewpubs in business, according to the Brewers Association, almost double the number that existed just five years ago. Although that could be a healthy sign for the industry, and even Boston Beer is opening up a series of taprooms , it could very well be that as occurred with the explosion of craft beer labels on store shelves, too many brewpubs will mean everyone's glass ends up less full. Ultimately, Ulrich sees 2018 being another down year for the beer industry, and it's easy to extrapolate the troubles the megabrewers are facing to the craft beer industry itself. Production continues to expand, but the beer market is in decline, and it may find that not nearly enough people will be bellying up to the bar. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Rich Duprey has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Anheuser-Busch InBev NV and Boston Beer. The Motley Fool owns shares of Molson Coors Brewing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Arizona man gets 20 months in prison for emergency system DDoS attacks: Denial of service attacks are serious by themselves , but doubly so when they target vital systems... and one perpetrator is finding that out first-hand. A court has sentenced Arizona resident Randall Charles Tucker (who nicknamed himself the "Bitcoin Baron") to 20 months in prison for launching distributed denial of service attacks against city websites, including damaging attacks against Madison, Wisconsin. He not only took down the city's website, but "crippled" its emergency communication system to the point where first responders had trouble reaching the 911 center. It also 'degraded' the automatic dispatching for emergency crews. Tucker had already pleaded guilty to the charge in April 2017 after making the mistake of bragging about it on social networks. He's expected to pay just under $69,332 in restitution to his victims on top of the prison term. This isn't a particularly steep penalty given that the crime could have put lives at risk. Even so, the very existence of the sentence is notable. Cyberattacks against emergency systems are becoming all too common , and successful convictions like this might discourage others attempting to show off their DDoS skills. View comments || Find out why Polychain and FBG Invested in Origo Network: NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / June 15, 2018 / .Recently, Origo successfully completed their private sale with several famous investors such as Polychain, FBG, Signum, Kenetic, 1kx and more. Origo is a blockchain start-up focusing on privacy preservation in smart contracts. With digital data growing at a rapid pace, security has become a growing issue. Current blockchains' unprecedented transparency has made all transaction details for coins like Bitcoin and smart contract details for networks like Ethereum totally public and vulnerable to the entire network, resulting in potential data and financial losses and limiting real world use cases. Origo is making an effort to explore technical solutions in order to protect privacy and develop a public blockchain, through complete privacy-preserving technology for smart contracts backed by a Double Advance Zero-Knowledge Proof System. Origo's Privacy Preserving Smart Contract Network provides a solution to execute smart contracts Privately, Securely and Correctly, which guarantees contract input, details of contract execution, contract output and transaction details to be private. Why did these famous funds invest in Origo? We contacted two of the investors and got some answers: "We are excited to support Origo and believe that technology to efficiently obfuscate smart contract steps is an important privacy component of the Web3 software stack. We've been impressed by the strong globally distributed technical team leading this project and we look forward to accelerate their growth through our support program PC-2030." Said Ryan Zurrer, Partner of Polychain Capital. Polychain Capital is the leading global institutional investor. Polychain's backers include top VCs like Andreessen Horowitz and leads investment in projects like DFINITY, Orchid Labs, MakerDao, Nucypher, Basis and Republic Protocol. FBG Capital is one of the most well-known specialized organizations globally. FBG has supported over 70 projects in a wide range of frontier technologies, including Aelf, Zilliqa, Aeternity, Raiden, 0x, Kyber, Republic protocol, Nucypher, Polkadot, Omisego, and MakerDao. Story continues Vincent Zhou, Founder of FBG Capital commented, "Origo is among the few exciting projects that tackle the privacy problem to help expand the use potential of blockchain technology. I like the well-balanced team, both in terms of technical as well as business development experience. I look forward to working with such a talented team to create more impact long term. " Currently, Origo is working hard in the development process. According to its white paper, the testnet will be completed before the end of the year. SOURCE: Origo || 3 Stocks That Could Double Your Money: Investing in the stocks of stable, well-run, innovative businesses is one of the surest ways to generate wealth. Not every company will produce epic gains, but that isn't necessary for an investor to be successful.
So how do you go about finding these potential opportunities? One way is to look to the stock market and identify companies whose winning streak has already begun, and will likely continue into the future.
To help with that, I've done some of the legwork and selected three companies that are pioneers in their respective fields, have already produced outsized gains, and have a clear runway to future growth. Read on to see whyShopify Inc.(NYSE: SHOP),NVIDIA Corporation(NASDAQ: NVDA), andNetflix, Inc.(NASDAQ: NFLX)fit the bill.
Image source: Getty Images.
The story has it that Shopify co-founders Tobias Lutke and Scott Lake were searching for a simple online platform to sell a line of high-end snowboards. When no suitable solution was found, Shopify was born. What began as a way to help small and medium-sized businesses navigate the path to online sales has blossomed into a worldwide e-commerce dynamo.
Over 600,000 businesses from 175 countries have chosen Shopify's easy-to-implement solutions for creating an online presence and simplifying the e-commerce experience. The company provides more than 100 ready-to-use website templates and more than 2,300 apps to customize the experience.
Shopify has gone on to incorporate solutions for other business necessities like payments, shipping, invoicing, order tracking, and working capital loans. It also created Shopify Plus to cater to the needs of enterprise-level businesses, now one of the fastest-growing segments of the company's business.
Image source: Getty Images.
Providing a much-needed service has proven particularly lucrative for Shopify. Since going public in mid-2015, the company's revenue has risen nearly 500%, and its stock has more than quadrupled. Shopify is not yet profitable, having chosen to pour all its profits into its expansion, as the majority of its customers are still in North America.
With a track record of stellar growth, amarket capof just $15 billion, and ongoing international expansion, it's easy to see how Shopify's stock price could double from here.
NVIDIA revolutionized modern gaming with the introduction of the graphics processing unit (GPU) and remains the worldwide leader in the technology it pioneered two decades ago. The company still controlled more than 66% of the discrete desktop GPU market to close out 2017.
NVIDIA's flagship gaming business is exploding, with revenue growing 67% year over year inits most recent quarter. That growth could continue, as battle-royale games likeFortniteadd new gamers to the fold and esports continues to gain wider adoption.
While processors used in video games still generate the majority of NVIDIA's business, it's the potential from emerging technologies that could drive significant growth. Researchers found that the same massive parallel processing capabilities that made GPUs perfect for rendering images was also the ideal solution fortraining artificial intelligence (AI) systems. NVIDIA's data center segment, which houses revenue from AI and cloud computing uses, has exceeded 70% year-over-year revenue growth in each of the last eight quarters, though it has slowed somewhat from the triple-digit growth it had produced. This has led to a stock that is up over 77% during the trailing 12 months.
Image source: Getty Images.
NVIDIA's GPUs are also found at the heart of several other emerging technologies, including augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and self-driving cars. The autonomous car marketmay represent the one of the greatest opportunities, as the data collected by the multitude of sensors in each vehicle needs to be processed to facilitate the self-driving functions -- and that task falls to the GPU. NVIDIA believes the total addressable market for autonomous vehicles will be $60 billion by 2035, with the first truly self-driving cars hitting roads between 2020 and 2021.
With a commanding lead in its primary market, and a number of emerging technologies that could drive blockbuster growth, NVIDIA stock is a prime candidate to double from here.
From its humble beginnings as a DVD-by-mail service, Netflix has emerged as a worldwide entertainment powerhouse. Since the debut of streaming in 2007, the television landscape has undergone a paradigm shift. The world has begun to move away from linear TV, with more consumers content to watch programs on their own schedule.
With that paradigm shift well under way in the U.S., Netflix took its show on the road, setting up operations in over 190 countries. Its global subscriber count just topped 125 million, but many believe that's just the beginning, which explains why Netflix stock has doubled over the past year. The nearly 57 million subscribers in the U.S. equates to about 50% penetration in its home market.
Image source: Getty Images.
If the company succeeds in growing its customer count by just 8% annually between now and 2030, its subscriber base will grow to 360 million, nearly triple its current level. Considering the 25% viewer growth Netflix has generated in each of the last four quarters, it certainly seems achievable.
Creating a growing library of original content and a massive international expansion has given bears reason to growl, as the company expects its cash flow for the coming year to be in a range of negative $3 billion to negative $4 billion. While some view thisgrowing cash burnas a red flag, some analysts believe the company will turncash flow positive with five years.
Netflix has said that the programs it produces are much less expensive on a per-subscriber basis, and as the company marches toward its goal of 50% self-generated content, the economics of its model will continue to improve, along with the company's improving operating margins and its ever-increasing profitability.
Even given the company's $145 billion market cap, its addressable market remains massive, and Netflix could double shareholders' money.
While past performance is no guarantee of future results, each of the companies presented here has proven it has what it takes to get the job done. Each is a pioneer in a specific area, has generated significant returns for shareholders, and still has massive opportunity. While they may not all double from here, the potential is there, and my money's where my mouth is: I'm invested in all three!
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Danny Venaowns shares of Netflix, Nvidia, and Shopify. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Netflix, Nvidia, and Shopify. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Is United States Steel Corporation a Buy?: Shares ofU.S. Steel(NYSE: X)have been red-hot over the past year, surging nearly 60%. Driving those gains has been a significant improvement in the company's earnings due to higher steel prices. In the first quarter, the steelmaker reported $57 million, or $0.32 per share, of adjusted earnings, which was a vast improvement from the adjusted loss of $145 million, or $0.83 per share, it reported in the year-ago quarter.
The main driver of that improvement has been an uptick in steel prices, which is due primarily to the Trump administration's decision to impose tariffs on steel. While those tariffs will likely act as a tailwind to steel prices in the near term, the resulting higher prices, when combined with a brewing trade war, could slow the global economy and impact demand for steel, which could affect U.S. Steel's stock going forward.
Image source: Getty Images.
Steel prices have improved significantly over the past year on the threat of tariffs. As the following table shows, this uptick has enabled U.S. Steel to realize higher prices on the types of steel it sells:
[{"Product": "Flat-Rolled", "$ per Net Ton in 1Q18": "$740", "$ per Net Ton in 1Q17": "$719", "Year-Over-Year Change": "3%"}, {"Product": "U.S. Steel Europe", "$ per Net Ton in 1Q18": "$707", "$ per Net Ton in 1Q17": "$594", "Year-Over-Year Change": "19%"}, {"Product": "Tubular", "$ per Net Ton in 1Q18": "$1,387", "$ per Net Ton in 1Q17": "$1,097", "Year-Over-Year Change": "26%"}]
Data source: U.S. Steel.
Shipments have also improved, increasing 5% year over year in the first quarter due to a stronger global economy. On top of that, U.S. Steel has been working hard to drive out costs and improve operations via its Carnegie Way plan, which has included using its increased profitability to pay down debt and reduce interest expenses.
U.S. Steel currently believes that those three tailwinds will grow stronger over the course of the year. Because of that, the company estimates that its adjustedEBITDAwill rise from $255 million in the first quarter to $400 million in the current quarter before averaging about $550 million in the second half of the year.
At that earnings run rate, U.S. Steel's stock sells for a mere 3.5 times itsenterprise value to EBITDA. For comparison's sake, that's about half the level of rivalNucor(NYSE: NUE), suggesting that U.S. Steel's stock could have much further to run if steel prices and demand hold up.
Image source: Getty Images.
While steel prices have improved as a result of the tariffs levied by the Trump administration, this has ignited a global trade war. China and Europe have added tariffs to other goods in response, causing the U.S. to reciprocate. These announcements are yielding new threats, with President Trump recently proposing a 25% tariff on imported cars and car parts.
This war could end in any number of ways. On the one hand, countries could agree to suspend the tariffs and address the issue that caused them in the first place, which was that some nations dumped steel on the U.S. at below-market prices. That hurt the profitability of U.S. Steel, which led the company to join the crusade to get the tariffs put into place.
On the other hand, the U.S. could wave the white flag and step back its tariffs on steel and other products to avoid doing damage to the economy. That action would likely cause steel prices to plummet, taking U.S. Steel's stock with it. Another possibility is that the trade war could continue escalating with counties putting new tariffs in place on more goods, which could significantly disrupt global trade and demand for products. For example, Trump's proposed tariffs on imported cars would increase the price of new vehicles in the U.S., which could slow sales. This slowdown would eventually impact steel demand, likely causing prices to fall.
Those last two outcomes would weigh heavily on U.S. Steel's stock. Shares have already come well off their highs from earlier in the year due at first to concerns that the U.S. would delay the steel tariffs and then more recently as a result of growing trade war fears.
If steel prices rose due solely to improving demand for steel, then U.S. Steel's stock would look like a compelling buy on valuation alone. However, since the big driver of steel prices are the tariffs -- which could go away or erode demand -- I don't think the stock is a good one to buy right now. Not only could shares take a tumble if steel pricing and demand take a hit, but there arebetter steel stocks out therethat have proven that they can do just fine at lower steel prices.
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Matthew DiLallohas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Nucor. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || 3 Embarrassingly Cheap Dividend Stocks: You like cheap? We all like cheap! But we also like quality, whether we're talking about used cars or dividend stocks. And despite the stock market's long bull run, there are still some dividend stocks out there that are both cheap and high-quality. So let's go bargain shopping and see if we can find some! Three in the bargain bin that look promising are Kinder Morgan (NYSE: KMI) , ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) , and Apache Corporation (NYSE: APA) . Here's why they might be right for your portfolio. A sign reading "SALE" in a shop window Bargain hunters will love these three cheap oil and gas industry stocks. Image source: Getty Images. Piping hot performance You'd think the stock market would reward the world's largest oil and gas pipeline owner, Kinder Morgan, especially after the company announced a stellar Q1 2018 and boosted its dividend by an impressive 60% -- no, that's not a typo: sixty percent! But after a small bump the day the earnings were announced, Kinder Morgan's shares have been trending lower...again. Wall Street has been bearish on the company since management announced a -- probably necessary -- quarterly dividend cut from $0.51/share to $0.125/share in 2015. The price is still languishing at near-historic lows, recently hitting its lowest per-share price in more than two years. And yet, during that time, Kinder Morgan has been executing well. In 2017, it delivered on its strategic plans . In the first quarter of 2018, it brought in more than $1.2 billion in cash flow thanks to natural gas transportation volumes that were up 10% year over year and natural gas pipeline earnings that rose by 6% year over year. That cash was $804 million more than management needed to pay out its newly increased dividend. So it funded some expansion projects and bought back $250 million in stock with the leftovers. That's not to say that Kinder Morgan is without risks. The company has a high debt ratio of 6.2 times EBITDA, which is well within its historical range but higher than the generally accepted upper limit of 5 times EBITDA. While Kinder Morgan has made some progress in debt repayment, it's surprising that a company so flush with cash hasn't devoted more energy to paying down some of that debt. Story continues Still, Kinder Morgan is trading at a discount to its peers on an enterprise value to EBITDA basis, which makes it both embarrasingly cheap and a top prospect for investors who want to cash in on the North American gas production boom. Big kid on the block Kinder Morgan may be the world's largest oil and gas pipeline owner, but its size pales in comparison to the world's largest oil company by market cap: ExxonMobil. As an integrated oil major, ExxonMobil not only produces oil and gas, but also refines and markets it. However, there's one big way ExxonMobil currently differs from its oil major peers: its shares are undeniably cheap by comparison. While most oil major stocks' prices have risen over the past year -- and some, like Royal Dutch Shell's , have risen a lot -- ExxonMobil's has fallen . That's pushed its valuation way down compared to the other oil majors. ExxonMobil's P/E ratio is currently 16.6, lower than Shell's 19.1 and less than half of BP 's 34.3. Its price to tangible book value is the lowest it's been since 2015, while its current dividend yield of 4% is the highest it's been in more than a decade. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that ExxonMobil is undervalued: it's possible that it's simply not as valuable a company as it was five or ten years ago. It's true that production has been declining for Exxon lately, and that some of its oil major peers have caught up to its historically superior returns. But ExxonMobil isn't going anywhere -- and its dividend certainly isn't either. The company has outlined plans to boost its returns, and is investing heavily in promising new offshore oilfields in Guyana and natural gas resources in Papua New Guinea. It will probably take time for these investments to pay off for Exxon, but in the meantime, you can enjoy the healthy dividend at a bargain price. A rare bargain in the oil patch The benchmark prices for both domestic and international crude oil closed above $70/barrel for the first time since 2014 this month. That was good for oil majors like ExxonMobil, but it's been even better for independent oil drillers, which are having a very, very good 2018. Shares of many independent oil and gas exploration and production companies have risen 20% or more since the start of the year. That's good for existing energy investors, but for would-be investors, it's made value tough to find in the oil patch. The market's been giving one driller the cold shoulder, though. Apache Corporation, which despite the improving oil price climate and a huge new Permian Basin play , has actually seen its shares decline by 1.8% so far this year. That looks like a great opportunity to snap up some shares at a bargain price, and nab Apache's best-in-class 2.4% dividend yield into the bargain. That is, if there isn't some other reason the market is sour on the stock. It's true that Apache has missed some of the production targets it set for itself in 2017. This was partly due to Hurricane Harvey -- which caused several problems for Houston-based Apache -- and also thanks to the company's sale of its low-margin Canadian holdings. It also reflected delays in bringing Alpine High -- its big Permian Basin find -- online. Alpine High sits on acreage in West Texas that Apache was able to pick up on the cheap, thanks to misconceptions about the amount of hydrocarbon potential in the region. But that meant Apache needed to build out Alpine High's infrastructure from scratch, and some unforeseen delays have made investors nervous that the company is missing out on today's high oil prices. Still, Apache's first quarter of 2018 saw more oil and gas finally coming from Alpine High, with Permian Basin production up 19% from the company's Q2 2017 low point. Indeed, Apache raised its 2018 production guidance on the strength of its Permian operations. If Apache can keep up this momentum, the market should start to take notice. In the meantime, Apache investors can content themselves with a decent yield at a bargain price. Cheap for a reason Most embarrassingly cheap stocks are cheap for a reason. That reason may be that the company has a high debt load, like Kinder Morgan, or has lost some of its advantages over its peers, like ExxonMobil, or has run into delays executing its plans, like Apache Corporation. And sometimes, there are good reasons for the market to be skeptical of those stocks. But no matter what the reason is behind the pricing, Kinder Morgan, ExxonMobil, and Apache are looking seriously undervalued at the moment and should be very attractive as part of a balanced dividend portfolio at these prices. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This John Bromels owns shares of Apache and Kinder Morgan. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Kinder Morgan. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || 3 Things to Watch in the Stock Market This Week: Stocks barely budged last week, to keep both the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) and the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) in just modestly positive territory for the year. ^DJI Chart ^DJI data by YCharts. Earnings reports still have the potential to steer indexes in one direction or the other, with retailers holding the spotlight over the next few trading days. Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) , Target (NYSE: TGT) , and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) are each set to report their latest results this week. Here's what investors can expect from these announcements. Lowe's seasonal traffic Home-improvement retailer Lowe's will post its results before the market opens on Wednesday. And while it routinely trails its bigger rival Home Depot on important growth and profitability metrics, the bar has been lowered for this most recent sales period after the market leader revealed a rare decline in first-quarter customer traffic and operating profit margin. Investors will be watching Lowe's comparable metrics -- especially customer traffic -- for signs that the retailer has stopped ceding market share to Home Depot. Outgoing CEO Robert Niblock and his team have predicted an overall growth slowdown to about 3.5% in 2018 compared to last year's 4% gain. That target might be harder to reach if the same industry struggles that impacted Home Depot also hurt Lowe's results at the start of the critical spring selling period. Still, investors might get good news on the financial front this week. Given its conservative dividend payout ratio and the extra cash on the way from tax cuts, Lowe's could have room to raise its direct cash returns in the coming quarters, provided its modest sales pace holds up. Target's profitability Investors are finding a few good reasons to believe in Target's turnaround lately. The retailer surpassed its upgraded sales-growth guidance over the holiday sales period, for example, thanks to healthy customer traffic gains and surging e-commerce sales. As of early March, the company had been predicting that this positive growth momentum will continue into 2018. Story continues Two women shopping for clothes. Image source: Getty Images. In addition to strong sales gains, investors will be following Target's profitability on Wednesday morning for clues as to where that figure might land after the retailer completes its transformation into a multichannel seller. Profit margin fell last year, and management warned shareholders to expect further declines as e-commerce becomes a bigger part of the business. That slight profitability dip will be a small price to pay for the other financial improvements that Target is hoping to achieve, including faster sales growth, surging free cash flow, and increased returns on invested capital. Best Buy's outlook Best Buy will announce its latest results on Thursday. After stunning investors by posting strong sales gains over the holidays, expectations are high for more good news this week. A couple shopping for a TV. Image source: Getty Images. CEO Hubert Joly and his team have predicted modest sales gains of roughly 2% this year following last year's 5.6% spike. For the first quarter, the target range is between 1.5% and 2.5%, but the retailer could surpass that goal if positive demand trends continue in key product categories like gaming and smartphones. The company has to strike a tough balance when seeking market-share gains at the expense of profitability. But operating income is expected to hold steady at 4.4% of sales this year, for example, compared to 4.7% two years ago. At the same time, Best Buy's aggressive cost-cutting program has made it easier to protect earnings, and the company's strong financial position gives it plenty of flexibility as it navigates through a volatile time for brick-and-mortar retailers. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Demitrios Kalogeropoulos owns shares of Home Depot. The Motley Fool has the following options: short May 2018 $175 calls on Home Depot and long January 2020 $110 calls on Home Depot. The Motley Fool recommends Home Depot and Lowe's. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Bitcoin tumbles as hackers hit South Korean exchange Coinrail: SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Coinrail said it was hacked over the weekend, sparking a steep fall in bitcoin amid renewed concerns about security at virtual currency exchanges as global policy makers struggled to regulate trading in the digital asset.
In a statement on its website on Monday, Coinrail said its system was hit by "cyber intrusion" on Sunday, causing a loss for about 30 percent of the coins traded on the exchange. It did not quantify its value, but in an unsourced report local news outlet Yonhap news estimated that about 40 billion won ($37.28 million) worth of virtual coins were stolen.
The heist at Coinrail, a relatively small South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, sent the price of bitcoin tumbling to two-month lows as it once again highlighted the security risks and the weak regulation of global cryptocurrency markets.
South Korea is one of the world's major cryptocurrency trading centers, and is home to one of the most heavily trafficked virtual coin exchanges, Bithumb.
On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp, bitcoin (BTC=BTSP) was last trading at $6,790.88, down a sharp 10.8 percent from Friday, having fallen roughly 65 percent from its all-time peak hit around mid-December 2017.
Investors and regulators were jolted earlier this year after Japan's cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck was hacked in a high-profile theft of over half a billion dollars worth of digital currency.
In 2014, Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which once handled 80 percent of the world’s bitcoin trades, filed for bankruptcy after losing bitcoins worth around half a billion dollars. More recently, in December last year, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Youbit shut down and filed for bankruptcy after being hacked twice.
WARNING
Global policy makers have warned investors to be cautious in trading the digital currency given the lack of broad regulatory oversight.
"Coinrail is not a member of the group that promotes self regulations to enhance security. It is a minor player in the market and I can see how such small exchanges with lower standards on security level can be exposed to more risks," Kim Jin-Hwa, a representative at Korea Blockchain Industry Association.
In South Korea, 14 major local cryptocurrency exchanges adopted measures aimed at better protecting users in January this year, including restrictions on creating more than one account.
Coinrail said the balance 70 percent of virtual coins are now secure in its “cold wallet”, which operates on platforms not directly connected to the internet. It wasn't immediately clear whether the lost coins were stored in the more insecure 'hot wallet.'
Korea Internet & Security Agency, currently carrying out the investigation with police, said only four of the country's largest exchanges are subject to the Information Security Management System certification (ISMS) requirement.
The ISMS is a system that certifies protection of personal information at companies with average daily visitor of over 1 million.
"Coinrail, as of June this year, hasn't been certified with the ISMS, as it isn't mandatory (for the organization to do so)," the local regulator said in a statement.
Coinrail confirmed in its statement that the exchange is fully cooperating with a police investigation into the hacking, and that trading has been suspended for now. The company wasn't immediately available for further comments.
Coinrail was the 98th largest cryptocurrency exchange that trades more than 50 different virtual coins, according to Coinmarketcap.com
(Reporting by Cynthia Kim; Additional reporting by Choonsik Yoo; Editing by Shri Navaratnam) || Despite Warnings, ICO Promoters’ Self-Reporting is ‘Underwhelming’: SEC Official: SEC Bitcoin ETF ICOs are securities, according to the SEC, but few are reporting themselves as such. As CCN reported , the SEC announced this week that it isn’t planning to update its securities framework to accommodate ICOs, which behave much like securities in that they back funding towards a company like a stock or traditional IPO. However, the SEC warned ICOs that they were skirting regulations as far back as early 2017, which stands out as a year full of ICOs. The number of fraudulent ICOs with exit schemes drew a lot of attention from regulators, who saw the ventures as the ‘Wild West’ outside of securities regulations that protected investors. Wait and See Isn’t Going as Planned While many ICO-backed ventures took a wait-and-see approach for more solid SEC’s decisions, this announcement adds to their unchanged belief that ICOs are the same as traditional securities. In an interview with CNBC, Brett Redfearn, SEC Director of division of trading and markets, stated: “We’re underwhelmed by the enthusiasm for coming within the regulatory structure right now. There are a number of exchanges that are trading ICOs that I would think that we would see more registrations.” This confirms again that the SEC’s stance hasn’t changed. As CCN reported , the SEC is stepping up enforcement of the laws this year, sending more Cease and Desist orders than ever before. The prior warnings from the SEC have changed to more aggressive enforcement. The SEC is also implicating exchanges that trade tokens and coins that did not self-report to the agency as part of their ICOs. One could argue, however, that these efforts to weed out scam ICOs are a key phase for legitimizing cryptocurrencies in the eyes of US regulators, as they are not pursuing outright bans. The Litmus Test for ICOs Refearn also discussed the way the agency determines whether an ICO is a security. They are using the “Howey Test,” a standard that came from a 1946 Supreme Court case ( SEC v. W.J. Howey Co. ). Refearn admitted, however, that tokens and coins aren’t easy to classify as “not all of them are obvious on its face exactly what it is.” The SEC director closed with a mention about ripple (XRP) and ethereum (ETH). As the SEC reported on May 13, XRP’s backers have made efforts to classify the token as purely a means of exchange. He said that a decision on “at least one of those products forthcoming in the future.” Other projects could soon follow with this argument in order to avoid lengthy securities laws. Story continues Featured image from Shutterstock. The post Despite Warnings, ICO Promoters’ Self-Reporting is ‘Underwhelming’: SEC Official appeared first on CCN . View comments || Google searches for 'bitcoin' nosedive 75% this year as interest in struggling cryptocurrency wanes: • Searches for the term "bitcoin" have dropped more than 75 percent since the beginning of this year, according to research from Google Trends.
• "Bitcoin needs a new narrative in order to reestablish global attention," says Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.
• The digital currency's price has dropped by roughly 50 percent this year, trading near $7,500 Monday.
Bitcoin prices have struggled this year, along with the cryptocurrency's ability to capture interest on the internet.
Searches for the term "bitcoin" have dropped more than 75 percent since the beginning of this year and roughly halved over three months, according to research from Google Trends.
Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, pegged waning searches as a bad sign for prices.
"We use Google Trends to track search queries for 'bitcoin' as a proxy for potential new buyers," Colas said in an email to clients Monday. "Bitcoin needs a new narrative in order to reestablish global attention."
Google Trends uses numbers to represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. As of January 1, bitcoin's popularity was 37 and fell to a 9 as of June 2.
Colas also uses wallet growth as a proxy for interest, and said even small demand is a determinant for bitcoin prices. Wallets store the public and private keys which can be used to trade, or receive cryptocurrencies.
Growth in new wallets was roughly 2 percent in both April and May, and first-quarter compounded monthly wallet growth was 3.7 percent this year, Colas said. But for the last quarter of 2017 when bitcoin prices were nearing $20,000, wallet growth compounded monthly was 7.6 percent.
"The comparisons between the 2017 back half comps (excellent) and 2018-to-date (poor) are stark and explain essentially all of bitcoin's fall from grace this year," Colas said. "Simply put, history shows bitcoin wallet growth needs to be +5%/month to see meaningful price appreciation."
Bitcoin prices have dropped by roughly 50 percent this year, trading just below $7,500 Monday, according to CoinDesk. The world's first and largest cryptocurrency surged more than 1,300 percent last year, nearing $20,000 in December.
"This dog will have its day, but today isn't it," Colas said. "While we love the idea of bitcoin (and own a little ourselves), we are not fans of buying it at current levels."
Google searches for most other top cryptocurrencies has also cratered. For ethereum , the world's second largest cryptocurrency, searches are down 70 percent this year. XRP searches have fallen even more sharply, down 87 percent since January 1. Searches for the fourth largest digital currency, bitcoin cash are down 82 percent.
But for EOS , the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, searches gone in the opposite direction. Google searches for that term have jumped 97 percent this year.
Much of that could be due to the company's recent fundraising efforts through what's known as an initial coin offering, or ICO. Start-up Block.one raised more than $4 billion through the cryptocurrency in a yearlong ICO that closed Friday.
Unlike an IPO, which gives investors stock ownership in a company, an ICO gives out tokens whose use case is based on a promise the platform will be useful in a digital network once it gets built.
More From CNBC
• For all the hype, blockchain applications are still years, even decades away
• Estonia says it won’t issue a national cryptocurrency and never planned to
• Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak hopes bitcoin will become a single global currency
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
i was just going to say that damn || Warframe – Updated Builds – Zephyr (The Versatile Birb) https://goo.gl/eMTmZD #bitcoin #bitcoinprice #BTCtoUSD #btcprice || An Upcoming Cryptocurrency Is Trialling a Trio of Bitcoin Tech Advances https://ift.tt/2HjF012 || honey... i hope you are open minded... we a fun crew of ppl and we dont hold anything back.pic.twitter.com/sHXlXLB3Ad || #ICO, #Bitcoin ,#EThereum, #Stellarhttps://twitter.com/GlitzkoinToken/status/998187681031974912 … || The #GastroAdvisor mission is primarily to help restaurant owners and users to improve their online experience and to introduce them to accept and allow payments of a consumption through #cryptocurrency!
#ico #blockchain #crypto #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #btc #eth #ethereum #xrppic.twitter.com/ZUqP7sHxJW || Nice write up. You absolutely need more bitcoin || IBM Will Beat Bitcoin https://buff.ly/2LPnYv5 || The Genesis Files: Hashcash or How Adam Back Designed Bitcoin’s Motor Block http://dlvr.it/QW7YrP pic.twitter.com/fenKT1I9kf || $BTC (#Coinbase ) Positive movement after entering green box, look like we are up for a good month here. #BTCUSDpic.twitter.com/K6pEtbYBhh
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Trend: down || Prices: 6639.14, 6673.50, 6856.93, 6773.88, 6741.75, 6329.95, 6394.71, 6228.81, 6238.05, 6276.12
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Your first look for Friday: The " Fast Money " traders revealed what's on their watch list. Dan Nathan was watching the Nikkei 225 (Nihon Kenzai Shinbun: .N225) . Steve Grasso had theiShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF ( IBB ) on his radar. Brian Kelly was looking at the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (NYSE Arca: TLT) . Guy Adami had his eye on the CBOE Crude Volatility Index ( ^OVX ) . Trader disclosure: On September 10, 2015 , the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders: Dan Nathan is long QQQ Oct put spread, XBI sept put spread, TWTR, PG. Steve Grass is long AAPL, BA, BAC, CC, DD, DIS, DECK, EVGN, FIT, KBH, MJNA, MU, PFE, PHM, STRP, T, TWTR, GDX, firm is long BP, COP, CVX, FCX, NE, NEM, OXY, RIG, WYNN, AMZN His kids own EFA, EFG, EWJ, IJR, SPY. Brian Kelly is long BBRY, TWTR calls, Bitcoin, U.S. Dollar; he is short British Pound, Euro, Yen, Yuan, US Treasuries. Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || Small Businesses Turn To Online Lenders: The tech sector has reached into a new industry over the past year, as more firms rush tomake loansto small businesses. Despite the U.S.'s recovery since the financial crisis, banks have been cautious about doling out small business loans.
In 2008, banks held $711 in small business loans; that figure has decreased significantly to just $599 billion as of the second quarter of 2015. For that reason, there has been a gap in the marketplace as entrepreneurs look for ways to fund their growing companies.
Lending To Well Known Firms
While small business owners might be required to make a pitch to a bank or private investor in order to secure funding, some companies are using their existing relationships with entrepreneurs in order to make loans.
Intuit Inc.(NASDAQ:INTU) together withOn Deck Capital Inc(NYSE:ONDK) havelaunched a financing productthat allows users of the firm's QuickBooks to secure small loans.
Related Link:Intuit And OnDeck To Launch 0M Small Business Lending Fund
The firm is able to use existing data from the user to determine how risky the loan would be, making it easier to deliver lower-rate loans for businesses with strong financials.
Knowledge Is Power
Other firms have created similar programs that use data gathered from customers in order to determine whether a loan is worthwhile.
Online lender Kabbage Inc. has partnered withUnited Parcel Service, Inc.(NYSE:UPS) to make loans using the firm's shipping history as a gauge of how many orders they're fulfilling.PayPal Holdings Inc(NASDAQ:PYPL) similarly uses vendors' transaction history to determine whether a loan would be high-risk.
High Interest Rates
However, such loans can be difficult for small business owners to repay. As online lenders become plentiful, many are jockeying for clients by offering more money at higher rates.
The ease of borrowing money online has also given rise to a slew of cash advance firms that are able to approve huge sums of money quickly, but charge annual percentage rates of more than 100 percent.
Image Credit: Public Domain
See more from Benzinga
• Logistics Firms Prepare For 3D Printing's Future
• The Biggest Losers From Monday's Market Meltdown
• Louis C.K. Embraces Bitcoin
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || ACKMAN: The US government is perpetrating 'the most illegal act of scale' with Fannie and Freddie: (Screenshot)Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital.
Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman, founder of $19 billion Pershing Square Capital Management, slammed the US government Tuesday night for keeping all the profits from mortgage guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Ackman called it "the most illegalact of scale" he has ever seen the US government do.
Ackman spoke Tuesday evening during a panel at Columbia University for the launch of Bethany McLean's new book"Shaky Ground." McLean and former Fannie Mae CEO Frank Raines were also panelists. Ackman, however, did most of the talking.
During the financial crisis, Fannie and Freddie needed massive bailouts and were taken over by the government.It has been seven years since the financial crisis and the companies are still in a state of conservatorship.Today, thegovernment-sponsored enterprisesmake billions in profits, all of which goes directly to the Treasury.
Ackman, the largestshareholder of Fannie and Freddie, and other investors aresuing the US governmentfor takingproperty for public use without just compensation.
He said: "And there is no way they will not be allowed to stand, from a legal point of view. And the reason for that is if the US government can step in and take 100% of profits of a corporation forever, then we are in a Stalinist state and no private property is safe — and take your money out of every financial institution, put it into gold or Bitcoin and just get the hell out because we're done, maybe the clothes on your back, but other than that nothing is safe."
(Thomson Reuters)
In Ackman's view, Fannie and Freddie are vital to the US economy. Right now, he said, the biggest threat to the US middle class is rising rental rates.
"If you don't own a home, and you're a member of the middle class, you have a problem," he said. "This is the biggest threat to the middle-class livelihood is that your cost of living, the roof over your head is not fixed, it's floating."
Ackman said Fannie and Freddie were set up to make middle-class housing more accessible. Together, they have enabledwidespread availability and affordability with the 30-year, fixed-rate, prepayable mortgage — a system that has been in place for 45 years.
Ackman said he's optimistic about the future of Fannie and Freddie. He has said before that withthe right reformsthey could be worth a lot more. He has given the GSEs a price targetranging between $23 and $47, which is well above the current $2 range.
Watch the full panel below:
More From Business Insider
• Bill Ackman is eyeing another huge and potentially controversial deal
• Some of Wall Street's biggest hedge fund names are racing to rescue their year
• BILL ACKMAN: Stocks are pretty cheap right now || Bitcoin Is Now Classified as a Commodity in the U.S.: Bitcoin will now be classed as a commodity in the U.S. along with gold and oil, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which has started to clamp down on unregistered firms that trade derivatives of the cryptocurrency.
The CFTC stated Thursday that it had ordered bitcoin options trading platform Coinflip, and its CEO Francisco Riordan, to cease trading due to it not registering and complying with its regulations. It added that it had also filed, and simultaneously settled, charges against the San Francisco-based firm.
This might mean a nervous couple of months for other unregistered bitcoin derivatives firms in the U.S. but also signaled that the cryptocurrency will now come under the CFTC's scope.
"CFTC holds that bitcoin and other virtual currencies are a commodity covered by the commodity exchange act," the regulator said in a statement Thursday.
Aitan Goelman, the CFTC's director of enforcement, added that "while there is a lot of excitement surrounding bitcoin...innovation does not excuse those acting in this space from following the same rules applicable to all participants in the commodity derivatives markets."
Francisco Riordan was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency that allows users to exchange online credits for goods and services. While there is no central bank that issues them, bitcoins can be created online by using a computer to complete difficult tasks, a process known as mining.
As well as bitcoin exchanges and wallet services, a small but growing sector of derivatives firms selling products based on the digital currency have also sprung up in recent years. Crypto Facilities was set up in the U.K. this year by former bankers from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BNP Paribas and Societe Generale.
The platform pitches itself as a broker which specializes in bitcoin derivatives, and trades financial products like options and futures which are directly linked to the price of the cryptocurrency. Thus, it allows users to "go long" and bet that the price of bitcoin will rise, or "go short" and bet the price will fall.
Technology enthusiasts, regulators and economists have been pondering how to pigeon hole bitcoin since its emergence in 2009. In August 2013, the German Finance Ministry classified it as a "unit of account", meaning it is can be used for tax and trading purposes in the country and is like "private money." || Overstock to Buy SpeedRoute for More Transparent Trading: Online retailerOverstock.com, Inc.’s OSTK cryptofinance subsidiary, t0, has signed a deal to acquire SpeedRoute and related group of privately held financial technology companies.Though the terms of the deal have not been disclosed, the total purchase price will be paid in cash and Overstock common stock. The acquisition of certain assets remains subject to regulatory requirements, with the majority of the deal already closed.SpeedRoute LLC, founded in Apr 2000, is a brokerage firm that currently handles approximately 2.5% of U.S. equity order flow.Overstock, a Bitcoin supporter, hopes to reinvent the public stock market using cryptosecurities, or virtual stocks based on bitcoin's blockchain technology. Bitcoin is a digital currency platform with no central regulating authority involved in the transactions. It is also called crypto currency because it utilizes military-grade cryptography to protect users against fraud. Bitcoin and other cryptocurencies operate on blockchain which is a distributed public ledger.Cryptosecurities will likely be the next major change in the stock market. With this deal, Overstock will enter a new financial technology space. SpeedRoute’s infrastructure and its underlying technologies will help the company to connect t0 securities trading platform with the entire U.S. equity market. This will bring in more transparency and efficiency to the existing capital markets, which was the basic idea behind t0.com.The blockchain technology allows investors and buyers to trail down their purchases and ownership of cryptosecurities, ensuring complete transparency. Moreover, the t0.com blockchain technology facilitates same-day settlement of the securities.In June, Overstock offered its first corporate bond, valued at US$25 million, as cryptosecurities to qualified institutional investors. This revolutionary development is part of the company's larger cryptofinance initiative known as Medici.Overstock.com is engaged in selling branded as well as non-branded merchandise through its websites. Customers can bargain before purchase and often get discounts. A major portion of its revenues is generated in the U.S. In the last reported quarter, the company’s earnings of 7 cents missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 46.15%.Currently, Overstock has a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell). Some better-ranked stocks in the technology sector are Amazon AMZN, Stamps.com STMP and Travelport Worldwide Limited TVPT. All these stocks sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free report >>
Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportAMAZON.COM INC (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis ReportOVERSTOCK.COM (OSTK): Free Stock Analysis ReportSTAMPS.COM INC (STMP): Free Stock Analysis ReportTRAVELPORT WWD (TVPT): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research || Goldman Sachs Still Likes Barclays Among European Banks; Upgrades Credit Suisse: Since 2008, European banks have gone through multiple strategic cycles and goals which were subsequently not met. Jernej Omahen of Goldman Sachs says "this time feels different" and banks' objectives and targets can now be achieved. Top picks in European banks include: Credit Suisse Group AG (ADR) (NYSE: CS ) which was maintained at a Buy rating and added to the Goldman Sachs Conviction List, and Barclays PLC (ADR) (NYSE: BCS ) which remains Conviction Buy rated. Back in 2008 many European banks set out ambitious strategic goals and financial objectives that were subsequently not met, marking a pattern that repeated itself - until now. In a note published Tuesday, Jernej Omahen of Goldman Sachs stated that "this time feels different" with the CEOs of Deutsche Bank AG (USA) (NYSE: DB ), Credit Suisse and Barclays having "changing incentives" and can deliver growth better than its peers. Related Link: Is Europe The New Home For Bitcoin? Omahen said the CEOs of the major European banks are "new and outsiders at the same time" and their incentives to persist with previous failed strategies and "ambitious" targets are low. At the same time, their incentives to implement new strategies and three-year achievable plans are "high." European banks are still "strained" by regulators and their capital positions "need to improve further." Using this as a starting point, Omahen suggested that the banks need their strategies to focus on costs and the best, highest-return businesses. The analyst expanded that this is an option as "most likely" at Credit Suisse and "less so" at Barclays. Rating And Price Target Changes (Note: The analyst's coverage and price targets are based on European-listed exchanges, not their respective U.S.-based ADRs). Shares of Credit Suisse remain Buy rated and were added to the Goldman Sachs Conviction List with a price target raised to SFr 32.50 from a previous SFr 30.80. Shares of Deutsche Bank remains Neutral with a price target lowered to €33 from a previous €34.60. Shares of Barclays remain Conviction Buy rated with a price target raised to p345.0 from a previous p335.0 Shares of UBS were downgraded to Neutral from Buy with a target raised to SFr 21.10 from a previous SFr 20.70. Latest Ratings for BCS Aug 2015 Investec Upgrades Sell Buy May 2015 Berenberg Downgrades Hold Sell Jul 2014 Macquarie Upgrades Neutral Outperform View More Analyst Ratings for BCS View the Latest Analyst Ratings See more from Benzinga A Basket Of Stocks To Play New York Fashion Week Analyst: Wayfair Consumer Awareness At Highest Level Ever Google Hires TrueCar President For Self-Driving Car Project; Shares Of The Pricing Website Decline © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || Bitcoin flounders in Australia as regulatory worries bite: By Byron Kaye and Swati Pandey SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian businesses are turning their backs on bitcoin, as signs grow that the cryptocurrency's mainstream appeal is fading. Concerns about bitcoin's potential crime links mean many businesses have stopped accepting it, a trend accelerated by Australian banks' move last month to close the accounts of 13 of the country's 17 bitcoin exchanges. The development is a blow to hopes of bitcoin fans that the currency can play a significant role in everyday business transactions in developed economies, with Australia once seen as one of its most promising markets. It is estimated to hold 7 percent of the currency's $3.5 billion global value, a sizeable figure in a country of just 24 million people. "We've got a squeaky clean reputation, and that's actually worth a lot more to us than dipping into this," said James Snodgrass, principal of Sydney's Forsyth Real Estate, which ditched the currency in late 2014 after the firm was investigated by the federal tax office. Forsyth had offered to collect home deposits and other realtor fees via bitcoin to cater to international buyers. The tax office probe found no wrongdoing but Forsyth was burned by the negative publicity and bailed out before ever taking a bitcoin payment. Although most mainstream banks in Europe and the U.S. already refuse to keep bitcoin-affiliated accounts, developments in Australia represent the first coordinated shutdown of bitcoin exchanges by a country's banking system. The move makes it much harder for people to convert regular currencies in to or out of bitcoin, threatening its long-term value. "It really runs on people using bitcoin, and if nobody uses it then it's worthless," said University of Technology Sydney senior finance lecturer Adrian Lee. BANK SHUTDOWN The banks' shutdown appears at odds with a government inquiry which in August recommended removing sales tax for people who buy bitcoin. The Australian anti-money laundering agency, AUSTRAC, told Reuters that banks have no legal obligation to close bitcoin accounts. The so-called "Big Four" banks - Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac Banking Corp, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and National Australia Bank - directed inquiries about bitcoin to the Australian Bankers' Association. Tony Pearson, the association's acting chief executive, wouldn't confirm the coordinated rejection of bitcoin but said in an email that its "lack of transparency and regulatory oversight raises a number of risks for users and also poses risks for the payments system, the integrity of the financial system and the erosion of the tax base". Australia's organised crime agency has said it is concerned the currency's untraceable nature makes it attractive for money laundering and selling illicit drugs. In the U.K. and the U.S., most large banks have already cut ties with bitcoin account holders, but lack of industry co-ordination has left room for individual lenders to support the currency, including Germany's Fidor Bank AG, which operates in Britain, and tech-focused Californian lender Silicon Valley Bank. CLOSE, MOVE OFFSHORE OR SNEAK AROUND The 13 Australian bitcoin exchanges whose accounts were closed by the banks have shut operations. The remaining four have had their accounts frozen, and now face three options: close, move overseas or spread their business into several smaller bank accounts to avoid detection by their banks. Buyabitcoin.com.au, one of the remaining four exchanges, said it is still considering its options. "It makes it, obviously, hard to take payments from our customers, but we have a couple of relationships left," said Andrew Smith, general manager of the Melbourne-based exchange. Smith declined to identify which bank his firm is now using from fear of repercussions but said he plans to move the business offshore. Two sources told Reuters that regional lender Bank of Queensland still held some bitcoin accounts. The bank said in an email that "virtual currencies fall outside of our risk appetite" but did not deny or confirm it had these accounts. RETAIL PULLOUT Some industry watchers believe ambivalence may be bitcoin's biggest problem. At least six Australian retail businesses, which as recently as 2014 courted publicity for offering sales by bitcoin, told Reuters they were considering exiting the currency. "If governments begin to aggressively attack the whole idea of cryptocurrencies and give it a bad name, it might have an adverse effect on our brand by accepting it," said David Brim, co-founder of off-road vehicle maker Tomcar Australia, which has sold one car using bitcoin since introducing it in November 2014. Grant Fairweather, owner of the Metropolitan Hotel in Sydney, said he started accepting bitcoin when a group of digital currency fans chose his pub as their regular meeting venue. "They tell me that it's doing quite well, but that doesn't transpose into here," said Fairweather, who sells about A$100 ($70) worth of drinks via bitcoin from the meetings and does no other bitcoin trade. An online clothing retailer told Reuters she had made no bitcoin sales since introducing the service in 2013 and asked not to be named, saying "since bitcoin's going out anyway, we'd rather not throw our name back into it". (Additional reporting by Nathan Lynch in SYDNEY and Jemima Kelly in LONDON. Editing by Jane Wardell and Rachel Armstrong) || Organic Food Goes Mainstream: Consumer preferences have shifted significantly over the past few years as more and more people opt for all-natural, healthy food options. Healthy food used to make up just a small isle of little known brands in the supermarket, but the niche has made its way into popular culture and now even big brands are hopping on the organic food bandwagon. Supermarkets Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFM ) is a heavy-hitter when it comes to the natural foods space. The company has grown into a well known brand where health nuts pay a premium for the best ingredients and most natural foods. However, as interest in health foods grew, so did the number of competitors. Other specialty grocers like Sprouts (NASDAQ: SFM ) and Natural Grocers (NYSE: NGVC ) are expanding quickly and looking to increase their slice of the organic pie. New Entrants While new entrants in the organic foods business used to be mom and pop businesses that were working their way up, today's natural foods isle is filled with products backed by big name companies who are shifting their approach in order to attract health-conscious consumers. Tyson Foods (NYSE: TSN ) promised to stop using chicken that had been treated with antibiotics and Kraft Foods (NASDAQ: KRFT ) has removed artificial dyes from its well-known Mac & Cheese in an effort to appeal to the organic-obsessed public. Bigger Not Always Better However, the big brands aren't always able to appeal to health nuts the way smaller brands are. After Kellogg Company (NYSE: K ) acquired the Kashi brand in 2000, the healthy cereal maker went steadily downhill. Customers discovered that Kellogg was using genetically modified ingredients and a social media campaign against the brand ensued. Now, Kellogg is working to restore Kashi's image with innovative new cereals and a new marketing approach, but it is likely to be a rocky road back into consumers' good graces. See more from Benzinga Is NASDAQ Going Green? Cybersecurity Becomes An Even Bigger Problem For U.S. Firms New Dictionary Entries Suggest Bitcoin Is Going Mainstream © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Your Old Credit Card’s Now Obsolete. Now What?: (Rob Pegoraro/Yahoo Tech)
Something weird has been happening to our wallets: Computers have invaded them, one credit card at a time.
This overdue migration from cards with magnetic stripes on the back to “EMV” cards that add a tiny computer chip on the front reached a semi-important point Thursday: the “liability shift,” a rebalancing of powers between card issuers and merchants in the U.S. that may change who eats the cost of a bogus transaction.
For most of us, Liability Shift Day should be the most boring holiday ever. Only a minority of debit and credit cards have EMV chips (“EMV” stands for“Europay, MasterCard and Visa,” the three parents of the system), and the share ofretailers taking chip paymentsis even smaller.
But over time, things will change. Here’s how:
How exactly do I pay with a chip?
Instead of swiping a card with that satisfying flick of the wrist, you pop the card into a slot in a card terminal. Then you leave it there as the chip generates a one-time code (like the three- or four-digit number on your card for online purchases), the terminal processes the transaction, and you sign to complete it.
In my experience, that takes a few seconds longer than a mag-stripe card—assuming the stripe was able to read on the first try, which we all know doesn’t always happen.
Where can I pay with the chip?
Your chip transactions may be confined to major merchants like Walmart, Home Depot, and Target. It’s not enough to see a “point of sale” terminal with an EMV slot; that part may be inactive.
For example, my neighborhood’s Whole Foods accepts Apple Pay and other phone payments but not EMV. Spokesman Michael Silverman said the chain plans to fix that across its stores… by the end of 2016.
A complete upgrade across U.S. retail will take longer. On a conference call Wednesday, Visa vice president Stephanie Ericksen said 314,000 establishments take chip payments, up from 55,000 last September—but that’s out of a total of maybe 6 million to 8 million.
How do I get EMV versions of my cards?
If you haven’t already been issued chipped versions of your cards—those in my wallet reached that blessed statein July—you’ll have to ask your issuer what the holdup is.
While you wait, you might as well use that time to shop around and see if you can switch to a card withbetter cash-back or travel rewards.
Will chip cards stop data breaches?
Sorry, no. With EMV, your card number and expiration date still get sent in the clear to the store and beyond. If somebody hacks the terminal or the software upstream, they can still go to town with your card.
“It does not take care of making sure that the data is protected as it travels through the various layers of payment systems,” explained Erik Vlugt, a vice president at the payment-processing firmVeriFone.
EMV cards also remain usable if lost or stolen unless they’re further secured with a PIN. That’s common with European but not U.S. cards. (More on that later.)
So what security problem does EMV actually solve?
Chip cards can’t be cloned the way stripe cards can. Counterfeiting is a huge problem, accounting for37 percent of all U.S. credit-card fraud in 2014—second only after “card not present” theft staged online or over the phone, according to the research firmAite Group.
Crooks have had a clear economic incentive to clone cards, security researcher Brian Krebs noted ina 2014 explainer: A counterfeiter “walks into a big box store and walks out with high-priced electronics or gift cards that he can easily turn into cash.”
Who pays with the liability shift?
Definitely not you — just like today, fraud isn’t your problem as long as you report it. But merchants can pay more, subject to various rules. AsNational Retail Federationgeneral counsel Mallory Duncan summed up in an e-mail: “Whomever has the more evolved equipment (in a counterfeit situation) wins.”
That is, if the bank issued a chip card, the crook shows up with a counterfeit version of it, and the merchant doesn’t process chip transactions, the merchant is liable to eat the cost. But it can get complicated: “There are scenarios where both parties accept a certain percentage of the responsibility,” MasterCard product-delivery head Carolyn Balfany said over e-mail.
Note, too, that retailers already pay for some fraudulent transactions, as you can see inVisa’s “chargeback” rules. In turn, all of us pay in the form of slightly higher prices, same as we collectively pay for the“shrinkage”of shoplifting and employee theft.
What if a store doesn’t take EMV?
Good luck judging a store’s security, although some modern payment gadgets likeSquare’s card readersdo encrypt card numbers automatically.
If you can use your phone to pay for things, do it. Apple Pay and Android Pay do“tokenization,”meaning they generate a new card number for each transaction. Or you could pay with cash,Bitcoin,bartered chickens, or any other mutually agreeable medium of value.
What about chip-and-PIN?
You may have read that chip-and-PIN cards are more secure because you have to type a number matching the one stored on the chip. But that’s not why they exist: When EMV cards arrived in Europe, many establishments didn’t have online access to verify transactions with issuers and so needed authentication that worked offline.
U.S. banks have avoided PIN because, hey, who wants to remember another number? (A few months ago, Underwriters Laboratories innovations director Maarten Bron said he’d seentoo many chip-and-PIN holders write down their PIN on the back of their cards.)
International travelers have complained that signature EMV cards don’t work at kiosks in Europe. Visa’s rules now require those unattended terminals to waive the PIN; it says that in a recent test across five EU states,90 percent of signature-card transactions worked.
So how do we stop online fraud?
Payment-processing systems can ensure they have nothing worth stealing by not keeping card numbers intact—what Visa calls “devaluing” that data.
In that respect, the slow adoption of EMV security could give lagging merchants a chance to jump to an Apple Pay level of security. SaidPCI Security Standards Councilchief technology office Troy Leach: “We’re hoping that they buy the next generation of security, which is encryption and tokenization.”
I hope he’s right. But I won’t be too surprised if five years from now, a shop with connectivity issues still has to dust off a“knuckle buster”card imprinter to take my payment on a slip of carbon paper.
EmailRobatrob@robpegoraro.com; follow him on Twitter at@robpegoraro. || WeedLife Steps Up To Fill Marijuana Advertising Gap: The marijuana industry has grown exponentially over the past decade as more and more states legalize the drug for both medicinal and recreational use. However, cannabis-based firms are extremely limited when it comes to getting their names out there as state and federal laws prohibit most forms of advertising.
Companies likeGoogle Inc(NASDAQ:GOOG) andYahoo! Inc.(NASDAQ:YHOO) are reluctant to engage with marijuana-related firms, leaving very few options for a pot company trying to get noticed. Advertising regulations for marijuana firms are stricter than that of tobacco and alcohol, making it difficult for dispensaries to reach their target audiences.
Related Link:Surprised? Marijuana Use On The Rise At College Campuses
Working Together
TheWeedLife Networkis hoping to fill that gap by opening its network to allow legal marijuana advertising. WeedLife Network is a collection of over 40 different websites and apps for marijuana businesses and consumers that generates over 4.5 million page views each month.
The company hopes that by expanding its network to include marijuana-based advertisers, it will help propel the industry further by giving cannabis startups the tools they need to reach their customers.
The Google Of Marijuana
WeedLife Network co-founder Shawn Tapp said he hopes this new offering will draw in new businesses who are struggling to gain exposure. Tapp said that WeedLife will "aim to be the industry's replacement for Google's AdWords." The network will give businesses an easy way to reach their target audience as it already encompasses businesses and consumers interested in the marijuana industry.
See more from Benzinga
• Apple Aims To Read Your Mind
• Is Europe The New Home For Bitcoin?
• U.S. Tech Firms Hope To Have A Say In New EU Digital Market Rules
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price: 168.54£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-10-19 01:00:03 BST || 1 #bitcoin = $4390.00 MXN | $267.29 USD #BitAPeso 1 USD = 16.42MXN http://www.bitapeso.com || Current price: 144.87£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-08-28 15:00:02 BST || In the last hour, 8 people won 1.00 BTC playing Bitcoin lottery at http://10xbtc.com , the easiest BTC lottery, 160BTC Jackpot || 1 #bitcoin 672.45 TL, 226.779 $, 201.21 €, GBP, 15186.00 RUR, 27250 ¥, CNH, 306.81 CAD #btc || 1 #bitcoin 654.77 TL, 217.119 $, 196.65 €, GBP, 14800.00 RUR, 27050 ¥, CNH, 297.03 CAD #btc || 1 #bitcoin = $3995.00 MXN | $233.6 USD #BitAPeso 1 USD = 17.1MXN http://www.bitapeso.com || USD $:
BTC_e:6.80 Hitbtc:256.17 Kraken:244.00 ANX:238.78 Bitcoin_de:219.80 ItBit:243.40 Local:360.75 TheRock:242.20 || Current price: 203.8€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2015-08-31 02:00:03 CEST || Current price: 144.45£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-09-04 00:40:02 BST
|
Trend: up || Prices: 283.68, 285.30, 293.79, 304.62, 313.86, 328.02, 314.17, 325.43, 361.19, 403.42
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2019-06-07]
BTC Price: 8043.95, BTC RSI: 53.92
Gold Price: 1341.20, Gold RSI: 74.54
Oil Price: 53.99, Oil RSI: 33.79
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Blockchain.info Confirms In-Wallet Paxos Stablecoin Trading Rollout for June 3: Cryptocurrencydata aggregator andwalletprovider Blockchain.info will launch trading of its fifth coin,paxos standard token(PAX), on Monday, the company told industry news outletCoinDeskon May 31.
Paxos is aUnited Statesdollar-peggedstablecoin, and its addition will be a first for Blockchain.info in the stablecoin space.
Blockchain currently supports four cryptocurrencies: bitcoin (BTC), ethereum (ETH), bitcoin cash (BCH) and stellar (XLM), having removed itslimitedbitcoin SV (BSV) options earlier this month.
The company had hinted about the move for some time, surveying users about their relationship with stablecoins and releasing publicity material. At the start of May, executivesconfirmeda formal partnership with Paxos.
Last week, a dedicatedblog postconfirmed PAX was live for Blockchain.info’s 37 million wallets.
“Launched in September 2018, Paxos Standard tokens are fully backed by physical U.S. dollars stored in FDIC-insured banks and regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services,” the staff wrote in an apparent explanation of their choice of stablecoin asset. The post continued:
“This financial certainty eliminates price volatility and gives users around the world an entirely new way to send value, manage inflation, mitigate trading risk, and gain exposure to the US dollar.”
Speaking to CoinDesk, Xen Baynham-Herd, head of Blockchain.info’s wallet department and strategy, said that ultimately the company wanted to addfiat currencyfunctionality to the wallet.
“Doing the stablecoin project here with PAX is a really big deal because it’s not just that we are adding a new asset, it’s adding a true dollar balance into the wallet,” he explained.
The comments mark a contrast in ideology between wallet providers, some of which conversely aim to remain free of fiat-based operations. Last autumn,Samouraieven took the step ofremovingUSD balances from its wallet altogether, arguing bitcoin users should learn to transact entirely in cryptocurrency.
• Bitfinex Plans to Launch Lightning Network Support for Stablecoin Tether: Report
• Eos Developer Block.one Announces Blockchain-Based Social Media Platform Voice
• Tether Stablecoin Now Available on EOS Blockchain
• Crypto Lending Startup BlockFi Launches Gemini Dollar Accounts || How Element Zero is creating a new definition for stablecoins: The extreme volatility of cryptocurrencies can make even the most experienced of investors break out in a cold sweat. Digital assets like Bitcoin are inherently unreliable especially as a currency for goods and services. This is where stablecoins come into play, but even they arent without their flaws. Its a conundrum that startups like Element Zero Network hope to resolve. What are stablecoins? Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that are designed to be immune from market volatility, making them a more useable form of payment than traditional crypto. This is achieved by pegging the value of the coins to other assets that are deemed stable fiat currency, for example, or commodities like gold. There are also stablecoins that are governed by internal protocols that try to stabilise the coin every time there is a market fluctuation. Stablecoins essentially try to offer the best of both worlds: the transparency, security and privacy of a digital asset, combined with the stability of a traditional currency. Stablecoin flaws Unfortunately, stablecoins arent quite as stable as you might presume. This is because the instruments theyre pegged to are themselves subject to market volatility. There have been several examples throughout history some fairly recent of government-backed currencies being toppled by hyperinflation. There is also a concern that if a major government decides to create its own digital coin, all the stablecoins pegged to that governments fiat currency will disappear. When you add in the fact that stablecoins are not truly decentralised, its clear the market is ripe for disruption. Who is Element Zero? Element Zero Network, a not-for-profit organisation, has introduced a methodology for a new generation of stablecoins. It claims its method eliminates the possibility for any volatility in the first place. Element Zero is launching its own branded stablecoin, EZO coin, but as a turnkey platform it will facilitate companies, providers and even governments to create and launch their own stablecoins free of charge. Story continues These new stablecoins could eventually replace Bitcoin and current stablecoins as a common way of payment. How it works Element Zero uses a proprietary Algorithmic Stability Protocol that protects the stablecoin from any future volatility events, and keeps its purchasing power in place by overcoming inflation. It isnt tied to any fiat currency, gold or other traditional methods of valuation. The decentralised protocol is based on a smart contract algorithm, which prevents the user from selling the stablecoin above or below the current face value. Unlike all other cryptocurrencies that can process a one-way transaction, the protocol is designed to process a two-way transaction. The sender can send a stablecoin to a receiver, but the receiver must send back in return cryptocurrency, an invoice, or even a receipt with same value as the stablecoin. If the value of the exchange does not match, the smart contract steps in to balance the face value between the sender and the receiver. It returns the extra value to whom it belongs. The stablecoin cannot be traded speculatively because its value is enforced. The smart contract in action To help you visualise how the smart contract works, Element Zero gives the following example: If user A pays $80 using cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or ETH to purchase from user B Element Zero stablecoins at $100 fixed face value, the smart contract will send to user A only 80% of the stablecoins ($80/$100). The remaining 20% will be returned back to user Bs wallet. The smart contracts work the same way when using the stablecoin to buy goods and services. The invoice or the receipt for goods and services must be equivalent to the fixed face value of the Element Zero stablecoins. If they do not match, the smart contract will adjust to ensure they do. Next generation? Whether or not companies and governments take up Element Zeros offer of a next generation stablecoin remains to be seen. Its clear, however, that the market is in need of a stablecoin that is actually stable one that can withstand whatever the economy has in store for us. The post How Element Zero is creating a new definition for stablecoins appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Energy Sector ETFs Strengthen After Attack on Saudi Supply: This article was originally published on ETFTrends.com. Energy sector ETFs were among the best performing areas of the market Tuesday as crude oil prices pushed higher on reports of attacks on major Saudi facilities that fueled concerns over the kingdom's ability to maintain its supply. On Tuesday, the SPDR Oil & Gas Equipment & Services ETF ( XES ) increased 3.5% and VanEck Vectors Oil Service ETF ( OIH ) advanced 3.2% while the Energy Select Sector SPDR ( XLE ) , the largest equity-based energy exchange traded fund, was 1.2% higher. Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, stated that explosive-packed drones attacked two of Aramco's pumping stations, according to the Associated press. The kingdom revealed drones attacked one of its oil pipelines while other assaults targeted energy infrastructure elsewhere in what it called a cowardly act of terrorism. Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said that Aramco halted pumps on the East-West pipeline until the damage was assessed but production and exports continued without disruptions, Reuters reports. The supply risks helped push West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures up 1.0% to $61.6 per barrel on Tuesday while Brent crude futures were 1.3% higher to $71.1 per barrel. Volatile prices have remained the theme of todays trading session. Heightened geopolitical tensions in the Middle East and anticipation that the United States and China could still reach an amicable solution to their trade dispute have rendered support to oil prices, Abhishek Kumar, head of analytics at Interfax Energy, told Reuters. Tuesday's incident followed a day after Riyadh stated two of its oil tankers were among the four vessels attacked off the coast of the United Arab Emirates on Sunday. U.S. national security agencies believed proxies sympathetic to or working for Iran may have been responsible for the tanker attacks. Iranian officials denied responsibility. Tehran has been embroiled with the U.S. over stricter sanctions. Story continues With rising tensions between Iran and the U.S., and with significant naval build-up in the region, markets are sensitive to news and can be tipped by the smallest signs of a conflict, Mihir Kapadia, chief executive of Sun Global Investments, told Reuters. What amounts to about a fifth of global oil consumed passes through the Strait of Hormuz from Middle East crude producers to consumers around the world. For more information on the energy sector, visit our energy category . POPULAR ARTICLES AND RESOURCES FROM ETFTRENDS.COM SPY ETF Quote VOO ETF Quote QQQ ETF Quote VTI ETF Quote JNUG ETF Quote Top 34 Gold ETFs Top 34 Oil ETFs Top 57 Financials ETFs Bitcoin Tear Continues As BTC Breaches $8,000 New Bitcoin ETF Filed as BTC Price Eyes $8K Beyond Meat Up 5.25% Despite Sea of Red Crytocurrency Devotee Sees Bitcoin Tripling by 2021 Universal Basic Income Would Be a Social and Economic Disaster READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || New crypto and blockchain books just for dummies: A raft of new ‘For Dummies’ guides are about to hit the world’s bookshelves – all with a cryptocurrency or blockchain theme. Cryptocurrency Investing For Dummies, Ethereum For Dummies, and Blockchain For Dummies (Second Edition) will be released between now and July. The subjects are natural progressions for the 28-year-old series which first launched in 1991 with an easy-to-use manual for early computer operating systems, sparking a frenzy for copies of DOS For Dummies. In 1992, Andy Rathbone’s Windows For Dummies became the world’s best-selling computer book, and remains so to this day with more than 15m copies sold. Out now is Kiana Danial’s Cryptocurrency Investing For Dummies, which is designed to help the amateur understand and navigate their way through the digital finance landscape as well as explaining how cryptocurrencies, wallets, and trading work. Kiana Danial is the well-known CEO of Invest Diva and is an upcoming guest on CRTV in June. Later this month, Ethereum For Dummies by Michael G Solomon arrives full of straightforward advice and explanations about how Ethereum works and what it can do in an attempt to demystify the technology. July sees the arrival of the much-anticipated Blockchain For Dummies (Second Edition) penned by Tiana Laurence, author of the hugely popular original Blockchain For Dummies. This revised edition explains how a blockchain securely records data across independent networks. The reader-friendly guide offers a tour of some of the world’s best-known blockchains, including those that power Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It also provides a glance at how blockchain solutions are affecting the worlds of finance, supply chain management, insurance, and governments. Again, Tiana is being lined up as an interview guest in the Coin Rivet studio. Her book, along with the other releases, will be reviewed later this month by Coin Rivet. The post New crypto and blockchain books just for dummies appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Is the New CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert a Bitcoin Ally or Enemy?: Bitcoin fans are wistful since CFTC chair Christopher Giancarlo will step down in July. His successor, Heath Tarbert, was confirmed by the Senate this week. | Source: Shutterstock; Edited by CCN By CCN : Bitcoin fans are wistful after learning that the pro-crypto CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) chairman Christopher Giancarlo is stepping down on July 15. The U.S. Senate confirmed Giancarlos successor, Heath Tarbert, by a vote of 84 to 9. Senate confirms CFTC chairman heath tarbert bitcoin fate Heath Tarbert was confirmed as the new CFTC chairman by a vote of 84 to 9. | Source: Senate.gov Giancarlo Backs Heath Tarbert Giancarlo was affectionately nicknamed Crypto Dad for his pro-bitcoin rhetoric. In a June 5 statement , Giancarlo expressed his enthusiastic congratulations to Tarbert, whom he called highly qualified. Tarberts position on cryptocurrencies is unknown. However, Giancarlo says Tarbert shares his vision of helping the CFTC transition into a 21st Century regulator for todays digital markets. Tarbert, a Republican nominated by President Donald Trump, is very pro-business. Therefore, its likely that he opposes over-regulation that would stifle innovation. Tarbert is currently an acting undersecretary at the U.S. Treasury. He is also a member of the Financial Stability Board, an international body that monitors the global economy. Read the full story on CCN.com . || Oil Price Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Traders Fearing Russian Withdrawal from OPEC-led Pact: Rising U.S. stockpiles and an easing of supply concerns were two factors that drove U.S. West Texas Intermediate and international-benchmark Brent crude oil futures lower last week.
Continuing to underpin prices were the OPEC-led supply cuts and the U.S. sanctions against Venezuela and Iran, but another jump in U.S. production combined with speculation that Saudi Arabia and its allies would increase output to make up any shortfalls from the expanded sanctions against Iran and worries that Russia would end its participation in the plan to trim global supplies, outweighed any potentially bullish news.
Last week,June WTI crude oilsettled at $61.94, down $1.36 or -2.15% andJuly Brent crude oilfinished at $70.85, down $0.78 or -1.10%.
On May 1, the Energy Information Administration reported that U.S. crude supplies rose by 9.9 million barrels for the week-ended April 26. That surpassed the rise of 1.4 million barrels expected by analysts. The EIA data also showed that gasoline inventories edged up by 900,000 barrels, while distillate stockpiles fell by 1.3 million barrels last week. Traders were looking for a draw of 1 million barrels for gasoline and 1.2 million barrels for distillates.
Total inventories now stand at 470.6 million barrels as imports grew to their highest since January and refining rates dropped below 90 percent of total capacity, the Energy Information Administration said.
Weekly U.S. oil production ticked up to a new high at 12.3 million barrels per day, according to the EIA. The weekly reading had been stuck between 12 million bpd and 12.2 million bpd since mid-February, with the U.S. output remaining constrained by pipeline bottlenecks in Texas.
The drop in refining activity and the rise in imports is being blamed for the surge in crude inventories. Analysts said the vast majority of the build was on the U.S. Gulf Coast – with refinery runs ticking lower and waterborne imports on the rise.
There are reports that production from Saudi Arabia could edge higher in June to meet domestic demand for power generation, though output will remain within its quota in the supply pact, sources familiar with the kingdom’s policy said.
The world’s top crude exporter is expected to produce about 10 million bpd in May, slightly higher than in April but still below its 10.3 million bpd quota under the OPEC-led deal, industry sources said.
Prices were further pressured after Russia began pumping clean oil through the Druzhba pipeline towards western Europe again. Additionally, Poland Hungary and the Czech Republic are offering their domestic refiners about 8 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves to make up any shortfalls.
Finally, U.S. energy firms this week increased the number of oil rigs operating for the first time in three weeks even as crude output decelerates with the rig count dropping five months in a row due to spending cuts.
Energy Services Firm Baker Hughes reported that companies added two oil rigs in the week to May 3, bringing the total count 807, lower than the 834 rigs active this time last year.
The current price action suggests that investors believe that Saudi Arabia and its allies will make up any shortfalls from the expanded sanctions against Iran. While President Trump says he demanded the group increase output to make up for the reduced exports from Iran, OPEC’s defacto leader Saudi Arabia said it had no immediate plan to do so. This doesn’t mean they won’t, but it probably means they’ll approach the situation with caution and make periodic adjustments in output when they deem it necessary.
Meanwhile, the biggest concern in my opinion for traders is Russia’s next move. OPEC meets in June to discuss production policy. At that time, Russia may opt-out of the deal to trim production. It’s no secret that they want to pursue market share and take back some of the customers currently being supplied by the United States. Not only will this move kill the OPEC-led deal, but it will also throw more supply into the market. This could collapse prices in the $50 range.
The recent price action suggests the professionals are paring long positions to prepare for this move. Furthermore, both WTI and Brent are threatening to cross to the weak side of the 200-day moving average. This should trigger further hedge and commodity fund liquidation.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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Shortly afterBitcoin SVwas delisted fromBinance, CoinDesk advisor Michael Casey published aninsightful op-eddiscussing whether the delisting amounted to censorship (it doesn’t), whether exchanges should be held to high standards of neutrality (they should) and whether regulation is necessary to achieve this result (it is).
The idea is that because major exchanges play such a crucial role in the industry (Casey claims that “[t]hey are the cryptocurrency industry) they should not be allowed to arbitrarily discriminate between crypto assets — rather they should be regulated to operate as neutral platforms.
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But ask any regulation expert and they will tell you that, absent Goldilocks conditions (hold that thought), neutrality is neither the natural state of markets, nor the natural instinct of regulators.
If that’s the case, regulation of the kind that would have saved Bitcoin SV and of the kind Casey advocates for – while possible – might not quite be around the corner.
That neutrality is not the natural state of markets, we’ve known for a while.
It is hard to notice when there is an abundance of choice and people get what they want, but when there is too little of something, the owner of that bottleneck resource often becomes partial and does not treat everyone the same.
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When the first telephone networks were rolled out, they suppressed devices and services from competitors and even arbitrarily refused call service. Microsoft saw Netscape as a threat and sabotaged it. Apple and AT&T similarlyblocked Skypein the early days of the iPhone. There are countless other examples of platforms disfavoring complements or customers.
Were regulators called in to save the day in all these cases? They were indeed. Telephone networks were designated ascommon carriers, which came with the obligation to provide non-discriminatory service; Microsoft wasforced by antitrust regulatorsto abandon the practices that squeezed Netscape out of the market; and Apple and AT&T dropped their restrictions against Skype after the Federal Communications Commissionthreatened themwith net neutrality action.
It may seem that regulation came to the rescue whenever necessary to restore neutrality. But the truth is that despite occasional corrections, neutrality still remains the exception in the market and in regulatory action.
Part of the reason is that the law actually acknowledges that non-neutrality is not all that bad. The ability to deviate from uniform practice is what allows companies to differentiate themselves in the market. Not all grocery stores carry the same products, neither do they all place them in the exact same shelf, and this helps consumers and producers address diversified needs.
Even extreme differentiation, like exclusive agreements that make a business proposition unique in the market, can be good. For example, Nintendo’sexclusive console agreementshelped bootstrap an entire industry by tying popular games to Nintendo’s consoles thereby increasing competition.
It is not that this kind of discriminatory practices have no downsides. Far from it. But it is also a standard assumption in modern market-driven economies is thatregulation distorts markets too, and therefore, the enactment of rules requires proof that, left alone, the market would perform demonstrably worse.
To decide whether Binance, or any exchange for that matter, should be neutral and not discriminate against crypto assets (be it cryptocurrencies, crypto derivatives or other), regulators would consider a number of factors.
PowerThe most decisive factor to regulate is sustained monopoly power or dominance in the market.
Regulators usually impose neutrality on platforms because users and/or complements (read: cryptocurrencies) can’t or realistically won’t turn to alternative platforms, which would allow the dominant platform to exploit them.
If Binance were a monopoly exchange, then delisting a cryptocurrency would result in driving it out of the market. Or, if the cost of switching from Binance to another exchange was prohibitively high, then, similarly, Binance users and listed cryptocurrencies would be trapped by Binance’s choices.
But neither of those conditions are true here. There arenumerous exchangeson which Bitcoin SV can be traded, and signing up with Binance does not preclude users from trading on other exchanges too. In other words, both Bitcoin SV and users multi-home.
In that sense, Bitcoin SV is not in the same position as companies listed on NYSE or Nasdaq, because by and large, companies are listed on only one exchange, and delisting them would mean that they cease to be publicly traded.
Harm and market distortionRegardless of power, would decisions such as Binance’s delisting of Bitcoin SV undermine important public interest goals such as market stability and efficiency, consumer and investor protection, and capital formation?
Regulation is more likely if the problematic conduct threatens harm to public interest goals, is frequent, and has long-lasting effects without second-best alternatives being able to contain them.
At the moment, the picture is still fluid. For one thing, regulators still grapple with the question of whether crypto assets even form part of financial markets. If they do not, then there would be no legal basis to subject exchanges to financial regulation.
Assuming that they do, the frequency of the problematic conduct matters too. Crypto delisting isnot unheard ofbut it is not exactly common either. There is no exact formula to calculate a threshold. In the case of network neutrality rules, fewer than five instances were enough to set the regulatory process in motion, whereas for privacy, numerous and repeated instances by tech giants have not resulted in regulation yet.
We also don’t know the extent of the harm of delisting. When the trading of conventional securities is suspended, they effectivelydisappear from the market, perhaps permanently. On the other hand, despite Bitcoin SV’s delisting from Binance, it still traded on anotherseven exchanges.
To be sure, Bitcoin SV’s price suffered significantly upon the announcement of the delisting on April 15 (from $73 on April 14 to $55 on April 15), and the effects to its medium-long term liquidity and reputation are yet to be accounted for (likely bleak).
This, in turn, can have severe consequences for investors’ financial situation.
But regulation is concerned with broad effects, not individual actors. The key lies less in the fate of Bitcoin SV specifically, and more in the effect of the practice of delisting in the overall stability of the market. It is a very different situation if delisting is regarded as a normal business practice whose risk is acceptably assumed by investors, and if delisting is regarded as serving no other purpose but to manipulate the market or to defraud investors. Only the latter could invite regulation.
Information inadequaciesThe market can only work efficiently if all parties are sufficiently well informed to evaluate their options.
If investors had perfect information, then their reactions to Bitcoin SV’s delisting would reflect their up-to-date assessment, and there would be no need for regulation to protect them from anything. Any price, reputation and liquidity fluctuations would correspond to investors’ full and accurate beliefs and manipulation by Binance would be impossible.
This is clearly not the case here or in any other market. Perfect information is one of the most unrealistic assumptions of neoclassical economics in modern economies.
But the obvious solution to information inadequacies is more information and more transparency, not neutrality. The difference is that transparency enables actors to make a (presumably better) choice, whereas neutrality is a choice itself: it mandates a specific treatment (i.e. non-discrimination).
Regulators would normally want to start with the least onerous measure (transparency). If it is not effective, they can escalate to neutrality. If still ineffective, they may even dictate the rules of listing and delisting themselves.
Unequal bargaining power and anticompetitive conduct
The main idea behind non-regulated competitive markets is that actors behave well because market forces discipline them. If, however, the competitive forces exercised by competitors (other exchanges), complements (cryptoassets) or customers (investors) are weak, market players (exchanges) are unconstrained to act in ways that harm others.
Think about how much more difficult it would be for an exchange todelist Bitcoinwith its much higher market capitalization, velocity and liquiditycompared to Bitcoin SV.
Evidently, Bitcoin is more valuable to exchanges and therefore the constraints around how exchanges treat it are tighter. In reality, the majority of cryptocurrencies are nowhere near as important as Bitcoin, and the fact that they are not backed by unified institutional actors further diminishes their bargaining power.
Large investors could have a similar constraining effect, since exchanges would not want to lose investors who can generate large volumes.
For this to work it would mean that cryptocurrency ownership is concentrated in large investors (there is evidence in that direction, for example42 percent of Bitcoin is owned by the top 0.01 of addresses), but also that these investors are actually active and that churn is high or at least plausible.
The factors listed above leave out one important aspect of regulation: the fact that, ultimately, it is a political game, not an academic exercise. If politics favor regulation then that’s the most likely outcome regardless of how the factors listed above weigh in. We even have a fancy name for it:New Institutionalism.
As a function of the executive branch, regulation is subject to political pressure and revolves around interest groups. Nascent immature markets, such as that of cryptoassets, are usually captured by the interests of the existing regulatory authority and those of the public.
They are captured by the existing authority (in the US, this is the SEC) because they are already in the game and by extending their reach they justify their existence. Widened reach and heightened activity entitles them to more funding and higher rating. Just look at how everyone speaks of the European Commission as the globalantitrustandprivacyenforcer after having gone after Google and the like.
Nascent markets are also more likely to be regulated in the name of the public interest both because people are generally more vulnerable in new market contexts, and because industry interests have not developed lobbying capacity yet. This leaves the field clear to side with the public which is generally seen as the weaker side.
A few industry associations are already present in blockchain markets (EEA,PTDL,ISDA) but none seems to represent the collective interests of exchanges. On the contrary, regulatory interest and grassroots support for crypto assets seem stronger.
In the end, it is usually not a question of whether a market segment will be regulated or not; rather a question of how it will be regulated.
Coin in vicevia Shutterstock
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• Collapsed Cryptopia Founder Wants You to Put Funds on His New Exchange || Crypto Recovers; Telecoms Giant AT&T Accepts Payments in Crypto: Investing.com - The crypto market recovered on Friday mid-day in Asia with most major cryptocurrencies trading higher. Bitcoin added 2.20% to $7,834.6 by 12:54 PM ET (03:54 AM GMT). With that said, the coin has not been able to climb back to the $8,000 level since Wednesday, after hitting a 10-month high at $8,287.2 in mid-May. Like Bitcoin, XRP gained 0.69% to $0.37636 and Litecoin rose 1.60% to $88.799. However, Ethereum dropped 0.06% to $242.9. The total market cap went up to $244.5 billion from $239.5 billion the previous day. The news that excited the crypto advocates on Friday was U.S. telecoms giant AT&T (NYSE:T) will start accepting payments in cryptocurrencies, the major U.S. mobile carrier to provide such option to customers. AT&T will process online bills paid in digital coins through a platform called BitPay, which converts cryptocurrencies to fiat currency. The platform is said to be used by over 20,000 businesses. “We have customers who use cryptocurrency, and we are happy we can offer them a way to pay their bills with the method they prefer,” said Kevin McDorman, vice president of AT&T Communications Finance Business Operations. The move signifies a step towards wider adoption of cryptocurrencies. "We've met with executive teams at many Fortune 500 companies to explain to them how [crypto] works and we brain storm on how we can work together,” said Sonny Singh, Chief Commercial Officer at BitPay. Related Articles Report: Telegram to Launch TON Network in Q3 2019 Morgan Creek CEO Says Every Investor Should Hold Some Bitcoin EOS BP, Explained || Bitcoins for Frappuccino: Will Starbucks’ Crypto Endeavours Pave the Way for Mainstream Adoption?: The United Statescoffeehouse chainStarbucksis one of the most mainstream companies to look into crypto, and its intentions have finally been confirmed this week: The company has teamed up withMicrosoftto track its beans with a blockchain.
Moreover, reports say that the coffee giant might start accepting bitcoin (BTC) payments in its U.S. branches later this year. So, is the long-awaited mainstreamadoptionfinally coming to the crypto market?
Starbucks’ relationship with crypto could be traced back to January 2018, when its executive chairman and former CEO Howard Schultzdiscussedthe subject during the company’s Q1 2018 earnings call.
Schultz appeared skeptical about bitcoin at the time, saying that it won’t be “a currency today or in the future.” However, the chairman suggested that some other cryptocurrencies might succeed instead:
“I’m bringing this up because as we think about the future of our company and the future of consumer behavior, I personally believe that there is going to be a one or a few legitimate trusted digital currencies off of the blockchain technology.”
Those cryptocurrencies, Schultz added, would have to be legitimized by a brick-and-mortar environment.
In an interview with Fox Business that aired in March 2018, Schultz continued to discuss cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology. “I think blockchain technology is probably the rails in which an integrated app at Starbucks will be sitting on top of,” the executive chairmandeclared.
In August 2018, the Seattle-headquartered coffee giant revealed itself as one ofBakkt’s key partners, alongside Microsoft and consultancy Boston Consulting Group. Bakkt is a digital assets platform created by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE),which is expected to launch later this year.
Notably,according to the original press release, Starbucks would not only be working with Bakkt to create its platform, but it would also be using it to accept crypto payments in its coffeehouses.
“As the flagship retailer, Starbucks will play a pivotal role in developing practical, trusted and regulated applications for consumers to convert their digital assets into US dollars for use at Starbucks,” said Maria Smith, vice president of partnerships and payments at Starbucks.
The news provoked bullish headlines akin to CNBC’s “New Starbucks partnership with Microsoft allows customers to pay for Frappuccinos with bitcoin.” However, the coffee retailer was quick to set the record straight. A Starbucks spokespersontoldVice on the same day the press release was published:
“It is important to clarify that we are not accepting digital assets at Starbucks. Rather the exchange will convert digital assets like Bitcoin into US dollars, which can be used at Starbucks. At the current time, we are announcing the launch of trading and conversion of Bitcoin. However, we will continue to talk with customers and regulators as the space evolves.”
“Customers will not be able to pay for Frappuccinos with bitcoin,” the spokesperson specifically stressed.
In March, new details about Starbucks’ partnership with Bakktsurfaced, confirming its intention to accept BTC-based payments once an equity deal between the two is struck.
Thus, according to The Block’s report citing anonymous sources, Starbucks will install Bakkt’s payment software in its branches, which will allow customers to pay with digital assets. Such payments will be instantly converted to fiat, however, so that the coffee giant does not have to deal with crypto, supposedly to simplify accounting. The option will be available exclusively for U.S. customers first, the article suggests.
That’s “no different” than other BTC merchant programs out there and hence is not a major case of retail adoption, says Michael Dowling, CEO and founder of FairX, a financial services company involved with banking and digital assets, and former chief technology officer at IBM’s blockchain arm. He told Cointelegraph:
“No one wants to hold BTC because of its USD volatility, but they love how ‘easy’ it is to receive value on BTC as long as it converts immediately to USD.”
Dowling suggested that it could be an attempt for Starbucks and Bakkt to bypassVisaandMasterCard’s interchange fees through the initiative, which can be helpful to merchants, but nonetheless should come with its own shortcomings:
“As a merchant, you're just betting the exchange rate will be neutral or in your favor when it comes time to redeem. Oh yeah, and hopefully the redemption agent will always be able to provide USD liquidity.”
Eyal Shani, a blockchain researcher at Aykesubir, is also too skeptical to consider the initiative as a case of mainstream adoption, but admits that it could pave the way for further cases.
“Accepting bitcoin and immediately transferring it to fiat is simply enjoying the rate and exchange fees on Starbucks’ side,” he told Cointelegraph. “They can accept any currency together with the right fee to process it later. With that being said, any new real use case of bitcoin could serve as another step for larger adoption later down the road, if that happens.”
Charlie Smith, an analyst at asset management firm Blockforce Capital, however, thinks that Starbucks’ expected arrival into the field of BTC payments is a largely positive thing for the crypto market as it is. “While some may try to downplay this news because Starbucks will be instantly converting bitcoin payments into fiat currency, we do not believe it diminishes the significance of this news at all,” he wrote to Cointelegraph in an email, adding:
“We believe that Starbucks’ reported adoption of BTC as an accepted form of retail payment is a clear case of retail adoption. The fact that customers will be able to pay using bitcoin not only helps increase the overall usability of the currency but should also increase awareness and understanding of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, given Starbucks’ market share. Additionally, if a retail corporation on the scale of Starbucks has determined that it is in their best interest to accept bitcoin as a form of payment, it is a clear signal that there is a significant consumer population ready to use cryptocurrency as a form of payment on a day-to-day basis.”
As for the immediate conversion of BTC, Smith said it should be similar to how a U.S. company converts payments made in euros into U.S. dollars: “There is a big difference between retail adoption of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and those same corporations being able or willing to deal with the exchange rate risks inherent in any multinational organization. Starbucks instantly converting bitcoin payments into fiat currency does not impact the retail use case for bitcoin any more so than a US company converting payments made in Euros into USD impacts the retail use case for Euros.”
The analyst summarized:
“Starbucks adoption is a leap forward for cryptocurrencies allowing people to utilize their bitcoin for more than just an investment, which should hopefully lead to further adoption.''
This week, tech news publication GeekWirereportedthat Starbucks will implement tech giant Microsoft’s recently announced Azure Blockchain Service to track coffee production.
First announced in 2018, the initiative is called “bean to cup.” Initially, Starbucksmentionedthat it was considering using a “traceability technology” for its coffee-tracking system, without specifying that it necessarily would be a blockchain.
Now, more details have been unveiled. The Azure-powered blockchain system will purportedly allow customers to track the production of their coffee and allegedly provide coffee farmers from Rwanda,Colombiaand Costa Rica with more financial independence.
Additionally, Starbucks noted that it would make the pilot program open source to disseminate their findings. Other projects announced in collaboration with Microsoft include predictive drive-thru ordering and connecting Internet-of-Things (IoT)-enabled equipment at different cafe locations.
Microsoft’s Azure Blockchain Servicewas announcedearlier in May. It is a blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform that allows users to build blockchain applications on a preconfigured network. It currently supports Quorum, theEthereum-based platform ofJPMorgan Chase. The new Microsoft BaaS aims to streamline the use of consortium blockchain networks, from creation to modification.
Explaining why Starbucks could pick the Microsoft blockchain solution over other ones, Shani suggested that it could be a move to strengthen the partnership:
“Although no relevant information was published, we can safely assume that the choice of Microsoft’s blockchain services over other options were mainly affected by the current partnerships the firms hold rather than the technical differences of blockchain on Azure vs blockchain managed services on AWS, at this level of maturity of those services.”
Indeed, the two companies seem to have a close relationship. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson is a former Microsoft executive who ran the worldwide sales and the Windows divisionsbefore joining the coffeehousechain in 2015.
Smith, on the other hand, argues that Microsoft's product is simply better for Starbucks than other options on the market. “Azure provides the ability to develop and implement blockchain technology into existing infrastructure in a faster and less resource intensive manner,” comparing to Quorum or other existing blockchain protocols, he told Cointelegraph.
“This allows Starbucks to focus on its own processes while outsourcing the responsibilities that may be best handled by a blockchain-savvy third party.”
Dowling of FairX suggested that Microsoft’s blockchain platform could seem more reputable to Starbucks than Quorum due to its roots:
“In enterprise IT, there's an old saying ‘no one gets fired for buying IBM.’ Basically, Quorum is written and maintained by JPM, which is a bank and not a SW dev shop. So, if I'm an enterprise customer, I'm going to feel much more comfortable with a Microsoft branded version – along with their support structure – over the JPM offering, even though they might be the same piece of software. JPM knows that, and that's why they partnered with Microsoft. That's also the reasonR3andIBMdid the same withCordaand Fabric.”
However, Dowling is not sure why Starbucks would need a blockchain in the first place. He suggested that it could represent a potentially efficient way to track which farmer is sourcing the best beans as "voted" by customers, but could not think of any other real case use that could be achieved with blockchain technology specifically:
“To be honest, I find the entire program, as explained in the press, very confusing and I'm not sure what problem they are trying to solve. [...] Why does it need to be decentralized? Why does this program — of people voting for beans, I think — require the application of public/private keys and a distributed database?”
Indeed, accomplishing this goal could be done without using blockchain, agrees Smith of Blockforce Capital, “but incorporating an enterprise blockchain solution is more efficient than alternatives.” He went on:
“With this initiative, Starbucks is looking to greatly bolster the transparency of its supply chain. [...] The proposed solution can be compared to how other blockchain networks, such as the bitcoin network, validate a large number of transactions without a centralized authority. The underlying technology is similar, its application is just different.”
There are other major cases of corporations successfully incorporating blockchain, the analyst adds, arguing that the technology should be the right fit for the “fair trade” concept that is popular within the coffee industry in particular:
“The IBM Food Trust program works with Walmart and other major food producers to track food production in order to help stem food-borne illnesses. Starbucks is tackling a similar problem but for a different reason. Whereas food safety isn’t the root cause, Starbucks wants to provide customers the opportunity to track where the coffee they consume is being produced. Any person that is even a casual coffee consumer has heard the term ‘fair trade’ used quite frequently. The concept of fair trade has gained significant attention over the past several years in a number of industries, with coffee being one of, if not the largest industry to focus on fair trade. Through the ‘bean-to-cup’ initiative’s use of blockchain, customers will be able to personally verify where their coffee is coming from and pinpoint specific producers that are producing coffee sustainably and fairly, as well as those that are creating exceptional coffee. A customer drinking Starbucks today has little to no idea who is producing the coffee they are consuming, and can only rely on a sticker to ‘verify’ that coffee is fair trade. In essence, Starbucks is looking for a way to provide greater accountability and that can be accomplished with an enterprise blockchain solution.”
Similarly, Shani believes that the “bean-to-cup” initiative is part of the general “food trust” trend empowered by blockchain:
“The use of blockchain in the food supply chain is a very interesting one for several reasons. If you’re a building constructor, you’re very likely to buy your hammers all at one place. Firms like Starbucks source their coffee beans from hundreds of thousands of small farmers to meet demand. Some of those farmers won’t even be registered business in their home countries. It is impossible to maintain trust when dealing with such large scale long-branched supply chain. Instead of making one entity to hold all the data and attest it’s correct, a smarter idea would be to create a collaborative blockchain based database where every party is liable to their part.”
However, the blockchain researcher added that even a centralized database could create new opportunities within the coffee industry, considering “the state in which the legacy systems are today.” Shani also stressed that neither the exact architecture of the solution nor the trust model have been disclosed by Startbucks at this point.
The potential financial opportunities for coffee farmers mentioned in the press release and the GeekTimes report are also somewhat unclear.
“The only thing I can think of here is there's a payment rail component that reduces the cost of cross-border transactions,” Dowling told Cointelegraph. “Though they make no mention of that. Or there's some kind of ‘bean-coin’ the farmers get, and they redeem that for fiat? If that's the case, why blockchain?”
Given that the main benefit of the “bean-to-cup” initiative is that it can provide farmers increased transparency and a large amount of new data, Smith suggested, it could allow them to build their unique brands “outside the overall Starbucks name.” He continued:
“Currently, when you buy coffee from Starbucks the only information available is the type of coffee and the country where it was grown. By utilizing blockchain, Starbucks will be able to provide its customers with endless amounts of new information, such as when the coffee was harvested, when it was shipped, what farm it came from, and potentially even the farming techniques used as that farm.
“This will provide customers with greater power to support certain farmers, whether because of sustainability or simply because that farmer makes the best tasting coffee. This, in turn, should allow the more than 380,000 farms to differentiate themselves and build a unique brand outside of the overall Starbucks name. From the farmers’ standpoint, this new service should provide valuable data on consumer preferences and taste profiles, which will allow farmers to form data-driven conclusions and help them make more profitable decisions.”
Cointelegraph has reached out to Starbucks to clarify why it would need a blockchain and how exactly it could benefit the coffee farmers, among other things, but has not heard back as of press time.
• Starbucks Working With Microsoft for Blockchain-Based Coffee Tracking Platform
• Bakkt to Roll Out First Bitcoin Futures Testing in July 2019
• ICE Pushes for Bakkt Bitcoin Custody License — CFTC Approval Imminent?
• Turkish University Opens Blockchain Center at Boston's Northeastern University || World’s Largest Bitcoin Exchange Wants to Help Rebuild Notre Dame: Binance, the world's largest bitcoin exchange, wants to rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral and is calling on the crypto community to help with donations. | Source: Reuters/AFP. Image edited by CCN. By CCN : Binance , the world’s largest bitcoin exchange , is stepping up efforts in the crypto community to help rebuild Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. The iconic 900-year-old Catholic church literally went up in flames after being destroyed by a massive fire. Authorities are still investigating the suspicious cause of the raging blaze. ‘Bring Crypto to Religion!’ Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao threw down the gauntlet to the crypto industry, urging them to help restore the historic landmark and show the world that bitcoin can be a force for good. “If we can push crypto to the last mile of the Cathedral building, it’s the ultimate adoption. Bring crypto to religion!” Reading the comments, please understand Charity is not exclusive, or obligatory. Feel free to choose the program you wish to donate to. If we can push crypto to the last mile of Cathedral building, it's the ultimate #adoption . Bring crypto to religion! https://t.co/3OrvyAEUXW — CZ Binance (@cz_binance) April 17, 2019 ‘We Call On Our Colleagues In the Crypto Space’ Binance launched the Rebuild Notre Dame campaign on April 17. On the fundraising page, the crypto juggernaut wrote: “On April 15, 2019, fire broke out of the roof of the historic Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France, severely damaging the edifice and destroying valuable artworks and relics.” Read the full story on CCN.com .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
こんばんは。今週も始まりましたね。今夜も22:00より4200k(https://t.co/q0B2kmQPa9)、BTC-R(https://t.co/4qh14mXvWd)の順に二題ずつup致します。おヒマでしたらのちほどお越しください。 || #analysts #predict #$10000 #bitcoin #[btc] might be #imminent as it keeps #resisting #bears
#instacryptocurrency #instavenezuela #ethereum #monero #cryptocurrencymarket #binance #AI #decentralized #ltc $CNY $BTCEUR #retweet
https://t.co/Mh81QFPmdp || $EGT
ゲーム系トークンのEgretiaがテストネットローンチしたみたい。2か月前ぐらいに爆上げしてて悲しい思いをしましたよ、わたくし。 || $XLM ST1 Hit! 11.2% Profit💥
Free crypto telegram channel, join https://t.co/YH2mbHpFkp
$NCASH $LOOM $ICO #cortex $BLOCK $SUB $QLC $ATX #nem $ZCL $BCH #aurora $BTC $QLC $DTA $EDO $AE $SKB $MCO #portfolio $ICX #blockchain $BTC $CMT $EDR 569110111 https://t.co/e4hpGYZAKY || https://t.co/q7NMG8pL2q çevrimsiz yatırımsız bonus 50 TL.üye ol kimliğini ve telefonunu onaylat ister çek ister bahis yap #freebet #denemebonusu #bahis #iddaa #canlıbahis #survivor #survivor2019 #bitcoin #perşembe #YandaşOnedio #16mayısdünyasamimiyetgünü #bitexen #BONUS #papara || May 11, 2019 02:00PM #Bitcoin Price:
USD 6757.76 | EUR 6023.32 | JPY 743093.19 || https://t.co/pR7ni8piBW || #Bitcoin watch worth up to $55k has a built in cold storage https://t.co/QdlHFN6dKj || @_digitalflow_ @rogerkver @PeterMcCormack @maxkeiser That was then. These days we have a better solution in Bitcoin Cash because of the "muh digital gold, muh store of value - transactions are secondary" crew. || https://t.co/zE0DCkP3az #xrp #ripple #trx #btc #Soha And Kunal's Daughter Had The 'Bestest' Birthday Gift For Her Dad - #Cricket
#CricketWorldCup2019 - https://t.co/N9dW9R8Aqy #Kunal Kemmu shared a video of Inaaya singing "Happy Birthday" while she ...
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Trend: up || Prices: 7954.13, 7688.08, 8000.33, 7927.71, 8145.86, 8230.92, 8693.83, 8838.38, 8994.49, 9320.35
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2015-06-18]
BTC Price: 249.01, BTC RSI: 70.16
Gold Price: 1201.50, Gold RSI: 56.72
Oil Price: 60.45, Oil RSI: 54.87
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Snoop Dogg Moves Forward With His Pot-Based Fund: Earlier this year, Calvin Broadus, more commonly known by his stage name Snoop Dogg, announced that he was planning to launch a fund that would invest in cannabis startups. The famous rapper has been open about marijuana use throughout the course of his career, but now he is hoping to profit even further from the newly legalized substance. Casa Verde Last week, Snoop Dogg continued his efforts to establish the fund by filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission as a manager of the new fund, to be called Casa Verde Capital, L.P. Casa Verde, which translates from Spanish to "Green House," is planning to raise $25 million from outside investors, which will be used to support pot-based startups. However, the fund hasn't raised any money just yet. Related Link: The Business Of Marketing Marijuana Celebrities Get Behind Marijuana Snoop Dogg isn't the first famous face to throw his money behind the growing marijuana industry. Willie Nelson also entered the space this year with his own brand, called Willie's Reserve. The country music star also released a single, "It's All Going To Pot," in order to raise awareness for his new venture. Famous pot-smoker Bob Marley's family is also hoping to capitalize on the late reggae singer's popularity in the marijuana community by creating the Marley Natural brand, which offers everything from marijuana infused massage oils to a smokable signature marijuana blend. Image Credit: "Snoop Dogg in car" by dodge challenger1 - Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons See more from Benzinga A New Cryptocurrency Draws Its Power From Unicorns Is Bitcoin Expanding Its Reach? Edible Marijuana Products Get The 'Okay' In Canada © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || ItBit Became The First Cryptocurrency Exchange To Receive A Banking License: The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) decided to grant bitcoin exchange itBit a banking trust charter this week, marking a major step forward for the cryptocurrency.
On Thursday the company announced its plans to sign up US customers following the decision, though the company's final license isn't expected until the end of May.
A Big Leg Up
The charter gives itBit a leg up against other bitcoin exchanges working to operate across the US as it gives the company a bank-like status which makes itBit responsible for consumer funds without the need of a third party bank.
NYDFS Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky has been working to create new regulations for the bitcoin industry as it continues growing.
He spearheaded a push to create a BitLicense, which could become a reality by this summer. However itBit instead applied for a trust company charter, which is believed to have even stricter rules than a BitLicense would.
Certified Safe
ItBit is the first New York-based trust company to be created since the financial crisis and the extensive work involved in applying for the charter has taken the company more than a year to complete.
The NYDFS looked into the company's consumer protection practices, cybersecurity standards and anti-money laundering safeguards before granting the license.
High Standards
ItBit CEO Chad Cascarilla toldCNBCthat the license will allow the company operate in all 50 states and give customers a safe, secure bitcoin experience.
Cascarilla said itBit's status as a trust company will give them a leg up against competitors as it will improve the company's standards of care to a level "that's totally different from where any one is currently."
See more from Benzinga
• Tracking Pot Plants A Growing Field
• Mind Control: Neurotech Research On The Rise
• Bitcoin In The Middle East
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Thoughts on The Future of Bitcoin From Genesis-Minings CEO Marco Streng Established Bitcoin Cloud Mining Company: Established In 2013 And One Of The Largest Bitcoin Cloud Mining Platforms In The World, Genesis-Mining's CEO Marco Streng Shares His Thoughts On The Possible Future Of Bitcoin Hong Kong / ACCESSWIRE / May 2, 2015 / Writing about the future of Bitcoin with any certainty is like saying someone knows a certain horse will definitely win the Triple Crown this year. The fact is that the technology could go anywhere, legislation could change everything, and Bitcoin culture continues to evolve somewhat sporadically. But there is no fun in not speculating; so Genesis Mining CEO Marco Streng decided to answer the impossible questions . Because Genesis Mining is one of the largest suppliers of any Bitcoin company in the world , Streng is uniquely informed about what new technologies are coming into vogue, which are over-hyped, and what research could change the technology tomorrow. "There is a lot of innovation and pioneering going on in the mining world. Advancements range from innovative data center structures, intelligent and more powerful mining farm monitoring solutions, to more and more optimized chip designs for lower and lower nanometer scales." Bitcoin culture today places a premium on the crowd-monitored nature of the technology, but as the power continually gravitates towards large companies and large data centers, that culture's voice is losing its thunder. The question is whether the average user will embrace the new era of mining or reject Bitcoin altogether. While the currency still represents the most regulatory-free currency in the world, its early adopters envisioned nothing short of utopia. Big companies are as prone to corruption as any other organization, or so the argument goes. Streng got the question if the consolidation of mining will hurt or help the Bitcoin movement, especially concerning the Bitcoin faithful. "What people may forget is that the higher the total mining power in the network, the less vulnerable Bitcoin is. In the early days, a private individual could possibly gain enough influence to control the Bitcoin network by a large enough investment in mining. Times have changed and it is much harder to do that now." Story continues One of the biggest obstacles still facing the currency is evangelizing the many millions of people who believe it is a fringe movement, a fad, one that will disappear quietly in a few years. It does continue to edge its way in to the mainstream with small but notable successes, like Rand Pauls new presidential campaign website accepting donations in BTC. And the technology does continue to gain high profile backers from numerous industries. But even with the most rose colored lenses, no one can say that Bitcoin is mainstream. Streng doesnt think we will have to wait too long for that to happen. "For those of us born in the late 80s and early 90s, we grew up with the internet being a major part of our lives. We didnt have to adopt the technology, we simply had to learn to use it and convince our parents we needed to upgrade our dial up connection. Change is hard, and we saw older generations struggle to use Google instead of libraries and Amazon instead of RadioShack. Despite some people opposing it and all the negativity it received, the internet prevailed and has changed the daily lives of billions of people. I understand that Bitcoin sounds crazy to some, but inmany ways it is following the same path as the internet, and I think it will change the world just as profoundly." Time will tell if Streng is right if a more centralized infrastructure can mesh with Bitcoin culture, if the technology will be embraced by the general public, and if officials in the US and other countries decide not to regulate. But one thing is for sure, many thousands of highly informed critics said Bitcoin would never last as long as it has. About Genesis-Mining: Hong Kong based Genesis-Mining was established in October 2013 with Bitcoin cloud mining facilities located in Iceland, USA and Canada . Genesis-Mining has a partnership with the world's largest ASIC manufacturer; Spondoolies Tech. For more information about us, please visit https://www.genesis-mining.com/a/47631 Contact: Paulo Fiorio paulo.fiorio@genesis-mining.com Genesis-Mining Source: Genesis-Mining || After the SendGrid Hack, Beware of Phishing Scams: Email has become a critical tool for transactions — from the sending of Uber receipts to delivery of hotel coupons. Naturally, companies that send mission-critical consumer emails often turn to third-party firms like SendGrid to manage the delivery of millions of messages. Of course, as third parties that maintain trusted relationships with both consumers and corporations, such email providers are an obvious target for hackers. Imagine the damage a criminal could do if he could believably pose as a giant tech firm and send out emails to all consumers? Such emails could ask millions of users to reset their passwords, for example, or update their credit card information, or even send bitcoins. Such attacks are now under way. SendGrid, which has 180,000 customers and sends emails for giants like Uber and Spotify, said this week that a hacker who broke into company systems earlier this month did more damage than initially believed. On April 9, the firm confirmed to The New York Times that a Bitcoin-related client account had been compromised and used to send phishing emails to its customers. But on Monday, SendGrid said additional investigation revealed that one of its own employees' accounts had been compromised and used to access several SendGrid systems in February and March. "These systems contained usernames, email addresses, and . . . passwords for SendGrid customer and employee accounts," the firm said on its blog . "In addition, evidence suggests that the cyber criminal accessed servers that contained some of our customers' recipient email lists/addresses and customer contact information." SendGrid says it has not found evidence that customer lists were stolen, but it "cannot rule out the possibility." The firm is urging its clients to change passwords and enable two-factor authentication. It takes only a little creativity to imagine all the damage a hacker who managed to steal customer email lists and credentials could do. But a harrowing tale told by cloud provider Chunkhost.com on its website offers a cautionary tale . Co-owner Nate Daiger wrote last year that a hacker talked SendGrid into changing its point of contact email from support@chunkhost.com to support@chunkhost.info, then used that change to retrieve a password reset email on two bitcoin-using clients. Fortunately, both clients used two-factor authentication, Daiger wrote. Story continues "Our customers' accounts were protected and the attackers were stymied. But it was really close," he wrote. Corporate clients who use third-party email services should be on notice: hackers are actively targeting such accounts. Meanwhile, here's an important notice to consumers: You can't believe everything you read, even an email that appears to come from a company you trust . Hackers can sent out very believable-looking phishing emails with requests for password changes or payment information. You should always be skeptical of such emails, but now, you have new reasons to be so. When feasible, avoid clicking on links in emails and instead visit websites directly by typing the site address into your web browser's address bar. If you have given up sensitive information to a phisher, it's important to take steps to control the damage. If it's an account number, report your account info as stolen so the bank or card issuer can close the account, or take similar steps to stop or undo any instances of fraud. Keep a close eye on your account statements, and check your credit reports and credit scores for signs that someone has opened an account in your name, or is using an existing one. You can get your credit reports for free every year from AnnualCreditReport.com, and you can get your credit scores for free from several sources, including Credit.com . More from Credit.com Identity Theft: What You Need to Know 3 Dumb Things You Can Do With Email How Can You Tell If Your Identity Has Been Stolen? || Bitcoin Making Progress In Europe: Despite several setbacks, thebitcoinindustry is continuing to grow across the world as people in more countries take notice of the digital currency's benefits.
While the cryptocurrency is still far from becoming a mainstream payment method, European regulators are beginning to follow in the footsteps of the Bank of England by planning ahead and evaluating how to integrate the cryptocurrency into the region's financial system.
EBA Review
On Monday, the European Banking Association issued areportdetailing its findings on the use of cryptocurrencies.
The report stated that, although bitcoin still has a long way to go before it can be considered a viable currency, digital currencies are an important issue worth paying attention to in the future.
Related Link:NASDAQ Interested In Blockchain
Blockchain As A Viable Opportunity
The EBA acknowledged that despite bitcoin's volatility and security concerns, the technology that powers it could be applied to several different industries to improve their operations.
The report commended blockchain's ability to make processes faster and simpler, saying that it would be useful in fields like IT and contract law.
More Bitcoin Exposure
Shortly after the EBA's release, bitcoin platform Coinify announced that it was expanding throughout the eurozone to allow 34 European countries to buy and sell bitcoins.
Coinify is using the Single Euro Payments Area, or the bloc's payment integration scheme, in order to carry out the expansion.
Related Link: ItBit Became The First Cryptocurrency Exchange To Receive A Banking License
Making Europe Part Of The Digital Payment Revolution
Coinify's expansion is expected to put Europe in a position to take advantage of the growing popularity of digital currencies. Coinify's Chief Financial Officer Christian Visti Larsen said the company's next round of funding is expected to raise enough money "to make sure that Europe will be playing a leading role in this new payment space."
Image Credit: Public Domain
See more from Benzinga
• Is The Shale Oil Market Recovering?
• Working From Home Could Become Even Easier
• The Rise Of Cyber Insurance
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Getting mobile with Bitcoin: This article, Getting mobile with Bitcoin , originally appeared on TechRepublic.com . If you haven't heard of Bitcoin, you might be living on another planet. It's a cryptographic-based currency which isn't actually printed or minted but exists solely in electronic (digital) form. The advantages to Bitcoin are that it is internationally-based (no currency exchange or other fees) and used, it is not subject to laws or regulation from one individual entity, and it can purchase goods or services from businesses and fellow consumers. Bitcoins can be converted into any local currency via exchange rates (at the time of this writing one bitcoin is worth $237.47 in U.S. dollars). You can even generate your own bitcoins through a process called "mining" whereby special high-speed computer systems run software to verify a set of bitcoin transactions (known as a "blockchain"). The more work these systems contribute to this effort, the more bitcoins can be earned (however there is a finite number of bitcoins that the world can generate; approximately 21 million). Bitcoins are generally stored in and utilized by an application or mobile wallet. Two such examples are Bitcoin Wallet for Android and Bither for iOS , either of which can be used to obtain, use, sell and track Bitcoins: figurea.jpg Image: Google Play The concept of Bitcoin Wallet is the same as any other mobile payment system; Bitcoins are accessed via a centralized account (not actually stored on the device per se, meaning your device isn't required nor must be powered up for someone to send you Bitcoins). The app is just a front end to manage the Bitcoins. As it enters its sixth year of existence, the Bitcoin has rolled forward with steady momentum and its popularity continues to grow. As is usually the case with technological advancements, new possibilities are also arising for those savvy enough to stay ahead of the curve. Entire industries are springing up around Bitcoin and one such example involves a merger between two companies called The Bitcoin Shop and Spondoolies-Tech. Story continues The Bitcoin Shop (aka "BTCS") provides Bitcoin (and other digital currency) transaction verification services. It's goal is to build a universal platform for digital currency to provide a single point of access for users to engage in their ecosystem. Consequently, BTCS is investing $1.5m in a transaction verification server manufacturer named Spondoolies-Tech Ltd (aka "Spondoolies"). The motivation behind the merger is to "create the world's first publicly traded company to produce Bitcoin transaction verification equipment and deploy Bitcoin mining resources." I spoke with Charles Allen, CEO of BTCS to find out more about Bitcoin and the details of the BTCS-Spondoolies merger. Scott Matteson: "How do Bitcoin mobile apps work (specifically via Bitcoin Shop's context)?" Charles Allen: "Bitcoin Shop ("BTCS") does not currently have a mobile app. However many digital companies offer iPhone and Android compatible apps most of which are bitcoin wallets or price feeds." SM: "What is the advantage of Bitcoin over traditional currency?" CA: "There are many advantages of Bitcoin compared to fiat currency. Below are some key differentiators: Highly divisible compared to fiat currencies Globally transferable - e.g. in the current system, money can be sent around the world in a matter of days via wires but this is costly for small transactions and slow in today's age. With bitcoin, for example, one can send their bitcoins from anywhere (e.g., from the Japan to the U.S.) instantly for free. Scarce - the supply of bitcoin is predetermined so inflation is factored in. Not government issued - with fiat currencies in a fractional reserve system there is a real risk that a country will make poor decisions over time and devalue their currency." SM: "What security controls are in place to protect customers and vendors/suppliers/businesses (ties into the transaction verification equipment)?" CA: "Apart from sourcing servers and building our data center, customers / suppliers / vendors are not directly involved in the BTCS' operations so I'm not sure the question is relevant to our transaction verification services operations." SM: "Can you elaborate on what to expect from the Bitcoin Shop/Spondoolies merger?" CA: "The digital currency ecosystem is similar to the Internet in 1995, i.e. very few companies are generating revenue. As a combined company, we plan to build a fully integrated transaction verification services business, which will be our revenue and profit engine (similar to Google with advertising) as we explore and develop other blockchain technologies. Spondoolies recently announced 2014 revenue of $28 million, and we believe our fully integrated mining efforts should allow us as combined company to continue to grow revenue and earnings and capture additional margin. Further BTCS has an 83,000 square foot facility to expand mining operations into." SM: "What is the future of Bitcoin?" CA: "Bitcoin - and more importantly blockchain technologies - have the ability to fundamentally change the world in the same way the Internet did. The 'genie is out of the bottle' and it is likely not going away." SM: "Why are hackers/ransomware/cyber-criminals so interested in being paid in Bitcoin?" CA: "Bitcoin is essentially digital cash, and once you have it, you own it. The downside is that every transaction is recorded on the blockchain, so identities can be associated to public addresses, meaning owners of stolen bitcoins can be found. In the long run, bitcoin is a poor means for cybercrime, as there is a public ledger of who owns what." SM: "Can you elaborate a bit more on how BTCS performs transaction verification services?" CA: "Please watch video #1 and video #2 for the best details. BTCS runs ASIC servers (see video #1) in a repurposed 83,000 square foot manufacturing facility in NC - see video #3 (it is now filled with servers, so we are working on an updated video). 93% of our equipment is currently manufactured by Spondoolies." SM: "Can you also elaborate on the Spondoolies server product and how they are specifically tailored towards transaction verifications?" CA: "Currently we do not manufacture ASIC servers. Spondoolies is one of only 4-5 companies that manufacture ASICS servers. There are many companies that run data centers with ASIC servers but very few that manufacture them. The big competitors to Spondoolies are Bitmain, Bitfury, and KNC Miner. However, all of these companies are involved in the design, manufacturing and deployment of ASIC servers. Pre-merger, BTCS is engaged in the deployment of ASIC servers and not the design and manufacturing of them, while Spondoolies is engaged in the design and manufacturing of ASIC servers and not the deployment. As a merged entity, we will be fully integrated similar to Bitmain, Bitfury, and KNC Miner and be able to capture the margin on both sides. To put this in perspective, Spondoolies achieved $28m in revenue in 2014 and many of their customers have had a tremendous return on investment (depending on when they started and their cost structure)." SM: "Can you walk me (briefly) through how a transaction involving Bitcoin via BTCS will work at present? Same question for after the merger (if different)?" CA: "The transaction verification services process is not a business-to-consumer endeavor. We simply maintain the network and are rewarded by the network for doing so. Consumers / users of bitcoin never directly engage with us." SM: "Can you tell me a little more about blockchain technology and how it applies to BTCS? CA: "Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology ( see video #2). Many technologies are being built upon Bitcoin's blockchain and we are a participant in securing the blockchain through our transaction verification services business (or often referred to as mining). In our opinion, this is the core of the technology as well as the cash cow in the business. Many bitcoin companies are "pre-revenue" and will be for years to come. To draw a parallel, Google's cash cow is advertising, hence, they have yet to pollute the elegant and simplistic search interface. Yet they experiment with all sorts of other technologies many of which fail i.e. Glass, Answers, iGoogle, etc. and some that succeed i.e. Maps, Android etc. We believe as a merged company, fully integrated mining / transaction services will be our cash cow which catapults our business to the next level and allows us to venture into other Hopefully you've found this discussion engaging and it has helped advance your understanding of the Bitcoin environment. I'd like to thank Mr. Allen for the time he spent on the topic with me. See also: 5 Bitcoin and finance startups to watch from DEMO 2014 Pay with Bitcoin: 10 of the most interesting places to spend it 10 things you should know about Bitcoin and digital currencies 10 mobile payment systems you need to know || Bitcoin In Minutes: Over 400 000 Locations Worldwide for Instant Buying and Selling Cryptocurrencies Added By 247exchange.com and MoneyPolo(TM): International Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin Exchange Platform 247exchange, Managed by InterMoney Exchange(TM), and Its Partner MoneyPolo(TM) Payment System Proudly Announce the Brand New Method of Buying and Selling Bitcoin Instantly Via Money Transfers
BELIZE CITY, BELIZE / ACCESSWIRE / April 28, 2015 /Bitcoin exchange service 247exchange.com and its partner MoneyPolo(TM) , large money transfer network, represent an innovative instant method of purchasing and withdrawing bitcoins -using express money transfer. The feature is available at more than 400,000 locations (including banks, post offices, shops, stores, money exchangers and so on) in about 130 countries. Having a bank account or credit/debit card is not necessary.
All that is required is cash, ID and a visit to one of almost half a million branches around the world to send an immediate transfer. Transforming cash into bitcoin and vice versa has never been so easy and fast.
"Our global aim is to make Bitcoin closer to average people, and cooperation with MoneyPolo(TM) makes a huge step on this way. It also seems like a perfect solution for buying/selling bitcoins for unbanked users and especially for people from developing countries having less local direct banking options. Speaking in general, our team is working hard to make the whole process as easy, as topping up the mobile phone balance. This is a challenge, but we believe we can make it!," Anton Vereshchagin, the founder, declares.
About 247exchange.com
247exchange is run by InterMoney Exchange(TM), a group of financial companies. The service offers various ways of buying, selling and exchanging cryptocurrencies paying special attention to instant methods.
"At the end of 2014 we integrated credit and debit cards support as an immediate method of buying bitcoins. However, until now we haven't had instant withdrawal methods (and there are not so many exchange services in the world who offers it). Judging by the feedback from our customers, they really missed such option. As a client oriented company we simply can't ignore that. Then we contacted MoneyPolo and made this promising partnership. I believe it's a real breakthrough in the whole cryptocurrency exchange business discovering the new opportunities for the users all over the globe," Alexey Maximenko, CEO, says.
About MoneyPolo(TM)
MoneyPolo(TM) is a registered trademark for Mayzus Financial Services Ltd. Since the company started its operations in 2009 it has been providing payment solutions, prepaid cards, foreign exchange operations for customer accounts as well as cash money transfers. MoneyPolo has customer branches in the UK, the Czech Republic, Mongolia and Philippines, while its partner offices spread throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, North America. Africa and CIS countries. Since 2012 MoneyPolo service portfolio includes accounts and payments for cryptocurrency industry. The company proved to be a reliable and responsible partner for its some 150 000 customers. MoneyPolo is constantly increasing the availability of its services and expanding its wide network of more than 400,000 own and partner branches.
How it works
To purchase Bitcon and other cryptocurrencies (Litecoin, Namecoin, Peercoin) via an urgent money transfer, the user submits a buy order at247exchange.comwebsite. The list of available agents to send cash from will be indicated (for certain money transfer systems it is also possible to send money online). Bitcoins will be sent to the specified address just a few minutes after the transfer has been made.
To withdraw Bitcon and altcoins using an urgent money transfer, the person places a sell order at247exchange.com websitechoosing the nearest agent to receive fiat money from. The funds will be available for picking up in just few minutes. The customer can also transfer money to his relatives and close ones this way. In both cases the user can choose the currency. 24/7 support is always ready to help the customers. Detailed instructions are also provided for client's maximum convenience.
For more information about us, please visithttp://247exchange.com.
Contact Info:
Name: Andrey VereshchaginEmail:adv@intermoneycorp.comOrganization: 247exchangeAddress: InterMoney Exchange Corp. 35 New Road, Belize city, Belize, C.APhone: +44 2070484188
SOURCE:247exchange || Smokeys Daylily Gardens Accepts Chicago's Digital Currency DNotes And Bitcoin For Daylily Purchases: Chicago based digital currency DNotes can now be used to buy flowers at Smokeys Gardens, one of the largest daylily growers in the world CHICAGO, IL / ACCESSWIRE / May 7, 2015 / Smokeys Daylily Gardens ( http://smokeysdaylilygardens.com/ ), established in 2007 and one of the largest daylily growers in the world, becomes the first merchant to accept DNotes ( http://dnotescoin.com ) as a form of payment for daylily purchases. This is a pilot project to demonstrate the significant benefits to merchants in accepting DNotes, a proven stable digital currency built from the ground up with trust and integrity. Hailing from Chicago, Bitcoin alternative DNotes was created on February 18, 2014, with an objective to meet the full functions of fiat currency as a unit of account, store of value and medium of exchange within three years. DNotes has taken a very different path since day one in building a trustworthy stable digital currency with reliable long term appreciation. Using blockchain technology, embedded features to prevent inflation and exemplary means of storage; DNotes may very well exceed fiat money in global online payments in the future. The same team that created DNotes built Smokeys Daylily Gardens in a highly fragmented industry with a blurred line between a business and a hobby. A solid business plan with a firm commitment to be the best in class, coupled with hard work and flawless execution quickly led the seven year old company to be one of the largest daylily growers in the world. Daylily is the second largest selling perennial plant with 79,360 registered cultivars according to AHS (American Hemerocallis Society) Smokeys Gardens offers the best selections of high end daylilies. Using a single 38 acre farm, highly trained and motivated employees, the best farm equipment and the most efficient processes, Smokeys gardens plants, harvests, and ships more daylily plants in one week than most of its competitors in an entire season. Story continues Co-owner Rocky DeLucenay pointed out that, "Efficiency and highly motivated employees are the key elements for small business owners to remain successful these days. We are always interested to save money where we can." She went on to explain that 100% of the business is processed online using paypal, credit and debit cards with some personal checks. The merchant fees along with charge backs often average around 8% of revenue. The cost of transactions using DNotes is near zero, while protecting the company from fraud and chargebacks. Unlike Bitcoin which has been highly volatile, DNotes is a stable digital currency with a proven record of reliable appreciation. DNotes also hosts long term savings plans (CRISP) for children, employees, retirees and students. Haley Mullet, a medical student and a third year employee of Smokey Daylily Gardens and new CRISP for students savings account holder states: "Working in the farm is hard work but it has been rewarding and inspiring to work with a group of professionals who truly want to be the best in class including a genuine concern and contribution to our financial future". To help students like Haley to keep up with costly student loans DNotes are hosting free giveaways for CRISP for Students account holders. CRISP accounts are free, the giveaway will continue with a limited supply of free DNotes. Chicago business leader and co-founder of DNotes Alan Yong is a strong advocate of small business owners, and is concerned about underfunded retirees and the constant struggles of small business owners. The need to constantly use high interest credit cards to supplement cash flow coupled with high transaction cost, reversed charges and credit card fraud has continued to put a damper on employers' ability to support pay raises and facilitate job growth. There has never been a more urgent time for the employer and the employee to foster a new mindset of partnership to confront these new realities for mutual benefits and survival. DNotes is committed to encourage and promote this new partnership by offering CRISP For Employee Incentive Benefits along with CRISP for Retirement, both with the potential for high returns. Accepting DNotes as payment is a significant competitive edge leading to revenue gain and meaningful savings that can be used as employee incentive benefits and owners retirement savings. As the first real world business to accept DNotes as a payment method Smokeys Daylily Gardens is ahead of the curve; well positioned to reap the rewards of instant transactions and low transaction fees. Anyone wishing to learn more about Chicago's very own global digital currency DNotes can contact Alan Yong at contact@dnotescoin.com . He will be attending the Chicago Bitcoin Meetup on Tuesday May 12, 2015 if anyone wishes to meet him in person. http://www.meetup.com/The-Chicago-Bitcoin-Center-at-1871-Official-Meetup/ To learn more about Smokeys Daylily Gardens please go to: http://smokeysdaylilygardens.com/ To buy DNotes with Bitcoin please go to: http://poloniex.com/exchange#btc_note Virtual currency is not legal tender, is not backed by the government, and accounts and value balances are not subject to FDIC and other consumer protections. This press release is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. For more information about us, please visit http://smokeysdaylilygardens.com/ Contact Info: Name: Rocky DeLucenay Email: rocky@smokeysdaylilygardens.com Organization: Smokeys Daylily Gardens SOURCE: Smokeys Daylily Gardens || Need a Kick in the Butt? 4 Apps That Pay You to Exercise: If youre finding it difficult to get off the couch and exercise, perhaps you need a little cash incentive. There are numerous websites and apps designed to track your eating and exercise. And while those are undoubtedly helpful for many people, theyre not enough to motivate others (myself included) to increase their physical activity and live a healthier lifestyle. But there are some apps that actually pay you to workout, according to Ozy. Sounds like a win-win, right? Here are four apps that reward you monetarily for living a healthier lifestyle: Pact: This app allows users to make weekly health goals (for example: veggie pacts, exercise pacts, food log pacts) and track their progress to try to win cash, which usually ranges from 30 cents to $5 per week. If you meet your health goals, youre paid from a pool of funds contributed by users who failed to meet their pact. Thats right, you can lose money with this app. People are two-and-a-half times more motivated by the idea of loss than reward, says San Francisco-based CEO and co-founder, Yifan Zhang. FitCoin: The more you work out, the more you are paid (in the cryptocurrency Bitcoins) with this free app, Ozy said. All you need to do is create an account and use a fitness tracker (like a Fitbit) to measure your workouts.Your average heart rate, distance, and pace are counted and turned into a FitCoin value, the apps website explains. Your FitCoin value totals the amount of bitcoin youve earnedfrom your workout to your (BitCoin) wallet. GOODcoins: This app rewards fitness goal achievements with a currency that can be used only for positive purposes, Ozy said. You earn GOODcoins by walking, running or cycling for 30 minutes each day. The coins can only be used on a selection of socially and environmentally conscious products. or donated to a long list of charities. HealthyWage : All you need to do is create an account, get a verified weigh-in and youre set to wager to win cash for pounds lost in an allotted time. You bet your own money on your weight-loss goals, and if you win, youre paid with Amazon credit or a PayPal balance. You can compete individually or with a team. Cash-based challenges are powerful tools that help you (1) commit to a specific starting point (eliminating prediet procrastination), and (2) avoid quitting before youve accomplished your goals, the HealthyWage website says. Story continues How do you stay motivated to reach your fitness or health goals? Share your comments below or on our Facebook page . Watch the video of Need a Kick in the Butt? 4 Apps That Pay You to Exercise on MoneyTalksNews.com. This article was originally published on MoneyTalksNews.com as 'Need a Kick in the Butt? 4 Apps That Pay You to Exercise' . More from Money Talks News Wearable Tech for Athletes, Babies, Pets and Execs Bring Out Your Inner Chef: 11 Best Apps for Better Meals 13 Fitness Hacks That Can Simplify Your Workouts || Coinbase Expands Into The UK: Over the past few months, the UK has made itself a welcome home for bitcoin users, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs looking to get in on the growing trend of digital currencies. Many have declared London as a hub for bitcoin businesses due to the city's attitude of acceptance, and it seems that established bitcoin-based firms are beginning to take notice. Coinbase Exchange Opening On Tuesday, Coinbase opened a regulated exchange in the UK, allowing users to trade bitcoins for both pounds and euros. Before this week's opening, Coinbase was only operating in the US, but the expansion will allow users in Great Britain to use the service as well. Positivity In The UK Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said much of his decision to expand into the UK was based on a recent visit to London, where he said the attitude surrounding cryptocurrencies was very optimistic. Though he admitted the exchange was difficult to open due to regulatory oversight in the UK, Armstrong said the region's regulators were very accommodating and helpful. Related Link: Bitcoin Wallet Circle Rumored To Be Raising Million London Emerging As Bitcoin Hub Armstrong's experience expanding into the UK suggests that the region is making good on pledges by British Economy and Finance Minister George Osbourne to work together with firms and promote digital currencies while still protecting the region against criminal activity. Coinbase To Continue Growing Armstrong says that the company's UK expansion is only the beginning of the exchange's growth. Already the largest exchange by volume in the US, Coinbase is hoping to take its services across the globe to serve several different markets. See more from Benzinga With No Chance Of A Rate Hike, Investors To Focus On Fed's Economic Analysis Rising Drug Prices Capture Congress' Attention Greece Isn't The Only Flight Risk For The Eurozone © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price: 208.3€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2015-05-15 20:00:06 CEST || LIVE: Profit = $859.15 (23.54 %). BUY B15.38 @ $237.13 (#Bitfinex). SELL @ $246.00 (#VirCurex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$237.90/$238.00 #Bitstamp
$242.03/$243.75 #BTCe
⇢$4.03/$5.85
$239.41/$239.51 #Coinbase
⇢$1.41/$1.61 || $229.43 at 06:30 UTC [24h Range: $228.00 - $232.30 Volume: 7508 BTC] || @JosePimpo y @BitsoEx obsequiaran una clave para que te adentres en el mundo #bitcoin, 19:00
http://www.podermexico.com || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 13 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $2,780.73 #bitcoin #btc || current #bitcoin price (winkdex) is $223.83, last changed Tue, 21 Apr 2015 00:00:00 GMT. queried at: 00:02:45 || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 20 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $1,060.44 #bitcoin #btc || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 22 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $1,062.23 #bitcoin #btc || LIVE: Profit = $892.15 (22.74 %). BUY B16.67 @ $234.28 (#BTCe). SELL @ $246.00 (#VirCurex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org
|
Trend: up || Prices: 244.61, 245.21, 243.94, 246.99, 244.30, 240.51, 242.80, 243.59, 250.99, 249.01
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2020-04-07]
BTC Price: 7176.41, BTC RSI: 55.57
Gold Price: 1664.80, Gold RSI: 58.32
Oil Price: 23.63, Oil RSI: 38.91
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
CoinZoom, a U.S. Regulated Cryptocurrency Exchange Officially Launches Crypto Trading Platform and CoinZoom Visa Card: CoinZoom's global platform allows customers to easily buy, sell, and spend Bitcoin, along with the most popular cryptocurrencies.
SALT LAKE CITY, UT / ACCESSWIRE / March 18, 2020 /CoinZoom, aU.S. regulated cryptocurrency exchangeannounced the official launch of its exchange and CoinZoom Visa card. With the launch, customers will be able to buy, sell, and spend a wide variety of cryptocurrencies on the exchange.
The CoinZoom Visa Card allows customers toinstantly convert their crypto balances to fiat and spend at over 53 million Visa merchants worldwide. The CoinZoom Visa Card is linked directly to customer accounts, where customers can pre-select the wallet they wish to debit when they use the CoinZoom Visa. Customers can select either their fiat wallet or bitcoin, ripple, ethereum, litecoin, or dozens of other coins they may have in their crypto wallet.
The CoinZoom Visa Card utilizes the latest technology in credit cards, including making payments through Chip, Contactless and PIN, as well as cash withdrawals from ATMs. When customers use their CoinZoom Visa Card, CoinZoom's authorization engine instantly converts cryptocurrencies to USD, which is used to complete the purchase. In addition to the ease of using crypto balances to fund their purchases, customers can earn up to 5% card rewards back on every purchase.
Todd Crosland, founder, and CEO of CoinZoom said, "We are extremely pleased to work with Visa as we launch CoinZoom. Visa's dominance as a global leader in digital payments, is a tremendous asset as CoinZoom begins to reshape the global cryptocurrency marketplace. Our goal is to provide cryptocurrency traders with the best platform for buying, selling, and spending digital assets."
Crosland continued, "CoinZoom is not only the first U.S. cryptocurrency exchange to provide a Visa card to its customers but also offers or industry-first features like ZoomMe,CoinZoom's FREE Peer-to-Peer crypto and fiat payment system. Customers can send both crypto and fiat instantly to friends and family all over the world for free. CoinZoom also provides customers with a premier fiat gateway for funding their accounts. There are several funding options including both Visa and Mastercard debit card options."
In addition to its professional desktop trading platform, CoinZoom has launched CoinZoom Pro, its proprietary advanced IOS trading App. CoinZoom Pro is available today for download in the Apple App Store. The CoinZoom Pro App allows customers to easily buy, sell, send, and spend cryptocurrencies, and features a virtual CoinZoom Visa Card that will assist customers in tracking and managing their transactions on the Coinzoom Visa. Customers have the option to use their virtual or physical CoinZoom Visa Card. CoinZoom Pro also features "ZoomMe", a free - instant international Peer to Peer fiat or crypto international money transfer service.
To celebrate the launch of the CoinZoom Exchange and the CoinZoom Visa Card, we are kicking things off with a$25,000 Bitcoin Halving Sweepstakes.
About CoinZoomCoinZoom is the next generation digital asset exchange that uses the team's vast experience in providing superb trade quality, customer-focused tools, and technology that help customers become successful traders. CoinZoom offers services in buying, selling, and spending bitcoin, ripple, ethereum, and other top digital currency pairs. The team's decades of experience in financial technology security are equally important in safeguarding customer funds and customers' digital currency positions. CoinZoom is a U.S. registered Money Services Business with FinCen in all 50 states and territories. CoinZoom is also a U.S. registered Money Transmitter, available for trading in over 45 states. CoinZoom also has subsidiaries in Australia and Ireland. CoinZoom Australia PTY LTD is registered as a Digital Currency Exchange with AUSTRAC and CoinZoom Europe Limited, is registered in Ireland.
Contact Information:
Benjamin CroslandCoinZoom, Inc.801-694-3537
SOURCE:CoinZoom
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/581139/CoinZoom-a-US-Regulated-Cryptocurrency-Exchange-Officially-Launches-Crypto-Trading-Platform-and-CoinZoom-Visa-Card || Bitcoin remains correlated to the equity market amid the ongoing financial crisis: Amid the current financial crisis, bitcoin has yet to prove itself to be the “safe-haven” asset that many claim it to be. In fact,researchby The Block shows that bitcoin has been relatively correlated to the equity market.
The correlation between bitcoin and the S&P 500 index started out negative at the beginning of the year. Going into March, however, it entered into the positive range and reached a high of 0.32. The contract between the negative correlation in Jan. and the positive one in March. – both statistically significant – shows an interesting development.
“The correlation can disappear just as quickly as it showed up,” said The Block researcher Larry Cermak. “But there is no indication of that as of yet.” || Bitcoin touches $9,500 as $31 billion wiped off cryptocurrency markets: In the last three days, the cryptocurrency market has experienced a minor reversal of sorts, with more than $31 billion wiped from the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies in the last three days.
Much of this loss can be attributed to the recent bearish momentum seen byBitcoin (BTC), which fell from over $10,300 on February 15 down to briefly touch below $9,500 today as more than $14 billion was wiped off its market cap. Bitcoin has since recovered slightly and currently sits at just south of $9,600.
Other major cryptocurrencies are also experiencing similar, if not greater losses. As it stands, every cryptocurrency in the top ten by market capitalization is in the red today, with Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and XRP currently performing the worst after losing between 7-8% apiece. Likewise, Ethereum (ETH) and EOS are down around 4% each.
Although it is currently unclear why the market has taken a bearish turn, recent performance issues seen by Binance may have contributed to a change in investor sentiment. Nonetheless, despite its recent losses, the global cryptocurrency market is still up by almost 14% in the last month, and almost 17% in the last three months. As such, there is still some leeway before this adverse market movement can be considered a long-term change in market dynamics.
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. || Stock market plunge set to be worse than 2008 financial crisis: The impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic on the stock market is on track to be worse than the 2008 financial crisis with the FTSE 100 being 29.32% down since January 27. Stock markets across North America, Europe and Asia have also been heavily affected by the recent panic surrounding the outbreak. The S&P500 has opened today’s trading session at 2,552 after closing yesterday at 2,741, marking a further 7.28% decline. Continued panic will trigger circuit breakers in the US markets, an event that happened earlier this week. These are events that have occurred extremely rarely over the past decade. The financial crisis in 2008 caused a 49.45% crash in the FTSE100 as it plunged from 6,739 to 3,439 within a matter of months. However, the speed of the recent decline trumps that of 2008, which suggests that continuation to the downside will undoubtedly cause a larger and potentially longer-lasting impact on the stock market. Economic stimulus and interest rate cuts have been put into motion by numerous countries across the world although it has failed to have the desired effect. Alternative markets have also been hit hard during the recent downturn with Bitcoin and Ethereum losing almost 50% of their respective value since early February. One asset that has performed relatively well considering the panic has been gold, which is up by 3% since the turn of the year after surging to a seven-year high of $1,700 per ounce. For more news, guides and cryptocurrency analysis, click here . || Stablecoins Are Evolving to Make Crypto Assets Irresistible to Wall Street Investors: 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has published a financial reform plan that among other things advocates for a stronger financial system. Part of the proposed reform also recommends the creation of a regulatory sandbox for startups and "providing a clear regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies." Wall Street still regards the cryptocurrency industry with a cautious degree of skepticism, but stablecoins are increasingly providing a clearer path to the mass-market adoption of the new asset class.
Stablecoins have risen in popularity to become a major source of liquidity in the cryptocurrency market. They provide an on-ramp to enter the crypto markets and an off-ramp to exit the cryptocurrency market. The rising popularity of stablecoins is a function of their inherent stability relative to other types of cryptocurrencies.
This piece discusses how stablecoins are free from the historical volatility of cryptocurrencies and how they are evolving to offer different types of on-and off-ramp opportunities that will make cryptocurrencies more attractive on Wall Street.
Wall Street is already testing the crypto waters
Even though Wall Street is yet to be fully onboard the cryptocurrency train, several equities, ETFs, and traditional instruments provide some level of exposure to the industry. For instance, Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) both have significant exposure to the crypto market because of the use of their graphics processors in crypto mining operations. In the year-to-date period, both Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Systems have delivered 23% as seen in the chart below.
Other stocks such as Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust(GBTC)provides a more direct level of exposure to the crypto industry as a publicly-traded Bitcoin fund. Overstock.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:OSTK) is one of the first traditional companies to adopt crypto payments and it currently keeps about 50% of its crypto payments, which ties its fate to the success or failure of the crypto market. In the year-to-date period, both Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and Overstock have delivered 56% and 25% gains respectively.
When compared to the rest of the US market in the year-to-date period, Wall Street assets with exposure to the cryptocurrency market have delivered double-digit gains. In contrast, the S&P 500, NASDAQ Composite, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have only managed to deliver single-digit gains in the same period.
The rising popularity of stablecoins across different market segments
Tether USDTis unarguably the biggest stablecoin in the market – it has been enjoying a first-mover advantage since its launch in 2015. It has more than 80% of the market share for stable coins and it has managed to maintain parity with the USD despite the recurrent panic episodes that accompany significant drops in the price of Bitcoin.
In 2019, the supply of USDT was increased from 2 billion tokens to 4.108 billion tokens to account for growing adoption. More so, the token was moved from the Omni-layer to the Ethereum network to facilitate the faster and cheaper transfer of value. Interestingly, a Chainalysis report shows that “for Chinese exchange users, Tether has replaced the yuan as the go-to fiat currency” as data from exchanges showed that almost all fiat-crypto trades in Mainland China was between Yuan and USDT.
Dollar Neutrino USDNis an algorithmically stable USD-pegged asset that is collateralized with the WAVES blockchain platform. Waves is rapidly driving the adoption of DeFi products and they are gradually becoming a leader in the industry. In addition to providing stability, USDN provides token holders with additional revenue streams through staking in much the same way that traditional dividend stocks provide returns. Launched barely one month ago on January 28, 2020, the token now has more than $3.2 million staked as it delivers a staking reward of about 8.9% per annum.
Whereas other stablecoins merely provide entry and exit into the crypto market, USDN also allows holders to stake their tokens for additional returns. Hence, when traders exit their crypto holdings into stablecoins to avoid the inherent volatility of the crypto market, USDN provides an opportunity to stake their funds and earn staking rewards until they are comfortable enough to return to the active trading of cryptocurrencies.
In 2018, Coinbase and Circle created the CENTRE Consortium which in turn created theUSD Coin USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the USD. Interestingly, while the use case of the original USDT is limited to the crypto industry and USDN allows people to earn low-risk rewards on cryptocurrencies, the USDC is serving as a measure of value in the brick and mortar world.
The USDC is gradually building a reputation as a stablecoin accepted by the government of a sovereign nation for the payment of taxes. Last year, Circle released a statement on how Bermuda became the first government to accept payments for taxes, fees and other government services using USD Coin (USDC). In less than two years, the market cap of USDC has grown to more than $430M and more than $700 million worth of the token are traded each day.
Summary
Cryptocurrencies are here to stay and stablecoins have an important role to play in driving the mass-market adoption of the new asset class. In 2019, JPMorgan revealed its plan to build a stablecoin,JPMCoin, and Facebook led a consortium of tech and payments companies to launch Libra.
Going forward, the differentiation of stablecoins- USDT for facilitating crypto trades, USDN for facilitating low-risk crypto investments, and USDC for facilitating localized payments, among others, suggests that are different opportunities for Wall Street to leverage cryptocurrencies without being unnecessarily exposed to the volatility.
Disclosure: None. || Malta Financial Regulator Warns Against Unauthorized Crypto Firms: Malta’s financial regulator has issued warnings against two crypto websites that falsely claimed to be licensed by the nation. The Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) called out the “ COINMALEX ” and “ Crypto Foxtrades ” crypto exchanges in twin warnings Wednesday. Both entities had claimed to be licensed, registered or domiciled in Malta, all of which MFSA denied. COINMALEX’s “ about ” page features a document purporting to be from the “Malta Business Registry,” a real institution within the small European island state. The document’s letterhead prominently displays the British royal coat of arms. Malta ceased using that icon when it gained independence from Britain in 1964 . Related: Crypto Investment Fund Suffers Hack Exposing Data of 266,000 Users: Report Crypto Foxtrades’ “about us” page is more forthright about its alleged Malta ties. It claims to be “licensed and regulated as a Category 3 Investment Services provider by the Malta Financial Services Authority.” That is a real category , however MFSA insisted that Crypto Foxtrades is not licensed under it. See also: Bitcoin Firms Report Uptick in Demand for Inheritance Services “The MFSA wishes to alert the public, in Malta and abroad, that Crypto Foxtrades is NOT a Maltese registered Company NOR licenced or otherwise authorised by the MFSA to provide the service of an exchange or other financial services which are required to be licenced or otherwise authorised under Maltese law,” MFSA said. MFSA released a similar statement for COINMALEX. Related: Malta’s Financial Watchdog Highlights Obstacles to Security Tokens After Industry Consultation Crypto Foxtrades and COINMALEX did not immediately respond to requests for comment. MFSA has been closely policing allegedly Maltese crypto businesses since 2018, issuing warnings wherever and whenever it spotted one claiming phony licensure. Its efforts came to a head in February with the revelation that Binance , one of the world’s largest exchanges, had never operated in Malta and was never regulated by MFSA. Story continues Regulated entities can be found on the MFSA’s website . Related Stories Binance Is Not Under Our Jurisdiction, Says Malta Regulator You Can Now Get a Master’s in Blockchain From a School in (Where Else?) Malta || Bitcoin’s Coronavirus Selloff Throws Cold Water on Safe-Haven Argument: As U.S. stocks tumbled on Monday by the most in six months amid renewed coronavirus fears, bitcoin barely budged – at least in terms of the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency’s trading history.
Bitcoin(BTC) was down 4.6 percent as of 6:17 p.m. UTC (1:17 p.m. ET) to $9,517. But a decline of that magnitude represents merely the biggest drop since last week; already this year, bitcoin has suffered six other single-day losses of 3 percent or greater. And due to a powerful rally in recent months, the cryptocurrency’s price is still up about 32 percent in 2020.
Such a performance stands in stark contrast with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of large U.S. stocks, whose 3.6 percent plunge was the most for a single day since early August and wiped out investors’ gains for the year.
Related:6 Explanations for Crypto’s Fascination With Coronavirus
“There’s certainly a bit of fear in the bitcoin market, but it’s not anything close to the panic we’re seeing on Wall Street today, with the clear flight to safety,” said Mati Greenspan, founder of the analysis firm Quantum Economics, which specializes in cryptocurrencies and foreign exchange. “Three percent is a very different figure for stocks and for bitcoin.”
The episode could renew an ongoing debate among investors over whether bitcoin should trade as a risky asset like stocks and junk bonds, or if it’s more akin to a safe haven like gold or U.S. Treasury bonds. There’s also the possibility that it’s neither — in a category of its own and largely uncorrelated with traditional asset prices.
Indeed, the coronavirus wasn’t the only news potentially affecting bitcoin prices on Monday: Billionaire investor Warren Buffett asserted in a CNBC interview that hedoesn’t own any cryptocurrencyand “never will.”
The plunge in stocks came as authorities globally struggled to stem the spread of the coronavirus beyond China, raising concerns the global economy will suffer a bigger hit from quarantines and delays in international trade and travel, according toBloomberg News. The epidemic has now spread to more than 30 countries, including South Korea, Italy and parts of the Middle East.
Related:‘Short Bitcoin’ ETP Available to Investors on Germany’s Second-Largest Exchange
Traditional safe-haven assets like gold and U.S. government bonds rallied on Monday. Gold rose 1.7 percent to $1,676.50 a troy ounce, the highest in seven years. U.S. Treasuries rose, too, as the yield on the 10-year note declined by 0.11 percentage point to 1.36 percent. Bond prices move in the opposite direction from their yield.
A jump in bitcoin prices in January — after the U.S. killing of a top Iranian led to heightened concerns of geopolitical and economic turmoil — prompted some traders to speculate that the cryptocurrency might begaining acceptance among investors as a safe haven.
But in areport last week, the Norwegian analysis firm Arcane Research noted bitcoin’s correlation with gold had weakened since the start of this year.
Greg Cipolaro, co-founder of the crypto-focused firm Digital Asset Research, said in an interview he recently studied bitcoin’s price performance over the past nine years on days when U.S. stocks experience big swings, defined as a price move that’s statistically two standard deviations away from average.
On the 13 times such daily moves occurred over the period, bitcoin’s price rose an average of 1.5 percent when stocks rallied. Bitcoin’s price fell 0.34 percent when there was an unusually large selloff. Since 2011, bitcoin rose by 0.6 percent per day, on average.
“On these kinds of days where you have these risk-off scenarios, bitcoin tends to be down on the day,” Cipolaro said. “It’s not the same as owning Treasuries, and not the same as owning gold.”
The takeaway for the bitcoin market might still be positive, he said, since hedge funds and other large investors are often hunting for assets that are mostly uncorrelated with traditional markets but boast a track record of high risk-adjusted returns.
Jeff Dorman, chief investment officer of the crypto-focused firm Arca Funds in Los Angeles, said in a phone interview that cryptocurrencies might be slower to react to global developments than stocks and bonds because they’re still largely disconnected from Wall Street; digital assets like bitcoin aren’t typically bought via traditional brokerage accounts.
“It’s irresponsible for anyone to say that bitcoin is truly a safe haven,” Dorman said. “Look at how gold and Treasuries and equities react instantaneously to global fears. Bitcoin and digital asserts live outside that work flow.”
Federal Reserve officials led by Chair Jerome Powell have signaled recently they see the current stance of monetary policy as appropriate, but that the coronavirus could put the health of the global economy at risk. The implication is that the U.S. central bank might need to cut interest rates to stimulate markets and business activity if the contagion leads to a steeper-than-anticipated dropoff in growth.
Such monetary-policy easing might ultimately bolster the case for buying bitcoin, Dorman said, since many analysts believe that limits on the supply of new units of the cryptocurrency make it useful as a hedge against inflation.
“I don’t expect bitcoin to trade as risk-on or risk-off asset,” he said. “But over a longer period of time, anything that’s inflationary, or said another way devalues other currencies, strengthens the purchasing power of bitcoin.”
• Bitcoin Faces Further Losses if Bulls Can’t Disrupt Bearish Chart Pattern
• How to Protect Bitcoin for Your Heirs With the Push of a ‘Dead Man’s Button’ || Bitcoiners Are Biohacking a DIY Coronavirus Vaccine: Anonymous bitcoiners are taking the search for a coronavirus vaccine into their own hands – bypassing academia, pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The “biohacking” effort by a group known asCoroHopeis crowdsourcingbitcoin(BTC) donations to fund its work. The group claims it has a biologist on board with 10 years’ experience building similar vaccines for the FDA. Prominent community members such as Blockstream co-founder Mark Friedenbach arevouchingfor the unknown team. (“It is not a scam,” he tweeted.)
And it’s drawing on bitcoin’s decentralized ethos for inspiration.
Related:Cash Is the New Safe Haven as Crypto, Gold Continue to Tank
“Cryptocurrency is uniquely able to help with this problem because, like us, it’s outside the traditional system. The original backers are bitcoiners, and we’d love to keep working with bitcoin and bitcoin developers on this problem. We need all the help we can get,” a CoroHope spokesperson told CoinDesk by email.
The group sees the FDA as a potential hindrance to finding a vaccine for the rapidly spreading coronavirus because the agency has a stringent approval process that, to the biohackers’ minds, doesn’t necessarily benefit the public.
See also:Chinese Crypto and Blockchain Firms Grapple With Coronavirus Outbreak
“FDA-compliant manufacturing is absurdly overregulated: paperwork for the paperwork, quadruple-checking, endless committees … just the worst of bureaucracy. So we can be more nimble,” the spokesperson said.
Related:Mass Surveillance Threatens Personal Privacy Amid Coronavirus
They noted that it took the World Health Organization (WHO) until Wednesday to declare the coronavirus a pandemic, “which will end up having cost thousands of lives due to continued complacency around the world. Unfortunately, COVID-19 is a global pandemic and frankly we’re not interested in waiting for regulations to try to do good work.”
Like other bitcoin-adjacent endeavors (3D-printed guns, online black markets), this one is likely to be controversial.
FDA-compliant manufacturing is absurdly overregulated … just the worst of bureaucracy. So we can be more nimble.
“I have no concerns with someone trying to develop something in a novel way. Science is all about that,” said Nancy E. Kass, a professor of bioethics and public health at John Hopkins University.
“But it would be harmful, problematic, confusing and misleading to start saying that they have an effective vaccine if that vaccine has not undergone proper safety testing and efficacy testing,” she said, pointing to FDA rules as a guideline.
The CoroHope spokesperson agreed with this sentiment. “We are not some televangelist hawking colloidal silver as a cure-all,” they said. “Even if we have thousands of reports of safe administration of our vaccine … and reports of vaccines tongue-kissing an infected person without incident, we will not declare it an effective vaccine. That is indeed the domain of the FDA, and we do not aim to undermine public trust in the FDA.”
Reached for comment, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told CoinDesk to contact the National Institutes of Health, which said it had received too many requests to respond. The FDA did not answer a request for comment.
Liability is the very reason its members have chosen to not reveal their identities, at least not yet.
Since CoroHope is using new means to develop a vaccine, the team is taking a risk. Bryan Bishop, a contributor to Bitcoin Core (the most popular bitcoin full node software), joined the biohacking project “to organize development” – only to quit a couple days later.
“There’s just too much liability,” he said, if the drug has adverse effects on patients who end up using it.
Bishop pointed to a recentNew York Times op-edspelling out some of the perceived issues with health care liability in this day and age, where neither the FDA nor pharmaceutical companies want to be on the hook for things going wrong.
See also:New York Crypto Companies Move to ‘Work From Home’ in Face of Rising COVID-19 Threat
The CoroHope spokesperson said liability is the very reason its members have chosen to not reveal their identities, at least not yet.
“Anonymity is preferable at this stage, as Bryan’s concerns about liability are shared by the rest of the group,” the spokesperson said.
For the same reason, the team is hesitant to reveal some details of the project.
“Whether we have medical personnel, we can not and must not say. We are actively inviting anyone with relevant expertise to join our project, and we encourage them to invest in privacy while doing so, to maximize everyone’s safety working on this endeavor,” the spokesperson added.
See also:Ben Hunt on Markets and Narratives in the Age of Coronavirus
CoroHope has received “only a small amount of bitcoin so far,” according to the spokesperson. It’s published anaddressthat as of press time had seen no transactions.
But the group is encouraging donors to get in touch directly to get an individual bitcoin address “because of the privacy-sensitive nature of this endeavor.” (Using fresh addresses for each transaction is considered a privacy best practice because it’s harder for busybodies to trace the flow of funds on the public blockchain.)
While the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, it’s unclear how long it will take for CoroHope to come up with a concoction – or if it will even work.
“This is not a cure,” CoroHope warns in adocumentexplaining its plans. “Untested vaccines are probably ineffective and come with no guarantees. This is true whether they are developed by a government, a large corporation or a collective of biohackers, just like any other medication. Our highest priority is to ensure that any vaccine we develop is not harmful, and its potential effectiveness is secondary to its safety,”
That sobering disclaimer was added out of “an abundance of caution – underpromise and overdeliver,” said the CoroHope spokesperson.
“Any vaccine like this only has a small chance of working (perhaps 20 percent for [biotech company] Inovio’s vaccine, and less for ours as we don’t have millions of dollars for optimization),” the spokesperson went on. “When doing the cost-benefit analysis, though, even a tiny chance of it working will be worth the investment.”
See also:How to Survive the Coronavirus and Keep Your Startup Alive
Other biohackers share this desire to circumvent problems with traditional systems. For example, anarchist and transgender biohackers havebeen workingto produce DIY estrogen and insulin, to avoid a medical system that is often unkind to them.
But while biohacking is a growing movement, biohacking a vaccine is quite novel.
“To our knowledge, no one has yet biohacked a vaccine,” the CoroHope spokesperson said.
A pioneering approach might make more sense with such a uniquely deadly virus, the spokesperson argued.
“COVID-19 is the most dangerous virus since 1918 (though not surpassing that), and certainly since biohacking became a thing,” they said.
CoroHope does, however, have a plan.
Specifically, it is attempting to create a so-called plasmid vaccine, inspired by what Inovio Pharmaceuticalsis working on. After successful trials, that publicly traded, Pennsylvania-based company said it will be ready for human trials in April.
The small CoroHope team has one person in an experimental “wet” lab, with another “standing by” if it receives enough crowdsourced donations, as well as a few people on the “non-biology side.”
Ultimately, the group plans to put into the public domain any DNA sequences and hardware it develops so anyone can inspect, modify or use them, much like open-source software.
See also:Crypto Firms Tout Dispersed Workforce as Coronavirus Contingency Plan
“Our biologist has manufactured plasmid DNA vaccines at the multi-gram scale for clinical trials,” the CoroHope spokesperson said. “Without too much detail, it was for a government agency, at a contract manufacturer. They have also manufactured biomolecules for over a decade and the experience is all relevant. Any molecular biologist has made plasmids with a kit, but doing it at industrial scale does require specialized knowledge that we possess.”
With initial funding, CoroHope’s first goal is to develop the plasmid DNA vaccine “to design and synthesize the plasmid, perform preliminary testing and send it out to interested labs.”
If the group receives more funding, “we can begin its production, scale-up and distribution,” according to the document. But there are limits to what the group thinks it’ll be able to do.
See also:Is Blockchain the Shot in the Arm Healthcare Needs?
“While we will be performing quality control testing to ensure that the vaccine is safe, we will be unable to test it in a clinical trial or animal models, and would leave that part of the process to be hashed out by the community,” the document says.
This could be useful since even if Inovio’s or another vaccine is approved soon, manufacturing enough doses for everyone “is going to take some time,” the spokesperson said.
“If someone is at the bottom of the list, they have a right to take their well-being into their own hands. Our end goal is to make our vaccine available to anyone in that situation who understands the risks involved.”
• Down 26%: Bitcoin Sees Worst Sell-Off in 7 Years as Coronavirus Spurs Flight to Safety
• UK Financial Regulator: Watch Out for Coronavirus Crypto Scams || Thousands of These Computers Were Mining Cryptocurrency. Now Theyre Working on Coronavirus Research: CoreWeave, the largest U.S. miner on the Ethereum blockchain, is redirecting the processing power of 6,000 specialized computer chips toward research to find a therapy for the coronavirus. These graphics processing units (GPUs) will be pointed toward Stanford Universitys Folding@home, a long-standing research effort that unveiled a project on Feb. 27 specifically to boost coronavirus research by way of a unique approach to developing pharmaceutical drugs: connecting thousands of computers from around the world to form a distributed supercomputer for disease research. CoreWeave co-founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Brian Venturo said the project has at least a shot at finding a drug for the virus. As such, CoreWeave has responded by doubling the power of the entire network with its GPUs, which are designed to handle repetitive calculations. Related: State Power After Coronavirus, Feat. Peter McCormack See also: Bitcoiners Are Biohacking a DIY Coronavirus Vaccine According to Venturo, those 6,000 GPUs made up about 0.2 percent of Ethereums total hashrate, earning roughly 28 ETH per day, worth about $3,600 at press time. There is no cure for the coronavirus just yet (though various groups are working on vaccines and research to combat the disease, including IBMs supercomputer ). Venturo noted that Folding@home has been used to contribute to breakthroughs in the creation of other important drugs. Their research had profound impacts on the development of front-line HIV defense drugs, and we are hoping our [computing power] will aid in the fight against coronavirus, Venturo said. Related: SkyWeaver Didnt Plan for a Captive Audience of Millions but It Sure Helps The coronavirus is taking a toll across the world. Italy and Spain are on lockdown . Conferences, stores and restaurants are closing to stem the spread of the disease; by stoking fears, its slamming the financial markets in the process. World computer When the idea of using GPUs for coronavirus research was mentioned to CoreWeave, the team didnt think twice. Story continues They had a test system up and running within minutes, Venturo said. Since then, the project quickly snowballed. CoreWeave has been contributing over half of the overall computing power going into the coronavirus wing of Folding@home. The idea of should we do this? was never really brought up, it kind of just happened. We were all enthusiastic that we might be able to help, Venturo added. Folding@home is a decentralized project in the same vein as Bitcoin. Instead of one research firm alone using a massive computer to do research, Folding@home uses the computing power of anyone who wants to participate from around the world even if its just a single laptop with a little unused computing power to spare. See also: Bitcoiners in Europe Reflect on Economic Shocks as Coronavirus Spreads In this case, the computing power is used to find helpful information relating to the coronavirus. Much like in bitcoin mining, one user might detect a solution to the problem at hand, distributing this information to the rest of the group. Their protein simulations attempt to find potential pockets where existing [U.S. federal agency Food and Drug Administration (FDA)] approved drugs or other known compounds could help inhibit or treat the virus, Venturo said. Viruses have proteins that they use to suppress our immune systems and reproduce themselves. To help tackle coronavirus, we want to understand how these viral proteins work and how we can design therapeutics to stop them, a Folding@home blog post explains . Simulating these proteins and then looking at them from different angles helps scientists to understand them better, with the potential of finding an antidote. Computers accelerate this process by shuffling through the variations very quickly. Our specialty is in using computer simulations to understand proteins moving parts. Watching how the atoms in a protein move relative to one another is important because it captures valuable information that is inaccessible by any other means, the post reads. Long shot Folding@home could use even more power. Venturo urges other GPU miners to join the cause. Even without these calls for participation, though, miners of other cryptocurrencies are already independently taking action. Tulip.tools founder Johann Tanzer put out a call to action to Tezos bakers (that blockchains equivalent of miners) last week , promising to send the leading contributor to Folding@home a modest 15 XTZ, worth roughly $20 at press time. The initiative blew up, to Tanzers surprise. Though they might not be contributing as much power as CoreWeave, 20 groups of Tezos miners are now contributing a slice of their hashing power to the cause. Tanzers pot has swelled to roughly $600 as Tezos users caught wind of the effort and donated. But thats not to say all miners can participate. While GPUs are flexible, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), a type of chip designed specifically for mining, arent, according to Venturo. Though ASICs are more powerful than GPUs, theyre really only made for one thing: To mine cryptocurrency. This is one advantage Venturo thinks Ethereum has over Bitcoin, since GPU mining still works on the former, whereas the latter is now dominated by ASICs. Se e also: Israeli Bitcoiners See Surveillance as Unavoidable During Coronavirus Crisis This is one of the great things about the Ethereum mining ecosystem, its basically the largest GPU compute resource on the planet. We were able to redeploy our hardware to help fight a global pandemic in minutes, Venturo said. (However, its worth noting that Ethereum has seen ASICs enter the fray. Not to mention, ether miners might soon go extinct when a pivotal upgrade makes its way into the network.) ASICs are useless for the Folding@Home effort, but if bitcoin miners have old GPUs lying around from the early days that they could contribute, too. Even if other miners join up, though, its still a long shot that the effort will lead to a helpful drug. After discussing with some industry experts [
] we believe the chance of success in utilizing the work done on Folding@Home to deliver a drug to market to be in the 2-5% range, Venturo said. Related Stories How to Escape Contracts That Are Killing Your Company During Coronavirus What an Uptick in Coinjoins Says About Bitcoins Value Proposition || Ethereum Dips Below 140.74 Level, Down 0.99%: Investing.com - Ethereum fell bellow the $140.74 level on Saturday. Ethereum was trading at 140.74 by 03:28 (07:28 GMT) on the Investing.com Index, down 0.99% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since March 29.
The move downwards pushed Ethereum's market cap down to $15.67B, or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Ethereum's market cap was $135.58B.
Ethereum had traded in a range of $139.36 to $142.02 in the previous twenty-four hours.
Over the past seven days, Ethereum has seen a rise in value, as it gained 10.08%. The volume of Ethereum traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $12.33B or 0.00% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $124.8400 to $148.9122 in the past 7 days.
At its current price, Ethereum is still down 90.11% from its all-time high of $1,423.20 set on January 13, 2018.
Bitcoin was last at $6,720.3 on the Investing.com Index, down 3.11% on the day.
XRP was trading at $0.17926 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 0.89%.
Bitcoin's market cap was last at $123.36B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while XRP's market cap totaled $7.90B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market value.
Related Articles
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 7334.10, 7302.09, 6865.49, 6859.08, 6971.09, 6845.04, 6842.43, 6642.11, 7116.80, 7096.18
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2015-08-11]
BTC Price: 270.39, BTC RSI: 44.49
Gold Price: 1107.60, Gold RSI: 45.26
Oil Price: 43.08, Oil RSI: 25.67
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Leading Global Bitcoin Adoption, HashingSpace Corporation Uplifts to the OTCQB: US Based Hashingspace Corporation Announced It Has Been Uplifted To A Higher Reporting Status On The OTC Market. Hashingspace Will Now Be Listed As OTCQB: HSHS. Hashingspace Provides Scalable Datacenter and Technology Infrastructure for the Global Adoption of Bitcoin Including Bitcoin Atms and Hosted ASIC Mining WENATCHEE, WA / ACCESSWIRE / July 29, 2015 / HashingSpace Corporation ( HSHS ), a company focused on the global adoption of Bitcoin, announced today that it has officially been uplifted to a higher reporting status. HashingSpace will no longer be listed on the Pink Sheets and has been moved to OTCQB status. HashingSpace Corporation submitted all the mandatory documents and has successfully met all of the initial requirements to receive this upgrade. The upgrade became official on July 23, 2015. "We are pleased to learn that we have been upgraded to a higher status," stated Terry Taylor, Chief Financial Officer of HashingSpace. "This upgrade reflects on our plan to bring better value to our shareholders. This shows that we are current in our SEC compliance reporting and will undergo an annual verification and certification process. Providing accurate information to our investors is a top priority." Included in our new OTCQB designation will be real-time level 2 quote display. Quotes can be found at www.otcmarkets.com . Weekly OTC Market Reports summarizing the activity in our security will be available. All company information, including stock trading, filings, and market data related to the company, is reported under the new upgrade, OTCQB: HSHS. HashingSpace Corporation's business will provide a wide range of services to include: - HASHHOSTING Servers fully managed and specifically set-up for ASIC MINING - CLOUDHASH Cloud mining servers that can be rented with full hashing power - HASHMINING Our own Mining Farm - HASHATM Owner and operator of Bitcoin ATM machines - HASHWALLET Bitcoin consumer wallet for bitcoin banking and transactions - HASHPOOL Public Stratum and P2Pool (Web/IOS/Droid) - HASHTICKER Free Ticker for tracking Bitcoin Value (Screen Saver/Web/IOS/Droid) - HASHVAR A wholesaler of Bitcoin servers and Bitcoin ATM machines Story continues About HashingSpace Corporation HashingSpace Corporation is a Bitcoin ASIC mining company, hosting provider, and service provider of blockchain transactional services. HashingSpace's high density datacenters are designed to meet the demanding power and cooling needs of client hosted Bitcoin mining gear with unparalleled pricing, cooling and green energy. The Corporation is continuing to expand its datacenters to satisfy the shortage of low cost hosting facilities catering to the Bitcoin and blockchain mining and transactional verification services industry specifically. HashingSpace Corporation manages HashWallet, a Bitcoin wallet; HashPool, a Bitcoin mining pool; and HashATM, the owner and operator of Bitcoin ATM machines. The company is a wholesaler of Bitcoin mining servers and Bitcoin ATM machines. Bitcoin businesses interested in reselling HashingSpace products and services are invited to reach out to HashingSpace Corporation for more information. HashingSpace Corporation is headquartered in Wenatchee, Washington. For more information, visit www.hashingspace.com . Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements may not be currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase HashingSpace services should make their purchase decisions based upon features currently available. For more information please visit http://www.hashingspace.com or call 1-855-HASHING (427-4464). Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect the Company's current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For more information please visit: http://www.hashingspace.com/ Company Contact: HashingSpace Corporation 5042 Wilshire Blvd. #26900 Los Angeles, CA, 90036 855 – HASHING (427-4464) Investor Relations: Email: ir@hashingspace.com SOURCE: HashingSpace Corporation || Fed Stuck In The Middle Of Marijuana Debate: One of the major issues plaguing the United States' newly developing marijuana industry has been banking. Although President Barack Obama has granted states the right to determine their own marijuana laws, the substance is still classed as illegal in the federal government's eyes. For that reason, banks bound by federal law have been unable to engage with marijuana firms even in states where the drug is legal.
Fed Lawsuit
Last week, Colorado's Fourth Corner Credit Unionsuedthe Kansas City Fed after its application for federal insurance was rejected. The credit union was denied a routing number in order to set up its master account, meaning that Fourth Corner would be unable to operate. The firm said the Fed's decision to reject Fourth Corner is an unreasonable restraint of trade and commerce and that the credit union's receipt of a state charter should have given it access to federal insurance.
Fed Pushes Back
The Fed has argued that it has the right to use its own discretion when it comes to opening new master accounts. The bank claims it was unable to accurately asses the risks associated with Fourth Corner's business and therefore is allowed to reject the application.
Conflicting Laws
The legal battle underscored the pitfalls of conflicting laws at the federal and state level. While legalization efforts have been successful in many states across the US, the banking issue will likely continue to plague the industry as long as federal law continues to class marijuana as illegal.
See more from Benzinga
• Australian Government Takes Steps Toward Becoming A Bitcoin-Friendly Nation
• Tech Firms Gear Up For 2016 Presidential Race
• Are Tethered Drones The Answer To Safety Concerns?
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Is Russia Next To Adopt Bitcoin?: This week, Russian President Vladimir Putingave his opinionon bitcoin to the public for the first time. Putin hasn't been open about his view on cryptocurrencies in the past, but on Russia 24, the nation's domestic TV network, Putin was optimistic about bitcoin's future possibilities.
Putin Commends Bank Of Russia
Putin remarked that the Bank of Russia's efforts to explore applications for bitcoin have been beneficial and that the nation may find future use for the technology. In his view, cryptocurrencies still have major reliability issues, but the technology they run on may be useful to facilitate transactions down the road.
Related Link:Wedbush Predicts A Bright Future For Bitcoin
Still Reliability Issues
In his interview, he underlined the problems that bitcoin presents, saying that the fact that the currency isn't backed by anything represents a major issue with adopting cryptocurrencies. Though he said the nation isn't planning to reject cryptocurrencies, the issues related to using them can't be overlooked.
Not A No
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts took Putin's comments as a positive sign for the direction of digital currencies. Although he did not make any definitive statements regarding the Russian government's stance on using the currency, he appeared optimistic about the possibility of using blockchain in order to keep track of accounting records. Many had expected Putin to take a more firm stance against cryptocurrencies, so the fact that he didn't announce that they would be prohibited was considered a win.
See more from Benzinga
• Cloudminr Hacking Scandal Reignites Skepticism Over Bitcoin
• Can Marijuana Fight America's Drug Addiction?
• The Big Business Behind Fantasy Sports
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin Payments Decline Significantly At Expedia: Expedia Inc(NASDAQ:EXPE) introduced bitcoin as a payment option about a year ago. The company hoped to reach new users and meet the growing demand for digital payments by adding a bitcoin option.
However over the past 12 months, the travel website said it has seen a significant decline in the number of payments made using bitcoin, something which could be attributed to the cryptocurrency's marked decline.
Loss Of Value
Expedia's Senior Payments Product Manger Connie Chung toldCoinDeskthat bitcoin purchases on the site have declined by 40 percent over the past year. Chung said that drop makes sense when you look at how much value bitcoin has lost over the past 12 months. When bitcoin was added to Expedia's service in June last year, it was worth more than $600. Now, the currency is trading at just over $270 following a price rally earlier in the month.
Related Link:Venture Capitalists Pouring Money Into Bitcoin
Bitcoin To Stay Put
While the decline in bitcoin payments suggests that consumers aren't as willing to use the cryptocurrency as merchants had predicted, Chung said Expedia plans to continue offering bitcoin as a payment choice for as long as there is some demand for it. She said the company's decision to incorporate bitcoin had little to do with the firm's stance on digital currencies and that it has simply been a way to meet customer needs.
See more from Benzinga
• EU In Favor Of Iran Deal
• Is Social Activism And Marketing A Good Combination?
• Deloitte Expresses Interest In Cryptocurrencies By Joining Australian Industry Group
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Your first trade for Wednesday, July 1: The "Fast Money" traders delivered their final trades for June.
Pete Najarian was a buyer of GILD(NASDAQ: GILD).
Brian Kelly was a buyer of SPY(Singapore Exchange: SPY-SG)puts.
Karen Finerman was a buyer of KORS(NYSE: KORS).
Guy Adami was a buyer of KITE(NASDAQ: KITE).
Trader disclosure: On June 30, 2015, the following stocks and commodities mentioned or intended to be mentioned on CNBC's "Fast Money" were owned by the "Fast Money" traders:Karen Finerman is long BABA, BAC, C, FINL, FL, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, KORS, M, TACO, URI, she is short SPY, Her firm is long ANTM, AAPL, BAC, C, DIS, DRI, FBT, FINL, FL, GOOG, GOOGL, GPS, IBB, JPM, KORS, M, SUNE, URI, XBI, KORS call spreads, URI calls, SPY puts, her firm is short IWM, SPY, MDY, Karen Finerman is on the board of GrafTech International. Pete Najarian is long AMAT, AAPL, BABA, BAC, BMY, BP, CSX, DISCA, DKS, FOXA, GE, KKR, KO, LLY, MRK, PEP, PFE, he is long calls AAPL, ABX, BAC, BBY, C, DAL, ETFC, FCAU, GS, HYS, INVN, JPM, LULU, NUAN, OC, PNR, S, SPY, SXC, SYY, UAL, UBS, USB, VOYA, VZ, WYNN, XLF, ZIOP. Today he bought SPY calls and WYNN calls. Today he sold DE calls. Brian Kelly is long BBRY, BTC=; TAN, TSL; he is short Euro, Yuan, and Yen. Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck.
SunTrust Robinson Humphrey Managing Dir. & Analyst Robert Peck: An affiliate of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc. has received compensation for products or services other than investment banking services from the following company within the last 12 months: TWTR-US.
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• Personal Finance || Block26 Leads Seed Round in Bitcoin Wallet Platform Airbitz With $450,000 Investment: LOS ANGELES, CA --(Marketwired - July 10, 2015) - Block26, the blockchain venture firm, today announced that it has invested $450,000 in Airbitz Inc., a digital wallet platform. Block26 joins Airbitz Board of Directors while leading a $1,250,000 seed round expected to close later this summer. The $450,000 infusion marks the first investment from Block26, led by Co-Founders Ni'coel Stark and Pedram Hasid, in the hot Bitcoin technology space. Airbitz was awarded first place at the 2015 Inside Bitcoin NYC startup competition and was named one of AlwaysOn OnFinance's 50 Companies to Watch in 2015. Airbitz's decentralized and open source platform solves many of the current usability, security and privacy issues inherent in the current generation of bitcoin wallets. Airbitz is a remarkably easy-to-use and intelligently designed wallet that allows users to receive, store, or send funds with confidence. The digital wallet software is protected by ironclad and effortless security that prevents any third party from accessing user funds or data, including Airbitz itself, and features the world's first one-touch 2-factor authentication. Available for iOS and Android, Airbitz automatically encrypts, secures and backs up user data without requiring complicated user prompts, and the decentralized server architecture ensures that Airbitz wallets are functional even if company servers are disabled. Altogether, Airbitz provides the familiar feel and functionality of mobile banking while implementing blockchain operations under the hood, reducing friction and making Bitcoin universally approachable and usable. Block26 understands that this same technology has the potential to disrupt arenas beyond digital currency. Block26 Co-Founder and Managing Principal Ni'coel Stark said, "Block26 is making its first investment in Airbitz because not only is it the best digital wallet for consumers, it is far more than a wallet. Airbitz technology enables a multifaceted financial tool, an extraordinary implementation on edge security, and a whole new contribution to the Internet of Things. Block26 is excited to empower Airbitz solutions in revolutionizing transaction, authentication and security processes." Airbitz is led by CEO and Co-Founder Paul Puey, a former Nvidia senior engineer and a prominent leader of Bitcoin advocacy in Southern California. The Airbitz leadership team includes CTO and Co-Founder Tim Horton, the former CTO of startup Breadcrumbs Inc.,; VP Design and Co-Founder Damian Cutillo, formerly Co-Founder at Breadcrumbs Inc.; Chief Architect and Co-Founder William Swanson, the core developer of Libbitcoin; and COO Rick "Henri" Chan, Co-Founder of AlphaPoint with 15 years experience at finance and technology firms including Robertson Stephens, Deutsche Bank and UBS Financial Services. Story continues Airbitz CEO and Co-Founder Paul Puey said, "Airbitz is tremendously honored to have Block26 as our partner and lead investor. Their core focus on bitcoin, blockchain, and decentralized technologies is perfectly inline with the DNA of Airbitz founders. Block26 brings incredible experience in building highly tuned team dynamics and they see the value in people, companies, and industries that aren't afraid to disrupt the status quo. We look forward to building a decentralized world with their passion and support at our side." Airbitz COO Rick "Henri" Chan added, "Block26 is more than an investor to Airbitz; they are an integral partner in our rapid development. We look forward to closely working with Block26 as partners in building a company that thrives as it grows. Block26's unique financial model allows for a flexible investment strategy that could provide Airbitz and other portfolio companies with early stage capital, with the capacity to provide bridge funding as well. For these reasons and many more, we greatly look forward to Block26 joining our Board." For more information, visit Airbitz at www.airbitz.co or Block26 at www.block26.com . View comments || Fearing return to drachma, some Greeks use bitcoin to dodge capital controls: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - There is at least one legal way to get your euros out of Greece these days, to guard against the prospect that they might be devalued into drachmas: convert them into bitcoin. Although absolute figures are hard to come by, Greek interest has surged in the online "cryptocurrency", which is out of the reach of monetary authorities and can be transferred at the touch of a smartphone screen. New customers depositing at least 50 euros with BTCGreece, the only Greece-based bitcoin exchange, open only to Greeks, rose by 400 percent between May and June, according to its founder Thanos Marinos, who put the number at "a few thousand". The average deposit quadrupled to around 700 euros. Using bitcoin could allow Greeks to do one of the things that capital controls were put in place this week to prevent: transfer money out of their bank accounts and, if they wish, out of the country. "When people are trying to move money out of the country and the state is stopping that from taking place, bitcoin is the only way to move any value," said Adam Vaziri, a board member of the UK Digital Currency Association. "There aren't any other options unless you buy diamonds, and that's very difficult to move." But Marinos said the bitcoin buyers' main aim was to shield their money against the prospect that Greece might leave the euro zone and convert all the deposits in Greek banks into a greatly devalued national currency. If voters reject the demands of international creditors in a referendum on Sunday, this becomes much more likely. "A lot of people are keeping all the bitcoins they buy on our platform, until they understand what to do with them," Marinos said. "In their eyes, now they have bitcoins, they're safe." VOLATILE CURRENCY That said, the value of a bitcoin, a web-based digital currency invented six years ago that floats freely and is not backed by a government or central bank, has been highly volatile. It peaked at over $1,200 in late 2013 before crashing almost 70 percent in less than a month after a hacking attack on the Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in early 2014. Story continues This week, as Greece defaulted on a debt to the IMF, the price jumped to a 3-1/2-month high of $268 (BTC=BTSP) on the Bitstamp exchange - up more than 20 percent since the start of June - while the number of daily transactions reached a record 150,917. Most bitcoin-watchers reckon the digital currency's rise is mostly due to speculators betting that capital controls would trigger heavy demand. In March-April 2013, when Cyprus clamped down on bank withdrawals, bitcoin rocketed almost 700 percent. Coinbase, one of the world's biggest bitcoin wallet providers, which is not currently accessible to Greeks, said it had seen huge interest from Italy, Spain and Portugal. It said the average daily sign-ups from euro zone countries had increased 350 percent since the start of June. Average daily bitcoin purchases from the euro zone this week were up 250 percent compared with June's average. On June 20, Greece got its first bitcoin "ATM", in a family-run bookstore in Acharnes on the outskirts of Athens. There, if they had them, customers could insert euros and in return receive bitcoin at the current exchange rate, which they would scan into an electronic "wallet" on their smartphones. But with Greeks having to form long queues at bank ATMs just to receive a meager 60 euros' cash a day, this machine has seen no customers since talks with creditors broke down on Saturday. "Before Saturday, there was some very limited interest, mostly customers asking what it does and how it works," said Maria Varila, an employee in the shop. "Since Saturday, however, when all hell broke loose, there has literally been zero interest." (Additional reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos and Dimitrios Michalakis in Athens; Editing by Kevin Liffey) || Fund Managers Double Down On Greek Crisis: Despite the fact that Greece and its creditors are dragging the nation's debt negotiations into the weekend, some fund managers say they are moving money into Europe in hopes of a big return. With Athens scheduled to repay its International Monetary Fund loan in just a few days, many worry that Greece is heading for a default, but others say the region is on the upswing despite the ongoing Greek drama. Possibility Of A Grexit? For months, European policy makers have been saying that a Greek exit from the eurozone would not be an option. However, in recent weeks a Grexit has begun to look like a real possibility, and EU officials have acknowledged that. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker remarked that although they were working to avoid a Grexit, he couldn't "pull a rabbit out of a hat" to keep it from happening. Related Link: Exclusive: The Grexit And Why "We're About To Witness The Return Of Drachma" Weekend Summit This weekend, EU policymakers are expected to gather in order to try to reach an eleventh-hour deal to release Greece's funding. So far, the nation has been unsuccessful in convincing its creditors that it is serious about reform, especially after Syriza, an anti-austerity political party, was elected into power. Bracing For Default Many now believe that a Grexit is a very real possibility, but fund managers say Europe is ready to weather such an event. As Greece's debt problems have been ongoing for four years, some say that markets will remain calm in the event of a default. For that reason, funds like the Thornburg International Value Fund Class A (MUTF: TGVAX) and RSQ International Equity Fund Investor Class (MUTF: RSQVX) are pouring money into European markets despite the region's uncertainty. Nations like Italy, Spain and Germany are all expected to benefit from the European Central Bank's quantitative easing program, and lower oil prices are likely to help boost the region's GDP in the coming quarters. Many fund managers say that with the Greece issue dragging the region's share markets lower, now is the time to buy. Image Credit: Public Domain See more from Benzinga Debate Deepens On Usage Of Confederate Flag Bitcoin Gaining Momentum...Or Is It? Study Shows Marijuana Is Often Mislabeled © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || Bitnet and BlockCypher Announce Deal to Remove Risk in Accepting Bitcoin: BELFAST, UNITED KINGDOM and SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 16, 2015) -Bitnet, an enterprise bitcoin payments processor, today announced that they have selectedBlockCypher, a blockchain web services company, as a key data provider to help Bitnet mitigate the risk for merchants in accepting bitcoin payments.
Bitnet's new 'Instant Approval' service addresses the challenge faced by merchants of waiting for bitcoin transactions to be confirmed on the blockchain. This process can take over an hour if merchants require guarantees from their payment processor that transactions will be settled.
Drawing on the long industry experience of their team in managing online payment risk for merchants, Bitnet has built a solution that calculates the probability of whether a bitcoin transaction will ultimately confirm on the blockchain. Significantly, Bitnet takes financial liability for that decision. The 'Instant Approval' service relies on a number of data points, crucial to which are BlockCypher's double-spend detection and transaction propagation metrics.
The new 'Instant Approval' service enables merchants to accept bitcoin within their existing checkout flows that are typically built around accepting card payments, where authorizations that guarantee funds are provided within seconds.
"We are delighted to work with Bitnet," said Catheryne Nicholson, CEO at BlockCypher. "Their expertise in the intricacies of enterprise payments can unlock bitcoin's potential in very large-scale industries that experience a high volume of chargebacks."
"One of the biggest challenges for merchants wanting to accept bitcoin is how to accommodate the delayed confirmation times into their 'real-time' checkout flows and still be assured of being funded," said Seamus Cushley, VP Product at Bitnet. "We partnered with BlockCypher to provide key data for our 'Instant Approval' service due to their best-in-class metrics and enterprise service."
The two companies have been collaborating for the last six months to make this deal happen. It's an example of the philosophy both companies share of working together to collectively further the Bitcoin ecosystem, also echoed in Bitnet's core values: "If you want to travel fast, travel alone. If you want to travel far, travel together. Let's do this together."
About Bitnet:Bitnet provides a digital commerce platform enabling enterprise-scale merchants to accept bitcoin payments. Bitnet's engineering, product, and business development team helped build and manage the world's largest payment gateway, CyberSource, which was sold to the world's largest payment network, Visa, for $2 billion in 2010. Bitnet has offices in San Francisco, California; Belfast, Northern Ireland; and Singapore. For more information visithttps://www.bitnet.io.
About BlockCypher:BlockCypher helps companies easily build reliable block chain applications, exposing simple web APIs for developers to build on. BlockCypher runs multiple block chains on the same infrastructure, including their own block chain. BlockCypher provides a cloud-optimized enterprise-grade block chain platform with no single point of failure, linear scaling, and uptimes >99.99%. BlockCypher's office is in Redwood City, California. For more information, visithttp://www.blockcypher.com. || Bitcoin Direct LLC Enters Las Vegas Market; Agreement Includes: ATM, Payment Processing, and Sponsorship: NEW YORK, NY and LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwired - Jul 8, 2015) - Conexus Cattle Corp. (OTC PINK:CNXS) announced today that their subsidiary, Bitcoin Direct LLC, a Nevada limited liability company ("Bitcoin" or the "Company"), will install an automated bitcoin ATM Machine at One Kick Nick's Mixed Martial Arts Gym located at 121 East Sunset Blvd. in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bitcoin ATMs provide consumers with the ability to instantaneously purchase bitcoins through their mobile devices. This is the first of several ATMs expected to be installed by Bitcoin Direct in Las Vegas.
Additionally, the Company will process bitcoin payments for the gym, allowing members and guests to pay for memberships and merchandise in bitcoin. The Company believes this is the first gym in the country to accept bitcoin. As part of the agreement, the Company will become a sponsor of the gym, which will include the ability to place display ads in the facility. One Kick Nick's Mixed Martial Arts Gym is home to numerous professional mixed martial arts fighters who regularly compete on national television for the UFC, Bellator, and World Series of Fighting.
Conrad Huss, President of Conexus commented: "We believe our bitcoin ATM will begin generating revenue immediately upon installation. The Company's relationship with One Kick Nick's Mixed Martial Arts Gym is an example of the Company's ability to provide a complete solution for businesses of any size interested in accepting bitcoin. We look forward to creating a host of business partnerships with this product."
About Bitcoin Direct LLC,Conexus Cattle Corp. (OTC PINK:CNXS) subsidiary, Bitcoin Direct, LLC, a Nevada limited liability company, provides bitcoin transaction solutions for consumer. Bitcoin's initial focus is installing and servicing its bitcoin ATMs (automated bitcoin machines) in multiple locations across the U.S. The bitcoin ATMs provide consumers with the ability to instantaneously purchase bitcoins through their mobile devices. Currently, the Company has installations serving New York City. ATMs present a convenient solution for bitcoin consumers to exchange cash for bitcoins. In addition, the Company plans to offer a full range of bitcoin transaction solutions to a wide variety of industries including remittance and gaming, among others.
Safe HarborThis press release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The forward-looking statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections made by management. The Company intends for the forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements. Words such as "anticipates," "expects," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "estimates," or variations of such words are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release include statements regarding the elimination of debt positioning the Company for growth and the vote of confidence in the growth plans. All forward-looking statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements other than as required by law. The forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth or implied by any forward-looking statements and include the Company's ability to complete its intended growth plans in a timely manner and the other factors discussed in Current Reports on Form 8-K. Copies of these filings are available atwww.sec.gov.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Teenaged Eric Finman converted his $1,000 to $100,000 via bitcoin & stared a e-learning site http://t.co/FJ9k1nf41u. http://t.co/OQeLppLtHW || Current value of DOGE in BTC: Cryptsy: 0.00000064 -- Volume: 81421253.04320078 Today's trend: stable at 08/01/15 00:55 || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 18 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $793.82 #bitcoin #btc || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$264.31/$264.50 #Bitstamp
$258.06/$259.00 #BTCe
⇢$-6.44/$-5.31
$265.26/$265.54 #Coinbase
⇢$0.76/$1.23 || Current price: 149.79£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-06-14 16:00:04 BST || LIVE: Profit = $1,228.14 (1.29 %). BUY B373.31 @ $256.00 (#Bitfinex). SELL @ $256.76 (#HitBTC) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || 1 BTC = 267.00 USD at https://bleutrade.com/exchange/BTC/USD … #bitcoin #btc #Bleutrade || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 18 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $922.01 #bitcoin #btc || Bitcoin traded at $260.88 USD on BTC-e at 10:00 AM Pacific Time || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$233.80/$233.92 #Bitstamp
$235.92/$236.00 #BTCe
⇢$2.00/$2.20
$236.08/$236.15 #Coinbase
⇢$2.16/$2.35
|
Trend: down || Prices: 266.38, 264.08, 265.68, 261.55, 258.51, 257.98, 211.08, 226.68, 235.35, 232.57
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2021-03-17]
BTC Price: 58870.89, BTC RSI: 63.02
Gold Price: 1726.80, Gold RSI: 41.42
Oil Price: 64.60, Oil RSI: 61.58
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Billionaire Investor Howard Marks Warming to Bitcoin: Howard Marks, co-founder of alternative investment manager Oaktree Capital, says he has reconsidered his previous dismissive stance on bitcoin . The investor, who is worth $2.1 billion according to Forbes, previously said in a 2017 memo that cryptocurrency was an unfounded fad. The comment was a knee-jerk reaction without information, Marks conceded in a video interview with the Korea Economic Daily on Monday. While hed previously considered bitcoin to have no intrinsic value, he said that there are plenty of things that people want and value highly that have no intrinsic value. How about a painting or a diamond or a bar of gold? he said. Related: Anchor Launch Puts UST in the Stablecoin Race Against DAI Marks described the positives of of bitcoin as being able to trade 24 hours a day and confidentiality. Saying his early comments hadnt been proven correct so far, Marks added that, with bitcoin now over $50,000, people who bought at $5,000 look right. See also: JPMorgan Sends Its Private Clients a Primer on Crypto However, while bitcoin, unlike the U.S. dollar, has a limited supply of 21 million units, Marks argued the market is circular, meaning people want the cryptocurrency because the price is rising and that demand drives prices up. Related: eToro CEO on Going Public via SPAC Marks also said in a recent Oaktree memo that his son thankfully owns a meaningful amount of bitcoin. Related Stories Billionaire Investor Howard Marks Warming to Bitcoin Billionaire Investor Howard Marks Warming to Bitcoin || Market Wrap: Bitcoin Reverses Wednesday’s Losses, Ether Climbs: Bitcoin’s price reversed Wednesday’s losses on Thursday. Traders and analysts, however, have largely kept a short-term bearish view because some are attributing gains in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to GameStop’s stock drama.
• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $32,607.78 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 3.17% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $29,921.96-$32,934.56 (CoinDesk 20).
• BTC above its 10-hour and 50-hour averages on the hourly chart, a bullish signal for market technicians.
GameStop’s stock drama seems to be galvanizing not just stock markets but bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, many of which reversed their losses of just a day ago, similar to what happened in the U.S. equities market. The most notable winner was dogecoin (DOGE), which hita new all-time highearlier Thursday.
Few attribute bitcoin’s price gains Thursday to market fundamentals. That’s because the crypto community still looks to be distracted by the GameStop (NYSE: GME) situation. A group of Redditors on a board calledWallStreetBets(WSB) sent the video game retailer’s shares skyrocketing in order to squeeze hedge funds that were betting the stock’s price would go down.
Related:Blockchain Bites: DOGE, Musk, Robinhood, GameStop and Crypto's 'Populist' Revolution
Read More:Bitcoin Rebounds From Early Losses, Markets Still Distracted by GameStop
“We are still on a downward chart from the $40,000 highs,” John Willock, chief executive at digital asset exchange Blocktane, told CoinDesk. “So the short-term volatility of up to 10% can be attributed to the market still finding its footing and consolidating to a more firm, sustained price level for the near future.”
On the technical side, bitcoin is near short-term oversold levels, yet momentum is still on the downside, according to Katie Stockton, managing partner at Fairlead Strategies.
“After a period of stabilization, the 50-day moving average (MA) looks in store for a test, and currently resides near $26,460,” said Stockton. “Bitcoin has characteristics of a risk asset, and therein could remain under pressure until the equity market works off its own excesses.”
Related:India Would Ban Private Cryptocurrencies Under Proposed Legislation
Retailer traders’ fear of missing out (FOMO) may be the big driver of both equity and crypto markets at the moment, but it isn’t clear if new institutional investors are buying more bitcoin, which could affect its price.
As CoinDeskreported previously, many institutions may be pausing bitcoin purchases until they have further clarification on how the new Biden Administration views bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Read More:Bitcoin Falls as Miners Sell, Institutions Watch Yellen
Whilesome negative commentswere made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week, there hasn’t been any big statement from anyone else in the administration regarding bitcoin. To some, that is a positive sign.
“The Biden administration has paused processing the much-discussed and dislikedproposed rule for U.S.-based crypto service providersthat would stifle trading and asset transfers, which is improving sentiment and prospects for a market lift,” Blocktane’s Willock said.
Willock also noted on Friday the CME’s January bitcoin futures contracts expire. That exchange caters primarily to institutional investors, so many of its clients will likely be adjusting their positions after a “very volatile” first month of 2021 and will decide whether they need to take profits or reduce exposure.
The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether (ETH), was up Thursday, trading around $1,332.19 and climbing 3.37% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).
Like most of the other cryptocurrencies, ether’s price has followed bitcoin’s recovery, according to Vishal Shah, an option trader and founder of derivatives exchange Alpha5. Another main driver is the growth of decentralized finance (DeFi).
“Blue-chip DeFi names have been performing quite well,” Shah said. “Ether still remains a proxy for that world.”
At press time, most DeFi tokens onMessari’s DeFi Assettracker are higher. At the same time, the total value locked (TVL), as provided by analytics websiteDeFi Pulse, was at $26.4 billion for the past 90 days. On Wednesday TVL was at a high of$29 billionfor the past 12 months, again according to DeFi Pulse data.
Digital assets on theCoinDesk 20are mostly higher Thursday. Notable winners as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):
• 0x (ZRX) + 17.49%
• Cosmos (ATOM) + 14.38%
• Stellar (XLM) + 13.15%
Notable losers:
• Tether (USDT) – 0.09%
• USD coin (USDC) – 0.08%
Equities:
• Asia’s Nikkei 225 closed in the red 1.5% asa result of the U.S. stock market’s loss on Wednesday.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe closed down by 0.63%also because of the volatility on Wall Street.
• The S&P 500 in the United States closed up by 0.98%, which waspartly driven by better-than-expected earnings reports from companies such as American Airlines Group.
Commodities:
• Oil was down 1.1%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $52.27.
• Gold was in the green 0.03% and at $1842.15 as of press time.
Treasurys:
• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield climbed Thursday to 1.053.
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Reverses Wednesday’s Losses, Ether Climbs
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Reverses Wednesday’s Losses, Ether Climbs || Ethereums Favorite Lossless Lottery Will Airdrop Its POOL Token Today: The leader of lossless lotteries on Ethereum, PoolTogether, is airdropping a new token to all its users who have joined it for the ride so far: POOL . Im really excited about the potential for a consumer financial primitive rather than a financial financial primitive, PoolTogether founder Leighton Cusack told CoinDesk in a phone call. This is a much more approachable product to people and therefore I think the idea of user ownership becomes much more approachable too. Launched in 2019 , PoolTogether is a lottery where there is no risk. Users put in assets that are sent to other decentralized finance (DeFi) apps in order to earn yield. Depositors get tickets that correspond to their deposits. One ticket from a given pool earns all the yield on everyones deposits. That said, the deposits can be withdrawn at any time. Related: Kia Motors America Victim of Ransomware Attack Demanding $20M in Bitcoin, Report Claims At least thats how it has mostly worked. When it released its latest version , PoolTogether opened up all the parameters to others who might want to create pools for lossless lotteries on all kinds of assets. More on that below. No-loss prize savings is one of the most, if not the most used consumer financial primitive in the whole world. If you look globally in the fiat world, the old-school money world, theres probably hundreds of millions that people have saved in no-loss prize savings accounts, Cusack said. With PoolTogether, anyone gets it, and because of that, I think giving people ownership of it and control of it is going to be so much more impactful. The POOL token airdrop should begin at roughly 18:00 UTC (1:00 p.m. ET), though it could be delayed. Are you in the POOL? POOL may have a better claim to the governance token moniker than some of the airdrops that have come before, because Cusack said the team waited until its app had both a user base and community members who wanted to contribute before releasing it. Story continues Related: Switzerland's 'Crypto Valley' Has Started Accepting Bitcoin, Ether for Tax Payments Less than 40% of all POOL will be allocated now, with 14% of it going to everyone who has ever used POOL so far, in any of its versions, at any time prior to Jan. 14. Cusack said its allocating tokens to users based on the amount they deposited and how long they stayed in. So someone who put in $100,000 for one week will get the same amount as someone who put in $1,000 for 100 weeks. That curve was slightly tweaked to distribute it slightly more evenly, Cusack said. In other words, they shaved some off the whales allotment and gave it to everyone else. Cusack promises this distribution should be good for the small PoolTogether users who stayed for a long time. Like other airdrops, it will just be based on wallets that used PoolTogether. Anyone who has should be able to sign in to the website and receive their tokens. There will be a brief liquidity mining opportunity for another 5% of POOL over the next 14 weeks, going to everyone who puts assets into one of the pools. The staff, investors and advisors will get about 20% of the tokens, but they are locked for a year. After that, the remaining 60% of POOL will be in the hands of governance to decide how to distribute. Making changes PoolTogether is an app that pushes people to be more financially responsible, but in a fun way. Now the team is also pushing the DeFi world to be more user-friendly. Cusack pointed out that participating in governance can be quite difficult for non-technical people. Most governance processes require proposals written in the code that would be implemented if a proposal passes. This means it requires technically skilled people to make a proposal. Because PoolTogether has a relatively simple set of parameters, the team believes it can make it easy for a non-technical person to make a governance proposal. New pools on PoolTogether need to decide which assets to accept, how long each lottery should run, how many tickets should win and other issues like that. It makes it very, very simple for anyone to submit governance proposals, he said. I think thats a big difference right now. The team released its code to allow others to build a pool last week . The new user-friendly interface should be live shortly. Right now, PoolTogether has pools for DAI , USDC , COMP and UNI . With the new pool builder, there could be pools for a wide array of Ethereum assets. Its up to POOL holders. As todays announcement said, Control is now fully in the hands of the community. Related Stories Ethereums Favorite Lossless Lottery Will Airdrop Its POOL Token Today Ethereums Favorite Lossless Lottery Will Airdrop Its POOL Token Today || MicroStrategy Bets Another $1B on Bitcoin: MicroStrategy announced the purchase of another $1.026 billion in bitcoin Wednesday, turning mountains of zero-interest debt into one of the single largest (dollar-denominated) bitcoin investments ever executed by a publicly traded company.
CEO Michael Saylor’s business intelligence firmbought the 19,452 BTCat an average price of $52,765 per coin. It now holds 90,531BTCworth $4.78 billion at press time, almost certainly bolstering its perception among Wall Street types as a de-facto bitcoin exchange-traded fund, albeit onewildly overpriced.
The latest buy, MicroStrategy’s single-largest dollar investment in the crypto, is second only to Tesla’s $1.5 billion investment on the list of (known) bitcoin allocations by a U.S. company. MicroStrategy was already and will likely remain the non-crypto firm with the biggest bitcoin bags as CEO Michael Saylor continues to pursue a coin acquisition strategy now codified in the business intelligence company’s mission.
Related:BitcoinPaperWallet ‘Back Door’ Responsible for Missing Funds, Research Suggests
Led by Saylor’s increasingly absurd bitcoin evangelism (the longtime tech CEO now reframes famous cultural and historical quotes through crypto-colored lenses) MicroStrategy has become the chief proponent of corporate investments in bitcoin.
Saylor has fully steeped himself in bitcoin’s swirling meme culture. He added laser eyes to his Twitter profile in apparent unity with the #LaserRayUntil100K movement last week. On occasion he trolls gold as an inferior reserve asset. He has shown a penchant for Lord of The Rings content, liking memes in praise of the “One Coin to Rule Them All” andretweetingvideos in which he is Gandalf, leading theRohirriminto battle against evil, evil fiat.
The CEO is certainly angling to rally his corporate brethren under the Bitcoin Standard; he’s doing so with some success. Just days before Tesla poured $1.5 billion into bitcoin, a CoinDesk reporter spotted the senior director of corporate treasury for fellow Elon Musk enterprise SpaceX on the attendee list of MicroStrategy’s bitcoin-heavy annual conference. Musk and Saylor had previously plodded through bitcoin topics onTwitter.
Indeed, the company reimagined its annual clientconferenceearlier this month into a corporate bitcoin hype fest complete with a stream of crypto services providers ready to sign companies on as bitcoiners-to-be. For its part, MicroStrategy has gone with Coinbase.
Related:Outage at the Fed Delays Bank Wire Transfers, Affecting Crypto Exchanges
MicroStrategy’s practice ofissuing zero-coupon convertiblesas a cash-raising mechanism is in line with that strategy. Investors in this latest round of convertible senior notes have been promised a 50% premium on MicroStrategy’s Feb. 16, 2021, share price of $955.
• MicroStrategy Bets Another $1B on Bitcoin
• MicroStrategy Bets Another $1B on Bitcoin || No 'Zelda: Breath Of The Wild' Sequel Reveal At Nintendo Direct: Nintendo Co (OTC: NTDOY ) held a Nintendo Direct presentation Wednesday to highlight its upcoming slate of games. What Happened: New games for the Nintendo Switch were shown off in a Nintendo watched live by over 1.2 million people. Among the highlights were: Pyra and Mythra from Xenoblade coming to Smash Bros. Ultimate Fall Guys being released on Switch in Summer 2021 Mario Golf Super Rush coming on June 25 with a story mode and competitive play A new DC Super Hero Girls game The next Plants Vs Zombies game launches March 19 Mario-themed costumes coming to Animal Crossing on February 25 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros A new Star Wars free-to-play online third person shooter called Star Wars Hunters from Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA ) Splatoon 3 is coming in 2022 to the Switch Legend Of Zelda News: Viewers were likely left wanting more as a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was rumored for the event. A sequel is in development but Nintendo had nothing to share for the game. Instead, the company highlighted the launch of a different Zelda game coming to the Switch. Zelda Skyward Sword, which was released in 2011 for the Nintendo Wii is coming to the Switch. The game will feature interactive gameplay using the right Joy Con for the sword and left Joy Con for the shield. The company said a variety of games are in development and will share more details later on. Related Link: 6 Video Games Stocks To Watch In 2021 Why Its Important: The Nintendo Switch topped the leaderboards as the best selling console for several years before releases from Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE ) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT ). The Switch has held up well in sales even against the new consoles. Nintendo outperformed the other two gaming stocks with a share return of 60% versus 40% gains from the other two in 2020. Nintendo saw sales of 11.57 million Switch units during the holiday quarter, which it recently reported. The console has sold 80 million units since launching 2017. Story continues Nintendo raised its guidance to 26.5 million units forecasted for the current fiscal year. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has sold over 20 million units and quickly became a fan favorite for the Switch console. NTDOY Price Action: Shares of Nintendo closed Wednesday at $81.25, near their 52-week high of $82.55. Shares of Nintendo are up 76% in the last year and up 360% in the last five years. See more from Benzinga Click here for options trades from Benzinga Cathie Wood Talks Tesla, Bitcoin, SPACs And More On CNBC: Here Are The Highlights QuantumScape Could Have Breakthrough EV Battery Technology: Wedbush © 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || World's first bitcoin ETF soars past $500 million in assets under management: The world's first bitcoin exchange traded fund is off to a hot start. The Purpose Investments bitcoin ETF now has more than $590 million in assets under management after launching just one week ago. The ETF was the first physically settled Bitcoin ETF to win approval and began trading in Canada on Thursday. It now gives investors a more direct way to invest in bitcoin relative to other closed-end funds like the popular Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ( GBTC ) and a less direct way than outright owning bitcoin through an individual wallet. Purpose Investments Chief Investment Officer Greg Taylor told Yahoo Finance that the inflows are proof of pent-up demand among investors looking for a more familiar way to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies. "A lot of people have wanted to get exposure to bitcoin but they haven't really wanted to go through the hoops of opening up their own accounts or their own wallet to do so or trading some of the other closed-end funds," he said. "Having the ETF option I think has always been the holy grail out there and we're happy to have it trading and we're seeing some of the results of that pent-up demand." The Purpose Bitcoin ETF ( BTTC ) carries a management fee of 1%. Its competitor and second ETF to gain approval, the Evolve bitcoin ETF ( EBIT ) cut its management fee to 0.75% on Wednesday. Both differ from closed-end trusts in that they directly purchase bitcoin and hold it in cold storage without the risk of trading at large premiums to the value of the ETF's underlying bitcoin holdings. From an ease-of-use perspective, that allows investors to gain more direct exposure without worrying about buying and selling crypto directly through a wallet on an exchange like Coinbase. That's particularly important for institutional funds that might not be able to go that route. According to Taylor, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF has seen inflows from around the world on the retail and institutional side. Story continues "It's hard with an ETF to figure out exactly where the inflows are coming from, but we've had a lot of people reach out from around the world that want to get access to this product," he said. "We are surprised to see a fair bit of demand from the institutions that are looking again for an efficient way to get exposure to bitcoin and don't have means to do that in other areas." A similar surge in institutional interest in cryptocurrencies was also revealed in Coinbase's Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public via a Nasdaq direct listing. Coinbase revealed its institutional trading volumes nearly tripled from 2019 to 2020 to reach $119 billion. Crypto advocates point to that institutional exuberance and purchases from publicly traded companies like Square and Tesla as proof that this bitcoin rally is not like the boom and bust that occurred in 2017 and 2018 when he crypto fell nearly 85% from a peak of $20,000. Coinbase institutional trading volume: 2018: $28 billion 2019: $45 billion 2020: $119 billion This time is different indeed https://t.co/X4yHVSwfFr — Zack Guzman (@zGuz) February 25, 2021 Coinbase's initial filing revealed institutional trading volume totaled just $28 billion in 2018. Regulators in the U.S. have yet to approve a bitcoin ETF, though investor and Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz told Yahoo Finance that it is likely to happen within the year , given Canada's approvals and the inefficient premiums observed in bitcoin trusts. Zack Guzman is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live as well as a senior writer covering entrepreneurship, cannabis, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz . Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , Flipboard , SmartNews , LinkedIn , YouTube , and reddit . Find live stock market quotes and the latest business and finance news For tutorials and information on investing and trading stocks, check out Cashay || Bitcoin’s Rise Should Make Regulators Ask if the Fed’s Policies Have a Hand in It: WaPo: The U.S. Federal Reserve and regulators should examine the consequences of their fiscal and monetary policies, including the resulting shortage of suitable investments that has led some to put their money into “speculative” ventures such as bitcoin, the Washington Postsaidin an editorial Saturday.
• While dismissing the possibility ofbitcoindisplacing the U.S. dollar’s reserve status, at least for now, for policy makers, “the best reason to focus on bitcoin’s rise is what it tells us about the risks that may be bubbling up amid the Federal Reserve’s commitment to zero interest rates,” the newspaper’s editorial board said.
• While calling the Fed justified for trying to boost the pandemic-afflicted economy by encouraging investors to put their funds in job-creating activities instead of parking it in banks or government bonds, the lack of suitable investment opportunities has driven many to chase yield via “speculative vehicles – bitcoin very much included,” the newspaper said.
• The Post quoted Tesla CEO Elon Musk’stweetfrom Friday: “When fiat currency has negative real interest, only a fool wouldn’t look elsewhere.” Musk was talking about why his company hadinvested $1.5 billionof its treasury funds into bitcoin. (Notably, the Post didn’t address the second half of Musk’s Tweet. “Bitcoin is almost as BS as fiat money. The key word is “almost.”)
• The Post concluded by appealing to new U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to look at the markets for how those policies are playing out: “We urge her and other regulators to heed what these markets reveal about the real-world consequences of current monetary and fiscal policy – positive and negative, intended and unintended.”
• Bitcoin’s Rise Should Make Regulators Ask if the Fed’s Policies Have a Hand in It: WaPo
• Bitcoin’s Rise Should Make Regulators Ask if the Fed’s Policies Have a Hand in It: WaPo
• Bitcoin’s Rise Should Make Regulators Ask if the Fed’s Policies Have a Hand in It: WaPo
• Bitcoin’s Rise Should Make Regulators Ask if the Fed’s Policies Have a Hand in It: WaPo || Bitcoin Artist Concludes 12-City Billboard Exhibit With $10,000 Bitcoin Treasure Hunt: Off a busy highway in a blue-collar neighborhood just outside San Francisco, a billboard emblazoned with a giant $1 bill overlooks the city’s cracked asphalt. But as you notice from the hooded George Washington on the bill, the billboard houses no ordinary dollar. In fact, this altered dollar is the start of a $10,000 treasure hunt.
The billboard is one of a series of 12 and is the latest artwork from pseudonymous Bitcoin artistCryptograffiti.
Part visual, part performance art, the exhibition takes place in each of the 12 Federal Reserve branch cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Francisco and St. Louis. Every billboard, a variation of Cryptograffiti’s “United Nodes of Bitcoin” piece, bears its own unique statement.
Related:Crypto Derivatives Platform FTX Now Supports Deposits via PayPal
Each epigraph is an aphorism, shibboleth or call to action that will be familiar to most bitcoiners. The artist told CoinDesk the work is meant to draw attention tobitcoinin areas where he believes it’s needed most: low-income neighborhoods.
Hosting it in Federal Reserve branch cities is part of the message. And given bitcoin’s current bull market, he wants to make sure this message is conveyed before bitcoin’s price runs aways from his target audience.
“We’re seeing the price go up a bunch and I don’t want to see the everyday citizen get left behind. We need to teach as many people as possible about what this is about,” Cryptograffiti told CoinDesk..
“Try and do something that brings attention to it by making a statement with magnitude in the Fed’s backyards and redirect the viewers back to bitcoin and educate them that they may be held back by the Fed’s policies. It’s more than just the billboard.”
Related:Fan Token Platform Chiliz Plans to Splash $50M on Expansion Into US Sports Leagues
And behind this “more” – the message of the artwork – is something more still: a 0.21 BTC prize.
The last billboard’s opening kicked off the treasure hunt.
Cryptograffiti scrawled the first clue to a private key for 0.21 BTC on the billboard, and he’s been posting clues under the tweet thread to the rest of the private key every day since. He told CoinDesk he thinks the key will finally be swept sometime this week (there’s already an active Discord server on the case).
The part-puzzle, part-artwork is part and parcel for Cryptograffiti, a pseudonymous bitcoin artist whose projects typically infuse bitcoin’s cryptographic themes and symbolism with charity and activism.
His past artworks include a live charity auction for Venezuelan orphans whereby bids triggered the physical dismantling of a Nicolas Maduro portrait made of bolivars, and a tiny black swan piece made of U.S. dollars that sold for less than a penny using the Lightning Network.
For his largest project yet, he chose his United Nodes of Bitcoin dollar art for this because of the effect the same artwork had in 2016 at an art exhibit in the Digital Garage co-working space in San Francisco, he told CoinDesk.
“Everyone would just gravitate toward the dollar. It’s a familiarity thing and people like money and want money. So I would use it to teach them about bitcoin,” he said, adding that bitcoin keywords like “nodes” and “public address” on the art are good educational jumping-off points.
Cryptograffiti recently finished the artwork for the backside of the piece in anticipation of the 12-city exhibit. Prints for this artwork completely financed the rent space for the billboards, which ranges in price from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month, depending on the city.
By couching the bitcoin message in something so familiar and desirable, he said, the art is something of a Trojan horse for inspiring interest in bitcoin to the uninitiated.
“It tends to be a curious introduction. The reactions very much mirror the people who saw the original in 2015 in Digital Garage. Very Uncle Ned saying, ‘What isTHISall about?’
“I wanted to take what I learned about inflation and the wealth gap and try to put it in a project that would grab attention, not just in real life but online too.”
An augmented-reality portion of the artwork brings these inflationary themes to life. Co-developed with fellow crypto artistJosie Bellini, this AR component presents the billboard’s dollar bill as a graph that illustrates the erosion of the dollar’s purchasing power over time.
This animation is the billboard’s most dynamic feature, and it lays out the art’s message clearly.
Cryptograffiti told CoinDesk that, as much as the dollar is a Trojan horse for bitcoin, so bitcoin art exhibitions are something like a symposium. The art may make bitcoin more palatable to outsiders, who otherwise would find nothing emotionally resonant to connect to the otherwise-perceived cold, technical world of bitcoin.
“Since it’s artistic, it makes people more open to asking questions. They can have more real conversations than if it’s a more jargon focused approach,” Crypografitti said. As such, he believes that artists and the like are “a sign of health for the community.”
As bitcoin and other coins have seen increased valuations over the past year, crypto-related art has been selling red-hot alongside them.Ethereum-based non-fungible tokensare posting auction prices north of $1 million and bitcoin artists have been using new platforms like Scarce.city to auction their art for bitcoin.
Cryptograffiti’s art puzzle draws on a long tradition of bitcoin giveaways embedded in art as a way to drum up enthusiasm for the now trillion dollar asset. It’s easier to draw eyeballs these days, Cryptograffiti said, and his latest work has already raised questions about if he’d extend it to other parts of the country, like rural America.
The artist didn’t want to reveal too many additional details, but he did say that there’s enough momentum behind the project at this point that it’s “a possibility.”
“This could turn into something bigger.”
• Bitcoin Artist Concludes 12-City Billboard Exhibit With $10,000 Bitcoin Treasure Hunt
• Bitcoin Artist Concludes 12-City Billboard Exhibit With $10,000 Bitcoin Treasure Hunt || Mark Cuban Hails ‘Store of Value Generation’ Taking on Wall Street: Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the National Basketball Association’s Dallas Mavericks, informed old-school investors that Reddit WallStreetBets (WSB) traders, in his mind “the store of value generation,” are “kicking your ass.” In a blog post published Sunday, Cuban said after watching the situation with the WSB traders unfold he believes they are applying the principles of the crypto world to the stock market. Last week, the financial world and beyond looked on as an army of ordinary online investors, the WSB group, took on the power of big institutions by pumping the price of U.S. video game retailer GameStop’s (GME) stock to counter Wall Street hedge funds that were “shorting” or betting against it. Related: Robinhood CEO May Testify Before US House Committee Over GameStop Allegations In his post, Cuban praised the new generation of investors that have grown up in a digital world, stressing that everything that has been of greatest value to them has been digital. “It’s pretty obvious that the WSB traders are applying the same principles of the digital/CryptoAsset world to the stock market and they are loving the fact that the old schoolers are hating it,” Cuban wrote. Read more: Feature from Business Mark Cuban on Bitcoin, NFTs and What Comes Next: ‘The Upside Is Truly Unlimited’ Cuban argues that for many old-school traders the idea that a crypto asset could be a store of value is crazy because it has no intrinsic value. Related: 21Shares Launching First Polkadot ETP on SIX Exchange “To them, it is a digital representation of nothing, that crazy people are paying good money for. That is not the case,” writes Cuban. He adds that Wall Street and the agency that regulates it, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), “have become fat and happy” and this makes the old school slow and resistant to change. “Very resistant. And obviously very unaware of the change that is happening around them,” adds Cuban. Related Stories Mark Cuban Hails ‘Store of Value Generation’ Taking on Wall Street Mark Cuban Hails ‘Store of Value Generation’ Taking on Wall Street || Bitcoin Miner Argo Blockchain Bought 172.5 BTC in January: Publicly traded bitcoin mining companyArgo Blockchain(ARB) has disclosed buying 172.5 BTC in January as part of its asset management strategy.
• The coins were purchased in the second half of January, the companysaidWednesday. While an average purchase price was not disclosed,bitcoinmostly traded between $30,000 and $36,000 during that time.
• With bitcoin trading near $36,500, the new holdings have a current value of over $6 million.
• The London-based company also said it mined 93 BTC “or bitcoin equivalent” in January, slightly less than the 96 BTC (or equivalent) in December 2020.
• Per the release, Argo held 501 BTC or equivalents at the end of January.
• CEO Peter Wall said January was the “best month in the company’s history in both mining revenue and profits.”
• Argo’s Q4 2020 earnings are project to be released in late April.
• Shares of Argo have soared over 1,350% in the past year. They are currently trading around $1.29, slightingly down from their peak in early January.
See also:Bitcoin Miners Saw Revenue Rise 62% in January From December
Correction (Feb. 3, 15:21 UTC):Argo shares price converted to dollars corrected.
• Bitcoin Miner Argo Blockchain Bought 172.5 BTC in January
• Bitcoin Miner Argo Blockchain Bought 172.5 BTC in January
• Bitcoin Miner Argo Blockchain Bought 172.5 BTC in January
• Bitcoin Miner Argo Blockchain Bought 172.5 BTC in January
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: down || Prices: 57858.92, 58346.65, 58313.64, 57523.42, 54529.14, 54738.95, 52774.27, 51704.16, 55137.31, 55973.51
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Cannabis Sativa Inc and THC Farmaceuticals’ Subsidiary, Terpene Research Labs (TRL) to Produce Terpenes Based on CBDS’ Patent Pending Strain: MESQUITE, NV / ACCESSWIRE / September 18, 2015 / Cannabis Sativa Inc ( CBDS ) and THC Farmaceuticals, Inc (CBDG) announced today that they have entered into an agreement for TRL to develop for CBDS terpene based products from CBDS' patent pending stain of Cannabis known as "CTA." As part of the agreement CBDG shall pay CBDS 10,000,000 hempcoins for the non-exclusive right to sell products TRL produces from the CTA strain plus a 5% cash royalty. CBDG will pay 35% royalty to CBDS on all fees or other gross revenues it receives from licensing products for others to produce products using CTA genetics. CBDS shall retain the right to sell the same products under its "Hi" brand (or such other of its brands in its sole discretion) and will pay a 5% royalty to TRL for all products sold using the terpene products developed by TRL. CBDS shall pay a royalty at the rate of 35% of gross revenue to CBDG for all terpene products developed by TRL and licensed by CBDS to other parties. CBDS also transfers to CBDG all rights to the CTA products developed by TRL for distribution outside of North America. CBDS granted CBDG a 3 year option to acquire all of the CTA plant and patent rights outside of North America for an additional 10,000,000 hempcoins. The option begins to run from the time that the first hempcoins are delivered to CBDS. Should this option be exercised, CBDG will then pay a royalty of 3% of gross revenues received from with respect to products produced by or for CBDG or any of its affiliates and 20% on all royalties it receives. The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission ruled yesterday that "[t]he definition of a commodity [being] broad... Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are encompassed in the definition and properly defined as commodities," the agency has turned our newest earned asset into a commodity. About Terpenes; Terpenes (/ˈtɜrpiːn/) are a large and diverse class of organic compounds, produced by a variety of plants. About Hempcoin : Hempcoins (HMP) is a litecoin type crypo-commodity that can be mined and is backed by shares of $RMTN. See: http://www.hempcoin.com . About CBDS: Cannabis Sativa, Inc. is in the business of branding and licensing via its 'hi' intellectual properties. The Company also offers the Wild Earth Naturals line of CBD Water and cosmetic products which are designed to use organic and natural ingredients, including CBD and hemp seed oil. The Company is engaged through its subsidiaries, Kush and Hi Brands International, Inc., in the research, development and licensing of specialized natural cannabis products, including cannabis formulas, edibles, topicals, strains, recipes and delivery systems. Story continues This press release contains "forward-looking statements." Although the forward-looking statements in this release reflect the good faith judgment of management, forward-looking statements are inherently subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those discussed in these forward-looking statements. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made by us in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risk factors that attempt to advise interested parties of the risks that may affect our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows. If one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results may vary materially from those expected or projected. Readers are urged not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this release. Contact Information: Investor Relations Mesquite, NV 89027 702-345-4074 http://www.cbds.com SOURCE: Cannabis Sativa, Inc. View comments || Bitcoin is off to the races again: (REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel)Rotariu uses Romania's first bitcoin ATM in downtown Bucharest
The value of bitcoin has rocketed higher since late August, gaining more than 60% as investors around the worldclamor to buy into the cryptocurrency.
It recently hit new highs for the year.
Long-term bitcoin watchers have seen this happen before, and they know that bitcoin rallies can be huge.
The last time bitcoin's value began soaring the cryptocurrency went from below $200 in September 2013 to more than $1100 by early 2014.
Right now – after the recent gains – bitcoin is trading at around $380. That's right, after that peak last year, bitcoin crashed – badly damaging investor interest. It took more than a year for that interest to return.
So what's bringing people back? The digital currency is gaining traction both in the consumer marketplace, as a tradeable security, and with regulators. To illustrate - you can donate to theAmerican Red Crossin bitcoin, buy a new personal computer with it, or even book a holiday.
It isn't just digital-currency enthusiasts that are bullish. Equity research firm Wedbush expects it to rise to $600 because of the growing adoption. That target includes a "high discount rate to account for uncertainty," the firm says in a Nov. 4 research note. In other words, there is a lot of risk here, but even factoring that in, the potential exists for a big gain.
“We’re crossing the chasm from early enthusiasts to mainstream adoption," says Adam White, a vice president of business development with bitcoin exchange Coinbase.
(Wedbush Securities)Payments with bitcoin have been on the rise — as has the value of bitcoin, as an investment.
As more people use bitcoin, retailers have become increasingly welcoming of it.
Companies including Dish, Microsoft, Dell and Expedia are accepting cryptocurrency as payment.
Perhaps most crucial: payments startups and legacy players including Square, Stripe, and PayPal are integrating it into their offerings.
Regulators in the US and internationally are embracing bitcoin now, instead of fearing — or, worse still, thwarting — it.
"What there needs to be is greater regulatory clarity," said Jerry Brito, executive director at Washington-based advocacy group Coin Center. "It's a very different world than it was in 2013."
Bitcoin legislation is being readied in several US states, Brito said.
In October, a consortium of startupsannounced the establishmentof theBlockchain Alliance, a partnership between bitcoin companies and US and foreign agencies including the Department of Justice, FBI and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, among others.
Last month, theEuropean Court of Justice said bitcoin transactions will be exemptedfrom a consumer tax, which could lead to even greater use of the cryptocurrency.
Another big step, yet to come, would be the declaration of bitcoin by US regulators as a security.
Another factor lending greater legitimacy to bitcoin is the investment capital being poured into related startups.
Recently, the total dollar volume backing startups in the sectorcrossed the $1 billion threshold. But the investors behind the money have also increased bitcoin's visibility.
The roster of bitcoin startup backersincludes Wall Street investment banks; the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ; andleading credit and debit card companiesincluding Visa, MasterCard and Capital One.
"The global banks and wire-houses have meaningfully gotten involved in the space," said Michael Sonnenshein, director of business development and sales at Grayscale Investments,which manages the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a publicly listed vehicle that tracks bitcoin. "In 2013, they were beginning to dip their toe, but primarily behind closed doors and within internal working groups."
There are still lingering issues surrounding bitcoin's validity.
To be sure, it is volatile and – because its loosely regulated – a draw for frauds and criminals.
Some big names in the crytptocurrency community — perhaps most notably Blythe Masters, the CEO of Digital Asset Holdings — have been critical of bitcoin and say the underpinning blockchain technology is actually what's most sexy to Wall Street.
But right now, to many investors, bitcoin is hot. And it could stay that way.
NOW WATCH:Everyday phrases that even smart people say incorrectly
More From Business Insider
• The Money Of The Future Will Look More Like Bitcoin Than The Paper We Carry Around Today
• Bitcoin hit a new high for 2015
• The Winklevoss twins tell us why they believe Bitcoin will come to dominate global finance || Bitcoin firm raises funding from Bain, New York Life, MasterCard: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK, Oct 27 (Reuters) - Digital Currency Group, a holding firm focused on investing and developing businesses that deal in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, has raised funding from some of the biggest U.S. financial names, founder and chief executive officer Barry Silbert said on Tuesday.
Bain Capital Ventures, the Boston-based venture capital unit of private equity firm Bain Capital, credit card company MasterCard, insurance giant New York Life Insurance Company, and Canadian bank CIBC were four of the company's new investors.
The holding company (DCG) is currently building and supporting the largest early-stage investment portfolio in digital currencies and the blockchain, the underlying technology behind bitcoin.
Silbert, a prominent bitcoin advocate and investor, declined to disclose the amount of funding raised from the new investors.
The other investors in DCG include a range of venture capital firms and family offices such as FirstMark Capital, Novel TMT, Oak HC/FT, RRE Ventures, Solon Mack Capital, and Transamerica Ventures.
Bain, CIBC, New York Life, Mastercard, FirstMark, Novel, Oak, and Transamerica are investing in bitcoin for the first time, Silbert said.
Structuring DCG as a company and not a fund is a strategic business decisions, Silbert said, and the business model is similar to that of Berkshire Hathaway, founded by billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
"Setting it up this way gives us flexibility," said Silbert, in an email to Reuters. "We can start companies, invest in companies, buy companies, etc and it gives us patient, permanent capital."
There is therefore no need to raise a bunch of different funds with different investors, he said, adding that this gives the company the opportunity to go public down the road.
DCG was formed this year with the merger of two SecondMarket Solutions companies: Genesis Global Trading, a bitcoin over-the-counter trading firm, and Grayscale Investments, a digital currency asset management firm that manages the publicly-traded Bitcoin Investment Trust.
SecondMarket, an entity that has helped private companies facilitate trading in their shares, was founded by Silbert. It was acquired last week by Nasdaq Private Market. Financial terms were not provided.
Silbert has invested in some of the biggest bitcoin companies: Coinbase, BitPay, Circle, itBit, Ripple, Xapo, and Coinsetter.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency bought and sold on a peer-to-peer network independent of central control. The digital currency is used for retail purchases and investments. Other virtual currencies include litecoin and dogecoin.
One bitcoin is currently worth around $296.01 on the BitStamp platform.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by David Gregorio) || MarilynJean Interactive (MJMI.QB) Today Announced Cancellation of Over 15% of Its Free Trading Shares: HENDERSON, NV / ACCESSWIRE / October 1, 2015 / MarilynJean Interactive ( MJMI ) today announced cancellation of 21,183,000 Common shares representing 10.9% of its issued and outstanding share total and 15.75% of its free trading shares. As previously disclosed, on July 11, 2012, the Company issued 42,385,500 units at $0.01/unit, each unit consisting of one common share and one fourth of one common share warrant exercisable at $0.50 and one half of a common share warrant with an exercise price of $1.00. All warrants associated with these units have since expired and none were exercised before expiration. On October 1, 2015 we have cancelled and returned to treasury 21,183,000 Common Shares, pursuant to Return to Treasury Agreements entered into with certain shareholders. The shareholders voluntarily agreed to cancel the shares and return them to treasury for consideration of promissory notes totaling $155,915. The notes are due and payable upon completion of a financing by our company in excess of $375,000. Peter Janosi, MJMI's president said: "In addition to the over 100,000,000 convertible preferred shares that were cancelled last week, today's share cancellation brings the total reduction to over 42% of the Company's previous fully diluted share total. By significantly reducing the Company's free trading shares, we believe we have further increased the Company's potential to access capital and grow its business." MJMI is in the business of providing safe and accessible services for the users of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. MJMI is currently exploring partnerships with several existing Bitcoin and crypto-currency exchanges as well as manufacturers and operators of BitcoinATMs. Such a combination would place the company in an exciting position to offer an end to end solution for trading in various crypto-currencies and potentially capture a share of the lucrative markets of Bitcoin trading and remittance services, just as these markets appear poised to undergo massive growth. Story continues About Bitcoin and Crypto-Currencies Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure transactions and control the creation of new units. Bitcoin became the first decentralized crypto-currency in 2009. Crypto-currency is produced at a rate which is defined when the system is created and publicly known. By contrast, in centralized banking and economic systems, such as the Federal Reserve System, corporate boards or governments control the supply of currency by printing units or demanding additions to digital banking ledgers. However, neither companies nor governments can produce units of crypto-currency and as such the value of crypto-currencies are completely based on supply and demand, free from any governmental control. Many people believe crypto-currencies, and in particular bitcoin, hold the promise of being the most significant advancement in global finance in modern history. The advent of bitcoin creates a secure, easily accessible and transferable transnational currency that is completely liberated from political influence. Richard Branson, head of the Virgin Group, is quoted on his company's website as saying: "I have invested in Bitcoin because I believe in its potential, the capacity it has to transform global payments is very exciting." Heavyweight investment bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), announced on April 30th 2015 that it had partnered with Chinese investment firm IDG Capital partners to invest $50 million in a Bitcoin start-up. Numerous high-profile firms have begun accepting Bitcoin as a payment method including: Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL), Dish Network Corp. (NASDAQ:DISH), Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE), and Overstock.com (NASDAQ:OSTK). MarilynJean Media Interactive is among the first publicly traded companies focused on bitcoin and the crypto-currency space. The company's trading symbol is MJMI.QB. Website: www.marilynjean.com Press Contact: bonnie@marilynjean.com SOURCE: MarilynJean Interactive || Bitcoin is back, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo restrict data: U.S. stocks ( ^GSPC , ^DJI , ^IXIC ) are lower for the second straight day. Is the autumn rally at risk here? Either way the next big catalyst for the market could come as early as 8:30am ET Friday when the October jobs report is released. Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App In the meantime, here are some other stories Yahoo Finance is keeping an eye on today. Big banks vs. personal finance websites JPMorgan ( JPM ) and Wells Fargo ( WFC ) seem to be restricting some customer data from flowing to third party websites and apps like Mint.com . The products are used by many to help track their finances. JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon has made his concerns known, pointing out that these products require customers to hand over a lot of personal information. Bitcoin is making a comeback Bitcoin is making a comeback. The price of the digital currency has surged more than 50% this week, partly fueled by the EU's classification of bitcoin as a currency and not a commodity. Can it avoid another big sell-off? Turning point for streaming music Adele's new single "Hello" has already brought in record sales, with over a million downloads. Now the big question is whether she will release her full album on streaming platforms. With the scheduled debut of her album "25" in two weeks, services including Apple Music ( AAPL ) and Spotify are still waiting to find out if they can play the rest of her new songs. || Cryptocurrency Trader Launches Super Deal for Bitcoin Sellers: WILMINGTON, DE--(Marketwired - October 28, 2015) -Miners Center Inc. (www.minerscenter.com) is now offering 12% to 13% above the market value for Bitcoin, and now is the time to take advantage. With the rise in popularity of Bitcoin commerce, many online firms are finding creative new ways to take advantage of this valuable virtual resource. However, none are more market-savvy than Miners Center, an up-and-coming financial world star that is taking e-commerce by storm.
For those not in the know, Bitcoin is the premier virtual currency that is being used online for a variety of purposes, including electronics purchases, travel, and a growing number of online businesses. It allows spenders to take advantage of the convenience and flexibility of online currency, invest, and grow their finances in a totally new way. Miners Center is offering unprecedented returns on user investments with their new offer.
Emilian Tourey, the CEO of Miners Center, commented: "We are happy that with this promotional offer we will be able to help the Bitcoin community. By riding on this next wave of digital technology, we hope to become a major leader of the Bitcoin community, and offer exceptional deals for all Bitcoin purchases. It's about staying in-step with the times, and we know that Bitcoin is a wise investment and are confident that it can take us to the top."
A visit towww.minerscenter.comreveals a cleanly-designed website that is easy to use, making Bitcoin transactions quick and easy. Users only need to enter their email address, and bank or PayPal information and they will be ready to take advantage of this new promotional offer.
Aside from the main page, they also offer a news section and frequently asked questions, which can help new users discover the relevance and importance of Bitcoin, and the subtleties of the trading process. Any further questions on the website can be answered in real time by staff.
Rates are updated constantly, following current market trends, for the most accurate information. Combined with knowledgeable staff and a regularly updated news page, this gives Miners Center the edge over competitors in the field by offering a depth of market knowledge that is unrivaled.
Miners Center is currently purchasing Bitcoins so any interested sellers should visit their website as soon as possible for the best deals. For more information, visit,www.minerscenter.com.
Image Available:http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2015/10/28/11G069537/Images/Bitcoin-648633992982.jpg || Consumer growth lagging as mobile payments battle rages on: The battle over the future of consumer payments raged on at the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas this week, just without consumers, most of whom seem quite content to keep swiping their credit cards or handing over cash instead of adopting the latest in mobile payment technology. JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ) announced that it would offer its own smartphone-based payments service to compete head on with Apple ( AAPL ), Google ( GOOGL ), Samsung and others. Scheduled to arrive in the middle of next year, Chase Pay will be available for all 94 million of the bank's credit and debit card customers. And Chase has signed on a huge array of retailers -- from Walmart ( WMT ) to CVS Health ( CVS ) and Target ( TGT ) — that haven't supported other programs. Samsung said 14 more banks had joined its payments service including Chase, SunTrust Banks ( STI ) and PNC Financial Services ( PNC ). It didn't disclose how many U.S. customers had signed up for the service in its first month but said participating consumers made an average of eight transactions. The company said three out of four transactions used Samsung's unique magnetic secure transmission, or MST, technology, which works at almost any checkout terminal by mimicking an ordinary credit card swipe. "We are seeing early signs of customer adoption and we are very, very encouraged by that," Thomas Ko, general manager of Samsung Pay, told the conference on Wednesday. Apple didn't speak at the conference. Meanwhile, Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president at Google overseeing Android Pay, offered few details on the early performance of that service, revealing only that "millions" of users have signed up for Android Pay since the program launched Sept. 10. When it comes to convenince, cash and credit rule Despite all the talk of mobile payments, consumers are still sticking with their more traditional forms of payment. Two thirds of consumers used cash on a daily basis, 59% used a debit card and 50% used a credit card, according to a survey by Accenture. Only 8% said they used Apple Pay or Google Pay, the prior name of Android Pay, "regularly," while 16% said they used PayPal. Story continues Less than 1% of transactions used Apple Pay at American Eagle Outfitters ( AEO ), an early Apple supporter, Joe Megibow, American Eagle's chief digital officer, revealed on Monday. The reasons are fairly obvious — cash and credit cards are quick and convenient ways to pay that are accepted almost everywhere. Some mobile payments systems work only at a small fraction of all stores, others work with only certain credit cards and none are as convenient as a traditional credit card yet. "We're still plagued by how is this really different in the end from plastic," Greg Weed, director of research at Phoenix Marketing, said. Asked what they'd like to see added to mobile payments services, 64% of consumers said they want to be able to redeem loyalty or rewards program points at the time of purchase, Weed said. And 52% said they wanted the ability to view discounts and deals while at a specific store. All of the announced services have pledged to include loyalty and rewards programs but very few have been offered so far. Consumers are "looking for something beyond the digitization of the swipe," Brian Mooney, CEO of the Merchant Customer Exchange, said. The three year old group, formed by leading retailers, is piloting its own payments app, called CurrentC, which intends to integrate loyalty and rewards programs. Mooney didn't say when the long-delayed service would be generally available but the group is also partnering with Chase's new service. The evolution of Bitcoin Amid all the excitement around digital payments, there was still plenty of talk about the financial world's favorite cryptocurrency, bitcoin. But unlike past years, entrepreneurs are now focused less on bitcoin as a replacement for buying and selling goods and more on the digital currency's infrastructure for securely recording all kinds of dealings. Every bitcoin transaction is recorded in a public ledger known as the blockchain. Nasdaq ( NDAQ ) announced that its pilot using the blockchain to record private stock transactions was a success . The exchange said it had signed up six clients, including messaging service Tango and data security specialist Vera, to use the transaction system as the basis for actual private trades in their shares. Some entrepreneurs are looking to add considerably more transactions onto the block chain, particularly the trillions of dollars per day of trades in public stocks and bonds. The current system makes traders wait three days for transactions to formally settle, but some at the Money conference said a blockchain-based solution could complete deals in a fraction of the time and with improved security and transparency. Three day settlement is "silly, it's downright dumb," famed venture capitalist Vinod Kholsa, who has backed numerous financial technology and bitcoin related start ups, said. || New Website Could Become The Playboy Of Pot: This week, the marijuana industry saw rapper Snoop Dogg announce a new marijuana lifestyle platform called Merry Jane. Snoop unveiled his intentions while joking about the marijuana culture and promising to feature smoking celebrities recounting their first pot experiences.
While the site is likely to appeal to college students and even young adults who are a part of the marijuana culture that Snoop Dogg represents, it will do little to draw in thousands of other users like the elderly, working professionals and athletes.
Civilized Pot
EnterCivilized. On Tuesday, startup Saint Johns Revolution Strategy launched a new website called Civilized which targets marijuana's "high brow" users. The company's founder and publisher Derek Riedlesaidthat the site's style is designed to appeal to the underserved pot market-- working professionals who aren't defined by marijuana usage, but enjoy its effects to relax or be creative.
Related Link:Is Snoop Dogg's Marijuana Platform Good For The Industry?
Transforming Pot Perceptions
The site includes pertinent topics relating to marijuana, but also encompasses broader lifestyle topics. Riedle wants the site to attract people based on their other interests as well, so it will include topics that may appeal to business people, teachers and athletes who happen to smoke marijuana in their free time.
While marijuana-related sites are a dime-a-dozen at the moment, Civilized is hoping to appeal to an undeserved part of the marijuana movement. Some have likened the company's mission to that of Playboy, saying it takes something considered taboo or indecent and normalizes it.
Funding
So far, Civilized has gained the backing of 14 angel investors and is expected to continue growing once the content is monetized. At the moment, the stories are free, but Riedle is planning to support the site through advertising in the future.
See more from Benzinga
• Bank Of America Prepares For Bitcoin Revolution
• European Investments, Greek Bonds Beginning To Look More Attractive
• U.S. Firms Brace For EU Ruling That Could Change The Way They Do Business
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Biting back: bitcoin heads for best month in 1-1/2 yrs: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin has just recorded its best month since May 2014, stealing the spotlight away from the blockchain technology that underpins it and which has been attracting investment from almost every major bank in the world. An investor in bitcoin at the start of October would have enjoyed a return of over 36 percent, dwarfing the return of about 2 percent that the dollar racked up for its holders. The web-based currency surged to its highest this year on Friday, hitting $334.05 on the Bitstamp exchange on its ninth successive day of gains, its best run in over two years. Bitcoin is used as a vehicle for moving money around the world quickly and anonymously via the web without the need for third-party verification. That has made it controversial, but also attractive, to users ranging from drug dealers to those trying to circumvent capital controls in Greece and China. Some bitcoin traders speculate that the latter might be partly responsible for the digital currency's latest surge. Most trading in the past month has come from Chinese bitcoin exchanges, according to Bitcoinity.org, though the accuracy of the Chinese exchanges' data is questioned. "At a time of central bank currency devaluations, direct and indirect, and with gold's directionless behaviour over the last two years ... bitcoin is increasingly viewed and marketed as a possible investable vehicle," said London-based trader Ashraf Laidi, who invests in both fiat currencies and bitcoin. Bitcoin is often dismissed as too volatile to invest in, having soared towards $1,200 in late 2013 before sliding to below $400 less than a month later, but it has stabilised this year. "What I'm happy about so far is that the price run-up hasn't been overly dramatic or disorganised," said Peter Smith, CEO of Blockchain, a bitcoin "wallet" or storage provider, which shares its name with the technology. EU RULING Last week the European Union's top court ruled that bitcoin should be treated like any other means of payment and therefore be exempt from value-added tax - a decision many in the industry say helped push up bitcoin's price. "It just makes bitcoin a lot more usable as a currency in Europe and also provides a lot of clarity to people who are speculating and trading in it," said Tom Robinson, co-founder of London-based bitcoin storage firm Elliptic. Another reason for the price surge might be that bitcoin supply is set to grow more slowly. The blockchain is secured by a network of computers that compete with each other to solve mathematical problems for a reward. That is currently 25 bitcoins every 10 minutes, but that will be halved to 12.5 bitcoins next year. In the same way that scaling back quantitative easing would prop up a traditional fiat currency, bitcoin could be boosted by the conventional economics of supply and demand. Although many say the technology behind bitcoin holds more potential than bitcoin itself and can function without it, bitcoiners argue that the blockchain supporting the currency is the only one to have been properly tested. An increased focus on the technology is helping prop up the price, they say. "The idea of blockchain and bitcoin are completely inseparable," said Michael Sonnenshein, a former JPMorgan banker who is now head of business development at Grayscale Investments, a New York-based bitcoin investment firm. "The blockchain is only as secure and as powerful as it is because there is this constant movement of tokens (bitcoins) on the blockchain." (Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Tom Heneghan) || Amazon Turns To The Sharing Economy With Part-Time 'Flex' Service: This holiday season there has been much concern over how firms will cope with the lack of seasonal employees. As unemployment rates have fallen dramatically across the United States, there is a much smaller pool of part-time employees, leaving many firms to decide whether to pay more and sacrifice margins or brave the shopping season without extra hands.
Amazon.com, Inc.(NASDAQ:AMZN) is one such firm which will likely feel the effects of fewer employees as the company's one-day shipping promises often attract droves of last-minute shoppers. However, the e-commerce giant is hoping to fill the gap usingthe sharing economy.
Related Link:What Could Amazon And Lear Mean For Detroit?
Sharing Economy
In Seattle, Amazon has been piloting a new program which allows everyday people to become Amazon delivery representatives in their free time. Much like Uber, Amazon is tapping into the sharing economy in order to fill a need without taking on new employees. The service, called Amazon Flex, allows people to pick up packages from Amazon warehouses and deliver them to customers' homes for a reasonable $20 per hour.
On Demand Workers
The program is expected to catch on quickly as the rise of on-demand workers has been huge over the past year. College students, part-time workers and low paid employees are often looking for ways to earn extra cash in their free time and programs like Amazon Flex allow them to do so without locking them in to set hours. Not only does it give the delivery people a bit of extra income, but it significantly reduces Amazon's shipping costs and allows the company to offer its customers faster delivery times even when the hiring pool is shrinking.
See more from Benzinga
• Boeing's Muilenburg Sees Space, Drones And China In Company's Future
• Bank Of America Prepares For Bitcoin Revolution
• Logistics Firms Prepare For 3D Printing's Future
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Current price: 239.09$ $BTCUSD $btc #bitcoin 2015-10-03 20:00:06 EDT || LIVE: Profit = $96.84 (5.39 %). BUY B4.76 @ $380.00 (#VirCurex). SELL @ $393.69 (#HitBTC) #bitcoin #btc - … pic.twitter.com/fhogDnAX0L || Current price: 238.46$ $BTCUSD $btc #bitcoin 2015-10-04 18:00:05 EDT || Current price: 272.07€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2015-10-28 09:00:05 CET || LIVE: Profit = $168.50 (0.42 %). BUY B154.00 @ $262.39 (#BTCe). SELL @ $264.44 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || In the last hour, 10 people won 1.00 BTC playing Bitcoin lottery at http://10xbtc.com , the easiest BTC lottery, 160BTC Jackpot || Current price: 235.62$ $BTCUSD $btc #bitcoin 2015-09-30 07:00:02 EDT || $363.57 at 22:45 UTC [24h Range: $320.00 - $368.74 Volume: 41686 BTC] via #btcusdpic.twitter.com/QELVxFe8Nf || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges: Cryptsy: Error Bittrex: 0.00000004 Average $1.5E-5 per #reddcoin 01:00:01 via #priceo…pic.twitter.com/Wq2AeeWVL9 || #RDD / #BTC on the exchanges: Cryptsy: Error Bittrex: 0.00000003 Average $1.2E-5 per #reddcoin 15:00:02 via #priceo…pic.twitter.com/G8QwtOJLHk
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Trend: down || Prices: 380.26, 336.82, 311.08, 338.15, 336.75, 332.91, 320.17, 330.75, 335.09, 334.59
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
South Korea to slap unregistered exchange bosses with jail time: South Korea will sentence cryptocurrency exchange bosses to prison if they fail to register with the nations financial regulator. On Thursday, the National Assemblys Amendment Subcommittee on Parliamentary Affairs made amendments to the legal framework so that digital asset exchanges are required to register with the Financial Services Commission (FSC). According to local publication The News , the amendment looks to make exchanges compliant with anti-money laundering guidance from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). It also states that exchanges must hold a real-name virtual bank account as well as subaccounts for each and every user. The notion of real-name bank accounts has attracted criticism in the past. In 2018, the FSC banned anonymous virtual accounts, a move which left just four exchanges standing including Bithumb and UpBit. South Korea has endured a turbulent relationship with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology over the past two years. A surge in financial crime led to a specialist task force being launched in order to combat the rising issue. But there has also been a plethora of positivity surrounding crypto and blockchain, with an announcement in February stating that $1 billion would be poured into the industry . South Korea has also been keeping a close eye on the progress of the Bitcoin ETF proposals in the United States, despite the fact that they have all been rejected so far. For more news, guides, and cryptocurrency analysis, click here . The post South Korea to slap unregistered exchange bosses with jail time appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Bitcoin Eyes $7,800 After Biggest Daily Price Gain in a Month: View Bitcoin jumped above $7,400 on Wednesday, confirming a bullish breakout on the short duration technical charts. Resistance at $7,800 could come into play in the next 48 hours. A violation there would expose $8,200. The nascent recovery will fall apart if Wednesdays low of $6.848 is breached. At press time, that looks unlikely. Bitcoin eked out the biggest single-day gain in four weeks on Wednesday, confirming a short-term price breakout and opening doors for a test of resistance at $7,800. The number one cryptocurrency printed a UTC close at $7,528 on Bitstamp, representing a 5.15 percent gain on the daily opening price of $7,168. Thats the biggest single-day price rise since Oct. 26. On that day, BTC rose by 6.81 percent and printed highs above $10,300. Wednesdays gain looks more impressive if we take into account the rejection of lower prices seen during the European trading hours. Prices had dropped to $6,850, but were quickly reversed and the cryptocurrency ended the day on an optimistic note, validating the seller exhaustion signaled by key technical indicators. Related: What the Crypto Markets Are Saying About the Future of Bitcoin More importantly, BTC activated twin bullish cues on the intraday charts with a convincing move above $7,400 and could continue to draw bids in the short-term. At press time, BTC is changing hands at $7,480, having hit a high of $7,670 during the U.S. trading hours on Wednesday. 4-hour chart Both an upside break of the descending trendline and inverse head-and-shoulders breakout indicate the path of least resistance is to the higher side. Related: Lebanese Bitcoiners Show How to Talk About Crypto At Thanksgiving The latter represents a transition from the lower-highs, lower-lows set up to one of higher lows and higher highs. Its considered a potent bullish reversal pattern if it appears following a significant price drop, which is the case here. The bullish reversal pattern has created room for a rally to $8,200 (target as per the measured move method). Story continues On the way higher, the pair may face resistance at $7,800 (horizontal line) and the descending 100-candle average, currently at $7,936. Hourly chart The 50-hour average is beginning to trend north a sign of strengthening upside momentum and looks set to cross above the 200-hour average in coming days. The impending bull cross may invite stronger buying pressure, possibly yielding a rally to $7,800. That said, a short-term bullish reversal would only be confirmed if the current three-day candle closes (Friday, UTC) above $7,380. On the downside, Wednesdays low of $6,848 is key support, which if breached with strong volumes, would kill the nascent recovery and shift risk in favor of a re-test of $6,500. Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency assets at the time of writing. Related Stories Bitcoin Is Looking at a Short-Term Bull Reversal if Prices Pass $7,400 Charities Put a Bitcoin Twist on Giving Tuesday || Chainalysis traced $2.8 billion in bitcoin being sent to crypto exchanges by criminals last year: Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said Wednesday that it traced $2.8 billion in Bitcoin being sent by criminals to crypto exchanges in 2019, with the bulk of those transactions going to Binance and Huobi.
"While exchanges have always been a popular off-ramp for illicit cryptocurrency, they’ve taken in a steadily growing share since the beginning of 2019. Over the course of the entire year, we traced $2.8 billion in Bitcoin that moved from criminal entities to exchanges,"Chainalysis noted, with 27.5% of that amount going to Binance and 24.7% going to Huobi.
On the two exchanges, a small group of accounts that received more than $100 billion worth of BTC in 2019 took in most of the illicit funds, Chainalysis found. 75% of the total amount received on Huobi and Binance went to 810 of the highest-receiving accounts.
"Overall, just over 300,000 individual accounts at Binance and Huobi received Bitcoin from criminal sources in 2019," Chainalysis noted.
[caption id="attachment_53148" align="aligncenter" width="1574"]
Source: Chainalysis[/caption]
According to the analytics firm, these large accounts likely belong to over-the-counter (OTC) brokers that "are typically associated with an exchange but operate independently."
Although Huobi and Binance both have Know-Your-Customer (KYC) procedures in place, such requirements are lower for OTC desks, hence the existence on the two exchanges of some OTC desks that specialize in providing money-laundering service to criminals, Chainalysis claimed.
In a list of 100 major 100 OTC brokers that Chainalysis believes to provide money laundering services, 70 of them are on Huobi. The 100 brokers together could account for as much as 1% of all Bitcoin activity in a given month, per the report.
The Block has reached out to Huobi and Binance for comments but did not receive responses by press time.
In a statement to Chainalysis, Binance chief compliance officer Samuel Lim said that the exchange "is committed to cleaning up financial crime in crypto and improving the health of our industry."
"We will continue to improve on our proprietary KYC and AML technology, as well as the third-party tools and partners we work with, to further strengthen our compliance standards," said Lim. || XRP Falls 11% In Rout: Investing.com - XRP was trading at $0.19261 by 22:41 (03:41 GMT) on the Investing.com Index on Tuesday, down 10.66% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since September 24. The move downwards pushed XRP's market cap down to $8.78017B, or 5.08% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, XRP's market cap was $20.48129B. XRP had traded in a range of $0.19171 to $0.20570 in the previous twenty-four hours. Over the past seven days, XRP has seen a rise in value, as it gained 3.22%. The volume of XRP traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $1.13639B or 1.62% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $0.1917 to $0.2236 in the past 7 days. At its current price, XRP is still down 94.15% from its all-time high of $3.29 set on January 4, 2018. Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading Bitcoin was last at $6,879.2 on the Investing.com Index, down 2.91% on the day. Ethereum was trading at $131.60 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 7.61%. Bitcoin's market cap was last at $125.24976B or 65.49% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while Ethereum's market cap totaled $14.47394B or 7.57% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Related Articles XRP Dips Below 0.19930 Level, Down 7% ETC Labs Core Rebrands to ETC Core to Clarify Difference With ETC Labs Int'l Regulator Basel Committee Calls for Prudent Rules for Crypto || Why Susquehanna Growth Equity Is Going $25M Deep Into Duda's Site Building Technology: In the crowded website builder market, Palo Alto-based Duda recently announced a $25M investment by Susquehanna Growth Equity (SGE). The market already has plenty of popular drag-and-drop website builders for SMBs, including those from GoDaddy Inc (NYSE: GDDY ) and Wix.Com LTD (NASDAQ: WIX ). What made Duda stand out to SGE’s investors is their committed focus on serving the agency customer. Instead of growing by one SMB at a time, Duda is leveraging their white label agency platform to help digital agencies and web developers to design and deploy more sites at a time, for more SMB clients, than they can with other platforms. Duda’s platform dramatically cuts the time it takes for our digital agency customers to create beautiful, effective websites for their customers without compromising on design,” Duda co-founder and CEO Itai Sadan told Benzinga via email. “This is a top-town investment in the SMB sector. Noa Wolfson, an investor at SGE, notes that the firm was initially impressed with the speed and ease of the product, but it wasn’t until they started speaking with some of Duda’s agency and SaaS customers that they realized the company’s growth potential. “Time and again, customers told us that Duda catalyzed the growth of their agencies,” Wolfson said in a statement upon joining Duda’s Board of Directors. “The ability to have all site building and client management needs on a centralized, and more importantly, secure, platform saves web professionals time and money.” This round of financing brings Duda’s total to $50M, and Sadan is banking it all on their B2B product. In 2015, he made the decision to stop going after individual SMBs and refocus Duda’s energies to become the go-to website builder for agencies and other companies that serve the SMB market. This decision became the basis for solid growth since then; their estimated 6,000 agency and SaaS customers have used Duda’s white label solution to publish more than 560,000 websites for SMB customers. Story continues The VC ecosystem loves the recurring model revenue of SaaS, and it tends to flow toward innovative tech with growth potential. Duda offers both in one package, with agency and SaaS customers that guarantee repeat sales, and SaaS-based technical innovation with headless web design capabilities which eliminate many of the challenges agencies and hosting platforms face when creating websites at scale. Duda notes their agency clients see a time saving of 50% or more compared to building a site on WordPress or other legacy-style, self-hosted platforms that aren’t built with optimized team workflows in mind. Used by leading hosting companies like Telstra, 1&1 Ionos and 123 Reg, the easy flow of Duda’s API-powered, self-service solution allows end users to start at their host’s website and seamlessly use Duda’s tools. This allows users to start building a website, without the need for service providers to enable any type of access for them. It’s all integrated through a robust API that can push and pull the end user’s content and data in a frictionless and secure environment. Duda has already partnered with some of the biggest digital players in the industry. They serve all types of customers, from freelance web professionals and digital agencies, to the largest hosting companies, SaaS platforms and online publishers in the world. The Palo Alto company will use this round of investment to accelerate sales and marketing push, and to grow its Israel-based R&D team. Image by Kevin Phillips from Pixabay 0 See more from Benzinga Binance Hosts IEO For Prime Broker TroyTrade; What Does It Mean For The Bitcoin Market? Bitcoin Vs FANG: A Pseudo-Analysis Of Traditional Equity Assets Compared To Emerging Crypto Assets Oil Markets In Action: Gaining Traction On Slippery Slopes © 2019 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || [SPONSORED] LMAX Digital, the #1 Institutional Bitcoin spot exchange: Leveraging LMAX Exchange proven, robust FX technology and liquidity relationships, LMAX Digital delivers a market-leading, institutional solution for physical trading and custodial services of the most liquid crypto currencies BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH and XRP. Institutional market demands for low latency, efficient price discovery and deep liquidity are satisfied and exceeded by the LMAX Exchange technology stack - the result of a $100m proprietary technology investment over the past 7 years and now deployed within LMAX Digital. Delivering trust, reliability and deep institutional liquidit y , LMAX Digital ensures complete transparency, open access and a level playing field for all institutional market participants: Central limit order book Streaming, firm institutional liquidity only Ultra-low latency, precise, consistent execution Best of breed security, compliance and AML/KYC expertise Full custodian solution with secure offline HSM, multi-sig. cold wallets & vault storage LMAX Digital: secure, liquid, trusted institutional crypto trading and custodial services. Learn more . Regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission. || Price of Gold Fundamental Weekly Forecast – Jobs Report on Tap, but Traders More Concerned About U.S.-China Relations: Gold prices drifted lower on extremely low volume during the holiday-shortened week. Not only was the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday to blame for the light trade, but traders were also held hostage by the lack of fresh developments over trade talk negotiations.
The market started the week under pressure as optimism over a U.S.-China trade deal drove demand for higher-risk assets, sending the major stock indexes to record highs. Treasury yields also rose, making the U.S. Dollar a more attractive asset and driving down demand for dollar-denominated gold.
Last week,February Comex goldsettled at $1465.60, down $4.90 or -0.33%.
Gold was under pressure early last week after a report said Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, U.S. Trade representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin discussed issues related to phase one of a trade deal and agreed to maintain communication on remaining issues.
Prices were also pressured after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said policymakers had a favorable outlook on the U.S. economy. However, weak global growth and trade uncertainty are holding back expansion and they will “respond accordingly” if economic data leads to a “material reassessment” of their outlook, Powell added.
Gold hit its low for the week after doubts resurfaced about the progress of trade talks between China and the United States.
The market was further supported as investors bought the so-called safe-haven metal on doubts about whether the United States and China will seal a trade deal after President Donald Trump signed legislation supporting pro-democracy Hong Kong protesters.
Beijing condemned the move and said it would take “firm counter measures.”
Helping to keep a lid on gold prices was a raft of upbeat economic data from the United States. Economic growth picked up slightly in the third quarter, weekly jobless claims fell, while new orders for key U.S.-made capital goods increased.
Gold could continue to consolidate until an actual trade deal is signed and sealed. And the recent bills passed by the United States supporting anti-government protesters in Hong Kong remain a point of contention between Washington and Beijing.
Additionally, although the U.S. economy is showing resiliency, many sections of the world are still showing slow economic growth.
This week, investors will get the opportunity to react on Monday to the latest ISM Manufacturing report. On Wednesday, the ADP Non-Farm Employment Change and ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI reports will be the centers of attention.
On Friday, the major report is U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls. The headline number is expected to show the economy added 189K jobs in November. The Unemployment Rate is expected to hold steady at 3.6% and Average Hourly Earnings are forecast to have risen 0.3%.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 01/12/19 || Latest Ethereum price and analysis (ETH to USD): At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) is trading at around $143 following a 10% increase in price since last week. Over the past 24 hours, ETH has gained close to 1.5%. The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap had been consolidating to the downside for the last two months of 2019 before a massive green candle took price back above its 20-day EMA this week. As mentioned last week , the uncertainty around ETH’s price action could mean a continuation of bullish momentum. Let’s take a look at the chart for Ethereum, courtesy of TradingView . During the second half of 2019, ETH was attempting to consolidate and recover following the huge market downturn in the summer. The altcoin experienced huge drops in September and November before an early-2020 market spike took ETH from around $123 to over $140. However, Ethereum is still over 50% down from last year’s high, meaning there’s still a long way to go before the coin recovers completely. I personally think the positive trend ETH is experiencing at the moment has a strong chance of continuing for the next few weeks. The current ETH/USD trend As a result of this week’s positive momentum, ETH has climbed back up and is now clinging on to its 20-day EMA – a bullish signal. Looking at the current Bitcoin trend, I expect price to continue pumping towards the 50-day and 200-day EMAs over the next week. For now, I would aim at making minor entries while the price is still below the 200-day EMA. Volume-wise, ETH is hovering close to $10 billion – close to five times higher than the previous weeks. At the moment, buyers are taking control, which means volatility can be expected to increase. Since ETH is also close to the lowest support level intervals (according to the volume profile), we should expect the price to keep rebounding. Right now, Ethereum is holding above $140. If there’s another swing to the upside, I expect ETH to face resistance near the 200-day EMA, between $170 and $180. Story continues On an equally positive note, the Istanbul upgrade has been implemented successfully with only a few minor issues . This hard fork was quite an important step towards ETH 2.0 and has implemented improved functionality and lower gas fees. I personally believe we can expect a testnet release of the new Casper PoS soon, at least by the first quarter of 2020. Safe trades! About Ethereum Ethereum was launched by Vitalik Buterin on July 30 2015. He was a researcher and programmer working on Bitcoin Magazine and he initially wrote a whitepaper in 2013 describing Ethereum. Buterin had proposed that Bitcoin needed a scripting language. He decided to develop a new platform with a more general scripting language when he couldn’t get buy in to his proposal. More Ethereum news and information If you want to find out more information about Ethereum or cryptocurrencies in general, then use the search box at the top of this page. Here’s an article to get you started: Ethereum adopts ERC-1155 as an official standard As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not. You may be interested in our range of cryptocurrency guides along with the latest cryptocurrency news . The post Latest Ethereum price and analysis (ETH to USD) appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Bitcoin investors still smiling at the end of 2019: It’s been a bumpy year forbitcoinhodlers, but despite the rough ride, over the last 12 months, the price of the cryptocurrency has risen by more than 95% since this time last year.
On New Year’s Eve 2018, the price of bitcoin was sat at around $3,700, at the time of writing in 2019 however, the price has surged to around $7,300. That’s a 97.3% increase. Compared to other types of asset over the same time period, bitcoin has performed exceptionally. The Dow Jones Industrial Averagerose 27.37%, and theUK FTSE 100rose by a modest 14%. Not bad. But it’s been a test of nerves for investors this year.
As we entered 2019, bitcoin’s price continued to trickle downwards, hitting a low of $3,400 on February 8, according to data from CoinMarketCap. But from that point, the price began to climb, with monthly gains leading all the way to July 12, where the price of bitcoin hit its 2019 high of $12,955. Since then the market has been dominated by dramatic price swings.
The first came shortly after its July high. In just five days, the price slumped from nearly $13,000 back down to $9,481 by July 17. But by August 6, the price was way up again, sitting at $12,240.
September, October, and November all saw similar patterns with billions wiped off the price of bitcoin before an almost miraculous recovery. While those recoveries never quite saw the price of bitcoin return to its July peak, if you’d bought bitcoin in January you’d still be sitting pretty.
There has been a myriad of reasons why this year has had so many swings. A report by Chainalysis suggested a Chinese ponzi scam was behind the mid-December crash. Others suggested investors are just tired of all the swings and got out while the going was (moderately) good.
“Many companies and individuals that hold Bitcoin or other crypto still need to liquidate to fund their day to day expenses, and the fear of Bitcoin crashing even further is likely causing people to sell off further,”said Simon Yu, CEO of StormX, an e-commerce platform for micro-tasking, toldDecrypt.
We’ve actually compiled a learn guide on why bitcoin’s price is so volatile. The TL:DR of it is, this is what happens in a small market (when compared to other assets like gold and equities) where there are a few big players or whales that cause significant shifts in price whenever they move their crypto. You canread the whole thing or watch our video.
But despite the turbulent waters of 2019, exchange chiefs seem optimistic about bitcoin’s fortunes in 2020.
Executives at top South Korean crypto exchanges Bithumb, Korbit, and Hanbitco believe that market conditions will be brighter in 2020 thanks to improved regulation and a shift in the appetites of institutional investors.
Japanese exchange executivesseem to agree that 2020 will be a golden year, too. There’s also the long-awaited halvening of Bitcoin mining rewards to come in May as well. In the last two such events, bitcoin’s price trended upwards-albeit not always right away. Many are hoping this could lead to further gains for investors in the crypto asset.
If you’d been lucky enough to get into bitcoin in 2010 however, 2019’s highs and lows mean diddly squat compared to what happens if you held bitcoin for a decade.
Happy New Year hodlers. || A Plan to Decentralize Bitcoin Mining Again Is Gaining Ground: Braiins , the company behind one of the largest bitcoin mining pools, recently released a code spec that could be promising for decentralized mining. The spec, Stratum V2 , could significantly change how bitcoin mining functions and would add security and efficiency to mining pools, the entities that organize miners spread across the world. Although it aims to improve bitcoin mining pools in a number of ways, the primary benefit comes from a component that reduces one of the most pressing problems in bitcoin: mining pool centralization. Related: 1 Gigawatt Bitcoin Mine Under Construction in Texas Would Dwarf Bitmains If this protocol does everything it promises, mining centralization as an argument will be completely dead, bitcoin developer and educator Jimmy Song said . Meanwhile, Square bitcoin developer Matt Corallo, one of the designers of the protocol, wrote in a recent Reddit AMA : This is huge for mining centralization. Instead of being focused on the centralization of pools (which is the world were in today), we can focus on the centralization of actual miners [and] farm owners! Last year, Corallo revealed BetterHash , a plan to combat the centralization problem in mining pools. Now Braiins and Corallo are pooling their work to build one protocol that fixes a number of current mining pool issues. Silver bullet? Mining has long been a difficult proposition for individual miners. In the early days to bitcoin, miners from around the world began connecting to so-called mining pools to earn a more consistent paycheck. All of the miners worked in tandem and when one member of the pool got lucky, the thinking went, the entire pool benefited. Related: Ukrainian Railways Branch Caught Mining Crypto With State Power In time, weighted mining pools emerged as a safer, more profitable way of mining by taking in all of the bitcoin earned by their miners and redistributing them based on mining power contributed. Unfortunately, according to recent data from Blockchain.info , only three mining pools control over 50% of bitcoins mining power, thereby centralizing the mining power in a few hands. Story continues Source: Source: https://www.blockchain.com/en/pools This is a problem. When one of the miners in a mining pool wins a block and rakes in the 12.5 bitcoin reward, the mining pool decides which transactions go into that block. Bitcoin experts worry that these centralized entities could use this power to censor transactions they dont like. To prevent this, Stratum V2 supports job negotiation modeled off of Corallos BetterHash. This changes the relationship between the miner and the mining pool. Instead of mining pools deciding what transactions go into blocks, miners decide which ones to include. [If] there are cases of transaction censorship in the future, we have a security measure in the protocol that miners can use to circumvent the censorship, Capek said. This also means that miners, not mining pools, will be able to vote on protocol upgrades to bitcoin if Stratum V2 is adopted by mining pools. With the job negotiation protocol, miners can also choose their block header version field. This allows them freedom in any potential voting via BIP8/BIP9 style mechanism, Capek said. All that said, Capek stressed that the new specification is not necessarily a silver bullet for mining centralization. He pointed out that the mining pools that want to censor bitcoin transactions could simply opt-out of adopting the protocol. At the same time its important to mention that a pool that would intentionally perform such censorship would not allow its users to negotiate their jobs, he said. Meanwhile, Luke Dashjr, veteran bitcoin coder, argued on Twitter that there are other aspects of mining centralization that still need to be addressed. For example, the fact that only a handful of companies produce mining hardware, the computers made specifically for producing bitcoin, is also a grave threat to decentralization. Thwarting attacks Decentralization isnt the only draw in Stratum V2. Mining pools will have an incentive to adopt the new protocol because it will save them money and prevent attacks that could cause them to lose rewards. First, it makes transferring data back and forth more efficient. It could also make stealing mining pool hash power much harder. Last but not least, we have addressed the security aspects by allowing fully encrypted and authenticated communication using the current state of the art technology called Noise Protocol Framework,' Capek said. This peer-reviewed technique is the same technology used by the mobile messenger WhatsApp and bitcoins lightning network. Braiins is still finalizing a few features in the specification, such as deciding which encryption algorithm to use for hiding data from snoops, Capek said. But a version is available to test and most of the Stratum V2 specification draft is now up for review. Capek expects it to take at least 12 months for mining pools to adopt the protocol. Getting everybody on board is a matter of realizing the benefits on the security and efficiency side, which in turn leads to saving some operational costs, he said. Related Stories WATCH: Coinmine Adds Interest Payments to Its At-Home Crypto Miners Founder of Bitmain Rival Held by Police Over Possible IP Dispute
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin Private Key question https://t.co/GQu59LapWp || Me when I see people scared of this drop and crying because of this dump! I eat ppls fear like Cartman does a bully's tears!
#bitcoin #fear #trading @SouthPark https://t.co/Alib86l4qv || "La récente chute du #Bitcoin, un "cas d'école" d'analyse technique"
https://t.co/qtMxHcwRbR || 🔔 Big trade (BTC-PERPETUAL)
$277,480 of $BTC bought at $7519.00
(22 Nov 2019 07:43:35 UTC) || #LLION #Lydian_lion #ICO #bitcoin #btc #cryptocurrency || https://t.co/oMxbVg9QZs
Start Bitcoin Mining Today! https://t.co/NiBW3ZEVRd || @WeissCrypto if you want to know more about #chromia you can check @chromaway @teamchromia @Chromia_Studios you can also check #CHR100X #BTC #ETH #ADA #EOS #XRP || AfriHealth is building a health ecosystem in Africa to make healthcare speedy, efficient, and cost-effective.
#Blockchain #healthcare #AfriHealth #Health #AfricaHealth #HealthcareinAfrica #BitCoin #ICO #cryptocurrency #SmartContract #ecosystem #HealthTech #Africa https://t.co/Jih0IuQWC4 || Bitcoin + Gold IRA Custodians https://t.co/QdG9b74M2W ⟶ via https://t.co/z0PZ8sZFNG || Somebody ordered 4 pizzas 🥱
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Trend: up || Prices: 8706.25, 8657.64, 8745.89, 8680.88, 8406.52, 8445.43, 8367.85, 8596.83, 8909.82, 9358.59
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2019-01-09]
BTC Price: 4035.30, BTC RSI: 54.21
Gold Price: 1289.30, Gold RSI: 67.96
Oil Price: 52.36, Oil RSI: 57.76
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin – The Bulls Eye $4,300 as the Next Price Target: Bitcoin gained 3.99% on Saturday, partially reversing Friday’s 5.66% loss, to end the day at $4,135, marking a 5thday in the green for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin bulls,
A relatively range bound start to the day saw Bitcoin ease to a mid-morning intraday low $3,919.3, holding well above the first major support level at $3,818.67, before finding support to break through to $4,000 levels by late morning.
An early afternoon pullback saw Bitcoin fall back to $3,900 levels ahead of a late in the day bounce back, Bitcoin rallying to an intraday high $4,166 to move back into positive territory for the day, while leaving the first major resistance level at $4,216.67 untested on the day.
For the Bitcoin bulls, a move back through to $4,000 levels and hold by the day’s end was key, though the need for a late in the day rally will raise some doubts over the near-term outlook, with Bitcoin likely to face plenty of resistance on any attempted run at the 23.6% FIB of $4.816 in the coming days.
Upward momentum through the weekend has seen Bitcoin’s dominance ease further back, falling to 52.5%, a bullish signal for the broader market, with the total crypto market cap rising to $134.15bn.
While investors will be looking for Bitcoin to breakout from $4,200 levels to hit $4,500 levels as a buy signal, Bitcoin’s dominance could be an early buy signal, with any fall to sub-52% suggesting a material improvement in investor sentiment.
With the holiday season rapidly approaching, there was no material news to provide Bitcoin and the broader market with direction, leaving investor sentiment towards current price levels and outlook on Bitcoin and crypto adoption to provide direction.
Even Bitcoin has seen greater usage as an alternative to fiat money over the last few years, which can only be a good thing, though the market has yet to evolve to materially differentiate by platform success.
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At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up 0.75% to $4,166.0, with moves through the early morning seeing Bitcoin rise from a start of a day morning low $4,112.8 to a morning high $4,196.4 before easing back, the day’s major support and resistance levels left untested early on.
For the day ahead, a move back through the morning high $4,196.4 would bring $4,200 levels and the day’s first major resistance level at $4,227.57 into play before any pullback, Bitcoin likely to face plenty of resistance at $4,200 levels to pin back any attempt at a breakout to $4,300 levels and the second major resistance level at $4,320.13 on the day.
Failure to move back through the morning high could see Bitcoin give up the early morning gains, a fall through the morning low $4,112.8 to $4,070 levels likely to bring sub-$4,000 levels and the first major support level at $3,980.87 into play before any recovery, heavier losses unlikely on the day, with Bitcoin heading for only its fourth weekly gain of the quarter.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Crude Oil Weekly Price Forecast – crude oil markets break down yet again this week || Bitcoin Trader Drugged, Beaten, & Tortured in South Africa: south africa bitcoin A Bitcoin trader from Lanseria in South Africa narrowly escaped death after being drugged, beaten, and tortured by suspected kidnappers. Narrating his near-death experience in a report in local news outlet Soweto Urban , the man, who is known only as Andrew, was invited for a presentation on cryptocurrency through a new contact on Facebook. The presentation was held at Natui Street in Meadowlands Zone Five. He is reported to have gone into the undisclosed residence at about 1 pm to conduct the presentation to an audience of six individuals. According to him, one of these people snuck up on him from behind and stuffed a cloth in his face presumed to be soaked with a sleeping drug that made him unconscious. Later, having recovered from the influence of the drug, he woke up in a completely different residence. Here, he was surrounded by five people two women and three men. He was subsequently stripped of his clothes, beaten, and tortured by his kidnappers, based on the report. He alleged that his kidnappers demanded that he provide his First National Bank (FNB) account details as well as the password to his cryptocurrency wallet , threatening to sear him with a hot iron and kill him if he didnt cooperate. Andrew was at first adamant that he would not give up his crypto holdings, but he cracked under the pressure of the torture and made a wire transfer of R 800,000 (around $59,000) worth of Bitcoin to the kidnappers wallet address. He was also forced to transfer R 100,000 (around $7,200) to his assailants bank account, as well. Andrew also lost R 3,000 (around $200) in cash, two iPhones and two laptops. When the raid was complete, he was blindfolded by the kidnappers and taken to Kliprivier Road, where he was dropped. He is currently in the intensive care unit of the Alberton Union Hospital, where he is being treated for his bruises and the burns all over his body. The case has been reported to the police and investigation is ongoing. Earlier this year, 65-year old Cape Town businessman Liyaqat Parker was kidnapped and released only after his family had paid 50 bitcoins as the ransom for his freedom. The businessman spent over 50 days with the criminals, having been kidnapped at gunpoint, on his way to work. Featured Image from Shutterstock The post Bitcoin Trader Drugged, Beaten, & Tortured in South Africa appeared first on CCN . View comments || Tesla Is Prepared for a Big Fourth Quarter: After running into logistics challenges in its third quarter as it ramped up production and deliveries of its Model 3, Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is trying to avoid making the same mistake in Q4. CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter this week that the electric-car company is taking steps to reduce shipping times, which will ultimately beef up deliveries before the quarter ends. Tesla's efforts to get more Model 3 units in the hands of customers before the end of the year comes as management aims for another record quarter. Will Tesla be able to deliver even more cars than it did in Q3? A red Tesla Model 3. Tesla's Model 3. Image source: Tesla. Acquiring trucking companies "Tesla just acquired trucking capacity to ensure Model 3 can be delivered in US by Dec 31 if ordered by Nov 30," said Musk in a tweet on Thursday. In a follow-up tweet, Musk clarified that Tesla both purchased some trucking companies and "secured contracts with major haulers to avoid trucking shortage mistake of last quarter." This is a significant acceleration in the Model 3's delivery time. Previously, Tesla had said the shortest time frame it could ship deliveries to the East Coast from its factory in California was eight weeks. For central U.S. and the West Coast, Tesla had previously promised ship times of four and six weeks, respectively. Considering Tesla's problems last quarter, it makes sense that the automaker is buying trucking companies. Tesla faced logistics challenges in its third quarter as it ran into "an extreme shortage of car carrier trailers." In addition, a large volume of Model 3 deliveries toward the end of the quarter even prompted Musk to invite current Tesla owners to help educate new owners at delivery centers. Notably, by shortening the time Tesla needs to deliver Model 3 vehicles in the U.S. before the end of the year, the electric-car company is maximizing the number of vehicles it can ship before buyers miss out on the full $7,500 federal tax credit. The $7,500 credit is set to be halved in 2019 for Tesla customers. Story continues Aiming for another record quarter But Tesla's effort to improve shipping logistics in the second half of Q4 is likely about more than helping its customers get the full tax credit. It is also likely a by-product of management's goal to deliver even more vehicles in Q4 than it did in its record third quarter. In Tesla's third quarter, vehicle sales more than doubled sequentially as Model 3 deliveries surged 204%. But management said it expected deliveries to rise even higher in Q4; Tesla guided for a slight sequential uptick in Model S and X deliveries and said, "Model 3 quarterly production and deliveries should continue to increase in Q4 compared to Q3." Of course, Q4 is about more than vehicle deliveries for Tesla. After swinging to a profit in Q3, the automaker wants to pull off yet another quarter in the black . To achieve this, Tesla's going to need another quarter of high-volume Model 3 deliveries. More From The Motley Fool 3 Growth Stocks at Deep-Value Prices 5 Expected Social Security Changes in 2018 6 Years Later, 6 Charts That Show How Far Apple, Inc. Has Come Since Steve Jobs' Passing 10 Best Stocks to Buy Today The $16,122 Social Security Bonus You Cannot Afford to Miss Bitcoin's Biggest Competitor Isn't Ethereum -- It's This Daniel Sparks owns shares of Tesla. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla and Twitter. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy . || Here’s How You Can Get Amazon to Kick Some Cash to a Bitcoin Charity: Are you planning to do some shopping on Amazon this holiday season? If so, you can also supportBitGive, the first registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity that uses the power of bitcoin to support some great philanthropic projects around the world.
This year, BitGive is celebrating its fifth anniversary of charitable work in the Bitcoin space. And while shoppers can support its philanthropic efforts year round through theAmazonSmileprogram, now is the time of year when you might be spending a bit more time (and money) on the Amazon website.
AmazonSmile is a subdomain on Amazon that allows shoppers to donate to their charity of choice when they shop with Amazon. You can passively donate toBitGiveby signing up on smile.amazon.com and selecting "BitGive" as your charity of choice. Then, you can proceed to shop as you usually would.
Amazon will donate 0.5 percent of the total price of your purchases to BitGive at no cost to you.
"We love the Amazon Smile program! It is an easy way for our supporters to contribute to our mission while also shopping for their holiday gifts and everyday needs," Connie Gallippi, founder and executive director of BitGive, said toBitcoin Magazine.
In October 2018, Amazonannounced it haddonated $100 million to charities through its AmazonSmile program.
“Hundreds of thousands of charities have been able to expand their meaningful work thanks to the donations they’ve received through AmazonSmile, and we want to say thank you to customers who are supporting important causes every time they shop,” said Jeff Wilke, Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO.
The BitGive foundation also accepts donations through their website to support their work with specific charities. Some of the past projects that BitGive has successfully funded and supported in the past include theMaternal & Neonatal India Program, theChandolo Primary School Water Projectand theShisango Girls School.
BitGive has also developedGiveTrack, a blockchain-based platform designed to make charitable organizations more transparent and increase donor confidence.
“GiveTrack has been our main project for the past few years,” said Gallippi. “We have alive MVPnow where you can see some of our early pilot projects, and there is somegeneral informationabout the goals of the platform as well. We have an anticipated launch for GiveTrack 1.0 in early December.”
This article originally appeared onBitcoin Magazine. || Crypto Critic Elizabeth Warren Officially Exploring Presidential Run: elizabeth warren cryptocurrency crypto 2020 us presidential election Senator Elizabeth Warren has joined the 2020 United States presidential race, after announcing on Monday that she will be developing an exploratory committee, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal . With the exploratory committee, Warren will be able to formally raise funds and make key staff appointments before she officially kicks off her presidential campaign. The Democratic politician from Massachusetts , who has made quite a name for herself due to her criticisms of corporations, large banks, and most recently, cryptocurrency , has become the first major candidate to declare her desire to run for the highest office in the United States government. She also released an announcement video on her website, which contained some of the regular anti-Wall Street sentiments that will no doubt be a central theme of her campaign platform. In the video, which was posted on Monday, Warren said: America’s middle class is under attack. How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie and they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice. With her announcement, Warren will be entering a 2020 presidential race that is already heating up, with many Democrats already sending hints that they will be looking to take on President Donald Trump. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, both of whom have run for president in the past, are said to be eyeing 2020 presidential runs, and are they are both expected to make their official announcements in the coming weeks. Other Democrats who are supposed to jump on the campaign trail before the mid-point of 2019 include Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The impact of a Warren presidency might not particularly bode well for the crypto industry, with the Democratic politician not seeming to be a fan of digital assets and initial coin offerings (ICOs) in particular. Back in 2017, Warren stated that she was worried about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, claiming that the volatility of the crypto market has the potential to leave a lot of American families hurt. Story continues In the same manner, while speaking at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Banking a few months back, Warren criticized cryptocurrencies, asserting that they are very easy to steal and that a lot of retail investors have also been swindled as a result of various ICOs scams. “The challenge is how to nurture productive aspects of crypto with protecting consumers,” she told the committee. Elizabeth Warren Image from Shutterstock The post Crypto Critic Elizabeth Warren Officially Exploring Presidential Run appeared first on CCN . || This Week in Crypto: Ohio Embraces Bitcoin, Judge Hassles SEC, and DJ Khaled Fined for ICO Promotion: bitcoin crypto news The last week of November was all about taxes, regulation, and SEC enforcement for Bitcoin and the wider crypto ecosystem. Major Headlines Sirin Labs Launches the FINNEY : The world’s first blockchain phone on the market, the FINNEY , launched at an event in Barcelona on Thursday. CCN’s Josiah Wilmoth was on the scene . The phone, its dApp store, and native blockchain integration have many wondering if crypto has finally arrived. Ohcrypto — Ohio State Government Embraces Cryptocurrency : Ohio state treasurer Josh Mandel defended his state’s decision to allow tax payments via Bitcoin on Bloomberg news. Earlier in the week, the state had announced the move , complete with a web portal for doing so. Crypto critics commented that the move wasn’t a full embrace of cryptocurrency because the state used BitPay, while traditional finance critics expressed concern about the “ease” of using cryptos. Any way you slice it, Ohio is the first of these United States to take such a step, one that Mandel referred to as “small.” Does that mean Bitcoin is becoming a “real” currency ? NodeJS Module Vulnerability Compromises CoPay and Tons of Other Web Wallets : A vulnerability in an upstream NodeJS package put millions of Bitcoin addresses at risk through “what can objectively be referred to as social engineering, laziness, and incompetence.” CCN asks why BitPay, who relied on this module and relies on several others, does not simply contribute more to the packages it relies upon or fork them and locally import updates. Bitcoin SV Sees 48% Rebound : Bitcoin SV presents itself as a more serious contender this week, with the market recognizing its efforts in a 48% rebound amid overall market decline . Analysts believe that Big Bitcoin will be down for a while yet. HODLers not affected. Bitcoin Regulation & Crypto Crime bitcoin law Following a minor sleight in a California federal court, the federal government seems to have flexed its regulatory muscles this week. Story continues Treasury Lists and Bans Bitcoin Addresses as Part of Sanctions : For the first time this week, the US Treasury specifically banned some Bitcoin addresses for interactions with US persons. It’s important to note that it’s already illegal under existing sanctions for any US person to do most types of business with Iran or Iranian nationals, so the listing of Bitcoin addresses is only notable in that it is a first, not that it mentions a form of payment. Treasury listed the addresses of two Iranian men in designating them as especially unable to do business with US persons – meaning that in the event sanctions are dropped, these people are still persona non grata. Anonymous Bitcoiners responded by sending the addresses a bit of Bitcoin with political messages. Bulgarian Authorities Seize $3M in Ill-Begotten Crypto : CCN’s David Hendeyin covered the Bulgarian seizure of some $3 million in illegally obtained cryptocurrency. He wrote, “The case highlights the increasing capacity of governments and regulators to track cryptocurrency transactions as they look to close all loopholes permitting money laundering, tax evasion, and terror financing. In September, CCN reported that blockchain research company Diar published data showing that U.S. government agencies have collectively spent $5.7 million hiring contractors who perform blockchain analysis, which involves linking an individual’s identity with their cryptocurrency funds.” Judge Tells SEC They Didn’t Prove Blockvest ICO Is A Security : In what might amount to a legal precedent , a California federal judge told the SEC it had not adequately proven that Blockvest was a security under federal law. This doesn’t mean Blockvest is off the hook, merely that the injunction and freezing of their assets will not carry on prior to a conviction. From the report, “In a brilliant defense, Blockvest claimed its tokens were only used for testing of the exchange, nothing more. The meat and potatoes of the defense was also that the majority of the people ‘investing’ were friends known well to defendant Reginald Buddy Ringgold III, and that claims they had made online regarding the raising of “$2.5 million” were overly optimistic, relied on a single investor, and that that deal had fallen through.” DJ Khaled and Floyd Mayweather Formally Charged for Fraudulently Promoting ICOs : CCN’s Samantha Cheng detailed the charges (and settlements) against Floyd Mayweather and DJ Khaled, who had promoted the Centra Tech ICO last year and neglected to tell anyone they were paid promoters, among other questionable activities. Khaled and Mayweather were not required to admit wrongdoing in the settlement which amounts to a collective $767,500 between them . French Regulators Get Upset about Retail Bitcoin : The French version of the SEC went on the offensive against a crypto start-up in France that intends to sell Bitcoin at retail stores across the country beginning early 2019. The move follows reports in the crypto space that the start-up, KeplerK, had received explicit approval from an affiliate of the same body. Israeli Entrepreneur Moshe Hogeg Accused of Misusing ICO Funds : CCN’s Mark Emem reported on the allegations against renowned Israeli cryptonaught Moshe Hogeg, who is accused of draining funds from two ICO-backed companies and thereby making them insolvent. From the report: “As a result, 17 individuals who claim to be shareholders of IDC Investdotcom Holdings, the company associated with Hogeg and which is more popularly known as Invest.com, have filed a petition seeking to liquidate the firm. A temporary liquidator has subsequently been appointed by a court in Tel Aviv, according to The Times of Israel.” Hogeg denies the allegations and has filed a counter-suit. Crypto Exchange News With a Bitcoin ETF still in the distant future , crypto exchanges remain dedicated to easing the entrance of traditional capital into the volatile crypto markets. Meanwhile, the Chairman of Waterchain told Forbes readers that crypto will create “an entirely new economy” and a high-ranking NYSE authority said crypto isn’t going anywhere . Coinbase Adds Ethereum Classic and Zcash : Coinbase added Ethereum Classic , the Ethereum whose blockchain never hard forked in response to the DAO hack. They also added Zcash , but apparently, it didn’t help ZEC much . HBUS Launches Cheeky Billboard Campaign : Huobi -affiliated HBUS has launched a billboard campaign in California which touts itself as “evolved” while “Coin base” (note the space) is referred to as the Homo erectus of trading. Nasdaq Announces Bitcoin Futures Market : In an important precursor, Nasdaq has said it will be launching a “transparent and regulated” Bitcoin futures market in early 2019. Nasdaq will not be the only ones in this space early next year. From the report: “Nasdaq’s rival ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) — the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange — is also charging ahead with its own plans to launch a physically-settled bitcoin futures product in the first quarter of 2019. Bakkt, a cryptocurrency exchange built by ICE, plans to roll out its bitcoin futures market on January 24, after scrapping the original launch date of Dec. 12, 2018. As CCN reported , ICE cited an unforeseen increase in demand for its futures product, the Bakkt Bitcoin (USD) Daily Futures Contract, for the delay.” Stablecoins Huobi Creates Exchange-Centric Stablecoin HUSD : Huobi has created a stablecoin for its users — not a tradeable coin like others, but a product within their exchange — they are calling HUSD , which is composed of four major stablecoins: Gemini Dollar, Paxos Standard, USDCoin, and True USD. USDT Announces Native Redemption With Steep Fee Schedule : In a perplexing move, Tether announced that it will allow direct redemption of Tether over $100,000, following a move by Bitfinex toward “stablecoin neutrality. From the report: “Users who want to cash out USDT at Bitfinex will do so at market rates, rather than 1-for-1, right along with the other stablecoins that are being offered. As we’ve reported in the past, tether occasionally divorces from its dollar peg due to market pressures, sometimes by as much or more than five cents. […] On the other hand, newcomer Paxos Standard (PAX) charges no fees. Withdrawals are not instant due to the way Paxos works, but they happen on a regular schedule which is published by the company. They also reserve the right to change their fee structure at any time. Similarly, Circle’s USD Coin (USDC) does not charge a fee for withdrawals. Both it and Paxos have a minimum of $100 for conversions.” Paxos Standard Gains Traction at Binance : Paxos Standard announced it will now be a base token in six new pairs at Binance this week, with the potential for more based on the performance of those markets. Binance currently relies heavily USDT for stablecoin markets but recently launched USDⓈ , a combined stablecoin market that will apparently integrate as many stablecoins as the world’s largest crypto exchange’s markets can handle. Images from Shutterstock The post This Week in Crypto: Ohio Embraces Bitcoin, Judge Hassles SEC, and DJ Khaled Fined for ICO Promotion appeared first on CCN . || Why 2018 Was a Year to Forget for J.C. Penney: J.C. Penney(NYSE: JCP)started the year with some optimism, and then saw those signs of hope disappear. The company entered 2018 in trouble but with a plan that looked like it should work.
Then-CEO Marvin Ellison wasn't following the path of rivalSears(NASDAQOTH: SHLDQ), which has mostlyclosed storesand done little else in its failed turnaround effort. Ellison instead made moves to right the ship, not just slow its sinking.
Over the past few years, he revamped J.C. Penney in an attempt to make its brick-and-mortar stores a destination for shoppers. He added store-within-a-store concepts including Sephora shops, revamped salons, and electronics departments. He also changed merchandise, added toy and baby merchandise after Toys/Babies R Us failed, and added home services in markets that Sears had abandoned.
On paper, these moves looked more like the ones that helpedBest BuyandMacy'sturn their fortunes around. In reality, they haven't worked, and Ellison jumped ship on May 22. That left the CEO's office empty during the crucial buildup to the holiday period -- which put the future of the company in jeopardy.
J.C. Penney has made a lot of moves, and most have not worked. Image source: J.C. Penney.
Same-store sales, which tell you if consumers are responding to changes, improved by 0.3% and 0.1% in the first and second quarters. That's not an overwhelming vote of consumer confidence, but it's at least something to show that things might have been moving in the right direction.
Any hopes for that being true were dashed when J.C. Penney reported Q3 numbers. In that period, same-store sales dropped by 5.4%, putting the company into negative comps for the year and forcing it to revise its guidance down.
In its first-quarter earnings release, the company said it expected full-year comps to come in between a 0% and a 2% gain. Again, that wasn't great, but at least the needle wasn't pointing down. Now, however, in its Q3 earnings release, the company forecasts a low single-digit drop in comps for the full year.
That's a tough way to start a new job for Jill Soltau, who took over for Ellison. While she appears well qualified, Soltau's selection didn't wow investors. She formerly ran fabric retailer Jo-Ann Stores, but she's a relative unknown taking over at a time when many shareholders were hoping for a splashier hire.
J.C. Penney isn't Sears -- its end isn't inevitable. But it needs a major course correction. The company continues to lose money ($151 million in Q3 with only $168 million in cash or cash equivalents on hand). What might be more troubling is that the chain closed Q3 with $3.22 billion in inventory.
That's actually down 5.4% versus the year-ago quarter, but it's very possible that a sizable portion of that inventory isn't what consumers are looking for. Soltau arrived too late to make any major holiday course corrections.
She may have to start the year by liquidating inventory in order to raise cash to pay vendors for merchandise that might better meet consumer needs. Whether she (or anyone) can make both of those things happen is a major question mark.
J.C. Penney is not inimmediate danger. It has managed its cash well and has minimized its losses. And its $4 billion in debt is less than half of the debt Sears is carrying. In addition, while Sears has roughly the same debt as it does assets, J.C. Penney closed Q3 with $8.4 billion in assets versus that $4 billion in debt.
That gives the company some room to maneuver, but not much. It's reasonable to think that Penney wants to close the books on its disastrous 2018 and enter 2019 ready to fight for its survival.
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Daniel B. Klinehas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Bitcoin And Ethereum Daily Price Forecast – Crypto Market Mixed On Last Trading Session Of The Week: The Bitcoin price (BTC/USD) has edged lower as a result of a downward correction that came after its Wednesday gains. The original cryptocurrency has been consolidating in a range with the downside capped at $3,500. Having opened at $3,931.05, the digital coin dropped below the $3,900 level in the early morning session and then continued to gradually decline until it reached an intraday low of $3,826.22 in the late afternoon trading. According to data from digital currency tracker Coinmarketcap, the coin finished the session at $3,836.74. Bitcoin saw some modest gains during the early hours of today’s session, when it rose to as high as $3,863.42. However, the coin has pulled back in more recent trading and is currently trading below the level of its Thursday close.
2018 was a difficult year for Bitcoin and the broader crypto currency. The original cryptocurrency ended the year at $3,742.70, having lost more than 73% in the 12 months to December 31, amid increased regulatory pressure, high-profile cyber-attacks against crypto exchanges, a significant cool down of the ICO market and weakened investor sentiment. But with 2019 already underway, crypto supporters hope that the market could make comeback. And according to some technical indicators, a Bitcoin comeback may indeed be coming soon. Meanwhile Ethereum continues to defy market bulls and trade positive. ETH/USD pair is currently trading at $153, about 1% higher than 24 hours ago.
A broader look at the chart shows that bulls are staging a steady come and that it is likely that Ethereum could retest $160 in the course of the day. Besides the pair has managed to regain foothold above $150 although it opened trading below $150. The Relative Strength Index (RSI) has resumed the uptrend from 48.57 to the current 65.57. The indicator is in an upward sloping momentum emphasizing the bulls have the control. However, there is a mixed message from the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) which is heading south from the 2019 high at +4.95. This means that the bulls must find support above $160 to avoid a reversal below $150.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• GBP/JPY Weekly Price Forecast – British pound breaks down during the week only to rebound again || Bitcoin ransoms just are not what they used to be: (Reuters) - Give me bitcoin or your life. Seriously? The people behind a rash of bomb threats made across the United States and Canada on Thursday demanded a $20,000 ransom to be paid in bitcoin. Authorities said none of the threats - emailed to hundreds of businesses, public offices and schools - appeared credible. Frankly, the perpetrators would have been better off asking for Turkish lira. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have long been a favorite ransom tender for cyber criminals thanks to the currencies' anonymous nature. U.S. cyber security firm Chainalysis estimates that from 2012 through 2017, global ransom payments using bitcoin totaled at least $31 million. Anonymity aside, of course, the big appeal was an incredible run-up in bitcoin's value over that time. It shot from $5 a coin at the start of 2012 to nearly $20,000 at this time last year, according to data from Bitstamp, one of the larger bitcoin exchanges. Today? Not so hot. Bitcoin on Thursday was trading at around $3,250, down more than 80 percent from its record high. In the last three months alone it has plunged 50 percent. Even the currencies of some crisis-hit economies like Turkey have done better: The lira is up 30 percent since August. (GRAPHIC: Bitcoin falls on hard times - https://tmsnrt.rs/2zWLEJH) (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfus and Anna Irrera in New York; Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Matthew Lewis) || Subreddit /r/Bitcoin Hits One Million Subscriber Milestone: Stalwart Bitcoin (BTC) communitysubreddit“/r/Bitcoin”has hit the 1 million subscriber mark, according to apostfrom moderator “ibelite” on Dec. 2.
One of the most well-known online Bitcoin communities, /r/Bitcoin wasfoundedin September 2010, almosttwo yearsafter the release of the Bitcoin white paper. The subreddit has reached the 1 million subscribers point amid the recentmarket slumpbeginning on Nov. 14, which continued throughout the week as Bitcoinfell below$4,000 on Nov. 29.
The subreddit notes in its description that they are “dedicated to Bitcoin, the currency of the Internet,” continuing:
“Bitcoins are issued and managed without any central authority whatsoever: there is no government, company, or bank in charge of Bitcoin. You might be interested in Bitcoin if you like cryptography, distributed peer-to-peer systems, or economics.”
As of press time, Bitcoin is trading at around $4,022, down more than 36 percent on the month, but up more than 4 percent on the week.
An alternative subreddit, dubbed “/r/btc,” was later created on the site in order “to foster and support free and open Bitcoin discussion” in response to allegations that the /r/Bitcoin forum moderators wereengagingin censorship against certain themes, specificallydebateover increase in block size.
User “theymos,” the high-profile /r/Bitcoin moderator at the center of the censorship controversy, has also defended his alleged censorship by noting that “posts about anything especially emotionally-charged [such as the about the block size debate] will be deleted unless they introduce some very substantial new ideas about the subject.”
One dissenting redditor, whose post received an 89 percentupvote,counteredthis explanation, arguing “How is the Bitcoin community supposed to build consensus to do a hard fork when the /r/bitcoin mods ban any discussion of a hard fork proposal that does not have consensus?”
Roger Ver, a prominent advocate of Bitcoin hard fork Bitcoin Cash (BCH),tweetedhis own opinion that /r/Bitcoin is allegedly “completely censored and has been for nearly three years now.”
As reported, Bitcoin Cash was itself hard forked as a solution for Bitcoin’s scalability problem. The altcoin has a maximum block size of 8MB (as opposed to 1MB in the original Bitcoin blockchain).
Just last month, Bitcoin Cash againhard forkedinto two separate currencies, BCH andBitcoin SV(BSV), asopposing factionsfailed to reach consensus over further changes to the protocol.
As of press time, /r/btc has 231,000 subscribers — a little under a quarter of that of its rival /r/Bitcoin.
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin - BTC
Price: $3,742.70
Change in 1h: +0.16%
Market cap: $65,331,499,158.00
Ranking: 1
#Bitcoin #BTC || #USD #bitcoin Index:
23248 satoshi’s = $1
#silver: 0.0033 btc/oz || #BTCUSD Market #1H timeframe on November 21 at 07:00 (UTC) is #Bearish. #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #btc #crypto #trading #idea #report technical analysis || BTC,ETH,XRP
Last: 3992.83, 111.36, 0.36
High: 4068.00, 114.65, 0.37
Low: 3781.00, 106.00, 0.34
%: -0.02% , -0.02% , -0.02%
Total USDT: -66.71, -2.74, -0.01
#BTC #bitcoin #ETH #XRP #ripple #crypto #cryptocurrency #pricepic.twitter.com/HEP6x0G7VD || #NBA - NOV 26 / 19:00 ET
Washington Wizards VS Houston Rockets
Bet #BTC
ArcaneBet - http://bit.ly/2F1OEon
SpinPalace Sports - http://bit.ly/2v3hJNw
More NBA action http://bit.ly/NBAOddsBetting
#sports #betting #odds #basketballpic.twitter.com/j5MOhB8xxb || $BCH を50.2%制圧、マイニングプールhttps://t.co/8UxmeA3gcUのハッシュレート679PH/s。分散化すべきネットワーク、マイニングするほど赤字になる相場低迷状況で脱落マイナー増え集中化となる。特定の企業が51%占領すれば取引改ざん可能な状況だ。
https://t.co/zkLGI2lMnb || Bitcoin Cash SV Price Surges by 63% And Pushes Past $100 https://twi.li/qgc8bC #CryptoCurrencies #crypto #cryptocurrencypic.twitter.com/s0IjiQbrDW || Bitcoin Will ‘Unequivocally’ Survive, Says NYSE Chairman https://ift.tt/2Pa8Dpd ********* Please be kind and share this news. Or just let your liked.pic.twitter.com/2E9a0TWDID || BINANCE REGISTRATIONS OPEN!
#1 Crypto Exchange (0.075% FEE)
https://www.binance.com/?ref=11292701
(All airdrops and forks get distributed!)
#Bitcoin #Blockchain #trading #VC #charts #TA #ico #altscoins #trade #stockmarket #cryptomarket #decentralized #Ether #Icon #hodl #Bitfinex $BTCPpic.twitter.com/gW43f3aeFS || FINANCIAL INDICATORS:
$ trading at R14.3913
£ trading at R18.3138
€ trading at R16.4700
A Bitcoin costs R57221.00
Brent Crude $53.65
|
Trend: up || Prices: 3678.92, 3687.37, 3661.30, 3552.95, 3706.05, 3630.68, 3655.01, 3678.56, 3657.84, 3728.57
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Dollar down in early Asia with Japan wages, Aussie GDP ahead: Investing.com - The dollar fell against the yen in early Asia on Wednesday with Japan wages data ahead and Australia GDP also on tap.
USAD/JPY changed hands at 108.67, down 0.13%, while AUD/USD traded at 0.8001, up 0.06%.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was last quoted down 0.31% to 92.28.
Japan reportsaverage cash earningswith a gain f 0.5% expected for August on year. In Australia, GDP for the second quarter is due with a 0.9% gain seenon quarterand a 1.9% rise at anannual pace.
Overnight, the dollar came under pressure on Tuesday, as rising tensions between the U.S. and North Korea kept demand for safe haven currencies steady while a top Federal Reserve official urged caution over further rate increases until the pace of inflation improved.
The dollar made a subdued start to the U.S. trading week, following the Labor Day public holiday Monday, as investors fled riskier assets in the wake of North Korea’s successful test of a hydrogen bomb over the weekend.
The U.S. warned on Monday that North Korea was “begging for war” but asked the UN to respond to Pyongyang’s test of its largest and most powerful nuclear bomb with tougher sanctions to deter the regime from conducting further nuclear tests.
Rising geopolitical uncertainty stoked demand for safe haven currencies like the yen and Swiss franc, weighing on the greenback.
Investors shifted focus to monetary policy later in the session, after Fed Governor Lael Brainard urged the U.S. central bank to delay raising interest rates as the pace of inflation remains subdued.
Brainard’s comments come a few hours ahead of speeches by Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari and Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan due later in the session.
The euro and sterling benefited from the slump in the greenback with latter surging above $1.30 for the first time in three weeks.
The rise in the euro comes ahead of a European Central Bank interest rate decision due Thursday.
Related Articles
Forex - Dollar down in early Asia with Japan wages, Aussie GDP ahead
Bitcoin regains momentum after regulatory crackdown in China
Dollar falls on concern about North Korea, Fed rate outlook || JPMORGAN: Here's who we think will replace Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway: Warren Buffett (The "Oracle of Omaha" and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett.Paul Morigi / Stringer / Getty Images) In Berkshire Hathaway's 2014 letter, Warren Buffett wrote that the legendary conglomerate's "future CEOs should come from internal candidates whom the Berkshire board has grown to know well." JPMorgan believes that it has identified the most likely internal candidate. The bank's analysts named Greg Abel as the most likely successor to Warren Buffett as Berkshire Hathaway's next CEO in a new report. Abel currently heads Berkshire Hathaway's utility business and is relatively young at age 55. The report notes Buffett's frequent praise of Abel. In the 2014 letter, Buffett also wrote that the next CEO should run the company for at least 10 years and that he did not expect the board to pick a candidate likely to retire at age 65. While JPMorgan analyst Sarah E. DeWitt believes Abel to be the most likely successor, she also left the door open for other candidates as well. Ajit Jain, the head of Berkshire Hathaway Reinsurance, was also named as a potential successor, though DeWitt believes that his age may be an obstacle at 66 years old. But DeWitt does not expect a new Berkshire CEO to happen anytime soon. " Importantly, [Buffett] shows no signs of slowing and could possibly be at the helm for another decade in our view. In fact, his partner, Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, is 93 and also very active," she wrote. Buffett has served as Berkshire Hathaway's CEO for 52 years and is currently 87 years old. DeWitt writes that in that time, Buffett's "ability to identify attractive acquisition candidates as well as deploy huge sums of money quickly and decisively is unmatched." Whoever becomes the next CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, DeWitt does not expect performance to suffer greatly. Though she foresees a sell off following Buffett's eventual retirement, DeWitt believes this will only serve to create a buying opportunity as the stock price falls. DeWitt writes, "This could ultimately present a buying opportunity because the underlying fundamentals should continue to improve and the board could repurchase significant amounts of stock if the shares fell below 1.2x book value." NOW WATCH: A massive Hamptons estate that once belonged to the Ford family is on the market for a potentially record-breaking $175 million More From Business Insider JAMIE DIMON: 'There is hope for solving our biggest challenges' 'Jamie Dimon doesn't have the strongest track record when it comes to looking over the hill': Bitcoin community reacts to JPMorgan CEO's comments JPMorgan is starting a new investment banking squad to help retailers facing the Amazon threat View comments || Bitcoin bounces 20 percent after dipping below $3,000: By Jemima Kelly
LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin bounced by more than 20 percent in the space of just four hours on Friday, having skidded below $3,000 earlier as Chinese authorities ordered Beijing-based cryptocurrency exchanges to stop trading.
After a vertiginous climb to record highs close to $5,000 earlier this month, bitcoin had plunged almost 40 percent in the 12 following days, with the sell-off driven in large part by fears of China cracking down on the market as well as a warning from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon that bitcoin was a "fraud".
The rapidity of the fall - matched by losses across the hundreds of other cryptocurrencies that now rival bitcoin - had driven fears that a giant crypto-bubble was finally bursting. Bitcoin looked likely to record its worst week since 2013.
But after seven consecutive days of falls, bitcoin was up around 13 percent on the day by 1538 GMT at $3,637 on the U.S. Bitstamp exchange (BTC=BTSP), around 22 percent up from its earlier low and leaving it just 13 percent down on the week.
Chinese exchanges were told by authorities to immediately notify users of their closure, and to stop allowing new user registrations as of Friday, according to a government notice.
But although Chinese exchanges used to dominate bitcoin trading - according to their reports - because of the fact that they did not charge fees, volumes have plunged since January, when Chinese authorities made fees mandatory.
That, industry experts said, means that although China is still important, the crackdown there would probably not be enough to cripple bitcoin, unless it was followed by exchange shut-downs in other parts of the globe.
"Chinese volumes account for less than 10 percent of global volume - they are no big deal," said Charles Hayter, founder of cryptocurrency analysis website Cryptocompare.
Beijing-based platforms OkCoin and Huobi, which are among China's biggest exchanges, said on Friday that they planned to stop yuan-based trading by Oct. 31, confirming earlier reports.
"Waiting for the axe to fall is worse than the actual event; leaked documents seem to be clearing up uncertainty," said Hayter. "But also a bounce of this magnitude was on the cards after such steep losses."
Shanghai-based BTCChina, a major Chinese bitcoin exchange, had said on Thursday it would stop all trading from Sept. 30, citing tightening regulation. Smaller Chinese bitcoin exchanges ViaBTC, YoBTC and Yunbi also announced similar closures on Friday.
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Gareth Jones) || Bitcoin exchange BTCChina says to stop trading, sparking further slide: By Brenda Goh and Jemima Kelly
BEIJING/SHANGHAI/LONDON (Reuters) - Chinese bitcoin exchange BTCChina said on Thursday that it would stop all trading from Sept. 30, setting off a further slide in the value of the cryptocurrency that left it over 30 percent away from the record highs it hit earlier in the month.
China has boomed as a cryptocurrency trading location in recent years, as investors and speculators flocked to domestic exchanges that formerly allowed users to conduct trades for free, boosting demand.
But that has prompted regulators in the country to crack down on the cryptocurrency sector, in a bid to stamp out potential financial risks as consumers pile into a highly risky and speculative market that has seen unprecedented growth this year.
Just hours after BTCChina announced its closure, Chinese news outlet Yicai reported that the country plans to shut down all bitcoin exchanges by the end of September, citing financial sources in Shanghai.
BTCChina said its decision was based on a Sept. 4 directive from Chinese authorities that expressed concern over investment risks involved in cryptocurrencies and ordered a ban on so-called initial coin offerings, or ICOs - the practice of creating and selling digital currencies or tokens to investors to finance start-up projects.
That ban, as well as warnings by regulators in other countries, has driven fears of a wider crackdown and prompted a sell-off that has helped wipe almost $60 billion off the total value of cryptocurrencies since they hit record highs at the start of the month, according to industry website Coinmarketcap.
"The Chinese ban is causing a panic in the market as mixed messages and lack of clarity has turned sentiment negative," said Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis site Cryptocompare.
BTCChina, one of China's largest bitcoin trading platforms, which also runs an international exchange out of Hong Kong, will stop registration of new users from Thursday, it said on its official microblog.
"We will stop all trades on the digital trading platform starting Sept. 30," it said. Its co-founder, Bobby Lee, told Reuters the move would not affect trading on the BTCC international exchange, however.
The price of bitcoin tumbled particularly sharply on BTCChina after the news. By 1233 GMT, it was down 18 percent on the exchange, at 20,510 yuan.
On U.S. exchange Bitstamp, it slid as much as 10 percent to a five-week low of $3,426.92, having hit a record high of nearly $5,000 on Sept. 2.
PANIC SPREADS
Panic also spread to other cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin's main rival ether - sometimes called ethereum - also down around 10 percent, according to Coinmarketcap.
Reuters and other media had reported this week, citing sources, that China planned to further ban exchanges that allowed virtual currency trading but the regulator has yet to make an announcement.
Spokeswomen for OkCoin and Huobi, BTCChina's main rivals in China, declined to say whether they would announce similar moves. Huobi said it had not received any clear directives from regulators to do so.
Investors in China contributed up to 2.6 billion yuan, or $397 million, worth of cryptocurrencies through initial coin offerings in January-June, state-run media have said, citing data from the National Committee of Experts on Internet Financial Security Technology.
Adding to bitcoin's woes this week was a warning by Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan, that the cryptocurrency was a "fraud" and was set to "blow up" - comments that helped fuel a slide of as much as 11 percent in bitcoin on Wednesday.
Bitcoin is on track for its worst month since January 2015.
(Reporting by Brenda Goh, Beijing Monitoring Desk and Jemima Kelly; Editing byLarry King) || Bitcoin ETFs: More Issuers Join the Race: The rising tide for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, Ethereum and Ripple have lately shaken the investing world. Among the lot, bitcoin has been firing on all cylinders since the beginning of 2017, having hit a series record highs. In three months, the price of the digital currency has surged about 94%.
Investors should note that bitcoins are ‘mined’ by using a greater amount of computer processing power. However, since there is a fixed amount of bitcoins, as the limit is reached, it becomes hard to ‘mine’ for the coins. The best part of this system is that it is beyond the reach of central banks (read: Explaining Bitcoin and Crypto Currency).
The currency is in the limelight probably because of the fact that “bitcoin isn’t regulated by any government and has been used by consumers worldwide to shelter assets from inflation or political upheavals in their home countries.” As per an article published on CNBC, bitcoin is emerging as a safe haven asset like gold.
source: coindesk.com
Needless to say, amid a sky-high price rise, the digital currency is gaining favor from ETF issuers, though the SEC is no quite happy with the concept. After rejecting the filing for an ETF on this cryptocurrency by Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, the SEC is reviewing its decision once again.
The SEC is seemingly looking for more proof of safety in this trade. Meanwhile, some more ETF issuers have lined up to seek regulatory approval with their bitcoin-related products (read: Will We Finally See a Bitcoin ETF?).
Inside New Filings
Investment firmVanEckfiled for an exchange-traded fund to invest in bitcoin derivatives in mid-August. Though VanEck acknowledged the riskiness of the product and believes that this digital currency is no match to gold as far as safe-haven status is concerned, the issuer could not overlook bitcoin’s monumental craze (read: Bitcoin Skyrockets, Race to First Cryptocurrency ETF Heats Up).
VanEck noted that the digital currency cannot even replace the necessity of the dollar, rather it is likely to end up in carving a place for itself as a niche product. VanEck’s proposed product will invest in certain Bitcoin Instruments through the Subsidiary and the investment in that subsidiary is likely to be limited to 25% of the portfolio, thus meaningfully lowering the risks.
After VanEck,ETF Firm REXalso planned a new fund that will invest in bitcoin-based derivatives. There are two products filed by REX, namelyREX Bitcoin Strategy ETFandREX Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF. The ticker codes and expense ratios of those funds are yet to be disclosed.
As per the filing, the long fund “seeks to achieve its investment objective, under normal circumstances, by obtaining investment exposure to an actively managed portfolio of financial instruments providing long exposure to movements in the value of bitcoin, together with an actively managed portfolio of fixed income instruments” while the short fund is intended to offer the negative exposure of the same asset.
What Lies Ahead?
The tussle between the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission and Winklevoss over the launch has been going on for about three years. In fact, the issuer has restructured the proposal for the Bitcoin ETF multiple times.
However, it looks like that the SEC may approve a fund in the coming days given rising pressure from issuers. Plus, the Russian government is also expected to make cryptocurrencies legal financial instruments in 2018, as per the source. Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari pointed to the strength of the blockchain technology supporting bitcoin.
Among other interested candidates, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has teamed up with Gemini, the bitcoin exchange backed by investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, in order to launch cryptocurrency derivatives trading.
Bitcoin’s Impact on the ETF World?
While it is still unclear if we will get a bitcoin ETF soon, the sheer success of the cryptocurrencies should benefit semiconductor ETFs likeiShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF SOXXandVanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF SMH. This is because mining of cryptocurrencies needs the usage of semiconductors. A hardware known as an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) is designed explicitly for mining bitcoin.
As per Bloomberg, there was a 10-fold rise from April to June in the Ethereum market which helped shares of Nvidia Corp. NVDA and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD substantially (read: Should You Buy These Semiconductor ETFs & Stocks Now).
On the other hand, since some view the currency as “digital gold,” bitcoin trading may snatch some buyers fromSPDR Gold Trust GLD. Bitcoin’s un-correlated nature to the other asset classes and strong momentum may hurt GLD in the current scenario.
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Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportAdvanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) : Free Stock Analysis ReportGOLD (LONDON P (GLD): ETF Research ReportsISHARS-PHLX SEM (SOXX): ETF Research ReportsVANECK-SEMICON (SMH): ETF Research ReportsNVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment ResearchWant the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report || Top 5 things that moved markets this past week: What will next week bring? Investing.com – Take a peek at the top 5 things that rocked U.S. markets this week Gold notched second weekly gain Gold continued its recent trend higher, notching its second straight weekly gain, as ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Korean peninsula sparked demand for safe-haven gold offsetting expectations of tighter monetary policy. In a rising interest rate environment, investor appetite for gold weakens as the opportunity cost of holding the precious metal increases relative to other interest-bearing assets such as bonds. Money mangers continued to pile into gold, however, as a report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday showed net bullish bets on gold rose to 231,000, the highest in eleven months. Dollar dodged bears after weak jobs report The U.S. dollar index rebounded from session lows against a basket of global currencies on Friday, as investors shrugged off the weaker-than-expected nonfarm payrolls in August amid analysts' comments that it would take a series of “horrendous” payrolls data for the Fed to abandon its plan to hike rates once more this year. The U.S. economy created 156,000 jobs in August, missing consensus estimates for the creation of 180,000 jobs. The jobless rate unexpectedly rose in August to 4.4% while average hourly earnings fell short of expectations, slowing to 0.1% from 0.3% in the prior month. The dollar had started the week on the back foot, falling to a 16-month low after North Korea launched a missile that flew over Japan. Bitcoin edged closer to $5,000 Bitcoin surged to all-time highs Friday, as investors piled into the cryptocurrency amid expectations that it would soon hit $5,000 for the first time in its nine-year history. Bitcoin hit a high of $4,936.9 before paring gains as market participants appeared to take profit on the recent rally which has seen Bitcoin gain more than 70% in August and more than 400% over the past year. Crude oil futures struggled to weather the storm as weekly slump continued Story continues Crude futures settled higher on Friday, but failed to pare losses sustained earlier during the week, as record flooding in the oil heartland of Texas due to storm Harvey weighed on refinery activity reducing demand for crude oil. Exactly a week after storm Harvey crossed the Gulf of Mexico off Port O'Connor, Texas, nearly a quarter of U.S. refining capacity has been taken offline, representing roughly 4.4 million barrels per day. The slump in refinery activity sparked fears of a fuel shortage, as gasoline prices hit two-year highs on Thursday before paring gains, after two refineries began to restart. Crude posted its fifth-straight weekly loss on Friday. Apple hit all-time highs Shares of Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) hit all-time highs on Thursday, after the company announced the launch event date for its newest smartphone. The launch event, slated for Sept. 12, will see the tech giant unveil its latest smartphone, the iPhone 8. Apple usually sells its new phones within a week or so of the announcement. As well as its latest smartphone, Apple is expected to announce several upcoming products, including two new iterative iPhone updates. Apple’s most high-end iPhone 8 is rumored to fetch a price tag starting from $1,000. Shares of Apple closed at $164.05, up 0.03% on Friday. Related Articles California lawmakers block Mojave water bill, Cadiz surges Weekly ETF Gainers / Losers New XXVI holding company is last step in Alphabet restructuring || How Apple's iPhone has improved: These days, we yawn and roll our eyes at each new smartphone model. The changes seem to be tinyevolutionary. Where are the big steps forward? Well, it may be that there arent many big steps left to take. Every kind of machine evolves, finally reaching an ultimate incarnation of itself. How often, for example, do you replace your refrigerator? Or your air conditioner? There just arent many compelling new features left to add. Even so, weve come a very long way since 2007, when Apple ( AAPL ) released the very first iPhone . Every year, theres another model, each faster and loaded up with more features. As we prepare for the September 12 unveiling of the 10th-anniversary iPhone, heres a chronology of what was new with each years iteration. The iPhone gets a total body makeover every few years. This year, its time. iPhone (June 2007) The very first iPhone introduced a very long list of firsts. The big one, of course, was that it was all touchscreenno typing keys. Not just a touchscreena multitouch screen, with all of those touch gestures we now take for granted, like pinch to zoom and swiping through lists. It also introduced visual voicemail, where your messages appear in an inbox. Its email and web browser apps were full-fledged, showing all the formatting youd see on a desktop computera first for phones. Its also worth remembering what the first iPhone didnt have: A front camera. A camera flash. Video recording. Cut and paste. GPS. MMS (sending photos as text messages). A memory-card slot. Voice dialing. Word-complete suggestions. A choice of carrier (it was AT&T [ T ] only, and really slow). And there was no app store. You got 16 apps, and you were happy. The base model cost $500, and packed 4 gigabytes of storage. As I wrote in my review in The New York Times: The iPhone is revolutionary; its flawed. Its substance; its style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones. Here it is: The Apple product that not even Apple guessed would change the world. iPhone 3G (July 2008) The second iPhone was intended to address the first phones Achilles heel: Its excruciatingly slow internet. This model took advantage of AT&Ts 3G network, which was at least twice as fast as the old one. Story continues The storage options doubled, to 8 and 16 GB. A white color option debuted. And the phone gained true GPS. (The original phone simulated GPS by triangulating from known WiFi hot spots and cell towers.) This iPhone was called 3G because it could get onto the 3G cellular networks (and NOT because it was the third-generation iPhone; it wasnt). Software: Focusing on only the hardware of the iPhone is missing the bigger picture: Each new phone is accompanied by a new version of its system software, which we now call iOS. In general, each new iOS versions features also work on earlier iPhone models. The iPhone 3G, for example, was accompanied by the debut of the App Store, a single, central catalog of add-on apps. The idea that you could download new programs directly onto the iPhone, instead of having to transfer them from a computer, was a huge breakthrough at the time. iPhone 3GS (June 2009) The S, Steve Jobs said, stood for speed. This phone was faster in every way. Its camera got bumped up to three megapixels, and gained a long list of features: auto-focus, tap-to-focus, exposure lock, auto white balance, auto macro shots, rule of thirds grid lines, and a 5x digital zoom. A new magnetometer permitted the creation of the Compass app. The S in 3GS stood for speed. Software: Video recording! And voice control of music playback and dialing. iPhone 4 (June 2010) The comfortable rounded plastic back disappeared in this redesigned model, which had crisp edges and hardened glass front and back panelsplus the first Retina screen (much higher resolution). A front-facing camera appeared on this model, plus, for the first time, an LED flash. Apple also added a second microphone, at the top, for noise cancellation during calls, and a gyroscope, which can precisely calculate how youre turning the phone in space (handy for games). This was the first iPhone that could run on the CDMA cellular network, the one used by Verizon ( VZ ) and Sprint ( S ). Once Apples early exclusive contract with AT&T ended in 2011, the iPhone 4 became the first model offered by Verizon and other carriers. No more rounded back in the iPhone 4. Software: iOS 4 introduced FaceTime video conferencing (over WiFi only) and limited multitasking, including an app switcher. iPhone 4S (October 2011) This model introduced Siri, the voice assistant that paved the way for Microsofts ( MSFT ) Cortana, Google ( GOOG , GOOGL ) Assistant, Amazon ( AMZN ) Echo, and so on. The 4S was, of course, faster, and its camera received its usually resolution bump (to 8 megapixels, good for 1080p hi-def videos). The iPhone 4sstarring Siri. Software: iOS 5 was a big one. It introduced iMessages, the Notification Center, Reminders, built-in Twitter ( TWTR ), iCloud, and the ability to let nearby computers get online via tethering (Personal Hotspot). iPhone 5 (September 2012) The iPhone 5 had a thinner body and taller screen; compatibility with much faster LTE cellular data networks; and a faster, better camera, capable of snapping stills while recording video. With this phone, Apple eliminated the 30-pin connector that it had used for charging and syncing all iPhones and iPads to dateand replaced it with the tiny Lightning connector. Millions of people had to buy and fuss with adapters. The iPhone 5 introduced the Lightning connector for charging. Software: iOS 6 introduced panorama mode for the Camera app, more Siri commands, one-tap responses to incoming texts and calls (like, DrivingIll call you later). Apple also replaced Googles fantastic pre-installed Google Maps app with a shockingly incomplete Apple app. Its guidance was so poor, Apple CEO Tim Cook wound up apologizing for it and suggesting that people use Google Maps instead. iPhone 5s (September 2013) Apples fingerprint sensor, cleverly embedded in the Home button, let you unlock the phone without a password for the first time. As usual, the camera got better and the processor got fasterits A7 was the first 64-bit chip ever used in a phone. Apple replaced its time-honored, coin-shaped iPhone earbuds with the blobbier AirPods earbuds. (A budget model, the iPhone 5C, came out at the same time, in a choice of five plastic colors. It was otherwise essentially identical to 2012s iPhone 5.) The iPhone 5s, starring the Touch ID fingerprint reader. Software: iOS 7 was a huge software release. It introduced a massive and controversial redesign. Its sparse look eliminated skeuomorphic design elements, in which on-screen things depict real-world materials (lined yellow paper for Notes, leather binding for Calendar, wooden shelves for iBooks). iOS 7 also came loaded with new features: AirDrop made it simple to shoot pictures, notes, and contacts among iPhones. Control Center is the panel that slides up from the bottom of the screen to offer commonly used settings. In the Camera app: slow-motion video, zooming while recording, photo filters, and 10-frames-a-second bursts. iPhone 6 (September 2014) With this model, Apple followed Samsungs leadand went for bigger screens. There were now, for the first time, two iPhones in the same line: the iPhone 6 and the larger 6 Plus. Both had faster chips and Apple Pay (wireless payments at special cash-register terminals). The 6 family gained a barometer to detect altitude changes (?!), and upgraded wireless components that permitted WiFi calling. The upgraded cameras offered slow-mo video at 240 frames a second (quarter-speed), phase-detection autofocus (faster and more accurate), and optical image stabilization on the 6 Plus. The front-facing camera got better low-light capability, burst mode, and HDR (high dynamic range) ability. The iPhone 6 dramatically increased the iPhones screen sizeand body size Software: In iOS 8, Apple finally added a row of three next-word guesses above the keyboard, to save typing. The Continuity feature permitted interaction between the phone and a Mac, like calling and texting from the Macand, in later iOS/Mac versions, copying on one device and pasting on the other. Family Sharing allows up to six family members to share stuff theyve bought from Apple (music, videos, apps, etc.). The Camera app gained a self timer and a time-lapse mode, iCloud Drive (Apples version of Dropbox) debuted. Eventually, in iOS 8.4, Apple Music came alongits subscription music plan. iPhone 6S and SE (September 2015) In addition to the usual speed and camera-resolution enhancements (12 megapixels, 4K video), the 6S and 6S Plus introduced what Apple calls 3D Touch: a pressure-sensitive screen. You can press harder on an app to see a menu of common commands, or peek into links or lists without actually leaving the screen youre on. These models also featured a front-facing flash that works by overcranking the front-facing screen by 3X. (The iPhone SE packed most of the same features of the 6S into a much smaller bodythe traditional iPhone sizeto the delight of the small-handed.) The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus introduced a pressure-sensitive screen. Software: The iOS 9 update introduced debuted Live Photos, which are three-second video clips that you can capture with every photo. iPhone 7 (September 2016) Most people will probably remember the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus primarily as the phones that killed off the headphone jack. But these models also gained waterproofing (up to 30 minutes under a meter of water), a larger battery, stabilized camera even on the smaller phone, better low-light photos, an array of four LED flashes on the back for greater brightness, stereo speakers, and a Home button that doesnt actually move, but instead just simulates a click using a vibration motor. On the iPhone 7 Plus, Apple installed two lenses: one wide-angle, one a 2X zoom. This is true, optical zoom, not the cruddy digital zoom on most previous phones. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus had no headphone jack. Theyre shown here with what Apple hopes youll use instead: the AirPods. Software: iOS 10 introduced a huge range of small tweaks, and a couple of big ones. First, there has been a colossal revamp of Messages, Apples text-messaging app, adding a wide range of visual treats, animations, and effects to dress up your message. Second, iOS 10 requires fewer steps to unlock the phonefor example, to check the latest alerts or fire up the camera. iPhone X and 8? (September 2017) Nobody knows for sure what Apple will unveil in the new iPhones on September 12. But the rumor millers seem pretty confident about a few things: A massive redesign. No more black panels above and below the screen. Instead, a gorgeous OLED screen will extend to all four edges of the flagship phone, rumored to be called the iPhone X. No more Home button. Youll have to get back to the Home screen, and perform other functions, using new swiping gestures on the screen. (Or maybe therell be an on -screen Home button.) Face ID. Youll be able to unlock the phone by looking at it. Pad-based charging. As on the Samsung Galaxy, instead of plugging in a cable, youll have the option of setting it down on a pad) to charge. (Thats why front and back will be glass.) AR features. Augmented reality means seeing graphics overlaid on the cameras view of the world around you: arrows that show which way to walk to get to the nearest subway stop, for example, or info boxes that identify the prices of apartments in nearby buildings. Nosebleed price. The number people are kicking around is $1,000. However, theres also some intel that a less expensive iPhone model or two (called iPhone 8) will be released simultaneously, without the OLED screen. Software: We already know what iOS 11 will bring, because Apples told us! It will be a lot of nips and tucks, like auto-Do Not Disturb when youre driving; a more real-sounding voice for Siri; screen recording; more compact photo and video formats to save space; and person-to-person payments within the Messages app, like Venmo. Heres my complete writeup of iOS 11. See you on September 12! Well be at Apples unveiling show at 10 a.m. Pacific time on September 12, live-blogging the event and posting a complete set of articles, photos, and videos about whats new. Were pretty sure you wont want to miss it! More from David Pogue: Gullivers Gate is a $40 million world of miniatures in Times Square The 5 best new features of this weeks YouTube redesign Samsungs Bixby voice assistant is ambitious, powerful, and half-baked Is through-the-air charging a hoax? Electrify your existing bike in 2 minutes with these ingenious wheels Marty Cooper, inventor of the cellphone: The next step is implantables The David Pogue Review: Windows 10 Creators Update Now I get it: Bitcoin David Pogues search for the worlds best air-travel app The little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their fingers David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, hes davidpogue.com . On Twitter, hes @pogue . On email, hes poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here , or you can sign up to get his columns by email . || REPORT: China tells its banks to stop doing business with North Korea: zhou xiaochuan pboc (Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's Bank of China.Jacky Naegelen/Reuters) China reportedly told its banks to stop doing business with North Korea. The People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, told banks to "strictly implement United Nations sanctions against North Korea," four sources told Reuters . Reuters added that banks were "told to stop providing financial services to new North Korean customers and to wind down loans with existing customers." The UN Security Council last week unanimously voted to levy a new round of economic sanctions in response to the country's recent nuclear provocations. Much attention has been paid to the commercial and financial ties between China and North Korea in recent months. Some have argued that the North Korean crisis could be "solved" if China applied economic pressure on the isolated government. In the 2016 " US-Korea Yearbook ," published in the spring by the US-Korea Institute at the School of Advanced International Studies, Han May Chan, then a second-year student, briefly explained the argument that the success of economic sanctions might depend on China's participation. Decades of sanctions have left other world powers with less sway over North Korea, she said: "The DPRK has grown accustomed to the hostile sanctions regime for decades. Therefore, the effectiveness and the success of the current sanctions regime actually depends solely on China and North Korea. Unless the DPRK believes that the benefits from trade with the international community are greater than the current security benefits of prioritizing its military-first economy, North Korea will have little incentive to change its policy." Others, however, have questioned whether a strong response from China — and China joining North Korea's adversaries — could lead to the conclusion desired by the US and the UN: the denuclearization of North Korea. Of North Korea's likely response should China turn against it, Jeffrey Lewis, the director of an East Asia program at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, told The New York Times , "The last thing you would do in that situation is give up your independent nuclear capability." He added: "The one thing you hold that they have no control over. You would never give that up in that situation." The UN Security Council resolution, drafted by the US, aims to "cap North Korea's oil imports, ban textile exports, end additional overseas laborer contracts, suppress smuggling efforts, stop joint ventures with other nations, and sanction designated North Korean government entities," according to CNN . Story continues China also previously announced a ban on imports of iron ore, iron, lead, coal, and seafood from North Korea. Check out the full report at Reuters » NOW WATCH: Bitcoin's bubble swells with a new record high More From Business Insider North Korea's biggest trading partner is China — and it's not even close Here's what North Korea trades with the world Markets are shrugging off North Korea's latest missile launch View comments || STOCKS CLIMB TO A RECORD HIGH: Here's what you need to know: (magnezja/Flickr)
Stocks climbed above 2,500 for the first time, boosted by technology and a weaker dollar after August retail sales unexpectedly fell.
The S&P 500 increased 0.2%. Meanwhile, both the Dow and the more tech-heavy Nasdaq climbed 0.3%.
First up, the scoreboard:
• Dow:22,268.34, +64.86, (+0.29%)
• S&P 500:2,500.23, +4.61, (+0.18%)
• Nasdaq:6,448.47, +19.38, (+0.30%)
• US 10-year yield:2.20%, +0.005
• WTI crude oil:$49.90, +0.01, +0.02%
1.An investing legend who's nailed the bull market at every turn sees no end in sight for the 269% rally. Laszlo Birinyi doesn't put any stock in bearish arguments, and thinks that the S&P 500 will continue higher for the foreseeable future.
2.The stock market's safety net is disappearing — and it has its own success to blame. Money spent by corporations on share buybacks has declined in each of the last two quarters as valuations have surged.
3.Bitcoin's wild volatility continues with $500 swing. The cryptocurrency has seen large price swings since a handful of notable market experts discredited it.
4.Deutsche Bank says that the dollar and euro are all about politics. An asset management team says that instead of reacting to economic developments, the greenback and its European counterpart have swung more on political occurrences in the US and France.
5.Markets shrugged off North Korea's latest missile launch. The Japanese yen and gold, two traditional safe haven assets, failed to climb on the news.
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• STOCKS SOAR TO A NEW RECORD: Here's what you need to know || Gold / Silver / Copper futures - weekly outlook: September 4 - 8: Gold hits 10-month high after weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report Investing.com - Gold prices rose to the highest level in ten months on Friday after the latest U.S. employment report came in weaker-than-expected, underlining doubts over prospects for a third Federal Reserve rate hike this year. The U.S. economy added 156,000 jobs in August from the prior month, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, the Labor Department said. Economists had expected 180,000 new jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.3%. Gold futures for December delivery ended up 0.57% at $1,329.79 on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, its highest close since September 2016. For the week, gold prices jumped 2.46%, the largest weekly gain since February amid heightened geopolitical tensions and growing doubts over the possibility of another U.S. interest rate increase this year. Gold is highly sensitive to rising rates, which lift the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets such as bullion, while boosting the dollar. The dollar initially weakened after the jobs report, which also supported metals prices. A weaker dollar makes gold futures, which are denominated in the U.S. currency, cheaper for foreign buyers. The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.25% to 92.82 late Friday after initially falling to a low of 92.05. For the week, the index was up 0.1% after ending the month of August lower, its sixth consecutive monthly decline, notching up its longest losing streak in a decade. The index is down 9.7% so far this year. Elsewhere in metals trading, silver futures were up 1.37% to $17.71 a troy ounce late Friday, its highest close since June 7 and platinum was up 1.28% to a six-month high of $1,011.25. Among base metals, copper for December delivery closed up 0.73% to $3.121 a pound. Prices are hovering at nearly three-year highs after recent rally spurred by growing confidence in the global economy. In the week ahead , market watchers will be awaiting the outcome of Thursday’s European Central Bank meeting for fresh clues on when the central bank will shift away from its ultra-easy policy. Story continues In the U.S., a report on service sector growth will be the highlight of the holiday-shortened week. Ahead of the coming week, Investing.com has compiled a list of these and other significant events likely to affect the markets. Monday, September 4 The UK is to release data on construction activity. Financial markets in the U.S. and Canada are to be closed for the Labor Day holiday. Tuesday, September 5 The Reserve Bank of Australia is to announce its benchmark interest rate and publish a rate statement which outlines economic conditions and the factors affecting the monetary policy decision. Switzerland is to publish inflation figures. The UK is to release data on service sector activity. The U.S. is to release a report on factory orders. Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard is to speak at an event in New York, while Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is to speak at an event in Minnesota. Wednesday, September 6 Australia is to release data on second quarter economic growth. Canada is to release reports on the trade balance and labor productivity. Later in the day, the Bank of Canada is to announce its benchmark interest rate and publish a rate statement. The U.S. is to publish figures on the trade balance and the Institute for Supply Management is to publish its manufacturing index. Thursday, September 7 Australia is to release data on retail sales and the trade balance. The UK is to publish industry data on house price inflation. The ECB is to announce its latest monetary policy decision and President Mario Drahi is to hold a press conference. The U.S. is to report on initial jobless claims. Friday, September 8 China is to release data on the trade balance. The UK is to report on manufacturing production and the trade balance. Canada is to round up the week with its monthly employment report. Related Articles Forex - Weekly outlook: September 4 - 8 Bitcoin rally gathers steam, nears $5,000 CFTC: S&P 500 Net Longs at 1-Year High; Gold Net Longs at 11-Month High
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
BTC Real Time Price: ThePriceOfBTC: $4168.00 #bitstamp;
$4168.30 #GDAX;
$4165.96 #gemini;
$4173.00 #kraken;
$4170.99 #hitbtc;
$4226.32 #cex; || ¿Negociando con Bitcoin? Antes que nada consulta su precio oficial en línea #Cotización http://www.preciobitcoin.net/ || I liked a @YouTube video http://youtu.be/nY__czzeAEA?a What The Bitcoin Surge Could Mean For Gold | CNBC || The Bitcoin rollercoaster continues...
#bitcoin #tech #cryptocurrency #sundaythoughts #sunday
https://buff.ly/2uBITJ7 || Sep 02, 2017 09:30:00 UTC | 4,692.10$ | 3,955.60€ | 3,623.20£ | #Bitcoin #btc pic.twitter.com/zUXy99fPFb || #BuyBitcoin for #BitcoinBetting and place your #Bitcoin #Bets today at http://btf.st/CoinMama pic.twitter.com/nzgoEEz2zD || One Bitcoin now worth $4698.42@bitstamp. High $4700.00. Low $4532.58. Market Cap $77.684 Billion #bitcoin || Block: 479637
Time: 2017-08-19 00:18:08
Size: 740745 bytes
Tags: #Bitcoin #Blockchain #BCC #BCH #BitcoinCash #Bothttps://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/block/479637 … || shrink links get #bitcoins ---> http://1ink.cc/?ref=94&btz78=0609081213 … #Siteptc #Money #Btc 1502604356 || Fidelity Investments Adds Cryptocurrency Integration Through Coinbase http://dlvr.it/Pdm9CG #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/0Z1RDLNylV
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Trend: up || Prices: 4403.74, 4409.32, 4317.48, 4229.36, 4328.41, 4370.81, 4426.89, 4610.48, 4772.02, 4781.99
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis for 2016-10-20]
BTC Price: 630.86, BTC RSI: 57.45
Gold Price: 1265.60, Gold RSI: 38.34
Oil Price: 50.43, Oil RSI: 59.17
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin is money, U.S. judge says in case tied to JPMorgan hack: By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bitcoin qualifies as money, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in a decision linked to a criminal case over hacking attacks against JPMorgan Chase & Co and other companies. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan rejected a bid by Anthony Murgio to dismiss two charges related to his alleged operation of Coin.mx, which prosecutors have called an unlicensed bitcoin exchange. Murgio had argued that bitcoin did not qualify as "funds" under the federal law prohibiting the operation of unlicensed money transmitting businesses. But the judge, like her colleague Jed Rakoff in an unrelated 2014 case, said the virtual currency met that definition. "Bitcoins are funds within the plain meaning of that term," Nathan wrote. "Bitcoins can be accepted as a payment for goods and services or bought directly from an exchange with a bank account. They therefore function as pecuniary resources and are used as a medium of exchange and a means of payment." The decision did not address six other criminal counts that Murgio faces, Nathan wrote. Lawyers for Murgio did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Prosecutors last year charged Murgio over the operation of Coin.mx, and in April charged his father Michael with participating in bribery aimed at supporting it. Authorities have said Coin.mx was owned by Gery Shalon, an Israeli man who, along with two others, was charged with running a sprawling computer hacking and fraud scheme targeting a dozen companies, including JPMorgan, and exposing personal data of more than 100 million people. That alleged scheme generated hundreds of millions of dollars of profit through pumping up stock prices, online casinos, money laundering and other illegal activity, prosecutors have said. Shalon has pleaded not guilty, and is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. He hired new lawyers last month and is seeking permission to replace lawyers who joined the case in June, a Monday court filing showed. The case is U.S. v Murgio et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-00769. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by David Gregorio) || Coen brothers are writing 'Dark Web,' the Silk Road movie: Heads up, Fargo fans: Fox is making a movie called Dark Web about Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht , and the studio enlisted the help of the Coen brothers. The siblings are on board to write the film's screenplay based on the Wired series that tells the story of Ulbricht's empire and its fall in the hands of authorities. Silk Road was once a thriving online black market selling illegal drugs, weapons and even the services of hitmen, where buyers and sellers dealt in Bitcoins as their main currency. Ulbricht, who was known in the community under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, began building it back in 2010. Five years later, he was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted on seven charges of money laundering, drug trafficking, conspiracy and computer hacking, among other things. The controversial figure also ordered a hit on five people, including a blackmailer, according to a transcript of his conversations with assassins that Wired published . While DPR paid for the hits, nobody actually got killed. As if those elements weren't enough to make a good thriller, one of the federal agents who investigated the case also received a six-and-a-half year sentence. He was found guilty of stealing $800,000 worth of Bitcoins from the marketplace while the feds were investigating the case. It's unclear if the Coen brothers will also direct Dark Web, but we're sure a lot of people will be thrilled if they sign up for that part, as well. Besides the crime thriller Fargo , they also directed and wrote a number of other award-winning films, including True Grit , No Country for Old Men and Spielberg's Bridge of Spies . || Dave Nadig's Deep Dive On New ETF Liquidity Rules: When the SEC published draft rules for mutual fund and ETF liquidity last year,I was less than complimentary. I pointed out that, for instance, virtually all corporate and high-yield bond ETFs would fail to meet the requirements on illiquid assets.
That rule issailing through(with some small changes) for mutual funds, but the press is reporting that ETFs got a pass. That’s not quite true.
Some BackgroundThe original proposal—and the current version—focused on all open-ended funds maintaining a liquidity risk management program with the intent to ensure that it could always meet shareholder redemptions in an orderly fashion.
It was a clear response—or convenient timing at least—to the shenanigans that happened to Third Avenue’s mutual fund in the summer of 2015, when it closed for redemptions because it couldn’t sell its junk bonds fast enough.
The original proposal received an enormous amount of industry commentary, and rather than publishing a revised rule for comment, the SEC simply published a final rule, which will go into effect for most funds in December 2018.
The key components of the final rule are threefold:
1. Rules that ensure a fund always have highly liquid securities to meet redemptions
2. Rules that ensure a fund doesn’t have more than 15% of its investments in illiquid investment
3. A reporting regime that has funds classify all of their positions at least monthly and report each security as belonging to one of four liquidity buckets (the two above and two in the middle)
Much of what the SEC requested was pretty noncontroversial; however, the ETF industry argued in its various comment letters that since ETFs meet redemptions generally by in-kind transfer of underlying securities, it should be exempt from large swaths of the program.
They got a small slice of what they wanted, and it will have significant implications.
What About The ETF Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card?The SEC has defined for the first time a class of ETFs it refers to as “In-kind ETFs.” In-kind ETFs are those that use only a de minimis amount of cash in any redemption activity. The commission goes out of its way to say that it really means this: If you regularly use cash redemptions, you’re not covered here.
The second big issue is that, to qualify, you must publish your complete portfolio every single day—the same transparency standard the SEC has so far held actively managed ETFs to.
If you’re an in-kind ETF by this definition, you cansort ofavoid two components of the program: You don’t have to hold a bunch of highly liquid investments to meet redemptions, and you don’t have to classify all your portfolio holdings.
I say "sort of" because the wording of the final rule is, in my opinion, a bit different than the actual discussion of the rule in the SEC’s 400-page final rulemaking document. The actual rule simply says in-kind ETFs can consider the fact that they can redeem-out shares when drafting their liquidity risk management program. It doesn’t actually say in-kind ETFs are exempt from holding those highly liquid assets or that they don’t have to comply with the fairly onerous reporting process.
I imagine that will get cleared up and clarified, but it’s frustrating when the final rule doesn’t match the stated intent. But let’s assume that ETFs get at least a little relief there.
The Big Whammy: The 15% RuleSo what’s the big deal? The 15% illiquid cap is problematic. There’s an enormous amount of wiggle room in how to meet the assessment that a given position can be liquidated without significant impact in seven days, and all that wiggle room lands on the fund board to interpret.
The SEC discussion clearly shows that the commission understands it could be upsetting the apple cart, going so far as to say some funds will have to consider closing:
“In circumstances in which it appears unlikely that the fund will be able to reduce its illiquid investment holdings to or below 15% within a period of time commensurate with its redemption obligations, a fund’s periodic liquidity risk review could lead the fund to reconsider its continued operation as an open-end fund.”
So Who Could Get Hit Hardest Here?There are two groups that have an immediate problem. The first is ETFs that invest in less liquid securities. Funds that invest primarily in high-yield debt or bank loans may be able to argue that they can unload their whole portfolios without impact, but ultimately fund boards will have to decide how much risk they want to take in defining liberal interpretations of “illiquid.”
The second issue is large funds. Because there’s no scaling here, funds that are very large have a much higher burden than small funds. I can own 100 shares of the most illiquid microcap and probably claim correctly that I could find a buyer in week. Not so for a $100 billion fund trying to own a proportionally similar position in the same company.
This second issue is a big one, particularly for Vanguard.Vanguard’s ETFsare share classes of mutual funds. My assumption is that the root fund is what will have to make the test, not each individual share class, so it won’t get the pass on the reporting or highly liquid requirements. And Vanguard will be hit harder on the 15% illiquid cap than it would if its ETFs were in fact separate funds.
While most of Vanguard’s 70 ETFs are in highly liquid corners of the market, it’s possible that funds like theVanguard Small Cap Index Fund (VB)or theVanguard Short Term Corporate Bond Index Fund (VCSH)could face real hurdles. When I ran the volume numbers on VCSH holdings last year, I estimated that even swamping the market, it would take VCSH 16 days to trade out.
So without market impact, that’s probably a multiple—clearly a fund that probably won’t be in compliance without a pretty liberal interpretation of how the short-term corporate markets can absorb big sales.
Could Vanguard solve this problem? It would be tricky. It would need to spin the ETFs out and adopt full disclosure. That’s a lot of work to save a few funds. Then again, I’m not sure what the options are.
In the end, it does seem like ETFs dodged a BB here, if not a bullet, but the ripples from this earthquake will be felt for quite some time. I’m not suggesting we’ll see a huge raft of fund closures, but at a minimum, it’s a good year to be a lawyer advising fund boards.
At the time of writing, the author held no positions in the securities mentioned. Dave Nadig is the director of exchange-traded funds at FactSet Research Systems. You can reach him atdnadig@factset.com, or on Twitter @DaveNadig.
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Permalink| © Copyright 2016ETF.com.All rights reserved || Bank of England aims to revamp interbank payment system by 2020: LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England said on Friday it aimed to revamp the system that underpins British banking and trading in the City of London by 2020 to boost its defences against cyber-attacks and widen the number of businesses that can use it. The BoE's Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) handles transactions worth around 500 billion pounds a day - equivalent to almost a third of Britain's annual economic output. It suffered a major outage in October 2014, and in June BoE Governor Mark Carney said he wanted to make it easier for smaller firms to use the system directly rather than via large incumbent banks. On Friday the BoE set out more detailed proposals and said it planned to fund the changes by temporarily increasing the charges banks pay to use the system. "The world of payments is changing rapidly, and central banks need to keep pace if we are to deliver our mission of monetary and financial stability ... whilst also enabling innovation and competition where we can," BoE executive director Andrew Hauser said. Proposed enhancements include running the system continuously, rather than just during normal working hours, and making it easier for smaller banks, brokers and payment processing firms to access the system directly. "A key enabler for delivering these changes will be a comprehensive rebuild of the RTGS technology platform. The Bank will make decisions on its resilience, including in particular its cyber defences, in consultation with intelligence partners," the BoE said. Other goals included allowing forward-dated payments and creating an interface with the 'distributed-ledger' technology that underpins digital currencies such as Bitcoin "if/when they achieve critical mass", it said. (Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Costas Pitas and Hugh Lawson) || Indian bitcoin company raises $1.5 million from U.S., Indian investors: NEW YORK, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Unocoin, a Bangalore-based bitcoin startup, has raised $1.5 million in funding from a mix of Indian and U.S. investors, the company announced on Thursday.
The company, which runs a trading platform to buy, sell, and store bitcoins for Indian customers, said the money raised was the largest for an Indian bitcoin startup. Unocoin, which has 100,000 users and more than 30 employees, has been in operation since December 2013.
Unocoin describes itself as the Coinbase of India. San Francisco-based Coinbase is the largest U.S. bitcoin company and runs an exchange and a wallet service, among other businesses.
Funding came from Indian entities such as Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and ah! Ventures along with U.S. investors such as Digital Currency Group, Boost VC, Bank to the Future, and FundersClub.
Digital Currency Group was founded by one of the top U.S. bitcoin investors Barry Silbert, while Boost VC is run by U.S.-based Adam Draper, the son of billionaire entrepreneur Tim Draper.
"We needed a separate exchange for India. A few years ago when we wanted to buy bitcoin, there was nothing available in India," Sunny Ray, Unocoin's co-founder and president told Reuters in an interview.
"So if you want to buy bitcoin from an international exchange, you will have to do a wire transfer from India to these international exchanges and get your bitcoin and oftentimes it takes three to five days."
Unocoin raised about $200,000 in its first financing round. It started from a small hometown called Tumkur, near Bengaluru.
Bitcoin, a digital currency, was trading at $604.50 on the Bitstamp platform.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) || Winklevoss brothers name State Street as bitcoin ETF administrator: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss on Tuesday filed amendments to their proposed bitcoin exchange-traded fund, naming State Street as administrator, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Winklevoss brothers, identical twins, had filed their first application for a bitcoin ETF called Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust three years ago.
Investors have shown keen interest in the Winklevoss ETF. If approved by the SEC, this would be the first bitcoin ETF issued by a U.S. entity.
According to the amended filing, State Street will provide the fund administration and accounting services, including calculating the bitcoin trust's net asset value (NAV).
Another major change involved the ETF's custodian, Gemini Trust Company, doing monthly "proof of control" exercises and publishing the reports on the ETF's website.
"Custodian's cold storage system was purpose-built to demonstrate 'proof of control' of the private keys associated with its public bitcoin addresses," the filing said.
"The sponsor and the custodian have engaged an independent audit firm to verify that the custodian can demonstrate 'proof of control' of the private keys that control the Trust's bitcoin on a monthly basis."
Burr Pilger Mayer, based in San Francisco and known for working with venture-backed digital currency companies, has been named the ETF's auditor, the filing said.
In addition, the SEC filing said Gemini's daily auction price at 4 p.m. EDT will now be used to price the NAV of the ETF. The previous pricing mechanism was the Gemini spot price. Gemini runs a digital currency trading venue.
Since its launch in September, the Gemini auction has transacted more than 1,900 bitcoin on average per business day, which represents more than 16 percent of all U.S.-based bitcoin exchange volume, according to company data.
The daily auction along with Gemini's expansion has increased the company's market share to about 9 percent of all U.S. dollar-denominated exchange-traded bitcoin volume.
The ETF would trade under the ticker symbol COIN.
Late on Tuesday, bitcoin traded at $632.88 on the BitStamp platform.
(This version of the story adds the dropped word "bitcoin" in the 7th paragraph, fixes a typographical error in the 10th paragraph and corrects source to say 'according to company data' instead of 'Gemini said on Tuesday')
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Tom Brown) || Payments In The Marijuana Industry: How Blockchain Can Increase Profit And Security: Blockchain was born with the bitcoin, conceived as a way to make databases secure but not managed by one single person. This allows “people who do not know or trust each other [to] build a dependable ledger,” an article fromThe Economistexplained.
As the technology evolved and became more programmable, other applications like tracing a product’s identity/authenticity were found for it. In some cases, blockchain technologies have even managed to replace banks and services like those offered byPaypal Holdings Inc(NASDAQ:PYPL),Moneygram International Inc(NASDAQ:MGI) orThe Western Union Company(NYSE:WU), making transactions faster, cheaper and more secure.
Related Link:You're So Money: NY Judge Rules Bitcoin Qualify As "Funds"
“While software reduces global inequalities through intellectual capital, the blockchain today is helping to reduce global inequalities through financial capital,” Forbes contributor Jonathan Chester explained in arecent piece.
The Marijuana Industry
The legal marijuana industry often finds big hurdles in the banking system; afraid of federal regulators and the money laundering risk derived from such a cash intensive space, most banks don’t want to open accounts for these companies. In this vacuum, a few companies have come up with creative solutions.
For instance,Tokken, provides online banking services to companies in the emerging marijuana industry. As per their site, they offer “safe payment methods to consumers, and a robust compliance platform to partner banks... [eliminating] the risk of money laundering by creating a virtual barrier to cash transactions.”
“Using an indelible Blockchain ledger to ensure data integrity and a proprietary compliance program based on structured analytic techniques, Tokken is designed to comply with every relevant regulatory requirement and provide a sustainable banking solution for the cannabis,” the site added.
CEO Lamine Zarrad recently sat down with Chester and explained that operating in cash costs the marijuana industry between 20 and 25 percent of its revenue. “This is typically lost through the costs of security, storage and shrinkage, a euphemism for employee theft,” he stated. “In order to get cash back into the banking systems, Marijuana companies will work with holding companies that will hold funds on behalf of the dispensary, which the dispensary can then access. In order to get funds into the accounts, these dispensaries need to hire groups of runners who take the cash to ATMs throughout the city to deposit cash in small batches.”
But, how can the company achieve this without recurring to a bank?
Related Link:Reads For The Weed-Kend: Franchising, Canada And Snoop Dogg, Damian Marley's Cannabis Prison Venture
As Chester expounded, blockchains were created specifically to avoid banks while still meeting most audit requirements — as each transaction is both public and protected from “book-cooks.” Tokken, for example, notarizes its transactions via Tierion, a platform that “puts an immutably cryptographic summary of business records on the blockchain, which permits verification while maintaining customer privacy,” Chester concluded.
Full ratings data available on Benzinga Pro.
Do you have ideas for articles/interviews you'd like to see more of on Benzinga? Please email feedback@benzinga.com with your best article ideas. One person will be randomly selected to win a $20 Amazon gift card!
Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no interest in any of the securities or entities mentioned above.
See more from Benzinga
• Apple, PayPal A Couple Of The Only Stocks That Traded Green Today
© 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Cable & Wireless Partners With Ericsson and Cisco to Enhance Its Caribbean IP Networks: MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Aug 30, 2016) -
• C&W Communications invests in new network that will serve as backbone for IPTV services, fixed operations and part of business-to-business services
• Ericsson and Cisco will deliver an IP/MPLS network for C&W in three markets: the Bahamas, Jamaica and Barbados
• An IP backbone network in the Bahamas will be upgraded to support traffic growth and improve performance on the fixed network
Ericsson (NASDAQ:ERIC) and Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) today announced an agreement to supply and install IP networks forC&W Communications, which operates the retail brand Flow, in three Caribbean markets. The plans include an upgrade to the IP backbone network in the Bahamas to improve performance and support an increase of traffic, and a new business-to-business IP/MPLS network in Jamaica and Barbados.
The partnership is part of C&W's investment plan for the region to continue transforming its customer experience. As part of the partnership, Cisco will provide the necessary hardware while Ericsson will provide project management services.
"We needed a powerful and intelligent solution to bring IP networking to both Jamaica and Barbados, while at the same time improving the IP network in the Bahamas," says Carlo Alloni, Executive Vice-president and CTIO, C&W. "This partnership will allow us to offer even more value-added services including our world class IPTV services as well as introduce more innovative solutions to our customers."
"Our teams complemented each other with the right approach, from network analysis and planning to systems integration and customer support from Ericsson, to selecting the right routers and switches from Cisco, and finally ensuring the right flow along every step with Ericsson services," says Clayton Cruz, Vice President Ericsson Latin America and Caribbean. "The partnership has delivered real value to Cable & Wireless in terms of accelerating their IP transformation by combining end-to-end business transformation competence and experience with deep product and domain expertise."
The deal includes Cisco® routers and switches (ASR9000, ASR900 and WR4500 families), supply and installation of NMS system (EPN-M), overall project management, and customer support.
"Cisco and Ericsson working together have the combined breadth, depth and lifecycle engagement required to help operators like Cable & Wireless succeed in their transformation to an IP-centric network," says Jordi Botifoll, Cisco President Latin America & Senior Vice President in the Americas. "Working together on this project will lead Cable & Wireless to a standardized approach across other markets, so that all their business-to-business and IP fixed networks will be supported by IP/MPLS, helping them do things better and faster."
Ericsson and Cisco -- two industry leaders in the development and delivery of networking, mobility, and cloud -- formed a global business and technology partnership in November 2015 to create the networks of the future. The partnership offers customers the best of both companies: routing, data center, networking, cloud, mobility, management and control, and global services capabilities. The next-generation strategic partnership will drive growth, accelerate innovation, and speed digital transformation demanded by customers across industries. The first product from the partnership, Ericsson Dynamic Service Manager, was announced in February 2016. To date, over 200 active customer engagements have now started to turn into won deals. Multiple deals, spread around the world, are in IP (routing and transport) and services. The companies announced deals with 3 Italy, Vodafone Portugal and Aster Dominican Republic earlier this year.
The Cisco-Ericsson partnership has been cleared by Brazilian regulatory authorities and will be implemented there under local agreements.
NOTES TO EDITORSEricsson and Cisco team up for next generation Network Service ManagementFor media kits, backgrounders and high-resolution photos, please visitwww.ericsson.com/press
Ericsson is the driving force behind the Networked Society -- a world leader in communications technology and services. Our long-term relationships with every major telecom operator in the world allow people, business and society to fulfill their potential and create a more sustainable future.
Our services, software and infrastructure -- especially in mobility, broadband and the cloud -- are enabling the telecom industry and other sectors to do better business, increase efficiency, improve the user experience and capture new opportunities.
With approximately 115,000 professionals and customers in 180 countries, we combine global scale with technology and services leadership. We support networks that connect more than 2.5 billion subscribers. Forty percent of the world's mobile traffic is carried over Ericsson networks. And our investments in research and development ensure that our solutions -- and our customers -- stay in front.
Founded in 1876, Ericsson has its headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden. Net sales in2015 were SEK 246.9 billion (USD 29.4 billion). Ericsson is listed on NASDAQ OMX stock exchange in Stockholm and the NASDAQ in New York.
www.ericsson.comwww.ericsson.com/newswww.twitter.com/ericssonpresswww.facebook.com/ericssonwww.youtube.com/ericsson
About CiscoCisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide technology leader that has been making the Internet work since 1984. Our people, products, and partners help society securely connect and seize tomorrow's digital opportunity today. Discover more at newsroom.cisco.com and follow us on Twitter at @Cisco.
Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found atwww.cisco.com/go/trademarks.
About C&W CommunicationsCWC is a full service communications and entertainment provider and delivers market-leading video, broadband, telephony and mobile services to consumers in 18 countries. Through its business division, CWC provides data center hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customized IT service solutions, utilizing cloud technology to serve business and government customers.
CWC also operates a state-of-the-art submarine fiber network -- the most extensive in the region -- in over 30 markets.
Learn more atwww.cwc.com, or follow C&W onLinkedIn,FacebookorTwitter.
About Liberty Global
Liberty Global is the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with operations in more than 30 countries across Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. We invest in the infrastructure that empowers our customers to make the most of the digital revolution. Our scale and commitment to innovation enables us to develop market-leading products delivered through next-generation networks that connect our 29 million customers who subscribe to over 59 million television, broadband internet and telephony services. We also serve 11 million mobile subscribers and offer WiFi service across seven million access points.
Liberty Global's businesses are comprised of two stocks: the Liberty Global Group (NASDAQ:LBTYA) (NASDAQ:LBTYB) (NASDAQ:LBTYK) for our European operations, and the LiLAC Group (NASDAQ:LILA) (NASDAQ:LILAK) (OTC PINK:LILAB), which consists of our operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Liberty Global Group operates in 12 European countries under the consumer brands Virgin Media, Ziggo, Unitymedia, Telenet and UPC. The LiLAC Group operates in over 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean under the consumer brands VTR, Flow, Liberty, Mas Movil and BTC. In addition, the LiLAC Group operates a subsea fiber network throughout the region in over 30 markets.
For more information, please visitwww.libertyglobal.com. || Bank of England aims to revamp interbank payment system by 2020: LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England said on Friday it aimed to revamp the system that underpins British banking and trading in the City of London by 2020 to boost its defenses against cyber-attacks and widen the number of businesses that can use it.
The BoE's Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) handles transactions worth around 500 billion pounds ($659 billion) a day - equivalent to almost a third of Britain's annual economic output.
It suffered a major outage in October 2014, and in June BoE Governor Mark Carney said he wanted to make it easier for smaller firms to use the system directly rather than via large incumbent banks.
On Friday the BoE set out more detailed proposals and said it planned to fund the changes by temporarily increasing the charges banks pay to use the system.
"The world of payments is changing rapidly, and central banks need to keep pace if we are to deliver our mission of monetary and financial stability ... whilst also enabling innovation and competition where we can," BoE executive director Andrew Hauser said.
Proposed enhancements include running the system continuously, rather than just during normal working hours, and making it easier for smaller banks, brokers and payment processing firms to access the system directly.
"A key enabler for delivering these changes will be a comprehensive rebuild of the RTGS technology platform. The Bank will make decisions on its resilience, including in particular its cyber defenses, in consultation with intelligence partners," the BoE said.
Other goals included allowing forward-dated payments and creating an interface with the 'distributed-ledger' technology that underpins digital currencies such as Bitcoin "if/when they achieve critical mass", it said.
(Reporting by David Milliken; Editing by Costas Pitas and Hugh Lawson) || Payments In The Marijuana Industry: How Blockchain Can Increase Profit And Security: Blockchain was born with the bitcoin, conceived as a way to make databases secure but not managed by one single person. This allows “people who do not know or trust each other [to] build a dependable ledger,” an article from The Economist explained. As the technology evolved and became more programmable, other applications like tracing a product’s identity/authenticity were found for it. In some cases, blockchain technologies have even managed to replace banks and services like those offered by Paypal Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: PYPL ), Moneygram International Inc (NASDAQ: MGI ) or The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU ), making transactions faster, cheaper and more secure. Related Link: You're So Money: NY Judge Rules Bitcoin Qualify As "Funds" “While software reduces global inequalities through intellectual capital, the blockchain today is helping to reduce global inequalities through financial capital,” Forbes contributor Jonathan Chester explained in a recent piece . The Marijuana Industry The legal marijuana industry often finds big hurdles in the banking system; afraid of federal regulators and the money laundering risk derived from such a cash intensive space, most banks don’t want to open accounts for these companies. In this vacuum, a few companies have come up with creative solutions. For instance, Tokken , provides online banking services to companies in the emerging marijuana industry. As per their site, they offer “safe payment methods to consumers, and a robust compliance platform to partner banks... [eliminating] the risk of money laundering by creating a virtual barrier to cash transactions.” “Using an indelible Blockchain ledger to ensure data integrity and a proprietary compliance program based on structured analytic techniques, Tokken is designed to comply with every relevant regulatory requirement and provide a sustainable banking solution for the cannabis,” the site added. CEO Lamine Zarrad recently sat down with Chester and explained that operating in cash costs the marijuana industry between 20 and 25 percent of its revenue. “This is typically lost through the costs of security, storage and shrinkage, a euphemism for employee theft,” he stated. “In order to get cash back into the banking systems, Marijuana companies will work with holding companies that will hold funds on behalf of the dispensary, which the dispensary can then access. In order to get funds into the accounts, these dispensaries need to hire groups of runners who take the cash to ATMs throughout the city to deposit cash in small batches.” Story continues But, how can the company achieve this without recurring to a bank? Related Link: Reads For The Weed-Kend: Franchising, Canada And Snoop Dogg, Damian Marley's Cannabis Prison Venture As Chester expounded, blockchains were created specifically to avoid banks while still meeting most audit requirements — as each transaction is both public and protected from “book-cooks.” Tokken, for example, notarizes its transactions via Tierion, a platform that “puts an immutably cryptographic summary of business records on the blockchain, which permits verification while maintaining customer privacy,” Chester concluded. Full ratings data available on Benzinga Pro. Do you have ideas for articles/interviews you'd like to see more of on Benzinga? Please email feedback@benzinga.com with your best article ideas. One person will be randomly selected to win a $20 Amazon gift card! Disclosure: Javier Hasse holds no interest in any of the securities or entities mentioned above. See more from Benzinga Apple, PayPal A Couple Of The Only Stocks That Traded Green Today © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#UFOCoin #UFO $0.000006 (-0.31%) 0.00000001 BTC (-0.00%) || #Bitcoin News Big Banks Band Together to Launch 'Settlement Coin': Four banks have reportedly partnered on a ... http://tinyurl.com/zj3x4he || #Triangles #TRI $0.071985 (-0.50%) 0.00012001 BTC (0.00%) || $612.87 #GDAX;
$606.00 #btce;
$611.64 #bitstamp;
$613.14 #bitfinex;
$611.93 #itBit;
$610.43 #OKCoin;
#bitcoin news: http://bit.ly/1VI6Yse || #Bitfury #Research Seeks to Shine Light on Bitcoin Mixing Methods: A new Bitfury white… http://dlvr.it/M5q1zs pic.twitter.com/NGsMQw0Fxf || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$608.74/$609.35 #Bitstamp
$606.78/$607.00 #BTCe
⇢$-2.57/$-1.74
$605.86/$612.17 #Coinbase
⇢$-3.49/$3.43 || 1 KOBO = 0.00000316 BTC
= 0.0019 USD
= 0.5781 NGN
= 0.0000 ZAR
= 0.1923 KES
#Kobocoin 2016-10-05 12:00 pic.twitter.com/pOPQD8K6qe || #Telmi Bitcoin und Euro: 0.0010 BTC = 0.54 EUR 1.00 EUR = 0.0018 BTC Konverter http://dlvr.it/MFYw8f || $606.23 #itBit;
$605.00 #btce;
$610.05 #bitfinex;
$602.13 #bitstamp;
$608.48 #GDAX;
$607.69 #OKCoin;
#bitcoin news: http://bit.ly/1VI6Yse || 1 BTC Price: BTC-e 600.4 USD Bitstamp 600.00 USD Coinbase 603.69 USD #btc #bitcoin 2016-09-24 20:30 pic.twitter.com/JuoYB1TPz8
|
Trend: up || Prices: 632.83, 657.29, 657.07, 653.76, 657.59, 678.30, 688.31, 689.65, 714.48, 701.86
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2017-01-24]
BTC Price: 892.69, BTC RSI: 50.24
Gold Price: 1210.30, Gold RSI: 62.20
Oil Price: 53.18, Oil RSI: 55.77
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Traders look at housing trades that are building up for the new year: With the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF(NYSE Arca: XHB)climbing about half a percent Monday, the "Fast Money" traders weighed in on housing stocks building up for 2017.
Trader Brian Kelly noted that even though housing starts fell below estimates last week, 2017 could be the year for homebuilders to break out. The sector's climb reminded him of another big performer from 2016.
"The homebuilder is set up similar to how the financials did last year where this could be a big breakout trade if you have that economic growth that's going to push people in homes," he said.
Trader Karen Finerman said she's not concerned about the move in the homebuilders ETF. She attributed it to the end of the election and the end of uncertainty.
As the low-end buyer in the sector, KB Home(NYSE: KBH)has the potential to be a strong stock next year in the face of regulation rollbacks from the Trump administration, trader David Seaburg said. Even thought the stock is up 33 percent year to date, Seaburg said it still has room to grow, while the high-end Wall Street banks are going to continue to have problems with regulation.
"I like the KBH. Even though it's up strong, I think it continues," he said.
Disclosures:
GUY ADAMI
long CELG, EXAS, GDX, INTC, Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck.
KAREN FINERMAN
long AAL, BAC, BAC short calls, C, DAL, FB, FL, GLMP,, GOGO, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, LYV, KORS, KORS calls, KORS puts, M, MA, SEDG, SPY puts, TACO, UAL, URI, WIFI long call spreads. Her firm is long ANTM, AAPL, BAC, C, C calls, FB, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, JPM calls, KORS, LYV, M, MOH, PLCE, SPY puts, URI, WIFI, her firm is short IWM, MDY. Karen Finerman is on the board of GrafTech International.
BRIAN KELLY
long Bitcoin, TLT, US30Y. He is short EUR=.,AUD,GPB
DAVID SEABURG
Opinions expressed by David Seaburg are solely his own and do not reflect the views and opinions of Cowen Group, Inc. David Seaburg and Cowen have a financial interest in EDIT.Diamond Offshore: an employee of Cowen and Company, LLC serves on the Board of Directors of Diamond Offshore
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• Rumor visits the Nasdaq, fresh off her Westminster win || Bitcoin exchange operator pleads guilty in U.S. case tied to JPMorgan hack: By Nate Raymond
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Florida man pleaded guilty on Monday to charges that he conspired to operate an illegal bitcoin exchange, which prosecutors said was owned by an Israeli who oversaw a massive scheme to hack companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co(JPM.N).
Anthony Murgio, 33, entered his plea in federal court in Manhattan to three counts, including conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to commit bank fraud, a month before he was to face trial.
Under a plea agreement, Murgio agreed not to appeal any prison sentence of about 12-1/2 years in prison or less. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan scheduled his sentencing for June 16.
The Tampa, Florida-resident is one of nine people to face charges following an investigation connected to a data breach that JPMorgan disclosed in 2014 involving records for more than 83 million accounts.
Prosecutors said Murgio operated Coin.mx, which without a license exchanged millions of dollars into bitcoin, including for victims of ransomware, a computer virus that seeks payment, often in the virtual currency, to unlock data it restricts.
Prosecutors said Coin.mx was operated from 2013 to 2015 through several fronts, including one called "Collectables Club," to trick financial institutions into believing it was a members-only group interested in collectables like stamps.
Coin.mx was owned by Israeli citizen Gery Shalon, according to prosecutors, who say he and Maryland-born Joshua Samuel Aaron orchestrated cyber attacks on companies. An attack on JPMorgan resulted in the information of more than 100 million people being stolen.
Prosecutors said the men carried out the cybercrimes to further other schemes with another Israeli, Ziv Orenstein, including pumping up stock prices with sham promotional emails.
Murgio, who was not accused of engaging in the hacking scheme, was tied not only to Shalon but also to Aaron.
Both men attended Florida State University, and in 2008 they formed a business together. On his website, Murgio called Aaron "my friend" and said he "showed me the ropes to online marketing."
Aaron was deported from Russia in December and taken into U.S. custody, while Shalon and Orenstein were extradited from Israel in June. All three have pleaded not guilty.
Five other individuals have been charged in connection with Coin.mx, including Murgio's father. Two individuals linked to it are scheduled to face trial on Feb. 6.
The case is U.S. v. Murgio et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 15-cr-769.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler) || Battered bitcoin slides another 12 percent after China warning: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin plunged by as much as 12 percent on Friday after China's central bank urged investors to take a rational and cautious approach to investing in the digital currency, which is on track for its heaviest two-day drop in two years. Bitcoin had been on a tear until Wednesday, gaining more than 40 percent in two weeks to hit around $1,139 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, just shy of its all-time record of $1,163. But the web-based digital currency, which has shown an intriguing inverse correlation to the Chinese yuan in recent months, plunged as the yuan soared on Thursday, falling as much as 20 percent at one point. It continued that fall on Friday, with its losses accelerating after the central bank's warning. It fell as low as $871, down almost a quarter from its peak on Wednesday, before recovering to about $900 by 1455 GMT (9:55 a.m. ET). That still left it down 10 percent on the day and on track for its worst two-day performance since January 2015. The Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) noted in a statement that bitcoin prices had shown abnormal fluctuations in recent days, and said those investing in it should do so carefully, with awareness of the currency's volatility. The PBOC's words carried echoes of its 2013 warning that financial institutions should steer clear of the digital currency, which sparked a $300 slide in bitcoin. The PBOC also repeated on Friday its 2013 view that bitcoin is not a currency and could therefore not be circulated as a real currency in the market. For full statement click: http://beijing.pbc.gov.cn/beijing/132005/3230072/index.ht "This is the Chinese authorities saying: we're watching," said Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency data analysis website Cryptocompare. "The relative size of the bitcoin market is minor, but trading has reached up to $10 billion a day on the bitcoin-yuan pairs." "The full meaning of the government's comments aren't 100 percent clear, but restrictions and regulation of trading is one avenue that could affect volumes and therefore price." Story continues Hayter said trading between the yuan and bitcoin had made up about 98 percent of the market for the past six months, according to his analysis. Because there are no trading fees on Chinese exchanges, it is much easier to get in and out of trades and therefore creates a higher trading volume, he said. Bitcoin can be used for moving money across the globe quickly and anonymously, and operates outside the control of any central authority. That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as in China, and also to investors who are worried about a devaluation in their currency - one of the reasons often cited for bitcoin's surge in 2016. While the yuan fell 7 percent, its worst year since 1994, bitcoin outperformed all other currencies, with a 125 percent climb. But many bitcoin experts say Chinese trading volumes are overstated and attribute sharp moves to speculation by, for example, U.S.-based hedge funds. "VOLATILE MARKETS" The volatile trading prompted officials from the PBOC's Shanghai branch on Friday to meet representatives of a major bitcoin trading platform in China, BTCC. "On January 6 the People's Bank of China Business Management Department and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Financial Affairs jointly met with the relevant regulatory authorities of the 'currency network'," the PBOC said in the statement. BTCC said in a post on Twitter: "BTCC regularly meets with (the) PBOC and we work closely with them to ensure we are operating in accordance with the laws and regulations of China." "All of our users should be aware of the current policies on virtual goods as well as the risks involved in trading in volatile markets," another Tweet read. Eric Gu, a blockchain expert and founder of ViewFin, a Chinese blockchain start-up, said the PBOC meets the country's major bitcoin exchanges regularly but had previously never made such meetings public. But recent volatility has increased risks and has triggered fears that the market could be used as a channel for money laundering, he said. "Previously, bitcoin trading volume was small, and money laundering was not possible in such a market," said Gu. "Now, the volume is up ... everyday, there are tens of billions of yuan worth of bitcoin changing hands. Volume is still (comparatively)small, but big enough to make the central bank worry." For a graphic on bitcoin price, click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/FOREX-BITCOIN/010031932VD/DataStream-Chart.htm For a graphic on bitcoin economy, click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/1/221/2432/AUSTRALIA-BITCOIN.jpg (Additional reporting by Yiming Shen in Shanghai, and Yawen Chen and Kevin Yao in Beijing; Editing by Hugh Lawson) || 6 ETF Trends Likely to Take Centre Stage in 2017: Donald Trump’s win as the U.S. President and the most sought-after OPEC output deal has actually set the tone of 2017 investing. Many are bullish on the prospect of oil price this year though rising U.S. supplies can anytime thwart the winning momentum in the oil patch. However, Trump-backed hopes are still in fine fettle.
Added to these, there are plenty of other events – across asset class and regions – that could prove to be game-changers this year. In view of this, we intend to highlight a few ETF trends that are likely to be prevalent in 2017:
Stocks to Be Bullish Overall
The year can be attributed to stocks. The first and foremost reason for it is an end to earnings recession. Earnings growth entered into the positive territory in Q3 of 2016 following five consecutive quarters of decline. For the upcoming Q4 earnings season, the S&P 500 is expected to score 3.3% earnings growth on 4.1% revenue growth.
Earnings for Q1 of 2017 are expected to surge 10.3% for the S&P 500 on 7.5% higher revenues, as per the Earnings Trends issued on January 4, 2017. The earnings growth trend is expected to stay firm even for Q2, Q3 and Q4 of this year with an expectation of 9.8%, 8.2% and 12.5% on revenue growth of 5.7%, 5.5% and 4.8% (read: Ten Predictions for the ETF Industry in 2017).
Along with earnings recovery, stabilization in the oil patch after a prolonged rout and a Trump-induced fiscal boost along with lower taxes should augur well for stocks this year. Still, withmarkets appearing overvalued by some measure and the President-elect Trump yet to roll out promised measures, cautious investors with a long-term notion can opt for value ETFs over growth. Investors should also note that a stronger U.S. dollar is likely to take some shine off the S&P 500 index as the components are heavily exposed to foreign currencies.
Investors should note thatSPDR S&P 500 Value ETFSPYV has a positive weighted alpha of 23.00 whileSPDR S&P 500 Growth ETFSPYG has it at positive 13.90. This indicates a higher growth potential in SPYV.
Currency-Hedged Foreign ETFs to Rule
The U.S. dollar is presently at a multi-year high on bets over faster Fed policy tightening and an improving U.S. economy. On the other hand, foreign economies are also gaining momentum. Business and consumer sentiments in the European Union are at about six-year highs. Business conditions in the Japanese economy are also improving.
An upside is more likely for European and Japanese stocks given the ultra-easy monetary policy over there, which will keep their currencies low against a soaring greenback and boost those economies.
As a result, currency-hedged ETFs likeWisdomTree Japan Hedged SmallCap Equity ETFDXJS,WisdomTree Japan Hedged Quality Dividend Growth ETFJHDG andO'Shares FTSE Europe Quality Dividend Hedged ETFOEUH will likely rule the year ahead.
More Factor-Based ETFs to Come On Line
Factor-based products have been quite a trend in 2016 as the fashion for plain vanilla ETFs is gone. Issuers are coming up with a more striking investment objective which can create a winning combination in the present investing environment. All in all, smart beta and multifactor ETFs will likely carry forward the legacy of the ETF world. An example of recently launched factor-based ETFs isALPS Dorsey Wright Sector Momentum ETFSWIN (read: 6 ETF Ideas Most Favored by Issuers in 2016).
More Players to Enter ETF Industry
Be it big banking giants or hedge fund managers, players are increasingly entering the ETF industry. We have already have seen J.P. Morgan and Goldman venturing into the ETF world and now Wells Fargo is also eyeing the space with its first-ever multi-factor ETF. Saba Capital Management, a New York-based hedge fund manager, is also planning to foray into the ETF space with an ETF related to closed-end funds.
Expense Ratio Cut
With rising competition among issuers for market share, expense ratios are increasingly being slashed. So long, Charles Schwab and Vanguard ruled the world of low-cost ETFs. But last year, BlackRock and Fidelity enacted steep fee cuts for several of their products. A new set of rules under the Department of Labor’s “fiduciary standard,” which asked advisors to give precedence to their client’s interest over their own also played a role in this burgeoning trend.
For example, BlackRock lowered fees for its S&P 500 tracking ETF,iShares Core S&P 500IVV, from 0.07% to 0.04%. The fee cut made IVV less expensive than other popular ETFs in its domain. Even a relatively new-comer like Hartford Funds, which launched Lattice Strategies and its ETF operations earlier in 2016, announced that it will lower the expense ratio on four of its smart-beta funds effective January 1 (read: Buy These ETFs as BlackRock Cuts Fees).
Bitcoin ETF to Hit the Market?
Even if we are yet to have a bitcoin ETF, one is expected to hit the market in 2017. Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust has filed for one to make it easy for investors to bet on this soaring digital currency. As per CNBC, “bitcoin is a very volatile asset” but doesn’t have a strong correlation with other classes. Bitcoin’s value beat the $900 mark in late December for the first time since February 2014 (Also read: Explaining Bitcoin and Crypto Currency).
India's demonetization also gave a boost to bitcoin trading volumes. Moreover, trading volumes in China have been solid with the government taking proactive measures against illegal money transfer. With this, investors expect to see an approval of the first bitcoin ETF in 2017.
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Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days.Click to get this free reportSPDR-SP5 VL (SPYV): ETF Research ReportsISHARS-SP500 (IVV): ETF Research ReportsWISDMTR-JP HSCF (DXJS): ETF Research ReportsOS-FT EUR QDH (OEUH): ETF Research ReportsWISTR-JP HQD (JHDG): ETF Research ReportsSPDR-SP5 GR (SPYG): ETF Research ReportsTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment ResearchWant the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report || COLUMN-Trump border tax to pile on China capital flight pressure: James Saft: (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters) By James Saft Jan 12 (Reuters) - The 'border tax' Donald Trump and Republicans are considering will spur capital flight from China, with potentially large repercussions. House Republicans back a plan for a border tax adjustment, discussed at 20 percent, which would impose a levy on imports while granting rebates to exports. While the Republican and Trump plans call for a border tax on all imports as a means to favor domestic production, Trump has also used the term to describe a punitive tax he threatens to levy directly on imports of companies which move production abroad. As ever with Trump, it is highly unclear what he intends or will attempt. Trump has in the past floated the idea of a 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports to the U.S., a higher rate than is being discussed for the border tax adjustment. For China, and for financial markets, this is going to cause trouble, and not just because it would make Chinese and other foreign imports to the U.S. less competitive. A border tax implies a strengthening of the dollar, prompting former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to warn this week of a "spike" in the greenback. All else being equal, which it seldom is, a 20 percent border tax should prompt a similarly large appreciation in the dollar. That won't likely happen, in part because other countries will pile in with their own border taxes or other measures, but the dollar would get a sizable boost. That poses a complex set of problems for China. Global dollar borrowing conditions would become more expensive and, importantly, pressure would intensify on the yuan to weaken in response. "The threat to Chinese stability at a time when it is already having trouble trying to limit capital flight from a new disruption of trade is a legitimate concern," David Levy of the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center said in an interview. "This is not a great time from a Chinese point of view or global stability point of view to have anything that is disruptive to the flow of trade." Story continues One fear is that Chinese yuan owners, anticipating a dollar spike, will try to front-run the effects on the yuan, seeking to move money into other currencies or stores of value, either by following Chinese rules or by skirting them. The yuan, which trades in a band set by China, fell by 6.6 percent against the dollar in 2016 in a self-reinforcing downdraft. CAPITAL FLOATS, USUALLY To be sure, China is not the nation most vulnerable to dollar strength. That honor belongs to emerging market countries which run a current account deficit and must attract dollars for financing. Yet two years of strong capital outflows have depleted China's once, and arguably still, massive foreign currency reserves. China's reserves fell by about $320 billion to $3.011 trillion in 2016, less than the $513 billion decline of 2015 but also despite wide-ranging efforts by China to make capital flight more difficult. Seeking to circumvent capital controls, owners of yuan in China have turned to cryptocurrency Bitcoin, which more than doubled in value between September and Jan. 4. "Spot checks" on Bitcoin exchanges in China by state authorities this week sent Bitcoin down by 12 percent. At any rate, money is eager to leave by any route possible. China still has huge FX reserves, but an IMF adequacy framework implies it needs to keep about $2.7 trillion on hand. At last year's depletion rate we will soon be there, and if a border tax accelerates matters the issue could soon become urgent. Asset management behemoth PIMCO said on Thursday China might float its currency in 2017. Yu Yongding, an influential former advisor to the People's Bank of China, said on Thursday the central bank should set a "bottom line" depreciation level for the yuan in 2017 of 25 percent. Floating the yuan would certainly be a taste of his own medicine for Trump, who has threatened to brand the country a currency manipulator. It would also, however, potentially cause a very strong outflow of capital. Foreign exchange reserves would be preserved but capital flight could become a problem, and a limit on other policies. China is notable in that, with a semi-closed economy and great central control, it has been able to stimulate its way out of various upsets during and after the financial crisis. China may find it has less room to maneuver if capital is leaving, or if the yuan depreciates greatly, with or without a float. Remember too, all of this would be happening in and to China while most of the other emerging markets go through a crisis of similar origin. Regardless of its impact on U.S. exports, a border tax could easily cause massive turbulence in global markets. (Editing by James Dalgleish) || UFOMiners Expands its Hardware Selection with Four New Products: Summary: UFOMiners, a Leading Cryptocurrency Mining Manufacture Based in Las Vegas, Just Released Four New High-Performance Products for Unbeatable Prices LAS VEGAS, NV / ACCESSWIRE / December 5, 2016 / When it comes to quality miner hardware development, UFOMiners LLC ( www.UFOMiners.com ) continues to push ahead of the competition. The growing company recently expanded its cost-efficient product offering, demonstrating their commitment to customer service and making high-quality cryptocurrency mining economical and readily available. The four additions to their hardware repertoire include two ethereum miners and two ZCash miners. Each device is unique in its features, offering a variety of hashing algorithms, hashing speeds, and consumption power rates of up to 1650 Watts. Like UFOminers first wave of miners, these four models are equipped with ports for monitor, mouse, and keyboard connection. All products come with a 5-year warranty and function in cascade mode at a connecting capacity of up to 32 devices via 100 Mbps Ethernet LAN. See product list . "Our in-house team of experts have outdone themselves again," says a spokesman of the firm. "The team's vast knowledge of blockchain technologies coupled with an innovative spirit to excel in delivering optimal, low-cost mining solutions to our customers is what brought this new line of products to fruition." The young and ambitious cryptocurrency mining developers at UFOMiners strongly believe in the philosophy of in-house quality production as a way of keeping costs low and making high-performance mining technologies readily available. They are not above offering consumer-friendly promotions and free international shipping to give their customers an exceptional experience. The new hardware, Ethereum RhinoMiner, Ethereum RhinoMiner Prime, ZCash Equinox and ZCash Equinox Prime, are now available for purchase at www.UFOMiners.com , ranging from $3200 to $4900. Company Profile UFOMiners was founded in 2014 on a vision to develop hardware equipment for mining scrypt cryptocurrencies, a project that later expanded to the development of the Bitcoin miner. This Las Vegas-based firm is now a rapidly growing provider of cryptocurrency mining hardware and blockchain-based technologies. UFOMiners currently services up to 1000 private customers as well as dozen businesses. Contact: Ruben Vos Ruben@UFOMiners.com SOURCE : UFOMiners View comments || First Bitcoin Capital Adds Innovative Automated Check Cashing ATM Solution for Cannabis Dispensaries’ Clientele: VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / January 12, 2017 /FIRST BITCOIN CAPITAL CORP. (OTC PINK: BITCF), a leading bitcoin and cryptocurrency developer, specializing in both blockchain and online merchant payment solutions for medical marijuana dispensaries and other high-risk merchant accounts and services, today announced the signing of an Exclusive Master Distributor Agreement to distribute a new type of fully automated check cashing ATM designed for use in medical cannabis dispensaries for the State of California. BITCF will add this check cashing ATM service to complete a full suite of financial services for the medical marijuana industry: merchant processing and POS solutions through its alliance network, a fully compliant, user friendly solution to accept Credit and Debit Cards through traditional Merchant Card Processing networks. The check cashing ATMs marketing efforts will be focused toward larger established medical marijuana dispensaries.
Fees for the check cashing services will be competitive. Dispensary customers using the service will be able to cash all types of checks: government issued checks, payroll checks and other types. Cannabis dispensaries service all kinds of customers. Many of those are unbanked and may need to cash checks before purchasing. Offering check cashing services on premises to this group of customers will be a very attractive way to increase revenues, as dispensary owners are looking for new ways to draw more customers because of check cashing convenience.
According to FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) recent 2015 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households, indicates that more than 7 percent of households in the United States were unbanked in 2015. This proportion represents approximately 9.0 million households. An additional 19.9 percent of U.S. households (24.5 million) were underbanked, meaning that the household had a checking or savings account but also obtained financial products and services outside of the banking system. By offering check cashing, our ATM Division expects that dispensaries will increase their customer base by 18%.
BITCF uses sophisticated fully automated risk analysis algorithms and underwriting procedures, resulting in 100% guarantee to the dispensary owners.
Summary of benefits of our services for the cannabis dispensaries and their customers:
Any types of checks can be cashed, including Payroll checks, Insurance checks, Personal checks, business checks, money orders, government issued checks and the funds can be credited to the Dispensaries bank account instead of their client pulling out and paying in cash.
Regulatory Compliance: The check cashing ATM will be installed pre-programmed to comply with all state, local federal regulations in California.
First Bitcoin is also developing a system that will enable dispensaries to accept Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a form of legal payment. Stater of California has already enacted legislation that makes Bitcoin and similar digital currencies legal tender.
BITCF has developed specific programs to meet the unique needs of the medical cannabis industry. Offering merchant services at competitive rates for businesses operating legally under state law of California and Oregon, the company can now provide financial services not typically available from conventional banks.
While legalization of marijuana in many forms – and in many states – garnered over $5 billion dollars in 2016, the sums are expected to grow for 2017. More innovative and unique products are being created, and the stigma that once surrounded cannabis is slowly fading. These changes are helping the medical cannabis industry to prosper now that federal policies allow dispensaries to sell, grow, or possess cannabis while compliant with state laws. BITCF will only provide these services where federal policies allow our business model to proceed for dispensaries that are fully compliant with state and country laws, rules and regulations.
Should your dispensary be interested in these services please contact us by email:info@bitcoincapitalcorp.com
About the company:
First Bitcoin Capital is engaged in developing digital currencies, proprietary Blockchain technologies, financial processing services and the digital currency exchange-www.CoinQX.com.We see this step as a tremendous opportunity to create further shareholder value by leveraging management's experience in developing and managing complex Blockchain technologies, developing new types of digital assets. Being the first publicly-traded cryptocurrency and blockchain-centered company (with shares both traded in the US OTC Markets as [BITCF] and as [BIT] in crypto exchanges) we want to provide our shareholders with diversified exposure to digital and blockchain technologies. At this time the Company owns and operates the following digital assets.
www.CoinQX.comcryptocurrency exchange, registered with FINCEN.
www.iCoiNEWS.comreal time cryptocurrency and bitcoin news site.
www.BITminer.ccproviding mining pool management services.
www.2016coin.orgonline daily election coverage and home page for $PRES, $HILL, $GARY& $BURN -commemorative presidential election coins.
www.bitcannpay.comFinancial and merchant services for medical cannabis dispensaries.
Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors as may be disclosed in company's filings. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release. Such forward-looking statements are risks that are detailed in the Company's filings, which are on file atwww.OTCMarkets.com.
Contact us via:info@bitcoincapitalcorp.comor visithttp://www.bitcoincapitalcorp.com
SOURCE:First Bitcoin Capital Corp. || Bitcoin's total value hits record high above $14 billion: By Jemima Kelly
LONDON (Reuters) - The total value of all bitcoins in circulation hit a record high above $14 billion on Thursday, as the web-based digital currency jumped 5 percent on the day to its highest levels in three years after more than doubling in price this year.
The price of one bitcoin reached $875 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, its strongest level since January 2014, putting the cryptocurrency on track for its best daily performance in six months.
That compared with levels around $435 at the start of the year, with many experts linking bitcoin's rise with the steady depreciation of the Chinese yuan, which has slid almost 7 percent this year.
Data shows the majority of bitcoin trading is done in China, so any increase in demand from there tends to have a significant impact on the price.
Bitcoin is a web-based "cryptocurrency" that can move money across the globe quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority. That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as China's.
The digital currency is still some way off the peaks it scaled in late 2013, when it traded as high as $1,163 on the Bitstamp exchange.
But because more bitcoins continue to be added to the system, currently at a rate of 12.5 every 10 minutes, its total value - or "market cap" - on Thursday surpassed the 2013 peak of around $14.01 billion. That puts its total value at around the same as that of an average FTSE 100 company.
Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis website Cryptocompare, said bitcoin had been helped higher by demonetization in India, and by global political uncertainty.
"If that trend continues, bitcoin is a good thematic play on the fracturing of our global norms as a flight to safety," he said.
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly, editing by Nigel Stephenson) || Bitcoin exchange Coinbase gets money transmitter license in New York: NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Department of Financial Services announced on Monday that it had granted a virtual currency and money transmitter license to bitcoin exchange Coinbase. Coinbase is the world's largest bitcoin company and currently operates in 32 countries. The announcement was made by Financial Services Superintendent Maria T. Vullo, who said the agency was continuing "New York's long record of being responsive to technological innovation." DFS said it had conducted a comprehensive review of Coinbase's applications, including the company's anti-money laundering, capitalization, consumer protection, and cyber security policies. Coinbase, which is subject to ongoing supervision by DFS, offers services for buying, selling, sending, receiving, and storing bitcoin. "At Coinbase, our first priority is to ensure that we operate the most secure and compliant digital currency exchange in the world," said Brian Armstrong, Coinbase chief executive officer and co-founder. Aside from Coinbase, DFS has granted money transmitter licenses to Ripple and Circle Internet Financial and trust charters to Gemini Trust Company, founded by the Winklevoss brothers, as well as itBit Trust Company. Coinbase currently has two trading platforms, one for retail investors and one for institutions. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Tom Brown) || Bitcoin's total value hits record high above $14 billion: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - The total value of all bitcoins in circulation hit a record high above $14 billion on Thursday, as the web-based digital currency jumped 5 percent on the day to its highest levels in three years after more than doubling in price this year. The price of one bitcoin reached $875 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, its strongest level since January 2014, putting the cryptocurrency on track for its best daily performance in six months. That compared with levels around $435 at the start of the year, with many experts linking bitcoin's rise with the steady depreciation of the Chinese yuan, which has slid almost 7 percent this year. Data shows the majority of bitcoin trading is done in China, so any increase in demand from there tends to have a significant impact on the price. Bitcoin is a web-based "cryptocurrency" that can move money across the globe quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority. That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as China's. The digital currency is still some way off the peaks it scaled in late 2013, when it traded as high as $1,163 on the Bitstamp exchange. But because more bitcoins continue to be added to the system, currently at a rate of 12.5 every 10 minutes, its total value - or "market cap" - on Thursday surpassed the 2013 peak of around $14.01 billion. That puts its total value at around the same as that of an average FTSE 100 company. Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis website Cryptocompare, said bitcoin had been helped higher by demonetisation in India, and by global political uncertainty. "If that trend continues, bitcoin is a good thematic play on the fracturing of our global norms as a flight to safety," he said. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly, editing by Nigel Stephenson)
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
MMMBTC || 1 ZEC: 36.22 USD 34.95 EUR 0.046 BTC 4.82 ETH Source: http://cryptocompare.com || .- Aprovecha y Gana Bitcoins Gratis..!!..#Bitcoin #Faucet https://cards.twitter.com/cards/18ce53yr6xi/1eiul … || $808.88 #bitfinex;
$809.85 #GDAX;
$808.46 #bitstamp;
$796.00 #btce;
$807.94 #gemini;
$808.09 #itBit;
#bitcoin new… http://bit.ly/1VI6Yse || Join MMM Global BTC!... and earn 200% in one month!
http://ift.tt/2hikpxz || MMMBTC || 1 KOBO = 0.00000200 BTC
= 0.0018 USD
= 0.5477 NGN
= 0.0252 ZAR
= 0.1839 KES
#Kobocoin 2016-12-27 03:00 pic.twitter.com/s1C2Wu62nM || MMMBTC || MMMBTC || MMMBTC
|
Trend: up || Prices: 901.54, 917.59, 919.75, 921.59, 919.50, 920.38, 970.40, 989.02, 1011.80, 1029.91
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2021-03-22]
BTC Price: 54529.14, BTC RSI: 51.06
Gold Price: 1737.80, Gold RSI: 45.53
Oil Price: 61.55, Oil RSI: 49.57
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Square’s $50M Bitcoin Buy Is Now Worth $253M: Square’s Cash App deals in bitcoin operationally but a $50 million investment from the publicly traded firm’s cash reserves has grown significantly since being announced last fall.
Square’s4,709 bitcoinswere worth $50 million when the company announced the purchase in October 2020. Now thatBTCis worth a whopping $253 million.
Along with MicroStrategy, Square was an early entrant in the corporate bitcoin sweepstakes. Such treasury management plays inspired Elon Musk’s Tesla to invest $1.5 billion in bitcoinearlier this month.
Related:DeFi Lending Platforms Liquidate Record $115M in Loans as ETH Price Drops
Still, ahead of Square’s latest earnings report on Tuesday, analysts aren’t as enthused about the fraction of Square’s treasury (roughly 1% of the firm’s total assets when announced) that is crypto-denominated.
“There will be a bigger focus on the bitcoin purchases of their customer base and Cash App,” said Seaport Global analyst Chris Brendler. “It should be a big number in the fourth quarter.”
Analyst consensus estimates that Square will record $1.5 billion in bitcoin revenue, but those estimates could be off because of analysts who don’t pay attention to the bitcoin markets, Brendler said. His own estimate is $2.2 billion, a $600 million increase from Square’s third quarter bitcoin transaction revenue.
In the third quarter of 2020, Squarereported $1.63 billion in bitcoin revenue, which resulted in $32 million of gross profit from the bitcoin product in that quarter.
• Square’s $50M Bitcoin Buy Is Now Worth $253M
• Square’s $50M Bitcoin Buy Is Now Worth $253M
• Square’s $50M Bitcoin Buy Is Now Worth $253M || Market Wrap: Bitcoin Back Above $33K While Ether Up 65% in 2021: Crypto markets have reversed course across the board and are flashing green Friday. Bitcoin crossed over $32,000 and ether is rallying hard in 2021 so far.
• Bitcoin(BTC) trading around $33,608 as of 21:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Gaining 5.3% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $28,845-$33,873 (CoinDesk 20)
• BTC above the 10-hour and the 50-hour moving averages on the hourly chart, a bullish signal for market technicians.
Bitcoin’s price was on an uptrend Friday, a marked reversal from the past several days. The price per 1 BTC bottomed out at $28,845 around 01:00 UTC (8:00 p.m. ET Thursday) and since then the world’s oldest cryptocurrency has been on an upward run. It reached as high as $33,873, according to CoinDesk 20 data, an appreciation of over 17% in that time span. Price has since settled somewhat, at $33,608 as of press time.
Read More:MicroStrategy Buys the Dip, Adds $10M to Bitcoin Treasury
Related:First Mover: Bitcoin Flushes 'Weak Hands' as Ethereum Hits New All-Time High
Guy Hirsch, U.S. managing director for multi-asset brokerage eToro, says one support level, where traders scoop up bitcoin to push the price back up, seems to have taken hold, leading to the reversal Friday. “There appears to be strong support around $30,000, as prices have rebounded to trade north of $32,000,” Hirsch told CoinDesk. This consolidation is likely the result of smart money continuing to buy bitcoin at a perceived discount.
Quantitative trading firm QCP Capital echoed a similar sentiment about the $30,000 level in its most recent investor letter published Friday. “In the near term, we’re expecting a key battle at the $30,000 spot level. This battle for the $30,000 weekly close will be key.”
In the derivatives market, bitcoin funding rates for swaps continue heading towards zero, particularly on venue FTX, which currently has the lowest rate, at 0.0318%. This signals leveraged demand to go long is dissipating.
“We pay close attention to weekend price action and the leveraged [perpetual] funding rates to gauge retail interest,” QCP noted Friday.
Related:Big Investors Stacked up Ether as Price Rose to Record High
Read More:Bitcoin Exchange LVL Launches Mastercard Debit Card
In the futures market, total open interest (OI) on the eight exchanges monitored by the CoinDesk 20 was at $11 billion Thursday, down from Tuesday’s record high of $13 billion. That is a sign institutional investors are losing interest and may be unwinding some of their positions.
“After the BTC top two weeks ago, the strength in U.S. hours has lost momentum for the first time,” QCP also noted. “This is a clear sign of exhaustion in demand from the U.S. institutions and corporates [that] have been the primary drivers of this bull run.”
Yet, macroeconomics may come into play, eToro’s Hirsch noted to CoinDesk. “With economic uncertainty continuing as the COVID-19 pandemic continues raging and central bank money printing continues unchecked, I’d expect more people to eventually rotate back into bitcoin in the not-too-distant future.”
Ether(ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, was up Friday, trading around $1,253 and climbing 4% in 24 hours as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET).
Read More:Mining Pools Threaten to Collude Against Contentious Ethereum Update
While bitcoin has gained more than 15% thus far in 2021, ether is doing much better, up over 70% over the same time frame. “Ether appears to have finally broken its recent lockstep correlation with bitcoin, as evidenced by its more rapid recovery after a sell-off, which also appears to have been fueled by profit taking after the second-largest crypto asset hit an all-time high earlier this week,” noted eToro’s Guy Hirsch.
Jake Brukhman, chief executive officer of crypto investment firm CoinFund, told CoinDesk investors are taking profits made from bitcoin and trading into ether and other assets given the 2021 price performance and high profile of bitcoin.
“I think the major assets are going through a dynamic of high hitting, consolidation and rotation,” Brukhman said. “Bitcoin hits [a] high, then consolidates and the money flows into ether. Then ether hits a high, then consolidates and the money flows into polkadot.”
Digital assets on theCoinDesk 20are mostly green Friday. Notable winners as of 21:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):
• tezos(XTZ) + 16.4%
• chainlink(LINK) + 12.7%
• algorand(ALGO) + 8.7%
One notable loser:
• ethereum classic(ETC) – 0.60%
Equities:
• Asia’s Nikkei 225 index ended the day in the red 0.44% astraders took profits ahead of corporate earnings reports that will arrive next week.
• In Europe the FTSE 100 closed slipping 0.30% aseconomic data so far in January shows eurozone business activity is at a two-month low.
• In the United States, the S&P 500 fell 0.30% asRepublicans began making statements that fresh government stimulus is not necessary.
Commodities:
• Oil was down 1.8%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $52.05.
• Gold was in the red 0.85% and at $1,853 as of press time.
Treasurys:
• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield fell Friday to 1.084 and in the red 2.3%.
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Back Above $33K While Ether Up 65% in 2021
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Back Above $33K While Ether Up 65% in 2021 || What the SPAC frenzy tells us about the market and ourselves: As Wall Street flits from one craze to the next; GameStop (GME), Bitcoin (BTC-USD) and now SPACs, the message is clear. If only we could act upon it. As a way of looking into this ongoing mania of mini-manias, I’ve turned my attention to the latest boom, SPACs, once a quirky, backwater of a security, now all the rage.
Let’s start with Kap, who has a SPAC.
That being former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick—famous for taking a knee during the national anthem—who has co-founded Mission Advancement Corp, a SPAC, (the word rhymes with ‘clack’) or special purpose acquisition corporation, also known as a blank check company.
Kaepernick’s SPACwill look to invest in companies with a social justice mission. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay and Silicon Valley VC Ben Horowitz are on its board of advisors. Private equity executive Jahm Najafi, part owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns, is the company CEO.
Not surprisingly there’s some eye rolling.“Colin Kaepernick becomes latest athlete to join Wall Street’s SPAC craze”read the New York Post headline (and indeed Shaquille O'Neal and Alex Rodriguez also have SPACs.) And then there’sFox Business which framed itthis way: “Colin Kaepernick plans to raise $250M for social justice SPAC: The board of directors is completely made up of Black, Indigenous and people of color and represented by a female majority.” (As you might imagine, the comments are toxic.)
Politics aside, will Kaepernick’s SPAC make any sense? Will it make any money? Kaepernick does have business experience working with Nike, Medium, Apple and others, and he’s not the CEO anyway. But the truth is, and by definition, we have no idea, because as a new SPAC, Mission hasn’t invested in anything yet. So who knows.
That’s the thing about SPACs. The more you dig into them, the more you realize they’re opaque and complicated. They’re also red hot. And that’s not necessarily a great combination.
The growth has been wack.In 2019,according to SPACInsider, 59 SPACs worth $13 billion were created. Last year there were 248 worth $83 billion. And already, just six weeks into this year, there are 135 SPACs which have raised $40 billion. Many more are on tap.
We’ll get back to what that means in the big picture, but first let’s journey deeper into the nitty-gritty of SPACs.
Here’s some more basic concepts:
-A SPAC is a shell company formed to go public for the purpose of acquiring an existing companytypically within two years. It’s really a way for a company to go public without doing an IPO, (more on that later.)
-Sometimes SPAC sponsors have a target in mind, sometimes they don’t.
-Typically hedge funds and traders bought SPACs to arbitrage prices of SPAC securities (common stock, warrants and loans—trust me it’s complicated.) But now plain-vanilla investors, both professional and retail, are snapping up SPAC shares.
-SPAC shares are usually issued at $10 and used to trade around that price until a deal is announced, but during this frenzy they have been spiking on rumors. (More on that later too.)
Essentially SPACs allow sponsors to make big money—for a nominal investment they get a 20% cut of the deal—and for companies to go public. DraftKings (DKNG), Virgin Galactic (SPCE) and Nikola (NKLA) all went public through a SPAC last year. The success of DraftKings in particular served as a clarion call. In fact the volume of new SPACs is now outpacing traditional IPOs,according to this excellent graphic made by The Wall Street Journal.
As for you, Mr. and Ms. Investor, you are just along for the ride.
SPACs have been around since at least 1993,according to this great Bloomberg explainer in the Seattle Times, so why are they hot again now?
Much of it has to do with the one-off year that was 2020. “There were lots of high growth companies needing capital and the traditional IPO process, which takes twice as long anyway, is far riskier in a pandemic and an election year,” says Kristi Marvin of SPACInisder. She also notes that with a SPAC a company can shill itself by predicting forward earnings, which it couldn’t do in an IPO. “Plus, as a huge bonus,” she says, “you get to go public with a high profile, seasoned executive, like David Cote, who immediately brings a ton of value to your company.”
Ah Dave Cote. Remember him? Former CEO of Honeywell (HON), who had a great run there. As it turns out, Cote may be partly responsible for the SPAC surge. Here’s that story: Cote stepped down as CEO of HON in March 2017 and began to poke around. “Yes, I wrote a book, but I didn’t want to do what other ex-CEOs did, I wanted to do something different,” Cote tells me.
“A friend of mine who I respect suggested doing a SPAC, so I took a long hard look. Over the course of a year, I would say 80% to 90% of the people I spoke with told me not to do one. That it would hurt my reputation. And so I was careful. I didn’t want an asterisk next to my name: ‘Was CEO of Honeywell and also had this lame-ass SPAC.’ But finally I decided there was something there.”
And so Cote teamed up withJohn Waldron at Goldman Sachs, who was also exploring the idea of getting into SPACs. They took the plunge in September 2018, forming GS Acquisition Holdings Corp., with Cote as executive chairman. A little over a year later,their SPAC bought control of Vertiv, a Columbus Ohio-based provider of equipment and services for data centers, from Platinum Equity, a private equity firm run by the billionaire owner of the Detroit Pistons, Tom Gores. The stock [VRT]which dipped down to $5 in the darkness of last March, is now trading at $21.
“When we announced the deal in December of 2019, we were flooded with calls,” says Cote. “I joked with John [Waldron] that we kicked this whole thing off and no one remembers us.”
Which might be understandable given all the bold-faced names I’ve already mentioned in SPACs, along with others I haven’t like Chamath Palihapitiya, (him again), Bill Ackman, Billy Beane, Kevin Systrom,Peter Guber, Ciara, Paul Ryan,Nobel Prize–winning economist Richard Thaler,Gary Cohn, Jay Z, Dan Och, 23andMe, Softbank, SoFi, former Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, Telco billionaire Crag McCaw, Elliot Management, and KKR.
Also, Adam Lashinksy ofBusiness Insider notesthat “a SPAC called Forest Road Acquisition associated with the ex-Disney execs Kevin Mayer [also ex-TikTok] and Thomas Skaggs is buying the well-regarded fitness company Beachbody...Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li and Kristina Salen, the chief financial officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, are on the team that's advising the SPAC started by the entrepreneurs Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus.”
And there are hundreds of lesser known players too.
Andrew Ross Sorkin pretty much summed it up with the latest Wall Street zingerin his recent column“I know more people who have a SPAC than have Covid.” (Ba rump-bump.)
To be clear, celebs in a SPAC aren’t necessarily a red flag (they’re there for deal flow after all), as long as they’re matched up with a legit team. In SPACs, since there is no investment yet, the team is the thing.
Naturally there’s asubreddit for SPACs, (“Let’s Talk About SPACs, Baby”), which is, well, just what you’d imagine it to be.
And naturally there areSPAC ETFs too.“This is the first time you’re able to access private equity-like investments,” says Paul Dellaquila, president of Defiance ETFs, which launched the first SPAC-only ETF (SPAK) last October. “Even the traditional IPO process is very closed off. You and I are not going to get a Snowflake at $120 like Warren Buffett; we come in later. That’s most retail investors' experiences.”
“Are SPACs right for everybody?” asks Dellaquila. “No. If you’re 75 years old living on a fixed income trying to get 3% or 4% per year to sustain yourself, it’s not for you. Are SPACs right for the right investor? Absolutely. Young professionals looking for higher returns; it could be right for you. It is a leap of faith, and that’s why potential gains are big.”
But the leap might be getting bigger.
With money flooding into SPACs looking for companies to buy and ordinary investors driving up stock prices, risks are rising.
“In some cases there’s 100% speculation,” says Kristi Marvin. “The one that worries me the most right now isChurchill Capital[founded and run byveteran banker Michael Klein] About a month ago, it came out as a rumor that Churchill was in negotiations with Lucid Motors, an EV company, which retail investors love. And so they got all excited and pushed the stock into the $30s. Now, it's a month later, still no deal. That's crazy. It's a big question mark to me if this deal even happens. If there's no deal or Lucid is going to go public via direct listing or traditional IPO, or even with another SPAC, investors are all gonna be running through the door.”
Michael Klausner, a Stanford Law School professor who co-authored astudylast November entitled “A Sober Look at SPACs,” has an even, well, more sober view: “I think SPACs are fundamentally not a good structure by which to take a company public, therefore I think the spike in SPACs is not a good thing,” he says. Klausner cites the 20% cut taken by sponsors as just one reason. “Moreover, the glut of SPACs that will be competing for targets is not a good thing. So, I guess my conclusion is the spike in SPACs is doubly not a good thing.”
TheWall Street Journal did a piece in Novembercalling into question the performance of SPACs: “SPACs have a poor record of delivering returns. Of 107 that have gone public since 2015 and executed deals, the average return on their common stock has been a loss of 1.4%, according to Renaissance Capital, a research and investment-management firm. During the same period, the average return of companies that went public via IPOs was 49%, the firm says.”
So you might ask, where are the regulators, the SEC in particular, in all this? Former SEC commish Jay Clayton, a regulation-light kinda guy, noted that SPACs might have issues with transparency.
Ditto for formerSEC Commissioner Harvey Pittwho spoke with Yahoo Finance’s Adam Shapiro and Seana Smith this week: “I think there are questions about SPACs and their effect on the market,” Pitt said. “There are also questions about the disclosures that are made and the uses for which the funds raised are put. But in general, raising funds to acquire other companies is itself a very accepted course of conduct. And it's one that's been around for a long time, although not quite in the context we're now seeing it.” Some speculate that Gary Gensler, nominated to succeed Clayton, might take a more active position when it comes to SPACs, but that’s unknown for now.
Understand though that the SEC may not be as interventionist as some would like. “The SEC’s regulatory mandate is as a disclosure regulator rather than a merit regulator,” says Michael Piwowar, who served as a commissioner and acting chairman during his tenure at the SEC from 2013 to 2018. He now works as executive director of the Milken Institute Center for Financial Markets.
“The SEC makes no judgment as to whether it is a good or bad investment,” says Piwowar. “It often comes down to balancing two parts of the agency’s mission–protecting investors and facilitating capital formation. To gauge Gary Gensler, look to his comments during his upcoming nomination hearing and public statements early in his term.”
But if the regulators did decide to act, would they be able to act fast enough? “No matter what the policy makers do, they’re closing the barn doors after everybody has left,” says Peter Atwater, founder of research firm Financial Insyghts. “They throw water on a fire that was already going out.”
To Atwater’s mind, the collapse of SPAC mania is a “when” not “if” proposition. “The data would suggest it’s very much a very late-cycle phenomenon. I joke that the bar charts of it run the risk of looking like a middle finger by the time they’re done: Nothing, nothing, a little bit of build up, and an enormous spike. Those historically get followed by collapse. Insatiable demand is always inevitably followed by absolutely nonexistent demand. The crowd goes from wanting too much to never having it again.”
For now it’s still frothy. “I was sitting in the locker room of my golf club in Florida the other day,” says a Wall Street big shot. “And some guy yells over at me, ‘hey buddy, you got a company I can buy for my SPAC?’”
As for Kristi Marvin, she’s had to cut back the newsletter she puts out from once a week to once every two weeks. Why? “Everybody's burned out,” she says. “The lawyers, myself, the bankers, everybody's exhausted. It's so insane. When I first started the website I was covering maybe 40 SPACs and as of today, I'm covering over 500. It does make me a little nervous. We’re starting to see some deals where you're kind of like, should this team be going public?”
We always talk about what happens when these manias end. But it’s like if you’re in the trenches? “I had a little bit of PTSD,” says Martin who worked as a SPAC banker a while back. “We priced 66 deals in 2007 and 2009 there was one. I became an expert in nothing, literally overnight.”
Atwater notes too that most things of interest to SPAC investors are futuristic. “It’s EVs, space, fintech, cutting edge something that is perceived to have an enormous future to it and that is unlimited in its potential. And then you pair that with an investment vehicle that is a blank check, which itself is a very high-confidence mindset. The behavioral parallels we’re seeing in SPACs we saw on a much more narrow basis with GameStop two weeks ago. And the fact that these have overlapped is significant to me as well. It speaks to this climactic sense of frenzy.”
It’s crazy to think we all know where this is headed but there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.
This article was featured in a Saturday edition of the Morning Brief on February 13, 2021. Get the Morning Brief sent directly to your inbox every Monday to Friday by 6:30 a.m. ET.Subscribe
Andy Serwer is editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter:@serwer.
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For tutorials and information on investing and trading stocks, check outCashay || Microstrategy CEO says Bitcoin will subsume gold market cap: Feb 23 (Reuters) - Microstrategy Chief Executive Michael Saylor told CNBC on Tuesday that Bitcoin is going to subsume the entire gold market cap.
“There’s $10 trillion dollars worth of gold in there, $1 trillion in bitcoin. The bitcoin is going to flip gold and it’s going to subsume the entire gold market cap," he said in the CNBC interview. "Then it’s going to subsume negative yielding sovereign debt and other monetary indexes until it grows to $100 trillion dollars.”
Saylor also told CNBC that Bitcoin is not for spending and not really a currency and that it's for saving.
MicroStrategy is a major corporate backer of the digital currency, and is engaged in an almost $1 billion convertible note offering with proceeds going to buying bitcoin. (Reporting By Sinéad Carew; Editing by Alden Bentley and Chizu Nomiyama) || ISW Holdings Announces Pod5 Crypto Mining Pod Set to be Powered Up on February 12: Las Vegas, NV, Feb. 09, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NewMediaWire -- ISW Holdings, Inc. (OTC: ISWH) (ISW Holdings or the Company), a global brand management holdings company with commercial operations in Telehealth and Cryptocurrency Mining, is excited to announce that its revolutionary Pod5 Cryptocurrency Mining Pod will be powered up into full operational launch at the Bit5ive renewable energy cryptocurrency mining facility in Pennsylvania on February 12, 2021. We are very excited to finally be ready to launch full mining operations at a time when margins are at historic levels following further strength in the value of cryptocurrency assets, commented Alonzo Pierce, President and Chairman of ISW Holdings. But make no mistake about it: we are doing this because we have a fundamental belief in the long-term future viability of cryptocurrency systems as stores of value and legitimate platforms for global commerce. We started diversifying our cash into Bitcoin nearly two years ago. And we partnered with Bit5ive early last year and began the design for our Pod5 unit when Bitcoin was still under $10,000 per coin. The Company formed a joint venture partnership with Bit5ive, LLC, (Bit5ive) in May 2020 to build and deliver an elegant, powerful, and efficient data center pod design. The Pod5 Datacenter is the result. Designed in partnership with Bit5ive, and geared primarily for the cryptocurrency mining industry, the Pod5 Datacenter offers next-generation dynamic self-management functionality, plug-and-play operation, virtually non-existent maintenance needs, and an industry best-in-class 1.06 Power Usage Effectiveness score. The Companys first Pod5 Datacenter unit was completed, in terms of design, by August 2020 and had been fully assembled as of late November 2020. It was shipped to the Bit5ive Pennsylvania mining project in December 2020 and installed shortly thereafter. It is now ready for energizing and mining launch and will be switched on later this week. Story continues Pierce added, Our long-term view on cryptocurrency assets has seen significant support from corporate and regulatory players over the past year, with the latest example being Teslas 10k filing on Monday announcing it has started to invest its cash in Bitcoin and plans to accept Bitcoin as payment. We have also seen major players like PayPal, Square, and JPMorgan all contribute to the growing sense of legitimacy for crypto assets. All of this puts our investment in developing the Pod5 last year on very sound footing. We will have additional news over coming days that reinforces this position. About ISW Holdings ISW Holdings, Inc. (ISWH), based in Nevada, is a diversified portfolio company comprised of essential business lines that serve consumer product demands. Our expertise lies in strategic brand development, early growth facilitation, as well as brand identity through our proprietary procurement process. Together, with our partners, we seek to provide a structure that meets large scalability demands, as well as anticipated marketplace needs. We are able to meet these needs through a variety of strategic innovative processes. ISWH is creating and managing brands across a spectrum of disruptive industries. It maneuvers its proprietary companies through critical stages of market development, which includes conceptualization, go-to-market strategies, engineering, product integration, and distribution efficiency. The company has also partnered with a well-known software development and consulting company, Bengala Technologies LLC, which is developing significant enhancements in the supply chain management space; and the partnership has a vitally needed patent now pending. For more information, visit www.iswholdings.com Forward Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology including "could", "may", "will", "should", "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "predict", "potential" and the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. While these forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment regarding the direction of our business, actual results will almost always vary, sometimes materially, from any estimates, predictions, projections, assumptions or other future performance suggested in this report. Except as required by applicable law, we do not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements so as to conform these statements to actual results. Investors should refer to the risks disclosed in the Company's reports filed from time to time with OTC Markets ( www.otcmarkets.com) . Company Contact: info@ISWHoldings.com Public Relations EDM Media, LLC https://edm.media (800) 301-7883 || Wall Street rallies on U.S. stimulus and vaccine hopes as bond markets calm: By Suzanne Barlyn NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global equities markets rose and the S&P 500 on Monday had its best day since June 5, with investors taking lower U.S. bond yields in stride on optimism over the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill and distribution of Johnson & Johnson's newly authorized COVID-19 vaccine. Wall Street's rise follows a jump in European shares and solid gains on Asian stock markets. Investor optimism that the J&J vaccine would further lift the economy is "giving a lift to all of the 'go-to-work' stocks" that benefit from businesses reopening, said Jim Awad, senior managing director at Clearstead Advisors in New York. A stabilization of U.S. Treasury yields has also removed pressure from growth stocks, Awad said. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 603.14 points, or 1.95%, to 31,535.51, the S&P 500 gained 90.67 points, or 2.38%, to 3,901.82 and the Nasdaq Composite added 396.48 points, or 3.01%, to 13,588.83. The much-anticipated COVID-19 relief bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday, and now moves to the Senate. The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 1.84% and MSCI's gauge of stocks across the globe gained 2.01%. Emerging market stocks rose 1.71%. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed 1.83% higher, while Japan's Nikkei rose 2.41%. Reports on manufacturing and factory activity showed strength in many developed economies on Monday, including a three-year high in the United States, which could keep inflation concerns on the radar. Major sovereign bonds rallied on Monday as markets showed further signs of stabilization after their worst monthly performance in years. Expectations of economic recovery and rising inflation boosted global benchmark bond yields in February to their biggest monthly rises in years. But the expected run-down of U.S. Treasury balances at the Federal Reserve has held down shorter-dated rates. Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes last rose 8/32 in price to yield 1.429%, from 1.456% on Monday. Story continues The coronavirus pandemic laid bare weaknesses in the financial system that should be addressed with new rules to prepare for the next shock, Fed Governor Lael Brainard said. "We should not miss the opportunity to distill lessons from the COVID shock and institute reforms so our system is more resilient and better able to withstand a variety of possible shocks in the future," Brainard said. Gold prices rose as the retreat in U.S. Treasury yields helped to bolster its status as an inflation hedge, but a firmer dollar limited bullion's advance. Spot gold dropped 0.5% to $1,724.06 an ounce. U.S. gold futures fell 0.45% to $1,720.40 an ounce. The dollar index rose to a three-week high as investors bet on faster growth and inflation in the United States, while the Australian dollar gained after Australia's central bank increased its bond purchases in a bid to stem rapidly rising yields. Bitcoin rose 6.70% to $48,719.02, with Citi saying the most popular cryptocurrency was at a "tipping point" and could become the preferred currency for international trade. Goldman Sachs has restarted its cryptocurrency trading desk, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. U.S. crude recently fell 1.77% to $60.41 per barrel and Brent was at $63.45, down 1.51% on the day on fears that Chinese oil crude consumption is slowing and that OPEC may increase global supply following a meeting this week. (GRAPHIC - Germany 10-year: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/jbyprddzype/Germany%2010-year.png) (Reporting by Suzanne Barlyn; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Sonya Hepinstall) || $4.6M in Filecoin ‘Double Deposited’ on Binance; Exploit Open on Other Exchanges: The very problem Bitcoin’s proof-of-work design was meant to stop just took place on the Filecoin (FIL) network – well, sort of. According to Filecoin miners at Filfox and FileStar, Binance processed a “double deposit” of FIL on Wednesday worth millions of dollars. This is not a true, on-chain double spend, but Binance credited the miners’ filecoin account twice after one deposit due to a “serious bug” in Filecoin’s remote procedure call (RPC) code. A “double spend” occurs when the same funds on a blockchain are spent twice; Bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm was designed to make this a virtual impossibility. But it appears that the RPC codes for Filecoin, a blockchain project for distributed storage built by Protocol Labs, feature a flaw where users can trick exchanges into accepting a deposit twice. Related: This Ether Options Play by Institutions Has Lottery Ticket Potential “The RPC channel is the information channel for exchanges to verify deposits are legitimate. They don’t verify directly. Instead, they send a message through the channel saying, ‘Hey, is this guy’s deposit any good?’ And they get a response back from FileCoin’s software saying ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” Bitcoin developer Dustin Dettmer explained in a message to CoinDesk. However, he added, the process Filecoin developers gave to exchanges to verify deposits includes a critical flaw that allows users to deposit the same coins repeatedly. “This allows hackers to write a single check but re-deposit it as many times as they like – similar to how kids, in the arcade, used to tie strings to quarters to play forever using a single coin,” said Dettmer. “Except here the consequences are more drastic. Unlimited amounts of real funds could be stolen.” The mishap could more correctly be called a “double-deposit” because this bug did not result in a true double-spend, and the miners who discovered it believe they have found other instances as well. Story continues The Filecoin RBF ‘double deposit’ bug Related: Bitcoin IRA Reports Clients Invested Over $100M in 'IRA Earn' Program The Filfox and FileStar mining collective discovered the bug Wednesday after accidentally exploiting it. After a 61,000 FIL transaction (worth roughly $4.6 million) to the exchange was taking too long, the team bumped the fee with a “replace-by-fee” (RBF) transaction to speed it up. A replace-by-fee transaction takes place when a user broadcasts a new transaction to replace an older, unconfirmed transaction and attaches a higher mining fee to it, with the goal of speeding up its confirmation. This RBF transaction, however, resulted in the deposit showing up in their Binance account twice, effectively turning 61,000 FIL into 120,000 FIL. The problem is the second 61k FIL never actually hit Binance’s wallet – Binance was tricked into crediting the deposits twice because of a bug in Filecoin’s RPC codes. The team immediately alerted Binance and Protocol Labs. Essentially, the bug meant Binance saw both transactions, ignored that they were conflicting and accepted both (for a replace-by-fee transaction, usually, the second, higher fee transaction is considered valid while the first is rejected). Every exchange with Filecoin trading pairs uses the same “StateGetReceipt” RPC code to process deposits, so the bug is theoretically exploitable on any exchange that trades the token, the team said. “Protocol Labs suggested that exchanges fetch message receipts from RPC StateGetReceipt, which has a serious bug. When there are two messages with the same sender and same nonce on-chain, (which means a double-spend), StateGetReceipt returns the same result for both of them,” a Filecoin developer told the mining firms in their correspondence. Deposits for Filecoin at Binance, Huobi and others have been halted as a result, the miners said. CoinDesk has reached out to popular exchanges Binance, Huobi and OKEx to verify these claims, but only heard back from Binance, who said that FIL deposits “resumed as of March 19, 2021 at 00:45 UTC and systems are back to normal.” Filecoin developers have opened a GitHub issue to work on a fix and the team has published a post-mortem if the issue . In correspondence with CoinDesk, they denied that the flaw resulted from an RPC error and instead claimed it originated from “misunderstanding” and ” misuse” on Binance’s end. “There is no RPC bug. The issue resulted from incorrect usage of APIs from the exchange in question. We do not know of any other exchange that has made a similar mistake,” Filecoin’s team said. “The team will work with exchanges to audit their deposit mechanism to avoid future issues.” FIL is down 4.5% on the day. This is a developing story. Updated Thursday, March 18, 2021, 21:57 UTC: Additional comments from Filecoin team added and edits made to clarify that the exploit was a “double deposit” on Binance, not a “double spend” on-chain. Updated Thursday, March 19, 2021 , 1 3:35: Comments from Binance added. Related Stories $4.6M in Filecoin ‘Double Deposited’ on Binance; Exploit Open on Other Exchanges $4.6M in Filecoin ‘Double Deposited’ on Binance; Exploit Open on Other Exchanges || GLOBAL MARKETS-Stocks rise, bonds sell off as investors bet on recovery: (Updates prices)
* The S&P 500 and the Dow hit all-time highs
* Bitcoin breaks above $50,000
* Government bond yields leap
* Oil prices close to 13-month highs, supported by Texascold snap
By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed
NEW YORK, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Wall Street joined a globalmarch propelling stock indexes to record highs on Tuesday, withinvestors selling government bonds in a bet that COVID-19vaccinations and U.S. stimulus will deliver a durable economicrecovery after a year of lockdowns.
Bitcoin added to the bullish mood, brieflyclimbing above $50,000 for the first time, while prospects of"reflation" - a boost in inflation from extraordinary fiscalstimulus - pushed U.S. Treasury yields higher.
U.S. President Joe Biden will travel to Wisconsin on Tuesdayto press his case for a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill inthe political battleground state that helped secure his victoryin last year's presidential election.
The MSCI's global stock index was about flatat 685.05 after hitting a record high of 687.26 earlier in thesession. A positive close would mark the 12th consecutive day ofgains for the first time since January 2004.
On Wall Street, the Dow hit an all-time high on Tuesday,while the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq retreated slightly from recordlevels, as investors bet on more fiscal aid to lift the world'sbiggest economy from a coronavirus-driven slump.
"The reflation trade continues to push equity markets acrossall industries and multi-caps ... and this rally could continuein the near-term," said Tony Bedikian, head of global markets atCitizens Bank in Boston.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 74.87 points,or 0.24%, to 31,533.27, the S&P 500 gained 0.63 points,or 0.02%, to 3,935.46 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped40.75 points, or 0.29%, to 14,054.73.
European shares ended about flat around a one-year peak onTuesday as a boost from major mining and bank stocks wastempered by losses in most other sectors, with investorsremaining uncertain over a euro zone economic recovery.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index finished down0.06%.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield neared 1.3% onTuesday and the yield curve steepened as expectations ofextended fiscal and monetary stimulus alongside hopes of aneconomic upswing boosted the reflation trade.
"The market has fully embraced the prospects of Biden's $1.9trillion stimulus, and the accelerated vaccine rollout issupport of further bearish price action as well," Westpacstrategists told clients.
Bond yield curves - considered a reliable barometer ofgrowth expectations - have also steepened, with the gap betweentwo-year and 10-year U.S. notes now around 117 bps, the widestsince March 2017..
The U.S. dollar bounced off three-week lows as bullishcomments from a U.S. Federal Reserve official and upbeatmanufacturing data helped arouse investor risk appetite.
Against a basket of its rivals, the greenback gained0.213% to 90.526, after earlier falling to 90.117, its lowestlevel since Jan. 26.
Bitcoin briefly soared above $50,000 to anall-time high, adding steam to a rally fueled by signs that theworld's biggest cryptocurrency is gaining acceptance amongmainstream investors and companies. The cryptocurrency was lastup 1.5% at $48,673.09.
Oil prices hovered near 13-month highs on Tuesday, supportedby a deep freeze in the U.S. South that shut wells and oilrefineries in Texas.
Brent crude futures settled at $63.35 a barrel, up 5cents or 0.08%, while U.S. crude oil futures settled at$60.05 a barrel, up 58 CENTS or 0.98%.
Spot gold XAU= was down 1.34% at $1,794.21 an ounce.
(Reporting by Saqib Iqbal Ahmed; Editing by Dan Grebler andJonathan Oatis) || S&P and Dow Surge After Biden Signs Stimulus: President Joe Biden’s speech that aired during prime time Thursday evening, just hours afterhe signed his stimulus package into law, represented a beacon of hope for Americans that pandemic restrictions will taper off by spring and Americans can safely celebrate the Fourth of July with “small gatherings.”
See:If You Get a Stimulus Check, How Will You Use It? Take Our PollFind:Biden Just Signed the Stimulus – and It’s Giving Millions of Parents a Monthly Allowance
But the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite were a few steps ahead of the speech. All three indices soared Thursday afternoon upon news of President Biden signing the long-awaited $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. Bitcoin also approached record highs, rallying to over $57,000, Yahoo! Finance reports.
The Dow climbed mid-afternoon, reaching a high of $32,658 midday and closing at $32,485, which was 189 points over the previous day’s close.
The Nasdaq composite gained 2.52% percent, closing just short of $13,400 as tech stocks rebounded. The S&P 500 gained just over 1%, closing at $3,939. Treasury yields steadied, which could also have affected the market rebound, as high bond yields have driven the major markets down in recent days.
See:Have $1,000? These Are the Top 25 Stocks to BuyFind:Why Now Is the Time for Gen Z to Start Investing
Experts predict the $1,400 stimulus checks could have a great impact on equity markets, according to Yahoo! Finance. Strategists and Goldman Sachs suggested that some of the stimulus money could be invested in the stock market, Yahoo! Finance reports.
“We expect households will be the largest source of equity demand this year,” Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin told Yahoo! Finance. “We raise our household net equity demand forecast to $350 billion from $100 billion, which reflects faster economic growth and higher interest rates than we had assumed previously, additional stimulus payments to individuals, and increased retail activity in early 2021.”
With retail investors looking at an infusion of capital, one might expect meme stocks and other fan favorite stocks like Tesla, fueled by consumers’ passion for the company, to rise.
See:Invest Like Buffett – Chevron Stock Could Be Your Next Great MoveFind:How Our Approach to Saving Money Has Changed Forever
In addition, Americans have changed their savings habits during the pandemic, with 22% of Americans saying they socked away at least $1,000 during the pandemic, according to a survey done by MassMutual in July 2020. Additionally, the survey revealed that 47% spent less during the summer of 2020 than they did in the summer of 2019.
Personal savings compared to disposable income rose to 20.5% in January 2021, according to a study by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
“Our expectation is that a portion of the stimulus money makes its way into equities,” Cliff Hodge, chief investment officer for Cornerstone Wealth, told Forbes.“The last time around, flows went into more speculative areas of the market, including SPACs, Reddit stocks, and high-growth momentum, so it wouldn’t surprise us to see something similar.”
More from GOBankingRates
• If You Get a Stimulus Check, How Will You Use It? Take Our Poll
• How Long $1 Million in Savings Will Last in Every State
• Navy Federal Platinum Credit Card Review: Great for Balance Transfers and More
• 27 Ugly Truths About Retirement
This article originally appeared onGOBankingRates.com:S&P and Dow Surge After Biden Signs Stimulus || PayPal Finally Welcomes Bitcoin, More Cryptocurrencies: Prykhodov / Getty Images At long last PayPal is on board with cryptocurrencies , enabling U.S. customers to hold, buy and sell bitcoin and other virtual coins in their PayPal accounts . This is only the first phase in what looks to be an ambitious plan PayPal is cooking up to make cryptocurrency more mainstream. Soon the company will allow customers to use crypto as a funding source for purchases at PayPal’s 26 million merchants. Additionally, in early 2021, PayPal will enable crypto support on its popular social payments app Venmo — and open services to select countries outside the U.S. The service is powered by via the U.S. with Paxos Trust Company. Save: Best Money Market Accounts of 2021: High Rates and Easy Access What finally prompted PayPal to make the move to support virtual currency? PayPal’s president and CEO, Dan Schulman, suggested that it was really only a matter of time. And that time has come, thanks in part to the pandemic, which has accelerated the use of digital payments . “The shift to digital forms of currencies is inevitable, bringing with it clear advantages in terms of financial inclusion and access; efficiency, speed and resilience of the payments system; and the ability for governments to disburse funds to citizens quickly,” Schulman said in a statement. “Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange. We are eager to work with central banks and regulators around the world to offer our support, and to meaningfully contribute to shaping the role that digital currencies will play in the future of global finance and commerce.” Surely, PayPal just helped secure that future wherein digital currency is a go-to form of money. More From GOBankingRates These Are the Best Banks of 2021 – Did Yours Make the Cut? 36 Ways To Save For Your Emergency Fund and Any Unexpected Situations Top 100 Banks Leading the U.S. in 2021 35 Ways To Slash Your Car Costs Last updated: Jan. 21, 2021 This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : PayPal Finally Welcomes Bitcoin, More Cryptocurrencies View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 54738.95, 52774.27, 51704.16, 55137.31, 55973.51, 55950.75, 57750.20, 58917.69, 58918.83, 59095.81
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Inside the World's Greatest Scavenger Hunt, Part 1: In the fall of 2015, my teenage daughter Tia crafted a spectacular, life-sized poodle out of feminine hygiene products.
“It’s a tampoodle,” she told me.
She made this, uh, artwork as an audition piece—to showcase her creative skills, as a tryout for an elite team in some kind of national scavenger hunt. (She made the team.)
I thought the tampoodle was cute. I thought it was great fun that Tia was joining some kind of scavenger hunt.
I had no idea what kind of ride was ahead.
When most people think of a scavenger hunt, they probably imagine the list of items includes, you know, “Get the dean’s signature” or “Find a dog with a curly tail.”
GISHWHES is not that.
It stands for theGreatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen.(Its creator acknowledges GISHWHES may be the Ugliest Acronym the World Has Ever Seen.)
Teams of 15 have one week to complete about 200 extremely difficult or hilarious tasks. They prove they’ve completed each item by submitting a photo or video of it; their $20 entry fees go to a charity, and the winning team gets a trip to some exotic location with Misha Collins, the hunt’s founder.
Sample items from past GISHWHES lists:
• • Do a dramatic reading of your grade-school report card.
• • Find someone you love and butter them up—literally. Cover them in butter and then give them a big hug.
• • Glaciers are melting—so act accordingly. Pose at a major glacier wearing a swimsuit with floaties.
• • Have a tea party with a pediatric cancer patient, where you’re dressed as a character from “Alice in Wonderland.”
• • Tour a sewage treatment plant dressed in formal attire with an accompanying violinist or flutist.
• • Get a child to write a letter to the universe. Launch the letter into orbit.
• • Film an erotically charged conversation between a housewife and pizza delivery man. The actors can ONLY talk about grammar and fonts.
What astonished me is what a big deal GISHWHES is. Last year, 55,000 people registered to participate—not including all the friends and family members who lent favors, assistance, and props. (Registration for this year’s hunt opens this week.)
GISHWHES holds seven Guinness World Records, including Biggest Media Scavenger Hunt, Largest Online Photo Album of Hugs, Longest Chain of Safety Pins, Most Pledges for a Charitable Campaign, and Largest Gathering of People in French Maid Outfits. (Why is there a Guinness record for Largest Gathering of People in French Maid Outfits!?)
But in the end, GISHWHES is an event that does good in the world. Over the years, GISHWHES list items have persuaded players to a) raise over $1 million for charity, b) donate hundreds of thousands of pints of blood, c) volunteer at soup kitchens, d) register thousands of citizens to vote, and e) register to become bone-marrow donors. (That last item has already saved two lives, according to GISHWHES producers.)
And the 2016 hunt raised $250,000 to buy homes for five Syrian refugee families.
So yes, GISHWHES is a do-gooder enterprise. But it’s also brilliantly clever, gut-bustingly funny, and positively unforgettable.
So my question is: Why haven’t people heard of GISHWHES? Why isn’t it a culturalthing?
Why isn’t it, at the very least, a reality show? It’d be the most entertaining show on TV.
Well, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. With the tolerance of my superiors at Yahoo, I decided to make myowndarned reality show. Above on this page is Episode 1 of a five-part series.
Part 1 •Part 2•Part 3•Part 4•Part 5
GISHWHES was created, and is run to this day, by TV actor Misha Collins, a costar of the CW series “Supernatural.” (His heartthrob status helps explain why GISHWHES participants are predominantly female.)
“I went to the University of Chicago,” he told me. “The University of Chicago has a scavenger hunt that we call Scav, that has been running about 30 years now. It took place over the course of a long weekend. We would completely abandon our academics and our sense of decency for those three days, and go all-out for this scavenger hunt. And I loved it. I actually think that it was one of the most educational aspects of my college experience, and infused with the most joy.”
Years later, after a decade of struggling as an actor in Los Angeles, Collins finally landed a show. “I got on this TV show ‘Supernatural,’ and I developed a little bit of a fandom following, and I started to notice that there was a high level of creative engagement from our fans. That got my wheels turning. What can I do with this? How can I have fun with it?”
Collins’s first side project with his fans wasa charity called Random Acts. “We’ve done some pretty big projects. We built an orphanage in Haiti; we’re finishing building a high school in Nicaragua right now. But we also do myriad smaller projects all over the world—as small as bringing roses into a senior citizen home.”
Then, in 2009, as a lark, Collins ran a little scavenger hunt from his Twitter account. About 300 people participated; they were instructed to photograph their submissions and send them to an email address that Collins set up.
“People engaged in it with an enthusiasm and a committedness that I could not’ve anticipated,” he says now. “I remember sitting in my apartment, looking at the submissions that had come in, and thinking, ‘This is amazing!’ The art people were creating, the tasks that I thought were impossible that people were pulling off—! I remember, ‘This is what I wanna do for my life’s work. This is awesome.’”
And so, in 2010, GISHWHES was born.
For the 2016 hunt, I embedded myself with my daughter’s GISHWHES team for the week. I filmed their efforts and followed their frustrations and joys. In the coming episodes, you’ll get to meet them—and you’ll get go to inside world’s biggest scavenger hunt.
Part 1 •Part 2•Part 3•Part 4•Part 5
More from David Pogue:
The David Pogue Review: Windows 10 Creators Update
Now I get it: Bitcoin
David Pogue tested 47 pill-reminder apps to find the best one
David Pogue’s search for the world’s best air-travel app
The little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their fingers
David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the web, he’sdavidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s@pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You canread all his articles here, or you can sign up toget his columns by email. || Bitcoin hits all-time high as talk of U.S. ETF approval intensifies: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss NEW YORK (Reuters) - Digital currency bitcoin hit a record high on Friday on optimism about the approval of the first U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded fund by the Securities and Exchange Commission. "There's one catalyst at the moment and that is the expectation that the Winklevoss Trust will be approved on the 11th of March. That's the only game in town," said Daniel Masters, portfolio manager of Jersey-based Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Program. Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have a pending application with the SEC for a bitcoin ETF, which was filed nearly four years ago. On March 11, the twins are expected to receive a final decision from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on whether they can list their ETF. If approved by the SEC, this would be the first bitcoin ETF issued by a U.S. entity. On Friday, bitcoin climbed to a record $1,298 on the BitStamp platform. Bitcoin last traded at $1,263.01, up nearly 5 percent on the day. So far this year, bitcoin has surged more than 30 percent. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world quickly and anonymously without the need for a central authority. Darin Stanchfield, founder and chief executive officer of bitcoin wallet KeepKey, said the approval of the Winklevoss ETF would be a big boost to the market. "It should add a fair amount of liquidity to the bitcoin market," added. To date, there are two other bitcoin ETF applications with the SEC. Grayscale's Bitcoin Investment Trust, backed by early bitcoin advocate Barry Silbert and his Digital Currency Group, filed its application with the SEC in March last year. SolidX Partners Inc, a U.S. technology company that provides blockchain services, also filed its ETF application in July of last year. Bitcoin relies on so-called "mining" computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. In return, the first to solve the puzzle and clear the transaction is rewarded with new bitcoins. Story continues Analysts said the groundwork for bitcoin gains was laid in July last year in a process called "halving," where rewards offered to bitcoin miners shrink. That has constrained the supply of the digital currency. Dan Morehead, chief executive officer at hedge fund Pantera Capital, said in his recent letter to investors that the bitcoin price moves in line with the currency's use in transactions and both have risen sharply. He sees the bitcoin price possibly rising to $2,288 by the end of the year. (Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Sandra Maler) || U.S. regulators reject Bitcoin ETF, digital currency plunges: By Trevor Hunnicutt and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday denied a request to list what would have been the first U.S. exchange-traded fund built to track bitcoin, the digital currency.
Investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have been trying for more than three years to convince the SEC to let it bring the Bitcoin ETF to market. CBOE Holdings Inc's Bats exchange had applied to list the ETF.
The digital currency's price plunged, falling as much as 18 percent in trading immediately after the decision before rebounding slightly. It last traded down 7.8 percent to $1,098.
Bitcoin had scaled to a record of nearly $1,300 this month, higher than the price of an ounce of gold, as investors speculated that an ETF holding the digital currency could woo more people into buying the asset.
Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world quickly and with relative anonymity, without the need for a central authority, such as a bank or government.
Yet bitcoin presents a new set of risks to investors given its limited adoption, a number of massive cybersecurity breaches affecting bitcoin owners and the lack of consistent treatment of the assets by governments.
"Based on the record before it, the Commission believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated," the SEC said in a statement. "The commission notes that bitcoin is still in the relatively early stages of its development and that, over time, regulated bitcoin-related markets of significant size may develop."
The regulators have questions and concerns about how the funds would work and whether they could be priced and trade effectively, according to a financial industry source familiar with the SEC's thinking.
"We began this journey almost four years ago, and are determined to see it through," said Tyler Winklevoss, CFO of Digital Asset Services LLC. "We agree with the SEC that regulation and oversight are important to the health of any marketplace and the safety of all investors."
The Winklevoss twins are best known for their feud with Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg over whether he stole the idea for what became the world's most popular social networking website from them. The former Olympic rowers ultimately settled their legal dispute, which was dramatized in the 2010 film "The Social Network."
Since then they have become major investors in the digital currency, which relies on "mining" computers that validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles. The first to solve the puzzle and clear the transaction is rewarded with new bitcoins. Solutions to the puzzle come roughly every 10 minutes.
Advocates of the currency and the technology it relies on to document transactions, blockchain, were dismayed by the ruling.
"How do we develop well-capitalized and regulated markets in the U.S. and Europe if financial innovators aren't allowed to bring products to market that grow domestic demand for digital currencies like bitcoin?" asked Jerry Brito, executive director of Coin Center, an advocacy group.
Spencer Bogart, head of research at Blockchain Capital, said bitcoin's price could fall as much as 20 percent but that its long-term adoption will continue.
A Bats spokeswoman said the exchange is reviewing the SEC's statement and would have no further comment.
There are two other bitcoin ETF applications awaiting a verdict from the SEC. Grayscale Investments LLC's Bitcoin Investment Trust, backed by early bitcoin advocate Barry Silbert and his Digital Currency Group, filed an application last year.
SolidX Partners Inc, a U.S. technology company that provides blockchain services, also filed its ETF application last year.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and John McCrank in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jennifer Ablan) || Bitcoin crashes after SEC rejects Winklevoss ETF: Cameron (L) and Tyler Winklevoss speaking in front of the New York Department of Financial Services in 2014 (Reuters) The price of the digital currency bitcoin has been flying for the last few weeks, reaching an all-time high today of $1,350 per coin just this week. But on Friday afternoon it began plummeting. Here’s why: the SEC on Friday released a long-awaited ruling on an application for a bitcoin ETF (exchange-traded fund) submitted by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of Facebook fame. The SEC denied the proposal —brutally. In its own language, from its 38-page decision, the SEC wrote (emphasis ours) that it: “does not find the proposal to be consistent with Section 6(b)(5) of the Exchange Act, which requires, among other things, that the rules of a national securities exchange be designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices and to protect investors and the public interest. The Commission believes that, in order to meet this standard, an exchange that lists and trades shares of commodity-trust exchange-traded products (“ETPs”) must, in addition to other applicable requirements, satisfy two requirements that are dispositive in this matter. First, the exchange must have surveillance-sharing agreements with significant markets for trading the underlying commodity or derivatives on that commodity. And second, those markets must be regulated. 6 Based on the record before it, the Commission believes that the significant markets for bitcoin are unregulated. Translation: a bitcoin ETF does not satisfy its fraud prevention rules, and it sounds like the SEC does not believe it could ever satisfy the rules, even with changes. (Ouch.) The Winklevoss brothers, who own a large amount of bitcoin and offer a bitcoin exchange site, Gemini , and a bitcoin price index, WinkDex , were looking to trade shares of their Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust, a grouping of bitcoin-based securities, on the Bats Global Exchange market under the ticker COIN. The ETF would allow investors to buy shares in something tied to bitcoin without actually buying bitcoin in the usual way. Story continues The SEC decision suggests major skepticism around the security of the volatile digital currency, which is sure to raise concerns among bitcoin investors and spur them to sell. That sell-off has already begun in earnest. In under an hour after the SEC posted its decision, bitcoin lost $300 of value. Bitcoin price on Mar. 10, 2017 Tech blog The Verge called the SEC’s denial “a huge setback” for the fund, and more broadly, “a frustrating false start” for bitcoin. A few hours after the SEC’s decision, a spokesperson for Winklevoss Capital sent out this statement from Tyler Winklevoss: “We remain optimistic and committed to bringing COIN to market, and look forward to continuing to work with the SEC staff. We began this journey almost four years ago, and are determined to see it through. We agree with the SEC that regulation and oversight are important to the health of any marketplace and the safety of all investors.” — Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering technology and sports business. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite . Read more: Bitcoin is becoming the new gold Expect more blockchain hype in 2017 Here’s where big banks stand on blockchain Why 21.co is the most exciting bitcoin company right now Coinbase is more bullish on bitcoin than ever || Monday Hot Reads: How To Tell If Your Mutual Fund Is Dying: Compiled by ETF.com Staff How To Tell If Your Mutual Fund Is Dying (LA Times) As many investors pull money from actively managed stock mutual funds, shareholders who stay put may face special risks. Would You Buy An ETF Without Knowing What’s In It? (Bloomberg Businessweek) Precidian will be competing with Eaton Vance on the level of nontransparent active exchange-traded vehicles. A Once-Hot ETF Now Looks Pricey (Benzinga) VanEck's SLX steel ETF is looking expensive after a recent surge. Building A Better Bond ETF (Barron’s) Bond indexes are problematic, making ETFs based on them problematic. Here's how to improve performance. The Anti-Bitcoin ETF (Wall Street Journal) Diversified currency funds provide a contrast to proposed—and so far rejected—bitcoin ETFs. ETFs Claiming Larger Share Of Invested Assets (Chicago Tribune) Asset gathering pace is picking up steam, and that’s even more impressive if you consider 401(k)s still largely don’t offer ETFs. 5 High Yield ETFs Of CEFs For Tactical Income Investors (FMD Capital Management) A rundown of the differences between five ETFs that invest in closed-end funds. Investors Check In To This ETF, But Don’t Want To Leave (WSJ) BlackRock’s iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF IEMG has never had a day of net redemptions. A Foreign Threat To US Treasuries That Dwarfs Fed's Debt Hoard (Bloomberg) There’s an even bigger debt pile that could draw buyers away from Treasuries at just the wrong time. Recommended Stories Monday Hot Reads: How To Tell If Your Mutual Fund Is Dying BlackRock’s Active Gambit Ups Pressure On Rivals The ‘Stock Picker’s Market’ That Wasn’t Friday Hot Reads: Model ETF Portfolios Get A Fixed Income Overhaul Tuesday Hot Reads: ETFs Have Saved Investors How Many Billions? Permalink | © Copyright 2017 ETF.com. All rights reserved || How to Invest in Bitcoin and Digital Currency: In the years since the Great Recession, you've probably heard about the electronic payment system and so-called cryptocurrency called bitcoin . But you're perhaps less likely to have heard of the underlying technology that powers it. It's called blockchain. Blockchain technology is a digital ledger distributed across a network of computers that keeps track of transactions. But beyond payments, it can be used for a wide variety of applications such as contracts, documents and basic record keeping. "Wall Street is going to eventually move into this in a big way," says Alan Friedland, founder of Compcoin, a blockchain-based public currency trading platform. "In the meantime, it's a great opportunity to get into early." [See: 9 Under-the-Radar Ways to Buy Financial Stocks .] Just like the internet democratized the dissemination of information, blockchain technology democratizes the securitization of information, says Chris Burniske, head of blockchain products with Ark Investment Management. "It's probably the most impactful general purpose technology that's been invented in the 21st century," he says. While bitcoin decentralizes payments, another major blockchain technology called Ethereum enables decentralized applications. Another, Storj, is involved in decentralized computer storage. Each issues its own value token or coin -- bitcoin issues bitcoins, Ethereum issues ether, and Storj issues Storjcoin X -- that can be bought and traded. There are now many different digital currencies. Blockchain assets have a very low correlation to other assets, and so they can be used to diversify portolios , Burniske says. Some use them as a risk hedge similar to how they use gold, he says. Stan Miroshnik, managing director with the Argon Group, an investment bank focusing on the blockchain sector, adds that bitcoin is uncorrelated to bonds, gold, real estate, commodities and emerging market currencies. It only has a very small correlation to U.S. equities, he says. Story continues Blockchain is "an important enough technology that people should try to invest a little bit," Miroshnik says. There are different schools of thought about the best way to invest in this nascent, but growing, industry. On the one hand, you can stockpile tokens , such as bitcoin or another digital currency, and hope the demand for them will increase, their value will rise and you can sell them later at a profit. Or, you can invest in the companies that are creating different blockchain-based products. Morningstar analyst Jim Sinegal falls into the latter camp, saying investors should focus on companies that stand to make money if they find useful applications for blockchain technology. He suggests investors go after the companies because the coins don't generate any cash flow. So the only way you'll make money off it is if a token's price goes up and you can then sell it, Sinegal says. However, because the industry is so new, it can be tough to invest in companies with exposure to blockchain technology, Sinegal says. He compares it to the early stages of internet stocks in the 1990s. A few were successful, but investors lost money on others. "It's very tough to make a direct investment," he says. [See: 6 ETFs That Let You Buy Micro-Cap Stocks .] Still, Sinegal says companies such as Goldman Sachs Group (ticker: NYSE: GS ) and CME Group ( CME ) eventually stand to significantly benefit from the lower costs blockchain technology makes possible. While more than 70 of the world's largest financial institutions have joined a blockchain-development consortium, and large technology firms like International Business Machines Corp. ( IBM ) and Microsoft Corp. ( MSFT ) have blockchain solutions, Miroshnik says it remains difficult to get true exposure to the technology through public companies. The blockchain penny stock universe includes BTCS, Global Arena Holding, HashingSpace Corp. and First Bitcoin Capital Corp. But penny stock companies are very young and may not be the best investment now as their business models are evolving, Miroshnik says. Miroshnik says investing in coins is the way to go because blockchain assets appreciate for two reasons. First, there is a real cost to producing each transactional ledger of the blockchain. It takes computer equipment and energy. These so-called miners compete to produce the next block in the chain and are rewarded with coins. This cost of production keeps going up over time, creating a fundamental driver of higher value, Miroshnik says. Additionally, there is transactional value created as demand rises for a blockchain coin, Miroshnik says. For investors wanting to buy into this emerging asset class, they can go to places such as Coinbase, Bitstamp or Kraken, Burniske says. It's similar to a foreign exchange trade, where investors exchange the value of one asset with another based on exchange rates, he says. His company runs two exchange-traded funds -- the Web x.0 ETF ( ARKW ) and Ark Innovation ETF ( ARKK ) -- that each have exposure to bitcoin though Bitcoin Investment Trust ( GBTC ), he says. Uninitiated consumers should stick with bitcoin or ether to get comfortable with the language of this emerging capital market, Miroshnik says. For other coins, investing means doing research into what project they are supporting and what value the investor thinks it represents, he says. [See: The 9 Best Municipal Bond Funds for Tax-Free Income .] "That process is very similar to how you would think about investing in small-cap stocks," he says. More From US News & World Report The 10 Best Financial ETFs You Can Buy Avoid These 8 Rookie Investing Mistakes 10 Tips for Couples and Young Families to Build Wealth || U.S. investment firm plans launch of first ever ethereum classic private fund: By Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. investment firm Grayscale Investments plans to launch the first-ever private fund focused on ethereum classic, a blockchain platform, according to Barry Silbert, founder of the company's parent Digital Currency Group.
Ethereum classic's token is the seventh largest digital currency in terms of market capitalization, totaling $126.6 million. The coin powers a decentralized blockchain hub in which developers can create different applications that can dramatically enhance the transfer and sharing of information and value.
Ethereum classic was built on the same fundamental principles as bitcoin: decentralization and immutability.
On Monday, ethereum classic traded at $1.42 on digital asset exchanges.
"As investors have grown more interested in digital currency as an asset class, we've also seen growing frustration with the difficulty in purchasing non-bitcoin digital currencies," Silbert told Reuters.
"We're excited to launch a fund for ethereum classic to satisfy the growing interest we are seeing in ETC from more mainstream investors."
The ethereum classic fund will be an open-ended trust that can raise an unlimited amount of capital, Silbert said. Digital Currency Group will be seeding it with its own capital and it will be offered initially to accredited investors, he added.
This will be the second digital currency fund for Grayscale, which launched the Bitcoin Investment Trust in 2013, the only publicly-traded U.S. security in the over-the-counter market invested in bitcoin.
Ethereum classic has had a rocky history. It came out of a split from the original ethereum blockchain platform created by Russian programmer Vitalik Buterin and launched in 2015.
In April 2016, a blockchain solutions company called Slock.it announced the launch of The DAO on Ethereum. The DAO was designed as a decentralized crowdfunding model, in which anyone could contribute ethereum tokens to become a voting member and equity stakeholder in the organization.
The DAO eventually raised $150 million as of late May last year. But on June 17,2016, an anonymous hacker funneled approximately $60 million in tokens into a separate account.
The ethereum network decided to undertake a "hard fork", in which the community would create an entirely new version of the ethereum blockchain, erasing any record of the theft, and restoring the stolen funds to their owners.
A new blockhain platform was then formed, keeping its ethereum name, and the original version was branded as ethereum classic. Both ethereum and ethereum classic trade on digital asset exchanges.
The new ethereum has a larger market cap of $1.8 billion, with the token trading at $19.97 on Monday
(This version of the story corrects the headline and first paragraph to show Grayscale plans to launch ethereum classic private fund, not that it has already launched the fund)
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Andrew Hay) || Kim Dotcom announces new Bitcoin venture for content uploaders to earn money: WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Controversial New Zealand-based internet mogul Kim Dotcom plans to launch a Bitcoin payments system for users to sell files and video streaming as he fights extradition to the United States for criminal copyright charges. The German-born entrepreneur, who is wanted by U.S. law enforcement on copyright and money laundering allegations related to his now-defunct streaming site Megaupload, announced his new venture called 'Bitcontent' in a video posted on Youtube this week. "You can create a payment for any content that you put on the internet...you can share that with your customers, with the interest community and, boom, you are basically in business and can sell your content," Dotcom said in the video. He added that Bitcontent would eventually allow businesses, such as news organizations, to earn money from their entire websites. He did not provide a launch date. Dotcom did not provide details on how Bitcontent would differ from existing Bitcoin operations or how it would help news organizations make money beyond existing subscription payment options. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world quickly and with relative anonymity, without the need for a central authority, such as a bank or government. The currency's anonymity has however made it popular with drug dealers, money launderers and organized crime groups, meaning governments and the financial establishment have been slow to embrace it since the first trade in 2009. The currencys value hit record levels in 2017, trading at $1,145 on Wednesday, a fivefold increase in a year, amid growing interest globally. A New Zealand court ruled in February that Dotcom could be extradited to the United States to face charges relating to his Megaupload website, which was shutdown in 2012 following an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion, a decision he was appealing. Dotcom, who has New Zealand residency, became well known for his lavish lifestyle as much as his computer skills. He used to post photographs of himself with cars having vanity plates such as "GOD" and "GUILTY", shooting an assault rifle and flying around the world in his private jet. (Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Michael Perry) || USD/CNH Patterns to Watch after PBOC Talks on U.S.- China Relationship: DailyFX.com - This daily digest focuses on Yuan rates, major Chinese economic data, market sentiment, new developments in China’s foreign exchange policies, changes in financial market regulations, as well as market news typically available only in Chinese-language sources. - The USD/CNH is testing a major support. Watch key levels next. - The PBOC Governor addressed on investment negotiations between China and the U.S. - Looking for more trade ideas? Review DailyFX’s 2017 Trading Guides and watch DailyFX webinars . To receive reports from this analyst, sign up for Renee Mu’ distribution list . Yuan Rates USD/CNH Patterns to Watch after PBOC Talks on U.S.- China Relationship Prepared by Michael Boutros . USDCNH is testing the monthly opening-range lows with key support seen at the 61.8% retracement of the January rally at 6. 8391 . The pair has been trading within the confines of a well-defined descending pitchfork formation with the upper median-line parallel highlighting resistance & near-term bearish invalidation at 6.8839 - note that this level also converges on the February high. The near-term focus remains weighted to the downside while below this region with a break lower targeting confluence support at 6.8048 where the 61.8% extension of the decline off the yearly high converges on the 50-line of the operative slope. Subsequent support targets at 6.7765-6.7818 (38.2% retracement & the 2017 opening-range low). From a trading standpoint we’ll favor fading strength while below the upper parallel with a break of the range lows targeting subsequent support objectives. Market News PBOC News : China’s Central Bank. - China’s Central Bank released the full text of Governor Zhou Xiaochuan’s speech at Boao Forum this weekend. “China has been conducting negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty with the U.S., though some of the talks have been suspended. China is waiting for the new U.S. government to decide how to move forward on these talks”, according to the Governor. Mr. Zhou also said that “if the U.S. adopts valued added tax [on imported goods], China welcomes; however, implementing a border adjustment tax is controversial.” Story continues This indicates that the outlook of trade and investment between the two countries still has some uncertainty. This may not be good news for the Chinese economy, as it has already experienced slow growth in exports and imports. - The PBOC announced on Monday that it has hosted a supervision work conference last week for cross-border Yuan business and set targets for the 2017: the regulator will guide the development of offshore Yuan markets and promote cross-border Yuan business to develop in a healthy way. The Chinese regulator has been strengthening oversight on cross-border Yuan transactions and this is likely continue to be the case in 2017. As of March 27th, the “Big Three” Chinese Bitcoin trading platforms, BTCChina, OKCoin and Huobi, have not yet removed restrictions on Bitcoin withdrawals, which came into effect following a series of inspections on illegal cross-border transactions launched by the PBOC. Sina News : China’s most important online media source, similar to CNN in the US. They also own a Chinese version of Twitter, called Weibo, with around 200 million active users monthly. - In the first two months of 2017, China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) made a profit of 201.86 billion Yuan, rising +40.3% compared to the same period last year, according to China’s statistics bureau. In specific, oil, petrochemical, coal and steel industries that experienced major losses last year, all reported gains this January and February. This is likely driven by soaring energy prices. On the other hand, machinery and electricity companies reported significant drops in profits, likely led by the same reason - higher energy costs . To receive reports from this analyst, sign up for Renee Mu’ distribution list . original source DailyFX provides forex news and technical analysis on the trends that influence the global currency markets. Learn forex trading with a free practice account and trading charts from IG . || Maple syrup water tapped from trees is the next coconut water: (Melia Robinson/Business Insider)
In 2016, coconut water generated$2.3 billionin sales worldwide.
The makers of a new designer brew — a subtly sweet water tapped from maple trees — want to ride the coattails of coconut water's success all the way to the bank.
Maple water has captured a modest following since it debuted in 2013. While coconut water still commands98%of the global "alternative waters" market (which includes water harvested from bamboo,cactus, and artichokes),maple water has made gains. A recentreport from food and drink market researcher Zenithpredicts the maple water market will triple in size by 2020. It's unclear how much revenue the category currently drives.
"It's not coconut water, yet, from a category-size. We all like to hope that it gets to be that big at some point in time," Mike Roberts, vice president of sales atSap on Tap, tells Business Insider. The company, founded in 2015, sources water tapped from maple trees on farms across the Northeast.
Arbeau, a luxury line of maple waters available in tap and sparkling, launched in 2016 in Canada. The brand's creator, Leanne Pawluk, likens the product to wine. Each batch will take on a slightly different flavor profile, just as wines change season to season.
("We wanted it to be the champagne of waters," Leanne Pawluk, creator of Arbeau, told Business Insider.Melia Robinson/Business Insider)
When I first tried maple water, I expected to taste a sugary syrup similar to what I pour over pancakes. Instead, sipping from a Dixie cup of Sap on Tap water was refreshing. The clear liquid tasted like normal water with a spot of honey — sweet, but not as sugary as a Coca Cola.
Each spring, maple tree farmers tap their trees to catch the maple water, which is also known as sap. That liquid —made up of about 98% water and 2% sugar— gets boiled down until it becomes the sticky-sweet staple of breakfast foods, according toMichael Farrell, a maple specialist at Cornell University.It takes 40 gallons of sap to yield one gallon of maple syrup.
Maple water may be a more sustainable commercial product than syrup. The trees only give about three gallons of sap per year, and farmers could stretch that supply further in its raw form. In order to be sold, the sap must be filtered to separate out bugs and bacteria. Most products have a shelf life of less than one year.
(A Parker's Maple Barn employee pours maple tree sap into a larger bucket in Brookline, New Hampshire.Elise Amendola/AP)
The future of maple water is ambiguous, however, asclimate change threatens sap production. Some predict that fewer freeze-thaw cycles during the late winter and early spring could throw the brakes on sap production. Others worry maple trees will die out due to climate change.
Farrell, who directs amaple syrup research station in Lake Placid, New York, has a more optimistic view. In his book, "The Sugarmaker's Companion," he outlines several workarounds, including moving up the harvest as temperatures rise and relocating the industry to mid-Atlantic states.
And if a warm winter leads to a low sap yield, the product becomes more exclusive.
"It's sustainable, it's renewable," Pawluk says. "And it's super cool because it's water from a tree."
NOW WATCH:Here's why maple syrup jugs have teeny tiny handles
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 8 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $3,984.92 #bitcoin #btc || Not if someone steals all their bitcoins & donates them to charity, which is just a matter of time. Security & bitcoin still haven't met. || Current price of $BTC is $1043.00 via Chain #bitcoin #btc || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 7 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $261.04 #bitcoin #btc || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$987.57/$990.00 #Bitstamp
$998.21/$1004.99 #BTCe
⇢$8.21/$17.42
$992.79/$1003.35 #Coinbase
⇢$2.79/$15.78 || 現在の価格は 135034円(http://blockchain.info )です。前回比は0円(0.00%)です。http://konvert.in/currency/1-bitcoin-to-japanese-yen … #ビットコイン #bitcoin via @konvertin || $1210.52 at 06:15 UTC [24h Range: $1202.62 - $1229.00 Volume: 2903 BTC] || Bitcoin price difference over the last hour: -$11.00. || LIVE: Profit = $13.19 (1.03 %). BUY B1.09 @ $1,180.00 (#HitBTC). SELL @ $1,192.30 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || 23:00~0:00のBitcoin市場は上げ一服だったのかな。
直近の市場の平均Bitcoinの価格は147305.0円
変化率は0.38%
1:00までは上げ一服かな?
【AIコメントです:テスト中@パターンB】
#bitcoin
#AI
|
Trend: up || Prices: 1347.89, 1421.60, 1452.82, 1490.09, 1537.67, 1555.45, 1578.80, 1596.71, 1723.35, 1755.36
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin price chaos as cryptocurrency loses a fifth of its value in mysterious rapid crash: Bitcoin price predictions range from $1 million to next to nothing: Getty Images Bitcoin has been hit by a dramatic plunge, wiping a fifth off its value. The same very rapid drop has hit the entire cryptocurrency market, with around 20 per cent being wiped off all of the biggest digital currencies. The price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies now appears to have settled but with all of that value lost, after a dramatic crash that took just minutes. Bitcoin began to plunge on Tuesday evening UK time. Within the space of an hour, it had gone from around £7,500 to £6,800. It has continued to trade down in the days since, though not quite so dramatically. The price is now at around £6,600, meaning bitcoin has lost 18 per cent over the last week and 20 per cent over the last month. Other cryptocurrencies were hit by the same plunge. All of the biggest markets dropped around the same time and have stayed at those lower prices since, according to market Coinbase. Bitcoin is still up over the year, however. It has gained more than 30 per cent since the same time in 2018. Read more Mystery person moves $1 billion worth of bitcoin and no one knows why Analysts blamed the sudden drop in the price on a number of technical issues, but said that it was still possible that its value would continue to grow. Bitcoin has been due a price break for some time," said Simon Peters, analyst at eToro, in the wake of the drop. "Since reaching $14k back in June, the cryptoasset has been making 'lower highs' and 'higher lows', forming a 'symmetrical triangle' chart pattern converging towards an apex. Generally, this pattern precedes a breakout either higher or lower, and this is what we saw yesterday." Peter pointed to the launch of Bakkt, a new platform for institutional investors, which has seen lower than expected volumes that disappointed many investors. 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," he said. Story continues Nevertheless, 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. Read more Read more Mystery person moves $1 billion worth of bitcoin and no one knows why || Why This India ETF Merits Consideration: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
Indian equities and ETFs, including theWisdomTree India Earnings ETF (EPI) , were recently boosted by a surprise national cut, but the effects of that move could have longer-ranging, positive impacts.
Analysts project Indian corporate earnings to expand 16% in 2019, the fastest clip in the region. Nevertheless, the fast pace may be partly attributed to the poor results a year ago for banks that were burdened by nonperforming loans.
Bolstering the case for Indian equities, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said taxes on domestic companies will be cut to 22% from 30%. The effective new rate will be 25.2% after all additional levies and will only be applicable for companies.
“This step reflects policymaking in India that responds fast to changing domestic and international environments,”said WisdomTree in a recent note. “Back-to-back reforms that were focused on streamlining taxes caused stress for manufacturers and distributors, and weakening credit growth has affected consumer spending. This has been reflected in weakening sales of automobiles and consumer goods. Thus, it was necessary for government to provide a fiscal boost in addition to the monetary boost provided by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in August.”
Evaluating EPI
India has been enacting a number of economic reforms to further strengthen growth, including announcements to boost consumer demand, bolster imports and attract investments into the country.
“Beyond domestic reasons, the tax cut was made to help incentivize global manufacturing companies to hedge against the effects of thevolatileU.S.-China trade dispute,” according to WisdomTree. “Early this year, Apple announced that it was shifting some of its manufacturing from China to India, and other companies are also shopping around.”
Market sentiment also strengthened on a boost in India’s services and manufacturing activity, which both gained momentum earlier this year, driven by rising new work orders that fueled a faster increase in output and job creation.
Related:India ETFs Rally After a Surprise Corporate Tax Cut
“Breaking down India’s tax collection by sector, the Energy and Financials sectors are among the larger tax-paying sectors, and therefore companies in those sectors stand to benefit the most,” notes WisdomTree. “This is a shot in the arm for public sector banks that have been reeling from nonperforming assets. This may also help the Energy sector, leading to potentially higher industrial utilization and increased investment activity.”
EPI allocates over 44% of its combined weight to financial service and energy stocks.
For more information on India’s markets, visit ourIndia category.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || Monero more dangerous than Bitcoin, says German Finance Ministry: So-called privacy cryptocurrencies such asMoneroare more likely to be used for illegal activities than Bitcoin, according to a report published on Monday by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance.
In its "First National Risk Analysis 2018/2019,” the agency examined to what extent cryptocurrencies endanger financial security. It found that Monero, rather than Bitcoin, better enables anonymous transaction opportunities in money laundering and terrorist financing on theDarknet.
“Due to the increasing popularity of Monero on the Darknet, it can be foreseen that this crypto asset, especially, will gain more practical relevance in the future in the area of securing and exploitation [sic],” said the report.
It added that the sophisticated techniques employed by Monero make it “impossible” to track money, and that the anonymity afforded also increases the possibility of abuse for further criminal activity. In contrast, and especially on the DarkNet, the agency classified the risk of illegal activity with Bitcoin as low.Recent investigationshave also highlighted Bitcoin’s lack of anonymity.
Going forward, the agency announced that German legislation would be amended in line with EU directives that extend responsibility for money laundering to so-called “obligated parties”—namely cryptocurrency exchanges, wallet providers or other providers of custodial services.
It also recommended increased vigilance, while admitting that Germany’s money-laundering risk was currently “medium-low,” and that there was a lack of reliable data on the topic of Bitcoin and terrorism—though arecent research paperfound that crypto fundraising is becoming more common for terrorist organisations. || The Week Ahead – Stats, Trade and UK Politics in Focus: On the Macro It’s a busy week ahead on the economic calendar , with 54 stats to monitor over the week. For the Dollar: The markets will need to wait until Tuesday for the first set of Stats from the U.S. October goods trade figures, new home sales, and November consumer confidence figures are due out. Of less influence on the day will be September house price figures. With consumer spending continuing to support the U.S economy, the CB Consumer Confidence Index figures will have the greatest impact. It’s a busier day on Wednesday, however. 3 rd estimate GDP numbers for the 3 rd quarter are due out, along with Chicago PMI, durable goods orders and inflation figures. Barring deviation from 2 nd estimates, we would expect the durable goods orders and Core PCE price index figures to have the greatest impact. Barring dire numbers, the weekly jobless claims, personal spending and pending home sales figures will likely have a muted impact on the day. With the U.S markets closed on Thursday and on a shortened session on Friday, there are no stats to provide direction. Through Thursday and Friday economic data limited to the weekly jobless claims figures and Chicago PMI. Barring particularly disappointing figures, we would expect the markets to brush aside the numbers. While the numbers will provide direction, geopolitical risk will also drive the Dollar and influence risk sentiment. Updates from Beijing and Washington will continue to have the greatest impact in the week. The Dollar Spot Index ended the week rose by 0.28% at $98.273. For the EUR : It’s also a busy week ahead on the economic data . German business and consumer sentiment figures due out on Monday and Tuesday get things going for the EUR. Germany’s Ifo Business climate index figure on Monday and the GfK consumer climate figure on Tuesday will provide the EUR with direction. In Germany, consumer confidence has softened of late as concerns over labor market conditions weigh. A further decline in confidence would certainly weigh on the EUR, as businesses continue to struggle. Story continues With stats limited to French jobseeker numbers on Wednesday and prelim inflation figures on Thursday, the focus will then shift to key stats due out on Friday. French consumer spending and Germany and the Eurozone’s unemployment figures will have the greatest influence. We can expect Germany’s unemployment change figure to garner the greatest interest. Prelim inflation figures out of France, Germany, Italy and the Eurozone will also need to be monitored in the 2 nd half of the week. The EUR/USD ended the week down by 0.27% to $1.1021. For the Pound: It’s another quiet week ahead on the economic calendar . There are no material stats due out of the UK to provide the Pound with direction. A lack of stats leaves the Pound firmly in the hands of UK politics in the week, with debates, opinion polls, and projections the main drivers. Sky News hosts a televised debate on Thursday, which includes Jo Swinson, Boris Johnson, and Jeremy Corbyn. On Friday, a live debate with the leaders of the seven major political parties in the UK will be in focus after the European markets close. The GBP/USD ended the week down by 0.49 % to $1.2834. For the Loonie: It’s a busy week ahead on the data front. September wholesale sales figures due out on Monday and GDP numbers due out on Friday will have the greatest impact. Following the BoC’s cautious view on the economic outlook, Friday’s 3d quarter GDP numbers will garner plenty of interest. Bank of Canada Governor spoke last week on policy, stating that interest rates were at the right level to support the economy. It remains to be seen whether the GDP numbers alter that view… From elsewhere, expect key stats from the Eurozone and the U.S to influence risk sentiment and the Loonie. Updates from the U.S and China on trade will also need monitoring. The Loonie ended the week up by 0.16% to C$1.3202 against the U.S Dollar. Out of Asia For the Aussie Dollar: It’s a relatively quiet week ahead. Economic data include 3 rd quarter construction work down and capital expenditure figures due out on Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, October private sector credit numbers are also due out and will need to hold relatively steady. On the geopolitical risk front, chatter on trade will monitoring and will remain the key driver. The Aussie Dollar ended the week down by 0.45% to $0.6786. For the Japanese Yen: It’s also a relatively busy week ahead on the economic calendar . Key stats include October retail sales figures due out on Thursday and prelim industrial production figures on Friday. We would expect Tokyo inflation numbers, due out on Friday, to have a muted impact on the Yen. While the retail sales and production figures will influence, geopolitics will continue to provide direction throughout the week. The Japanese Yen ended the week up by 0.13% to ¥108.66 against the U.S Dollar. For the Kiwi Dollar: It’s a busy week ahead on the economic calendar. 3 rd quarter retail sales figures due out on Tuesday gets things going for the Kiwi Dollar. October trade data on Wednesday and business confidence figures on Thursday will also provide direction. We would expect building consent figures due out on Friday, however, to have a muted impact on the Kiwi. Outside of the numbers, the RBNZ will release its financial stability report on Wednesday which will garner plenty of interest. After the RBNZ’s hold on interest rates earlier in the month, the report will give some clues on what lies ahead… The Kiwi Dollar ended the week up by 0.09% to $0.6410. Out of China: It’s a quiet week on the economic data front. There are no material stats due out of China until after the market close on Friday. November’s private sector PMI numbers are due out on Saturday. With no stats to consider, updates from Beijing on trade talks with the U.S will continue to influence risk appetite. The Yuan ended the week down by 0.42% to CNY7.0391 against the Greenback. Geo-Politics Impeachment: Open door testimony continued to deliver damming evidence last week. In spite of the testimony, however, Trump looks to have avoided a loss of Republican support, which dashes any chances of a conviction as things stand. The Democrats, however, are expected to impeach. Trade Wars : Trump spoke of the U.S and China getting close to a phase 1 agreement last Friday. With Thanksgiving on Thursday, updates from both sides in the early part of the week will have a material impact on the global financial markets. At the start of the week, the big question will be whether vetos the HK Bills that were voted through to support the rights of HK protestors… UK Politics : Live televised debates, opinion polls, predictions and bookmaker odds will continue to be the driving force behind the Pound. At the start of the week, the opinion polls will provide direction, as voters react to last Friday’s Q&A session. The focus will then shift to live debates scheduled for Thursday and Friday… This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 24/11/19 European Equities: A Week in Review – 22/11/19 Natural Gas Price Prediction – Prices Rally as Momentum Turns Positive Gold Price Forecast – The Next Buying Opportunity is Almost Here Silver Price Forecast – Silver Markets Slump On Friday U.S. Dollar Index Futures (DX) Technical Analysis – Strengthens into Close Over 98.120, Weakens into Close Under 98.095 || Italians prefer to shop online with Bitcoin over Visa or American Express, says new report: Italians love them some Bitcoin . According to a new report from marketing analysis firm SEMRush , Italians love Bitcoin so much that the cryptocurrency is the third-most used method of payment online in Italy, behind only PayPal and PostePay. That means Bitcoin is more widely used for e-commerce in Italy than even Visa, Mastercard, and American Express, according to SEMRush (as reported by Italian news site La Stampa ). Italys interest in e-commerce has grown considerably in recent years, and digital payment methods among Italians have diversified. And the Mediterranean country, evidently, has moved beyond directly using traditional credit cards for online purchases. Bitcoin, somehow, has managed to sneak in as a viable alternative in that process. On average, Bitcoin is used more than 215,800 times a month in Italy for online purchases, according to data obtained by La Stampa . American Express is used just 189,000 times per month, on average, while other credit cards, such as Visa and Mastercard, are used only 33,950 times every month. Data from SEMRush indicates that Bitcoin transaction activity peaked in Italy this year in June, with roughly 368,000 transactions that month. Coincidentally, Bitcoin itself peaked in June, exceeding a price of $13,000 per coin at the time. By comparison, PayPal dominates online commerce in Italy, with approximately 1,383,000 payments made each month. The payment processing giant is widely known for its ease of use and near-global acceptance. (And, to be fair, that figure likely includes various transactions made with credit-card-linked accounts, as well as bank accounts.) The Italian payment processor, PostePay, is a close second with an average of 1,175,000 monthly transactions made on the platform. Combine them and that figure dwarfs the amount of Bitcoin transactions made to buy online products in Italy each month. But the fact that Bitcoin still outranks Visa, Mastercard, and American Express in Italy in usability? Mamma mía . || XRP crashes 10 percent in a bad day for the crypto market: Ripples XRP suffered more than most top-10 cryptocurrencies by market cap today in a market crash that dropped the price of Bitcoin below $7,500 per coin. The crash chopped about 10 percent of cryptos total market capitalization in a matter of hours. Just days ago, XRP was able to beat heavy resistance at $0.29 per token and briefly rose above $0.30. But that bearish curse struck again just as things were looking up for XRP hodlers. Today, Bitcoin crashed, and the rest of the market, including XRP, followed. The drop, however, respected the $0.25 per XRP support zone. This mornings big red candle has started to correct itself slightly, as the token currently nears $0.27. That still represents a setback of about 11 days-worth of a bullish trend for XRP. But, on the plus side, the XRP-BTC trading pair doesnt look so bad, given the circumstances. The tokens price went down, sure, but the drop merely canceled out yesterday's gains, according to data from TradingView . So those using XRP to stack sats don't have much to worry about. Generally speaking, XRP has remained in a horizontal trading channel against BTC, fluctuating between 3,540 and 3,781 satoshis. Currently, XRP is being traded at around 3,570 sats. Overall, XRP has been growing steadily, and Ripple has a lot to do with that. Yesterday, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced the opening of a new office for Ripple in Washington, D.C. with the aim of working closely with regulators to strengthen the XRP ecosystem. Every federal regulator is looking at this space and trying to figure out how to regulate it, and having a D.C. presence is essential to smart and effective regulation, Garlinghouse said. Were focused on maintaining a dialogue with Washington regulators and policymakers and being a resource to the Hill allows us to be easily accessible at all times. || Latest Bitcoin price and analysis (BTC to USD): Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at just below $9,500 ,after a massive run that saw the digital asset jump over 40% in price last week. BTC experienced a substantial pump on Friday, with price spiking from $7,500 to over $10,000 before retracing to the $9,000 range. Following a number of lower highs, Bitcoin now seems to be in a confirmed uptrend, with price rising above all its EMAs. Will the price recover back to $10,000 and above? Let’s take a look at Bitcoin’s chart. BTC chart, by Trading View As you can see from the chart above, BTC is now back trading above all its EMAs – something that hasn’t happened since September. In addition, all the EMAs are now moving in an upwards direction, which means we should expect BTC to hold above $8,500 where the 200-day EMA is sitting. Last week , I stated how I expected Bitcoin to bounce to around $10,000. After last week’s massive pump, it’s clear new investors and traders are taking over price action. BTC is now trading near the key $9,500 level, and I argue it will keep trading above this level over the next few days as the coin is above key volume profile levels. I personally believe BTC will hit $10,000 and above by the end of October. The current Bitcoin trend History shows us that BTC is prone to huge drops between 30% and 40% during bull seasons. Therefore, I don’t advise that you fight the trend, but surf it for as long as possible. Last week, I underlined that within the next three to five weeks, we could see a major reversal after a period of serious accumulation by ‘hodlers’. However, for the time being, not only has Bitcoin reversed its downwards trend, I argue BTC will reach $12,000 by the end of 2019 if we continue to see strong gains. Volume, which had dropped from a peak of $27 billion earlier in the year to more than $15 billion last week, is now moving back towards $30 billion. Bitcoin’s market dominance has also slightly increased about 1% since early October, from 66.5% to 67.7%. Story continues As veteran traders and investors usually say, smart money “buys when there’s blood on the streets”. Currently, I’m waiting for another minor drop in price to make new entries. These drops won’t last forever, and if you think traditional markets are currently on a massive bull run, I wouldn’t be so sure the trend won’t reverse. How can the markets not push higher throughout the year after the ECB’s recent rate cuts, the continuous share buybacks from huge corporations, or the inverted bond yield shoving investors away towards riskier assets? In addition, repo market activity – as in loans from central banks to commercial and investment banks – has spiked to new monthly records. That adds up to another signal of weakness among most banks. Safe trades! Current live Bitcoin pricing information and interactive charts are available on our site 24 hours a day. The ticker bar at the bottom of every page on our site has the latest Bitcoin price. Pricing is also available in a range of different currency equivalents: US Dollar – BTCtoUSD British Pound Sterling – BTCtoGBP Japanese Yen – BTCtoJPY Euro – BTCtoEUR Australian Dollar – BTCtoAUD Russian Rouble – BTCtoRUB About Bitcoin In August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. On 31st October 2008, a paper was published called “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”. This was authored by Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. To date, no one knows who this person, or people, are. The paper outlined a method of using a P2P network for electronic transactions without “relying on trust”. On 3rd January 2009, the Bitcoin network came into existence. Nakamoto mined block number “0” (or the “genesis block”), which had a reward of 50 Bitcoins. More Bitcoin news and information If you want to find out more information about Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general, then use the search box at the top of this page. Here’s an article to get you started. As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author should not be considered as financial advice. The post Latest Bitcoin price and analysis (BTC to USD) appeared first on Coin Rivet . || Bitcoin price holds steady following crypto markets' rally: Following what can only be described as a dramatic recovery for the cryptocurrency markets, the vast majority of cryptocurrencies have managed to hold their recent gains and are now in the green on the 7-day time frame. As it stands, Bitcoin (BTC) is among the best performers this week, after gaining over 13% in the last 7 days. At time of going to press, it stands at $9257.07. Meanwhile, Ethereum (ETH) has increased by 6.2% over the past week, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) gained over 23%, Litecoin (LTC) climbed by more than 10% and XRP gained 1.6%. Beyond this, much of the market is now experiencing slight further gains today, with 16 of the top 25 cryptocurrencies in the green. Among these, Bitcoin SV (BSV) and NEO are capturing the majority of the gains. NEO stands out as an outlier in today's predominantly green market. The cryptocurrency has now climbed to $11.32, up from $9.06 at the close of play yesterday, an increase of more than 24% in the past day. Bitcoin SV, on the other hand, has captured gains of nearly 5%, climbing back up to $142.51. One factor behind NEO's recent surge could be Chinese President Xi Jinping's announcement Friday endorsing blockchain technology, in which he argued that building on blockchain will bring economic and social value to China. NEO, a smart contract platform that's known as "the Chinese Ethereum", has focused on regulatory compliance . With the Chinese government introducing new cryptography laws in January 2020, NEO could be well-placed to take advantage of the country's newfound enthusiasm for blockchain. If so, today's gains could be just the tip of the iceberg for NEO. || With 18 Million Bitcoins Mined, How Hard Is That 21 Million Limit?: In a matter of hours, the 18 millionth bitcoin will have been mined and the world’s first cryptocurrency will draw one step closer to its hard-coded cap of 21 million coins.
“The pie is shrinking. This [milestone] gives people some simple math to raise awareness about where we’re at in the [bitcoin mining] process,” said Alex Adelman, CEO of bitcoin rewards platform Lolli, adding:
“It’s good for people to see the progress of bitcoin, to look back on everything that has been done and will be done for the next 3 million. … You should pay attention to the next 3 million.”
Related:Peter Thiel Backs $200 Million Valuation for Renewable Bitcoin Mining in the US
But don’t worry, you’ll have 120 years to do so.
The next 3 million bitcoins will be progressively slower to mine as a result of block reward halvings which occur every 210,000 blocks (or roughly four years) and reduce new bitcoin supply by 50 percent. The final bitcoin is expected to be mined in 2140.
Or is it?
It seems blasphemous even to go there, given bitcoin’s value proposition as digital gold. But outsiders foresee a day when the 21 million cap might, gasp, come up for debate.
Related:Next Bitcoin Halving Could Squeeze out Retail Miners, But Jury’s Split on Price
Eventually, once there are no more bitcoins left to mint, miners will rely solely on transaction fees, which are paid by users to transfer coins through the blockchain. This change gives cause for concern to some who view bitcoin’s block subsidies as integral to bitcoin’s incentive system.
To skeptics, this could undermine the structure that motivates miners to record validated transactions in the ledger.
“All of your assumptions about incentives, risk and value go out the window,” said Angela Walch, a research fellow at the University College London Centre for Blockchain Technologies. “Please take the blinders off and stop assuming that everything will still work well once everything goes to a pure transaction-fees system as opposed to block [subsidy].”
Currently, with each block, miners get a subsidy of 12.5 newly created BTC, worth roughly $99,370, plus any additional transaction fees, which normally don’t totalmore than 1 BTC.
Along the same lines, Paul Brody, global innovation leader for audit firm Ernst & Young (EY), said bitcoin’s limited supply could limit the cryptocurrency’s utility as a global reserve currency.
Pointing to situations such as the Great Recession where monetary policy interventions were needed to lift the U.S. out of economic turmoil, Brody said:
“If bitcoin were to become a substantial part of the global monetary system, we would need to address [the hard supply cap] because a lot of economists agree deflationary systems are not necessarily the best thing.”
Both Walch and Brody suggested that bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap might one day be subject to change. What if?
“We need to acknowledge that the 21 million cap is aspirational,” said Walch. “If people decide to change that [supply] cap for certain reasons and enough people make that decision, the system will move to it. It’s aspiration, not reality.”
While technically feasible, a change to the supply cap would almost certainly be a non-starter for bitcoin users who cherish its gold-like properties. Indeed, bitcoin’s code has long been governed by a community with a bias toward retaining the coin’s original features as created by its pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Unlike ethereum, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, the bitcoin blockchain has rarely seen backward-incompatible, system-wide upgrades changing core code features.
In the rare instances it has, the bitcoin community has gone through fierce governance disputes – such as the infamousscaling debates of 2017, which centered on a potential increase to bitcoin’s block size. The philosophical rift ultimately resulted in the creation of bitcoin cashin August 2017.
Still, a prospective hard fork that would change bitcoin’s 21-million-coin supply cap is conceivable, if perhaps heretical.
“It’s not a given that bitcoin has to stay at that 21 million hard limit,” said EY’s Brody (who, it should be noted, is building enterprise applications on top of rival chain ethereum). “There is a governance mechanism to permit changes in bitcoin – if the community agrees that would be good.”
Even so, bitcoin advocate and author Andreas Antonopoulos stressed that governance drama surrounding bitcoin’s supply cap is nothing to lose sleep over – especially since bitcoin’s transition to a purely transaction-fee rewards model will take 120 years.
Antonopoulos added that from the very launch of bitcoin in 2009, mining was always “a marginally profitable endeavor” never intended to stay constant.
“[Mining rewards] dynamically adjust based on the network. … It’s a very complex economic environment. It’s not as simple as people think,” said Antonopoulos, adding:
“There are half a dozen variables that determine miner profitability [right now] including the cost of electricity, their access to bandwidth transaction, the block subsidy, the transaction fees at the time, bitcoin price, their local currency exchange rate, the type of equipment and how efficient it is at converting electricity into mining.”
As such, Antonopoulos says the concerns surrounding a transition from a block subsidy to purely transaction-based block rewards are grossly overblown.
“Nothing magical happens when block subsidy drops to zero,” said Antonopoulos. “It’s a very gradual and predictable change that happens over a period of 120 years. It’s already happening and every day [miners] make their decisions.”
While the 18th million bitcoin may not be the best reminder of the ongoing reality of a limited supply cap, the next upcoming milestone on bitcoin’s horizon assuredly will.
Viewing the next bitcoin halving as a far more notable event in bitcoin’s history, venture capitalist William Mougayar said:
“In my opinion, [the 18 million] milestone is not that significant in relation to the next halving which occurs May 2020. … On that date, the block [subsidy] will go from 12.5 BTC to 6.25 BTC.”
Andreas Antonopoulos image via Christine Kim for CoinDesk
• MakerDAO’s Multi-Collateral DAI Token Is Launching Nov. 18
• Hyperledger Blockchain Group Weighs Changes to Fix Election Issues || Russian Aluminum Plant Pivots to Bitcoin Mining Following US Sanctions: A Russian aluminum plant is pivoting to bitcoin mining after U.S. sanctions forced the plant to shut down in 2018. Russian aluminum giant Rusal is leasing its Nadvoitsy Aluminum Plant, located in the northwest region of Karelia, to a crypto startup called the Russian Mining Corporation (RMC), according to Russian news siteRBC.
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) hit Rusal with sanctions in April 2018. At the time, the U.S. Treasury Department dubbed Rusal majority shareowner Oleg Deripaska a “Designated Russian Oligarch,” thereby sanctioning the firm.
RMC is renting out a small part of the plant and plans to use the plant’s cheap power and expansive footprint to install miners in order to take over a large portion of the global bitcoin mining market. In cooperation with U.K.-based exchange and wallet provider Cryptonex, founder Dmitry Marinichev said the company plans to capture 20 percent of the current bitcoin mining market. RBC reports Russia currently holds about 10 percent of the world’s bitcoin mining capacity.
Related:Bitmain Seeking US IPO With Confidential SEC Filing: Report
“Now the Rusal plant is unprofitable, the electricity supplied to it is practically not being utilized, and people living in the single-industry town near the plant have nowhere to work,” Marinichev told RBC, “Our idea is to redesign the plant and sell its computing power as a service, that is, provide an IT service.”
Under the agreement, Cryptonex transferred 42 million of its exchanges native token CNX to the mining firm, worth an estimated $85 million at press time according toCoinMarketCap. The firms also came will also fund the purchase of mining equipment for the new facility, Crytponexsaid in a release.
Bitcoin miners image via CoinDesk archives
• Binance CEO: ‘Russia Is Our Key Market’
• Livepeer Prepares to Unlock New Way for GPU Miners to Earn Crypto
• Avalon Bitcoin Miner Maker Canaan Officially Files for $400 Million US IPO
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
BTC
週足ベースでの大きな下落後のW底っぽい値動き形成中だけども一枚目黒丸の所下落に対しての上昇圧が弱すぎるかつ乱高下しながらの上昇で底固めも大してしてないので大きく上昇していくか疑問
２、３枚目の４時間足では平行レンジともウェッジとも言える動きを形成中 https://t.co/ZdXbU3oCdz || BTC
この保ち合いの後
#プレ企画 #企画 #仮想通貨 #貰える #プレゼント #イーサリアム #プレゼント #airdrop #プレゼント #BTC || https://t.co/GM77Ke8vz8 || Hangisi önce olur: Bitcoin yeni zirve mi altcoin baharı mı? https://t.co/fn8uS4uj12 || @Ohambleton @Dr_Crypto14 @TheLetterE_ @Barclays @OracleStartup Let’s assume 0 connection between Chainlink/Barclays from Crowdz.
Now go to second 0:20 here: https://t.co/LMHsagR2Bi || @MADinMelbourne @HotepJesus Welcome to BitCoin Hotep👍✅🐉 https://t.co/cWvBi5ovEJ || Jay Clayton’s SEC Will Never Approve a Bitcoin ETF: US Counsel https://t.co/PUBdzzIa17 https://t.co/DsFtKwzTv5 || btc:899500[jpy]
zeny:0.188[jpy]
neet:0.26[jpy]
nanj:0.008[jpy]
alis:3.418[jpy]
mona:123.051[jpy]
yenten:0.26[jpy]
koto:0.089[jpy]
SanDeGo:0.00024[jpy]
bell:0.341[jpy]
fuji:0[jpy] || #Mrmarket #Cashflow #Passiveincome #Psychology #Stocks #REALESTATE #Business #cryptocurrency #Bitcoin #Uk #Africa #Japan #Afganistan #Ww2 #Goldstandard #Cfds $Gold #Etfs $Fb #Wholesalingrealestate #Beefent… https://t.co/IxhFZvNAXP || $BTC USD - 1 W
Bulls showing some signs of life in the critical area.
As long as we can close weeklies above there, we can be bullish on BTC.
Any lower, and we have a date with the 200 MA's underneath.
Momentum indicator tells we're in for some choppy bounce. https://t.co/W1eX2p4vax
|
Trend: up || Prices: 7146.13, 7218.37, 7531.66, 7463.11, 7761.24, 7569.63, 7424.29, 7321.99, 7320.15, 7252.03
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2020-05-22]
BTC Price: 9182.58, BTC RSI: 53.62
Gold Price: 1734.60, Gold RSI: 55.33
Oil Price: 33.25, Oil RSI: 60.98
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Ethereum Dips Below 128.07 Level, Down 7%: Investing.com - Ethereum fell bellow the $128.07 level on Saturday. Ethereum was trading at 128.07 by 03:21 (07:21 GMT) on the Investing.com Index, down 7.06% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since March 22. The move downwards pushed Ethereum's market cap down to $14.18B, or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Ethereum's market cap was $135.58B. Ethereum had traded in a range of $125.48 to $132.30 in the previous twenty-four hours. Over the past seven days, Ethereum has seen a drop in value, as it lost 2.27%. The volume of Ethereum traded in the twenty-four hours to time of writing was $11.37B or 0.00% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $120.1977 to $142.8971 in the past 7 days. At its current price, Ethereum is still down 91.00% from its all-time high of $1,423.20 set on January 13, 2018. Elsewhere in cryptocurrency trading Bitcoin was last at $6,173.2 on the Investing.com Index, down 8.15% on the day. XRP was trading at $0.16995 on the Investing.com Index, a loss of 1.93%. Bitcoin's market cap was last at $113.13B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while XRP's market cap totaled $7.47B or 0.00% of the total cryptocurrency market value. Related Articles India Crypto Renaissance: Industry Sees Rebirth as RBI Crypto Ban Lifts Pantera Capital CEO: BTC Will Come of Age in Crisis, May Top All Time High Blockchain Jobs Continue to Rise Despite Global Recession View comments || Bitcoin Jumps 12% as Fed Keeps Money Flowing and US Economy Shrinks: Bitcoins price jumped Wednesday by the most in six weeks, outpacing U.S. stocks, after the Federal Reserve pledged to keep pumping new money into markets and government data showed the economy sliding into recession. Bitcoin rallied 12% to $8,703 as of 19:30 UTC (3:30 p.m. Eastern time). The Standard & Poors 500 Index rose 3.1%. In terms of year-to-date performance, bitcoins returns increased to 20%, surging past golds 12%. Many cryptocurrency investors see bitcoin as a hedge against inflation, similar to gold, which could theoretically be a long-term consequence of central-bank money injections. Deutsche Bank estimates that central bank balance sheets have expanded by some $3.7 trillion just since the start of March. Related: BTSE Exchange Taps Into Crypto Demand by Increasing Request-for-Quote Limits The Fed, led by Chair Jerome Powell, said it would keep benchmark U.S. interest rates close to zero while reiterating a pledge to continue buying U.S. Treasury bonds and other assets in an unbounded amount to keep global markets functioning smoothly. Some economists had speculated the central bank might announce plans to start tapering the asset purchases, which along with emergency-lending programs have ballooned the Feds balance sheet past $6.5 trillion for the first time in its 107-year history. Read more: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Money Printer Its clear that the effects on the economy are severe, Powell said during a press conference Wednesday. Reporters, based remotely, dialed into the event via a group video call. We wont run out of money. Its an unlimited pot. The Feds announcements came after a report from the Commerce Departments Bureau of Economic Analysis earlier Wednesday showing that gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 4.8% during the first quarter as government issued stay-at-home orders. The report provided what economists described as the first official data confirming that the country is sliding into a recession. Story continues Related: Genesis CEO Details Black Thursday Chaos in Q1 Lending Report Powell, in his press conference, warned that second-quarter economic data will reveal the unprecedented damage from the coronavirus. Bitcoins rally was likely abetted by fear of missing out, or FOMO, on the part of traders, said Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Delphi Digital, a cryptocurrency research firm. Buying begets more buying, he said. We wont run out of money. Its an unlimited pot. Bitcoin tumbled 11 percent during the first quarter of 2020, but the price has soared since the start of April. Bears are yet to put up any fight and, given the contained squeeze past $8,000, said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at BeQuant, a London-based institutional bitcoin brokerage firm. Such trading action suggests the upside may have some longevity. Related Stories Shares in Grayscales Bitcoin Trust Up By 14% After Cryptos Price Rallies First Mover: Bitcoin Now Crushing Gold After Biggest Price Jump in Six Weeks || Introducing CoinDesk’s All-New Newsletters: It’s a new day for CoinDesk’s newsletters. If you previously subscribed to any of our newsletters , you’ll notice they now look a bit different. That’s because we’ve re-launched them with new missions, dedicated authors and a fresh coat of paint. We’re also launching a brand-new newsletter with an ambitious mission: a weekly exploration of how money and value are being transformed by the rapid expansion and evolution of digital assets. It’s called Money Reimagined , and it’s helmed by Chief Content Officer Michael Casey. Every Friday, Michael will take you on a tour of the most important stories in the ongoing disruption of the global financial system that began with cryptocurrency but now encompasses so much more. With his extensive experience covering money (both the old-school and digital kind), Michael brings a unique lens to this transformation, focusing on the real stories of the week, beyond the headlines. Related: Blockchain Bites: Major Crypto Players Sued, Steem Froze Accounts and More Our daily markets newsletter is now called First Mover , a reflection of its mission to provide actionable insights on cryptocurrency markets as well as the time it hits your inbox — 7 a.m. Eastern, every weekday. First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and other assets. We follow the money so you don’t have to. Crypto Long & Short is the new name for our Institutional Crypto newsletter, one that reflects the growing variety in its audience in the professional investment community. There is no better guide to the nuances of cryptocurrency markets and the myriad ways they differ from traditional ones than CoinDesk’s head of research, Noelle Acheson. Noelle’s passion for unearthing the first principles of crypto investing is matched only by her ability to write so thoughtfully about it. And it’s still incredibly easy to stay abreast of the most current stories that intersect cryptocurrency, blockchain, markets and more with our daily news newsletter, Blockchain Bites . More than just rounding up the day’s news, curator Daniel Kuhn zeroes in which ones really matter and why. Story continues You can subscribe to any or all of our email newsletters right here . We’re quite proud of the new lineup, so if you’ve never subscribed to CoinDesk, this is the perfect time. We’d also love to hear what you think and how we can make these products even more useful. Send feedback to newsletters@coindesk.com or just email me directly at ppachal@coindesk.com . Related: First Mover: Trillions in Coronavirus Stimulus Bring Out the Bitcoin Bulls We know it’s a privilege to have a spot in your inbox every day, and we aim to earn it — with indispensable news, analysis and opinion — every single time. || Bitcoin and Ether Prices Stagnate as Traders Take Wait-and-See Approach: After staging a recovery earlier this week, cryptocurrencies were stuck in a holding pattern Friday afternoon.
Bitcoin(BTC) andether(ETH) appeared to be in a period of consolidation where prices bounce around within a tight range, showing indecisiveness among traders.
Bitcoin and ether had both climbed by less than a percent. Notable performers on CoinDesk’s big board includeXRP(XRP), up 10 percent,Stellar(XLM) in the green 3 percent anddash, up 4 percent. All 24-hour price changes are from 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET) on March 27.
Related:Bitcoin Diverges From Falling Equities With $500 Price Rise
Traditional markets, meanwhile, continued to reel from the record unemployment claims in the U.S., part of the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, despite a $2 trillion stimulus package making its way to President Donald Trump for his signature. U.S. stocks closed with the S&P 500 index down 3 percent. Earlier in the day, Japan’s Nikkei 255 closed its session up 3.8 percent. For Europe, the FTSE 100 Index closed in the red 3.3 percent.
See also:How a Flurry of ‘Digital Dollar’ Proposals Made It to Congress
Federal Reserve “and fiscal policies have averted for now accelerated economic and financial de-leveraging. Unfortunately, they can’t avoid a deep and sudden recession resulting in alarming unemployment and business closures,” Mohamed A. El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz,wrote in a tweet.
On low volumes, bitcoin’s price changes have narrowed, staying in a $6,400-$6,900 per 1 BTC range since March 24. This has put the bellwether cryptocurrency’s 10-day and 50-day moving averages close to each other.
Related:Bear Market Over? Charts on Bitcoin and ASX 200 Suggest Otherwise
“I think bitcoin just moved up from its $4,000-$5,000 crash range earlier than equities did. While equity markets have been rallying the last couple of sessions, other more safe haven-type markets like bonds and gold have been consolidating,” said Siddharth Jha, a former Wall Street analyst now focused on blockchain technology at startup Arbol.
Indeed, gold has started to consolidate moving averages as of March 27.
“Some people I respect say gold is a buy here,” said Rupert Douglas, head of business development for institutional sales at Koine, a digital asset manager. “Perhaps it is, perhaps silver is going to go rocketing higher, but if it doesn’t and trades lower, does bitcoin follow?”
The crash on March 12 is still fresh in the minds of crypto traders and fund managers, leaving some to think no trading decisions are the best decisions for the time being.
“Markets need to be saturated for people to look for incremental yield. Plus, there’s a lot of wound licking, post-BitMEX debacle,” said Vishal Shah, founder of Alpha5, a new derivatives exchange backed by large crypto funds.
See also:Strange Days: S&P 500 Is More Volatile Than Bitcoin This Month
Shah was referring to the$700 million of liquidations on BitMEX on March 12. This causedproblems for the Ethereum network-based DeFi ecosystem, which relies on ether’s price to ensure stability. Not surprisingly, ether has been consolidating, although there was a bit of volume early Friday.
“After a major crash and rebound, markets often consolidate for some time to see which way the flows may develop,” Arbol’s Jha said.
• Strange Days: S&P 500 Volatility Enters Bitcoin Territory
• Bitcoin Price Decline Prompts US Mining Firm to Shut Down ‘Indefinitely’ || Up 3%: Bitcoin Leaves S&P 500 Behind in Year-to-Date Recovery: Both bitcoin and the U.S. stock markets have witnessed a notable recovery rally over the past couple of weeks, but it’s the cryptocurrency that’s taken the lead. Bitcoin (BTC) clocked a 3.5-week high of $7,459 early on Tuesday, meaning the cryptocurrency was up 4.2 percent from the yearly opening price of $7,160. Since then prices have fallen back slightly, putting the year-to-date gain at around 3.2 percent. Meanwhile, the U.S. stock markets are still trading in the red on a YTD basis. The S&P 500, Wall Street’s equity index, has pulled off a strong 21.5 percent rally from lows near $2,190 reached on March 23, but even so it’s still down 17.5 percent for the year. Related: Bitcoin Tracks Stocks Up to $7.4K Before Sliding Back to $7.1K Gold, a classic haven asset, has gained around 2 percent so far since Jan. 1. At press time, bitcoin is changing hands near $7,445 – up around 90 percent from the low of $3,867 observed on March 13, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index . As bitcoin looks to be moving in tandem with the equity markets, what’s behind bitcoin’s outperformance of the S&P 500 on a year-to-date basis? Rally fueled by crypto investors Bitcoin may be gaining altitude because the market is now dominated by long-term investors who believe in the narrative that the cryptocurrency is a hedge against global economic duress brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Related: Price Gap Between Sellers and Buyers Yawned During Bitcoin’s March Sell-Off, Study Finds Bitcoin’s rapid drop from $8,000 to $3,867 seen on March 12 and March 13 was mainly fueled by long liquidations by institutions and macro traders. “These non-crypto dedicated participants squared off their long positions to raise the cash needed to fund margin calls,” said Richard Rosenblum, co-head of trading at GSR. “Following the liquidations, the market is primarily made up of crypto-native firms and long investors. Not surprisingly, bitcoin is acting more bullish,” Rosenblum said. Story continues The coronavirus-led sell-off in the equity markets, triggered a global dash for cash, which saw macro traders sell everything from gold to bitcoin. Derivatives market data does suggest institutions took a break from the crypto markets in March. Open interest, or open contracts, in futures listed on global exchanges fell from $4 billion on March 11 to $2 billion on March 14, according to data from research firm Skew. See also: Bitcoin’s Crash Triggers Over $700M in Liquidations on BitMEX The cryptocurrency is expected to maintain its upward trajectory and challenge the high of $8,000 seen just before the March 12 sell-off. “Bitcoin is within shouting distance of its March meltdown level, and could make par by the weekend,” Jehan Chu, co-founder and managing partner at Hong Kong-based blockchain investment and trading firm Kenetic told CoinDesk. Chu, however, warned the cryptocurrency is still on uncertain ground and could slip back below $7,000. A pullback may be seen if key resistance near $7,480 proves a tough nut to crack. Daily and 4-hour charts Bitcoin charted a green marubozu candle on Monday (above left), which comprises a big body and small or no wicks. The candle indicates buyers were in control from the open to the close, reflecting strong bullish sentiment. The pattern strengthened the case for a rally to $8,000 put forward by a pennant breakout confirmed last week. So far, however, the buyers have failed to challenge the 50-day average hurdle at $7,482. Bitcoin narrowly missed passing the average resistance early on Tuesday, with prices dropping back from $7,459. If the hurdle continues to cap upside during the U.S. trading hours, an overbought reading on the 4-hour chart relative strength index would gain credence, possibly yielding a drop to the daily chart rising channel support, currently at $6,810. Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency at the time of writing Related Stories First Mover: Bitcoin’s Back in the Black for 2020 Peer-to-Peer Crypto Exchange Paxful Now Lets You Trade Bitcoin for Gold || First Mover: Bitcoin Now Crushing Gold After Biggest Price Jump in Six Weeks: Bitcoin has lagged gold this year as investors looked for hedges against inflation – especially with the Federal Reserve creating trillions of dollars of fresh money to offset the devastating economic and market toll of the coronavirus.
Not anymore.
The oldest cryptocurrency jumped 13% on Wednesday, the most in six weeks, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell promised an “unlimited pot” of money to keep the U.S. economy from collapsing.
Related:Market Wrap: There’s a Bright Side to Bitcoin’s Drop on Worsening Unemployment
You’re readingFirst Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You cansubscribe here.
Bitcoinis now trading at roughly $8,860, for a year-to-date gain of 24%.
Gold, a symbol of riches and monetary stability at least since theSumerians civilized Mesopotamia, is up just 13% in 2020. And the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of U.S. stocks is still negative on the year, down 9%.
Over the span of April, bitcoin has succeeded in reclaiming its status as one of the world’s best-performing assets, following a 94% return in 2019 that was three times the gains in the S&P 500.
Related:Bitcoin Whale Addresses Hit Highest Number Since August 2019
Just the bragging rights alone might attract more bitcoin buyers, at a time when central bank money injections are already starting to attract the interest of a broader swath of investors.
“Investors for years were just kind of scratching the surface of bitcoin and crypto,” Joe DiPasquale, CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund BitBull Capital in San Francisco, said Wednesday in a phone interview. “Now there’s been this seismic shift in the investor community, which is that they know what it is and increasingly understand the proposition of bitcoin as a deflationary asset, versus the dollar as an inflationary asset.”
It would be hard to argue that the cryptocurrency’s performance through the first four months of the year isn’t remarkable, given the backdrop of the global pandemic and the fact that the digital asset was concocted by computer programmers just 11 years ago.
Wednesday’s move up looked powerful, too: Bitcoin blew past price points that charting analysts had tagged as resistance levels, such as the 100-day and 200-day moving averages of the cryptocurrency’s price.
Delphi Digital’s Kevin Kelly noted in a report later in the day that bitcoin’s volatility can be friend or foe: “We must be prepared to face its ugly twin eventually.”
In the meantime, the year-to-date title puts bitcoin in a better position to capitalize on the marketing bonanza sure to come from the cryptocurrency’s once-every-four-years “halving,” now fewer than two weeks away.
The halving, in which the pace of new issuance of bitcoins gets cut in half, was hard-coded into the Bitcoin blockchain’s original programming as a way of limiting inflation. Ultimately, no more than 21 million bitcoins can ever be minted.
Mark Warner, head of trading for London-based BCB Group, a financial firm focused on digital assets, said in an email that Wednesday’s rally was likely fueled by enthusiasm over the halving.
“The jockeying for position ahead of the halving is now starting,” Rich Rosenblum, a former Goldman Sachs managing director who now leads the markets group at the digital-asset trading firm GSR, wrote in an email.
For now, the digital gold, not the yellow metal, appears to be the favored horse.
BTC: Price: $8,8783 (BPI) | 24-Hr High: $9,469 | 24-Hr Low: $8,111
Trend: Bitcoin has pulled back from two-month highs above $9,400 hit early on Thursday, confirming signs of buyer exhaustion on the intraday technical charts.
The hourly chart is now reporting a bearish divergence of the relative strength index (RSI), which occurs when an indicator forms a lower high, contradicting a higher high on price.
Further, the current four-hour candle is flashing red and validating the preceding spinning top candle – signaling a weakening of upward momentum.
As a result, the cryptocurrency may consolidate for the next day or so. That said, most analysts expect bitcoin to continue rising toward $10,000 ahead of the mining reward halving, scheduled to take effect on May 12.
“While bitcoin miners are choosing to hold, the number of actual participants in the market is hitting new highs amid the expectation that this halving event will play out like the last one and push the price up sharply,” said Simon Peters, an analyst and crypto asset expert at investment platform eToro. “With these tailwinds in place, we think it is likely the price will go above $10,000 before the halving actually takes place.”
From a technical standpoint, the probability of bitcoin testing five figures in the next 12 days would weaken if the spot price finds acceptance under the 200-day average at $8,000.
• Blockchain Bites: Bitcoin’s Boom Roils Markets and a16z Makes a Long-term Play
• The ‘Great Lockdown’ Is Boosting Demand for Bitcoin Custody Solutions || The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers -08/04/20: Bitcoin fell by 1.87% on Tuesday. Partially reversing an 8.25% rally from Monday, Bitcoin ended the day at $7,203.0. A choppy start to the day saw Bitcoin rise to an early morning intraday high $7,454.3 before easing back. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $7,544.7, Bitcoin slipped to a morning low $7,237.4 before finding support. Steering clear of the first major support level at $6,955.4, Bitcoin recovered to $7,400 levels before hitting reverse. The reversal saw Bitcoin slide to a late intraday low $7,088 before finding support. Steering clear of the first major support level, Bitcoin recovered to $7,200 levels to limit the loss on the day. The near-term bearish trend, formed at late June 2019’s swing hi $13,764.0, remained firmly intact, reaffirmed by the March swing lo $4,000. For the bulls, Bitcoin would need to break out from $10,000 levels to form a near-term bullish trend. The Rest of the Pack Across the rest of the majors, it was also a mixed day on Tuesday. Tezos bucked the trend on the day, rising by 2.21%, while the rest of the pack saw red. Monero’s XMR (-5.85%), EOS (-4.66%), and Ethereum (-4.07%) led the way down. Binance Coin (-3.16%), Bitcoin Cash ABC (-3.03%), Bitcoin Cash SV (-3.75%), Ripple’s XRP (-2.57%), Stellar’s Lumen (-2.73%), and Tron’s TRX (-3.60%) also saw heavy losses. Cardano’s ADA (-1.82%) and Litecoin (-0.71%) saw relatively modest losses on the day. Through the start of the week, the crypto total market cap rose from a Monday low $190.55bn to a Tuesday high $211.57bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $208.58bn. Bitcoin’s dominance continued to ease back from 65% levels last seen on Monday. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s dominance stood at 64.1%. 24-hour trading volumes recovered from sub-$100bn levels to hit $171bn levels on Tuesday before easing back. At the time of writing, 24-hr volumes stood at $153.73bn. Story continues This Morning At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up by 2.07% to $7,351.9. A bullish start to the day saw Bitcoin rise from an early morning low $7,151.6 to a high $7,393.1. Bitcoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. Elsewhere, it was also a bullish start to the day for the crypto majors. Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV led the way with gains of 8.92% and 15.73% respectively. For the Bitcoin Day Ahead Bitcoin would need to move back through the morning high $7,393.1 to bring the first major resistance level at $7,408.87 into play. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break back through to $7,400 levels Barring another crypto rally, the first major resistance level and Tuesday’s high $7,454.3 would likely pin Bitcoin back. Failure to move back through the morning high could see Bitcoin hit reverse. A fall back through to sub-$7,250 levels would bring the first major support level at $7,042.57 into play. Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Bitcoin should steer of sub-$7,000 levels. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: EOS, Ethereum and Ripple’s XRP – Daily Tech Analysis – 08/04/20 Toilet Paper Hoarding Pushes Investors to Grab ‘Ahold’ of Stocks The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers -08/04/20 That Can Be a Very Important Day for Global Indices! The Greenback Finds Early Support ahead of Today’s FOMC Meeting Minutes EUR/USD Daily Forecast – Euro Retreats as Equity Market Rally Loses Steam || Bitcoin is at Risk of Deep Fall in the Coming Months: In the last 24 hours, bitcoin has lost nearly 4% to $8,700. Ethereum (ETH) sank under $200 threshold, losing more than 6% in the last 24 hours. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index rose 17 points over the week, fully reflecting the market sentiment. However, it remains in the fear area. The RSI for BTCUSD on the daily chart is declining from the overbought area. This technical indicator has worked accurately enough lately. Since last Thursday Bitcoin is being redeemed on the declines to the 200-day average, which has stabilized near $8,500. If this support could not resist, the pressure on the first cryptocurrency might intensify. A simple 200-day moving average is a reliable trend indicator in traditional markets, and it has proved to be a reliable indicator on the crypto market. The decline under this line at the end of February was the start of a 3-fold price collapse the following month. In November 2019, BTCUSD dropped by 18% the next month after fixing under the 200-day line. In May 2018, the decline from about the same levels was stopped only seven months later, at $3,300. There is only a week left before halving in the Bitcoin network, but it is still difficult to see signs of FOMO in the market dynamics, which could push the price far above $10,000. And the closer the halving is, the less likely FOMO to happen. It is quite probable that halving will not clear on price prospects for market participants. As before, this event may have a delayed effect. However, the environment around the cryptocurrency and the composition of investors has changed. Institutional market participants still are not crypto enthusiasts. This should be considered in forecasts on the impact of halving on the future price of bitcoin. by Alex Kuptsikevich, the FxPro senior financial analyst This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: U.S. Stocks Set To Open Lower As U.S. China Tensions Increase E-mini NASDAQ-100 Index (NQ) Futures Technical Analysis Strong Over 8743.50, Weak Under 8576.50 Silver Price Forecast Silver Continues to Underperform US Open Risk, Earnings, Oil, Gold, Bitcoin Natural Gas Price Forecast Natural Gas Markets Run Into Resistance Gold Price Forecast Gold Markets Gap to Kickoff Week || The Crypto Daily – Movers and Shakers -09/05/20: Bitcoin fell by 1.88% on Friday. Partially reversing a 9.06% rally from Thursday, Bitcoin ended the day at $9,792.4. A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin rise to an early morning intraday high $10,025 before hitting reverse. Falling short of the first major resistance level at $10,340.07 and 62% FIB of $10,034, Bitcoin slid to a mid-morning intraday low $9,705.0. Steering clear of the first major support level at $9,324.07, Bitcoin bounced back to $10,000 levels before a late slide. Falling short of the 62% FIB of $10,034, Bitcoin slid back to $9,700 levels to end the day in the red. The near-term bearish trend, formed at late June 2019’s swing hi $13,764.0, remained firmly intact, reaffirmed by the March swing lo $4,000. For the bulls, Bitcoin would need to break out from $10,000 levels to form a near-term bullish trend. The Rest of the Pack Across the rest of the majors, it was a mixed day for the pack on Friday. Bitcoin Cash ABC rose by 2.71% to lead the way. Binance Coin (+0.53%), Bitcoin Cash SV (+0.91%), Cardano’s ADA (+1.19%), Litecoin (+0.65%), Stellar’s Lumen (+0.41%), Tezos (+1.14%), and Tron’s TRX (+1.10%) also saw green. It was a bearish day for the rest, however, with Monero’s XMR sliding by 3.52% to lead the way down. EOS (-0.64%), Ethereum (-0.43%), and Ripple’s XRP (-0.05%) also joined Bitcoin in the red. Through the current week, the crypto total market cap rose from a Monday low $240.56bn to a Friday high $271.32bn. At the time of writing, the total market cap stood at $269.10bn. Bitcoin’s dominance held onto 65% levels following Monday’s modest loss, before the mid-week breakout that delivered 68% levels. At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s dominance stood at 67.5%. 24-hour trading volumes fell to a Tuesday current week low $145.07bn before jumping to a Friday high $205.18bn. At the time of writing, 24-hr volumes stood at $168.77bn. This Morning At the time of writing, Bitcoin was up by 0.93% to $9,883.6. Bitcoin fell to an early morning low $9,723.3 before striking a high $9,876.6. Story continues Bitcoin left the major support and resistance levels untested early on. Elsewhere, it was another bullish start to the day for the rest of the majors. Binance Coin and Bitcoin Cash ABC led the way early on, with gains of 1.52% and 1.54% respectively. For the Bitcoin Day Ahead Bitcoin would need to avoid sub-$9,840 levels to bring the first major resistance level at $9,976.6 into play. Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Bitcoin to break out from the morning high $9,876.6. Barring a broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely leave Bitcoin short of the 62% FIB. In the event of another breakout, the second major resistance level at $10,160.8 would come into play. Failure to avoid sub-$9,840 levels could see Bitcoin struggle on the day. A fall through back through the morning low $9,723.3 would bring the first major support level at $9,656.6 into play before any recovery. Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Bitcoin should steer clear of sub-$9,700 levels. This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Gold Price Forecast – Prices Could Exceed $10,000 This Decade E-mini Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM) Futures Technical Analysis – Strong Over 23796, Weak Under 23571 Silver Price Forecast – Silver Markets Rally Towards Top of Range European Equities: A Week in Review – 09/05/20 Gold Weekly Price Forecast – Gold Markets Continue Consolidation Crude Oil Weekly Price Forecast – Crude Oil Markets Continue Attempted Recovery || Emin Gun Sirer’s AVA Labs Seeks Wall Street Business After Open Sourcing ‘Avalanche’ Protocol: AVA Labs, the first project building on the “Avalanche protocol” blockchain network, is looking to modernize financial infrastructure.
As first envisionedin a 2018 white paperby the pseudonymous “Team Rocket,” Avalanche protocol uses random network sampling to reach consensus. But it is AVA Labs’ ambition in building new infrastructure for the financial markets that now drives the firm forward.
The new platform could have special value for financial infrastructure and applications, not just in decentralized finance (DeFi) but for Wall Street firms, too, said AVA co-founder Kevin Sekniqi. That’s why the team decided to base itself in Brooklyn, N.Y., instead of the more tech-savvy Bay Area in California, where Sekniqi admits AVA Labs’ “hackers and engineers at heart” might fit in more naturally. AVA open sourced its initial codebase on March 11.
Related:Crypto Progressives Become Conservative With Their Own Chains
See also:Long-Festering DeFi Dapp Bug Still Not Fixed by Industry
AVA is now looking to move even closer to New York’s financial gearworks. Sekniqi has tentative plans to abandon its current Brooklyn HQ in favor of offices within striking distance of the Financial District in lower Manhattan, where physical proximity to banks, brokers and firms can raise awareness of the product.
“We’re going to have a big push in the financial sector, so we’re going to need to meet with a lot of people in that area, downtown in FiDi,” Sekniqi said.
He said those meetings could go a long way to getting institutions to take blockchain solutions more seriously. Too often there’s a breakdown in messaging in which institutions do not see the value of blockchain because they do not see how it solves their business “pain points” in digitizing assets.
Related:Coronavirus Is a Catalyst for Work-From-Home Tech
“Everything is lacking right now, primarily in technology,” Sekniqi said.
AVA is still in the process of building its first network. To that end, it released the codebase for the Avalanche protocol earlier this month, fleshing out the technical elements for an ecosystem AVA’s founders hope will challenge the supremacy of other leading consensus families.
The launch gives the developer community a look at AVA Lab’s multiyear effort to piece together a workable source code for Avalanche.
Avalanche’s random sample method presents a significant break from two popular consensusfamilies: Nakamoto, the proof-of-work model behind Bitcoin, and “classical,” which uses majority vote.Proponentssay Avalanche takes the best of both protocols while detractorsscoffat what they deem a lesser derivative.
See also:Why Polynomial Commitments Might Be a ‘Breakthrough’ for Ethereum 2.0
“We’ve been hearing from people that they want much more scalable, much faster consensus protocols,” Sekniqi said, comparing Avalanche’s protocol toCosmos.
For its part, AVA’s leaders are betting Avalanche has the potential. Running on $6 million funding from a 2019 venture capital round, the 30-person team has been building out their mainnet backend, developing a system Sekniqi says could be the “seed” for a new generation of projects and dApps.
“It’s a much better foundation for building blockchain platforms,” Sekniqi said. He admits his pro-Avalanche bias.
“Our end goal here is we want to be the platform on which all assets are issued, we really want to encompass DeFi and much more broadly alternative assets,” he said. “We’re taking a very long-term approach to this.”
• Information Overload Is Stopping Us From Seeing the Truth
• How an Open Blockchain Project Scored a Rare Endorsement From China
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 9209.29, 8790.37, 8906.93, 8835.05, 9181.02, 9525.75, 9439.12, 9700.41, 9461.06, 10167.27
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
3 Artificial Intelligence Stocks to Watch This Year: It seems like nearly every technology company is pursuing some form of artificial intelligence these days. But while there are many companies hoping to benefit as this burgeoning market expands,NVIDIA Corporation(NASDAQ: NVDA),Amazon.com(NASDAQ: AMZN)andAlphabet(NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL)are already leading the way.
Here's how these companies are transforming artificial intelligence (AI) right now and why investors should consider these companies for their portfolios.
Image source: Getty Images.
Alphabet likes to have its hands in nearly every new technology trend, and AI is no exception. Specifically, the company is focusing on three key areas: AI servicesin the cloud, driverless cars through its Waymo subsidiary, and implementing AI into its flagship services. The company is doing much more in AI, but let's just start with these.
In the cloud space, Alphabet's Google Cloud platform integrates AI services that companies and developers can tap into to make their own AI products. For example, Google offers its machine learning software, called TensorFlow, for free to developers that help them to build apps that havemachine-learningcapabilities (it's the same tech that's used to easily find images in the Google Photos app). The company hopes that combining TensorFlow with its cloud-computing services will make for a winning combination as it tries to take a larger share of the $411 billion market (by 2020).
Alphabet is also using its AI know-how to build driverless car software through its Waymo subsidiary. Waymo announced at the end of last year that it's now testing its driverless minivans (void of any human driver) with the public in Arizona. The company has already logged 4 million miles with its vehicles, and Waymo is setting itself up for further ride-hailing driverless car services in the future.
The tech giant is also busy building its second-generation AI chip, called theTensor Processing Unit(TPU) which will be used for its cloud services and is improving the company's own services, like Search and Gmail. Alphabet can use AI to better understand what its users are looking at, watching, and reading, and then use that information to display more targeted ads. Considering that the company makes about 86% of its top line from selling ads from Google services, it's no wonder Alphabet is using AI to make its ad business even better.
Like Alphabet, NVIDIA is building its own AI chips and is working on its own driverless car technology as well. But the difference is that NVIDIAsellsboth its chips and its autonomous vehicle tech to other companies -- and it's already paying off.
The company's AI graphics processing units (GPUs) are already used by Alphabet,Microsoft, and Amazon to make their AI cloud computing services a reality. More and more companies are adding GPUs to theirdata centersto make them better at things like image recognition, and that's led to NVIDIA's data center revenue climbing by 109% in the most recent quarter.
In addition to data center opportunities, the company is also on the third version of its semi-autonomous driving computer, called Drive PX Pegasus. The computer fits into the trunk of semi-autonomous vehicles and uses NVIDIA's GPUs to process images from a vehicle's cameras, so the car can understand what it's looking at while driving. More than two dozen companies are already usingDrive PX Pegasusto create autonomous taxis withLevel 5 automation(no human driver needed).
NVIDIA's GPUs are also quickly becoming a powerful tool for other tech companies to utilize in building strong AI services. That's led the company to estimate that its total addressable market for AI (for data centers, driverless cars, AI for cities, etc.) is about $40 billion between now and 2025.
Amazon makesthe majority of its revenuefrom its e-commerce platform, but CEO Jeff Bezos explained the brains behind its online retail platform in an investor letter last year:
Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations, and much more. Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type -- quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.
Bezos said investors shouldwatch the machine-learning spaceclosely (which is part of the broader AI market) because of its impact on many of Amazon's businesses. But the company isn't just using AI to make its online retail recommendations better; it's also using it to expand its Amazon Web Services (AWS) in cloud computing as well.
The company already holds 40% of the public cloud-computing market and offers AI services like image recognition and language translation.
Amazon sees AI as another tool it can use to make its AWS services stronger, and late last year, it teamed up with Microsoft to offer new AI tools to combat Google's expansion into cloud computing. Amazon is focused onAI cloud computingbecause the company brings the vast majority of its operating profit from its AWS cloud services. The more it stays ahead of Google and others in the cloud market, the more it stands to add to its bottom line.
Investors should also take note that Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant is also a play on basic artificial intelligence in smart homes. Amazon already holds about 70% of the smart speaker market, and 2018 is poised to be abig year for smart speaker adoption. RBC Capital estimates that Amazon could add $10 billion to its top line by 2020 through its smart speakers, and the company's AI for Alexa is helping make that a reality.
It's best to keep in mind that artificial intelligence is still a small part of these companies' revenues, but that doesn't make their AI pursuits irrelevant. Artificial intelligence is making the products and services that Amazon, NVIDIA, and Alphabet offer much better, and that, in turn, should help fuel their growth. AI will likely transform nearly every aspect of these companies in the coming years, and investors would be wise to take notice now.
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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft.Chris Neigerhas no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A and C shares), Amazon, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Stock market outlook, February 26: After a bit of a see-saw week, stocks finished in the green to cap a second week of gains. And in the week ahead, a full economic schedule and a rush of retail earnings should give investors plenty to key off. On the economic data side, month-end reports on manufacturing data, consumer confidence, and auto sales are expected, while the second estimate of fourth quarter GDP will also be released on Wednesday. Economists expect the annualized pace of growth in the final three months of 2017 will be downgraded slightly, to 2.5% from 2.6%. According to the Atlanta Fed’s latest GDPNow tracker , the U.S. economy is on track to grow at an annualized rate of 3.2% to start 2018. And while Friday does mark the first Friday of the month, we will not get the February jobs report until the following Friday, news that will come just a few days ahead of the next monetary policy announcement from the Federal Reserve. On the earnings side, notable earnings expected out this week should include Lowe’s ( LOW ), Mylan ( MYL ), Salesforce.com ( CRM ), Square ( SQ ), as well as a flood of retail and apparel names, notably TJ Maxx parent company TJX ( TJX ), L Brands ( LB ), Best Buy ( BBY ), Kohl’s ( KSS ), Nordstrom ( JWN ), Gap ( GPS ), J.C. Penney ( JCP ), Foot Locker ( FL ), and Macy’s ( M ). Macy’s earnings will be a highlight in the week ahead as fourth quarter results from the retail sector are a focus for investors. (Stuart Ramson/AP Images for Macy’s) On Monday, the latest letter to Berkshire Hathaway ( BRK-A , BRK-B ) shareholders from Warren Buffett will likely be a big topic of market discussion, with Buffett revealing that the Trump tax cuts led to a $29 billion gain for Berkshire in 2017 . Investors will also continue to keep an eye on Walmart ( WMT ) and Amazon ( AMZN ) shares, which last week diverged notably as Walmart fell 11% after disappointing earnings on Tuesday and Amazon shares closed at a new all-time high on Friday of $1,500 on the nose. Another story surely to make headlines in the week ahead is the increasing number of major companies distancing themselves from previous relationships with the NRA in the wake of this month’s mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 . On Saturday, both Delta ( DAL ) and United Air Lines ( UAL ) would no longer offer discounts to NRA members. Story continues Economic calendar Monday: New home sales, January (+3.6% expected; -9.3% previously); Dallas Fed manufacturing index, February (30 expected; 33.4 previously) Tuesday: Durable goods orders, January (-2.5% expected; +2.8% previously); FHFA home price index, December (+0.4% expected; +0.4% previously); S&P Case-Shiller home price index, December (+0.6% expected; +0.75% previously); Richmond Fed manufacturing index, February (15 expected; 14 previously); The Conference Board consumer confidence, February (126 expected; 125.4 previously) Wednesday: Fourth quarter GDP, second estimate (+2.5% expected; +2.6% previously); Chicago PMI, February (65 expected; 65.7 previously); Pending home sales, January (+0.5% expected; +0.5% previously) Thursday: Personal income, January (+0.3% expected; +0.4% previously); Personal spending, January (+0.2% expected; +0.4% previously); “Core” PCE, year-on-year, January (+1.5% expected; +1.5% previously); Initial jobless claims (226,000 expected; 222,000 previously); Markit manufacturing PMI, February (55.8 expected; 55.9 previously); ISM manufacturing PMI, February (58.7 expected; 59.1 previously); Auto sales, February (17.2 million vehicles annualized expected; 17.07 million vehicles annualized previously) Friday: University of Michigan consumer sentiment, February (99.5 expected; 99.9 previously) What matters to Warren Buffett Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders is one of the year’s most highly-anticipated pieces of investment writing. But in his latest missive to investors, Buffett had a few glaring gaps in his discussion, not the least of which is the length of the letter itself. The 2017 edition of his letter to shareholders released on Saturday came in at 17 pages, down from 29 pages a year ago. When it comes to what’s in the letter, Buffett passed on discussing Wells Fargo ( WFC ), which is Berkshire’s largest public market equity investment and which has been, to say the very least, embattled over the last 18 months. Buffett also declined to comment on bitcoin ( BTC-USD ), a topic from which his vice chair and right-hand-man Charlie Munger has not shied away, as well as giving limited commentary on his view of the U.S. economy, which has been a staple of recent letters. This more sparse edition of his letter to shareholders, however, does give us perhaps a tighter focus on what Buffett himself sees as the major drivers, or hangups, when it comes to Berkshire Hathaway’s business. And that is Berkshire’s insurance operation and Buffett’s clear frustration over what to do with the firm’s $116 billion cash pile. Warren Buffett has $116 billion in Treasury securities and he doesn’t know what to do with them. On the insurance side, Buffett said that hurricanes impacting Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico in 2017 likely cost the company $3 billion, or about 3% of Buffett’s guesstimated $100 billion industry-wide loss. “I believe that percentage is also what we may reasonably expect to be our share of losses in future American mega-cats,” Buffett writes, adding that he expects Berkshire would have little trouble withstanding a mega-cat storm that inflicted $400 billion of damage on the U.S. Buffett also detailed what he sees as the primary advantage of Berkshire’s insurance business — it’s “long tail” policies. Certain lines of insurance, like medical malpractice or product liability, have longer timeframes when payment to a claimant is required, giving Berkshire a longer lead time to earn profits from the float generated by these policies — or the insurance premiums paid to Berkshire which Buffett can then invest. Berkshire, as Buffett writes, “has been a leader in long-tail business for many years.” And while this float may seem to be a fickle source of funding for what is essentially the Buffett-run hedge fund that operates inside the Berkshire Hathaway umbrella, this money is not like that which sits in a bank or is pledged by LPs. “Unlike bank deposits or life insurance policies containing surrender options, p/c float can’t be withdrawn,” Buffett writes. “This means that p/c companies can’t experience massive ‘runs’ in times of widespread financial stress, a characteristic of prime importance to Berkshire that we factor into our investment decisions.” And its this business line which Buffett expects to be the driver of Berkshire’s long-term viability after he and Munger are gone. “Charlie and I never will operate Berkshire in a manner that depends on the kindness of strangers – or even that of friends who may be facing liquidity problems of their own,” Buffett writes. “During the 2008-2009 crisis, we liked having Treasury Bills – loads of Treasury Bills – that protected us from having to rely on funding sources such as bank lines or commercial paper. We have intentionally constructed Berkshire in a manner that will allow it to comfortably withstand economic discontinuities, including such extremes as extended market closures.” Now when it comes to acquisitions, Buffett’s frustrations are fairly straightforward: everything is too expensive. “In our search for new stand-alone businesses, the key qualities we seek are durable competitive strengths; able and high-grade management; good returns on the net tangible assets required to operate the business; opportunities for internal growth at attractive returns; and, finally, a sensible purchase price,” Buffett writes. “That last requirement proved a barrier to virtually all deals we reviewed in 2017, as prices for decent, but far from spectacular, businesses hit an all-time high. Indeed, price seemed almost irrelevant to an army of optimistic purchasers.” Among Buffett’s notable one-liners in this year’s letter was an analogy between executives who want to sell their company and horny teenagers. This perhaps reflects the seriousness with which Buffett views many pitches he fielded for acquisitions over the last year. But Buffett also makes clear that a major acquisition is a near necessity for the company. “Berkshire’s goal is to substantially increase the earnings of its non-insurance group,” Buffett writes. “For that to happen, we will need to make one or more huge acquisitions. We certainly have the resources to do so. At yearend Berkshire held $116.0 billion in cash and U.S. Treasury Bills (whose average maturity was 88 days), up from $86.4 billion at yearend 2016. This extraordinary liquidity earns only a pittance and is far beyond the level Charlie and I wish Berkshire to have. Our smiles will broaden when we have redeployed Berkshire’s excess funds into more productive assets.” Of course, this eagerness to make a deal complicates Buffett’s ability to acquire a large, productive business at an attractive price. The last major deal Berkshire Hathaway made was the $36 billion purchase of Precision Castparts which closed in early 2016. With a $116 billion war chest, one imagines deals in excess of $40 billion are preferred to move the needle on turning this less-productive Treasury stockpile into an accretive business. The number of potential targets at this size, however, is limited. Combine a strong economy with a strong stock market and a buyer who has made their desire to acquire a large company known, and all of a sudden Buffett has set his own market such that it does not actually exist. It seems likely that Buffett’s frustration will continue. — Myles Udland is a writer at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @MylesUdland Read more from Myles here: A few major topics were missing from Warren Buffett’s latest annual letter The Trump tax cut earned Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway $29 billion in 2017 Goldman Sachs says U.S. economic data right now is ‘as good as it gets’ One candidate for Amazon’s next headquarters looks like a clear frontrunner Tax cuts are going to keep being a boon for the shareholder class Auto sales declined for the first time since the financial crisis in 2017 The markets story of 2017 — real returns, fake news || Bitcoin Price Stays Heavy Amid Korean Regulatory Reports: Despite the two-way action on the price of bitcoin over the last 24 hours, the bears still appear to have the upper hand.
CoinDesk'sBitcoin Price Index (BPI)fell to $13,455 yesterday before rising back above $14,900. At that point, it appeared bitcoin (BTC) had found a bottom, but the ascent was cut short at $14,942 and prices fell further to $12,845 at 04:29 UTC – very likely on fears South Koreamay soon announcean outright ban on cryptocurrency trading at exchanges.
With South Korea one of the biggest markets for cryptocurrencies, such a ban by the nation would definitely weaken the demand side pressure. As a result, markets reacted negatively to the news.
However, the initial knee-jerk drop in prices came to a halt seemingly due to later reports clarifying that South Korea may not be able to implement the new legislation anytime soon.
Reutersstated: "Legislation for an outright ban of virtual coin trading will require a majority vote of the total 297 members of the National Assembly, a process that could take months or even years."
At time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $13,7290 – down 4.08 percent from the intraday high of $13,845 (08:59 UTC). As per data sourceOnChainFX, bitcoin has depreciated by 4.4 percent in the last 24 hours.
The technical charts also favor further downside to prices.
The abovechart(prices as per Coinbase) shows:
• Yesterday's bullishhammer-like candle meant the sell-off from $17,174 (Jan. 6 high) has ended at $13,550 (yesterday's low). Also, prices closed (as per UTC) yesterday above the rising trendline (inside the rising wedge).
• However, the bulls failed to capitalize on yesterday's positive price action, and the minor rally stalled at $14,970 before falling to an 11-day low of $12,800 today.
• The price action only adds credence to the bearish continuation pattern and a bearish 5-day and 10-day moving average crossover.
• The relative strength index (RSI) has entered bearish territory (below 50.00).
• BTC is more likely to cut through the support at $12,500 (Dec. 30 low) and may extend losses as low as $10,400–$10,000 over the 72 hours.
• Today's high/low ($14,970 and $12,800) engulfs the previous day's price action. So, today's candle looks like abearish outside day, indicating the continuation of the sell-off.
• Bullish scenario: A close (as per UTC) today above $14,970 could save the day for bitcoin bulls. That said, only a move above $17,174 (Jan. 6 high) would signal a bearish-to-bullish trend change.
Gym weightsimage via Shutterstock
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• Goldman's Jafari: Watch For Signs of Price Base Just Below $10K || 3 Best Self-Driving Stories From 2017: While serious driverless car research and development has been happening for years, 2017 might very well mark the year it became clear to the masses that driverless vehicles are the future -- and will be showing up sooner rather than later. Over the past few years, nearly every large automaker has announced self-driving vehicle programs or partnerships; even Silicon Valley tech companies have been quick to go all-in on developing some aspect of driverless car technology. Driverless cars will be the story of the future, but some of the most interesting stories could very well be from 2017.
John Rosevear(General Motors):For my money, the best self-driving story in a year full of them wasGeneral Motors'(NYSE: GM)emergence as a leader -- yes,leader-- in the race to deploy a fleet of self-driving vehicles.
General Motors' Super Cruise system, introduced in 2017, allows for hands-off highway driving. Image source: General Motors.
How did that happen? Here are the high points:
• Earlier this year, GM launched itsadvanced driver-assist Super Cruise systemas an option on the big Cadillac CT6. Super Cruise isn'tquiteself-driving, but it's a big step in that direction. LikeTesla's(NASDAQ: TSLA)Autopilot, Super Cruise allows for hands-off-the-wheel driving in certain situations (highways, in GM's case).
• In September, the CEO of GM's self-driving subsidiary Cruise Automation announced that the company has created a self-driving version of the Chevrolet Bolt EV that can be mass-produced by the thousands on the Bolt's existing assembly line in Michigan. That's a significant step toward deploying self-driving cars at scale.
• And in November, GM announced the missing piece: It will build thousands of self-driving Bolts for urban ride-hailing duty as soon as its system is deemed to be safer than a human driver. At the current rate of improvement, it expects that to happen sometime in 2019.
Long story short: GM's self-driving system appears to be among the most advanced in the industry. There may be one or two ahead of GM's, but GM -- uniquely -- has the carand the production line-- ready to go as soon as its system is ready.
The kicker: If GM can be first (or even second) to deploy self-driving cars at scale, it could enjoy a significant (and significantly profitable)first-mover advantage. That makes GM's self-driving story in 2017 a very big deal.
Daniel Miller(Investing in autonomous):Take a mere glance at the automotive industry, and you can see a wide range of companies developing driverless vehicle technology. Companies that range from parts suppliers in Detroit to tech companies in Silicon Valley are all positioning themselves for the future of driverless cars. Despite all the action, investors have so far been left without a direct driverless company to invest in -- that is, untilAptiv PLC(NYSE: APTV)was spun off fromDelphi Automotive(NYSE: DLPH).
Delphi is a giant auto-industry supplier and is known for its powertrain components and systems for internal combustion engines. And while that's a healthy business, Aptiv's focus on electrical systems and driverless car technology should warrant a higher multiple on Wall Street thanks to better margins and more lucrative growth prospects. Already, Aptiv is a major player in self-driving and boasts partnerships with Intel, Mobileye, and BMW, among many others.
Beyond its number of partnerships to develop crucial technology, Aptiv doubled down when it acquired nuTonomy Inc. for about $450 million. The move brings in the privately held software firm, founded as recently as 2013, and more importantly, it brings in 100-plus employees including 70 engineers and scientists, that doubled Aptiv's autonomous team overnight.
Aptiv has come a long way from starting as a division of General Motors. And while its legacy powertrain business was solid, it's clear with Aptiv's spin-off that the future of driverless vehicles is so tantalizing, it's forcing companies to adapt rapidly. Driverless cars will be the story of the next two decades, and investors can expect Aptiv to play a massive role down that road.
Travis Hoium(Intel/Mobileye):I think the biggest story in self-driving in the past year has beenIntel's $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye, a self-driving technology leader. The combination makes Intel a formidable force with technology and self-driving partnerships with 27 car manufacturers around the world.
Intel's(NASDAQ: INTC)decision to buy Mobileye goes far beyond just having a piece of the technology built into the car; it willfold vehicle sensors into the company's massive cloud and server business long term. Cars won't have the world of maps onboard at all times, but rather will be pulling data about roads, traffic signs, and other important information as it's needed from the cloud. Mobileye allows Intel to provide solutions from the sensor to the cloud. Since automakers don't have the technology or bandwidth to develop their own sensors, maps, and cloud infrastructure for self driving vehicles, they'll have to lean on someone, and Intel now became a frontrunner in the autonomous driving business.
We don't know exactly what the future of self-driving cars or autonomous ride sharing looks like, but we now know that Intel is taking a big swing at being a key player. That's not something everyone would have guessed coming into the year, and it could help shape self-driving technology for the next decade.
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Daniel Millerowns shares of General Motors.John Rosevearowns shares of General Motors.Travis Hoiumowns shares of Intel. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends Intel. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Disney Taps Former iTunes Veteran for Its Streaming Service: The entertainment landscape is evolving. With the debut of streaming 11 years ago, the way that viewers consume content has been unalterably changed. The pioneer of this technology,Netflix(NASDAQ: NFLX), has long been the biggest beneficiary of the changes that it initiated back in 2007.
That type of success breeds competition and has encouraged companies likeAmazonandAppleto join the fray, though thus far, they have met with some, but ultimately limited success. Investors have long wondered what company would emerge and earn the title of "Netflix killer," but the company's near-flawless execution thus far has succeeded in keeping the competition largely at bay. That may be about to change.
One of the world's largest entertainment companies has its sights set on streaming --Walt Disney(NYSE: DIS). The company has hired an industry veteran to build and run the upcoming service.
Can this industry veteran help Disney compete with Netflix? Image source: Getty Images.
Disney's BAMTech Media has tapped Kevin Swint, a consumer tech and media executive, to build and launch its new streaming service, acting as the senior vice-president and general manager of the as yet unnamed service, according toa reportin Variety.
While not a household name, Swint spent five years as the director of Apple's iTunes movie and TV business, which resulted in the TV segment producing its fastest growth since it debuted in 2007. He was charged with the launch of iTunes movie stores in more than 50 countries, increasing revenues by 10-fold, and increasing the company's library of movie titles by 15 times.
Swint also spent time developing content strategy for Apple competitorSamsung(NASDAQOTH: SSNLF), developing the company's Milk Video short-form streaming video service in 2014. The platform had a social component and was widely praised for its sophisticated and elegant design and streamlined interface, though it was ultimately shuttered a year later.
Another gig that adds to Swint's credentials were the several years he spent atWal-Mart(NYSE: WMT), initially handling the company's digital music and photo businesses, then helping establish its digital media division. He negotiated deals with all of the major Hollywood studios and developed the concept of including the digital copy with a physical media purchase -- a practice which is now widely used.
During Disney's third-quarter 2017 earnings release, the company revealed that it would increase its stake in streaming platform BAMTech Media and launch two streaming services.
The first would be an ESPN-branded direct-to-consumer service, which would launch in early 2018, and the second would be a Disney-branded service slated for release in 2019. The latter service would "become the exclusive home in the U.S. for subscription video-on-demand viewing of the newest live-action and animated movies from Disney and Pixar." The company later revealed that it would include films from its Marvel and Lucasfilm studios as well.
The recentlyannounced acquisitionof some ofTwenty-First Century Fox's(NASDAQ: FOX)(NASDAQ: FOXA)properties will also give Disney a 60% ownership and controlling interest in streaming service Hulu, the third most popular platform among U.S. consumers.
Going up against the leader in streaming in the U.S. and one of the fastest-growing streaming platforms worldwide is a seemingly monumental task. Combining the right platform with the expertise to develop Disney's upcoming direct-to-consumer service will be one factor in the success or failure of the enterprise. The other defining factor will be content, but rest assured, Disney has that covered.
It's important to note that I don't subscribe to the view championed in the movieThe Highlander: "There can be only one!"
A recent survey reveals that 38% of streaming video customers pay for more than one streaming subscription, according toDecoding the Default, a report by market-research firmHub Entertainment Research. The report also reveals that 14% of streaming video customers subscribe to Netflix, Prime Video, and Hulu -- the three most popular platforms.
Considering the company's treasure trove of content and a shifting viewing landscape, it would be downright "Goofy" to bet against Disney.
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John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors.Danny Venaowns shares of Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Walt Disney. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2020 $150 calls on Apple and short January 2020 $155 calls on Apple. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || IBM, Maersk to Create New Blockchain Platform: International Business Machines Corp.(NYSE:IBM) andMaerskhave partnered up to create what they call a way to speed up the trade industry.
Source: IBM
The companies arerolling out a new blockchain platformdesigned to save up billions of dollars, while also managing and tracking tens of millions of shipping containers around the globe. IBM and Maersk will do so by digitizing the supply chain process from end to end.
It’s been a while since the global shipping industry has seen any technological changes as the container invented in the 1950s marks the last major breakthrough for it. Sending items still requires plenty of paperwork and bureaucracy.
InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips
The new IBM and Maersk platform will be made available to the ocean shipping industry starting in mid-2018, and it is dependent on whether or not the companies can lure in shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customer authorities to adopt its new tech.
Blockchain technology is used to power bitcoin, ethereum and other digital currencies, sharing data across a network of individual computers. Customs and port authorities in the United States, China, Singapore and the Netherlands have expressed interest in using the platform.
“The big thing that is missing from this industry to digitize and unleash the potential of the technology is really to create a form of utility that brings standards across the entire ecosystem,” Maersk’s Chief Commercial Officer Vincent Clerc said in an interview.
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The postIBM, Maersk to Create New Blockchain Platformappeared first onInvestorPlace. || 3 Small Biotechs That Big Drugmakers Are Probably Drooling Over: 2018 just might be the best time to be a small biotech -- and own shares of small biotech stocks -- than ever before. Despite a couple of noteworthy deals, last year was relatively quiet on the mergers and acquisitions front in the biopharmaceutical industry. But now, large companies can bring more cash back into the U.S. at lower tax rates thanks to corporate tax reform. And many of them are itching to spend some of that money.
We've already seen several significant acquisitions in just the first few weeks of 2018. I expect more will be on the way. But which small biotechs rank among the most likely to become buyout targets? Here's why I thinkbluebird bio(NASDAQ: BLUE),Madrigal Pharmaceuticals(NASDAQ: MDGL), andSage Therapeutics(NASDAQ: SAGE)could be small biotechs that big drugmakers are drooling over.
Image source: Getty Images.
Bluebird is one of an elite group of small biotechs with a promising cell therapy program that hasn't been scooped up or is in the process of being scooped up by a larger company. It also has the distinction of being an important partner to one of those larger companies thathave already done some scooping over the past few weeks--Celgene(NASDAQ: CELG).
Celgene views Bluebird's bb2121 as one of its highest pipeline priorities. The big biotech first partnered with Bluebird in 2013 to develop CAR-T cell therapies. This collaboration currently includes two CAR-T candidates targeting B-cell maturation antigen -- bb2121 and bb21217. Both drugs are being evaluated in early stage studies for treating multiple myeloma.
There has been considerable speculation that Celgene will make Bluebird its third acquisition of 2018, following its buyout deals with Impact Biosciences andJuno Therapeutics(NASDAQ: JUNO). If Celgene doesn't pull the trigger, Bluebird could find itself courted by other big drugmakers looking for an edge in cell therapy.
Madrigal Pharmaceuticals ranked as theNo. 3 best-performing healthcare stock of 2017, with its share price soaring 516%. All this excitement for Madrigal stemmed from its lead candidate, MGL-3196. The biggest news for MGL-3196 came in December, when the biotech reported the drug met its primary endpoint of reducing liver fat in a phase 2 study for treating non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
It was only 30 years ago that NASH was so rare that the disease didn't even have a medical name. Now, between 3% and 12% of adult Americans have NASH. It's projected to edge out hepatitis C as the leading cause of liver transplants by 2020. And there are currently no approved treatments for the disease.
With a significant market and unmet need, big and small biopharmaceutical companies alike have raced to develop drugs to treat NASH. There has already been some acquisition activity over the past few years, includingGilead Sciences' purchase of Nimbus Therapeutics in 2016. I wouldn't be surprised at all more activity this year, with Madrigal in the crosshairs.
Sage Therapeutics' stock price more than tripled in value last year. Nearly all of that huge gain came in November and December, after the biotech reported positive results from clinical studies of two pipeline candidates.
In November, Sage announced that brexanolone met the primary endpoints in two late-stage clinical studies targeting treatment of postpartum depression. The next month, the company reported experimental drug SAGE-217 met its primary endpoints in a phase 2 study for treatment of major depressive disorder. Sage stated that the drug "provided rapid, profound, and durable effects" through an initial two-week treatment period and during a four-week follow-up period.
The company now plans to file for FDA approval for brexanolone this year and advance SAGE-217 to a pivotal late-stage study. Small biotechs with late-stage assets that have significant market potential should find themselves in demand in 2018. I expect Sage Therapeutics will be one of them.
Buying a stock only because the company might be acquired isn't the smartest investing strategy. One key word in that statement is "might." Bluebird, Madrigal, and Sage might be acquired -- but they might not. The other key word in the statement, though, is "only." The potential for an acquisition certainly should be factored into the decision to buy a stock, but there should be other, more solid, reasons to buy the stock also.
Because of the big run-up in its stock price after Celgene announced its buyout of Juno, Bluebird's market cap now stands at nearly $10 billion. That's close to the total price Celgene paid for for Juno. I'm not convinced that Bluebird is worth a lot more than the current price.
Sage Therapeutics, on the other hand, could have room to run, in my view. The biotech's market cap is around $7.5 billion currently. Tremendous potential for brexanolone and SAGE-217 could make the company worth a good bit more if all goes well with both drugs.
That leaves Madrigal. I think the NASH space is so competitive that Madrigal will be bought at a significant premium to its current market cap of $1.7 billion. I could be wrong, of course. But I like the chances for MGL-3196, and I view Madrigal as a small biotech stock that both big drugmakers and investors can drool over.
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Keith Speightsowns shares of Celgene and Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Bluebird Bio, Celgene, and Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool recommends Juno Therapeutics. The Motley Fool has adisclosure policy. || Japanese bitcoin exchange BitFlyer comes to Europe: Japanese bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange BitFlyer has expanded into Europe after it landed a payment license to operate across the EU. Data from Coinmarketcap.com shows that BitFlyer is the world's 14th largest exchange based on volume, with more than $294 million trading in the last 24 hours at the time of writing. Bitcoin is the dominant choice for BitFlyer users, having accounted for $287 million of that 24-hour trading. That's around the same amount traded on Coinbase. Unlike some exchanges which offer a gamut of altcoins, BitFlyer has stuck to mainstream crypto by offering its users the chance to buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and popular Japanese option Monacoin. Initially, it plans to stick to Bitcoin in Europe -- which it will trade with Euros -- but the company said it intends to offer "other virtual currencies such as Litecoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic and Bitcoin Cash later in the year." The exchange's European presence will be anchored in Luxembourg, which is where it was granted its payment license. Japan is one of the world's crypto trading hubs, alongside Korea and of course the U.S., but those in the industry say Europe has potential to grow significantly. Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng told TechCrunch in a recent interview that Italy, France, Germany, the UK and Turkey are among his exchange's fastest rising markets. BitFlyer will hope its early landing can give it an important advantage over the competition that will doubtless follow its path to Europe. Disclosure: The author owns small amounts of cryptocurrency. || Why Celgene Corporation Stock Is ALL About the Buyouts: For the biotech superstar, Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG ), the last few months have not been too kind. CELG stock has hit a rough patch on several different fronts. That included it stopping phase 3 clinical trials for a potential blockbuster for Crohn’s disease as well as reducing forward earnings forecasts based on that stoppage and the fact that Revolve won’t be coming to market. That’s a big problem as the biotech firm is facing a pretty large brick wall with the end of patents for its cancer drug and huge money-maker Revlimid. So, the pressure is on for Celgene to perform and do well in this upcoming earnings report. And that pressure will be coming from its planned and speculated big-time buyouts. InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips Patent Pressure for CELG Stock There’s no denying that CELG won’t make money this quarter. That’s a given — especially since it preannounced unaudited results two weeks ago . Celgene is one of the better run biotech drug producers and we shouldn’t be seeing any surprise loses here. However, the concern is just how top-heavy its results are. During their prelim report, Revlimid is still running the show and it is estimated to have brought in more than $8 billion in sales for CELG. Celgene’s next biggest drug — Pomalyst/Imnovid — only brought in about $1.6 billion in sales for all of 2017. With prescriptions for Revlimid growing like weeds, the problem for Celgene is only getting worse. The risk is that CELG and its stock valuation is still riding too high on its chief cancer drug. Celgene loses patent protection by 2022 for the multiple myeloma drug. The hope is that we can see enough growth in its other medications to help reduce the crutch that Revlimid is causing. That’s why CELG stock tanked when it abandoned its trials for the Crohn’s disease-fighting Revolve. It’s also why, investors weren’t too happy with the prelim results and CELG’s less-than-expected revenue growth from Otezla. Story continues CELG Tries to Fill the Gap For Celgene, it’s not about earnings per se — it’ll have them. But it’s about how it’s going to fill the potential revenue gap come 2022 when Revlimid goes off patent. So, either medications like Otelzla need to show some better results or it needs to expand its pipeline by a lot. And we may just get the latter when CELG reports. 10 Niche ETFs That Will Make You Money In 2018 When CELG reported its preliminary results, it also announced that it was buying privately held Impact Biomedicines for roughly $7 billion . The deal fits Celgene’s oncology focus as Impact’s main product/development is a potential treatment for myelofibrosis — a type of blood cancer. But what it really does is flesh-out the biotech’s pipeline and potentially adds another big-time future money maker to its arsenal. But the real boom in M&A for CELG could come from a speculated deal. Reports have been swirling that Celgene will buy Juno Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ: JUNO ). Snagging Juno would be a huge win for CELG. Like Impact, JUNO focuses on oncology/cancer medicines. Currently, JUNO has 11 different drugs in phase 1 or 2 clinical trials. Talk about a pipeline boost. Adding JUNO to its arsenal would certainly help build-up its pipeline and build-out enough in future revenue streams to overcome the Revlimid shortfall. An official account announcement of a JUNO buyout would be welcome news for investors. As would be any news from CELG’s multitude of joint ventures, partnerships, and its already decent-sized pipeline. A recent cancer drug joint venture with Jounce Therapeutics Inc (NASDAQ: JNCE ) should begin phase 3 trials during the first few weeks of 2018. Any update on this front or additional JV’s should be positive news. Pipeline Will Be the Focus for CELG Traders The mantra for CELG’s earnings report is “pipeline, pipeline and more pipeline.” Actual earnings probably won’t even matter. Whether investors are impressed will have to do with the firm’s plans to replace Revlimid. And that can come from its buyout plans or increasing revenues from its other medicines through trials. So, where does that leave investors? 3 Tech Trades to Bet on 'FANG' Stocks in 2018 Over the long-term, CELG seems like a steal. It does have an impressive resume of drugs that are growing and that patent-cliff for its leading cancer drug won’t happen for another four years. There should be plenty of profits to be had for patient investors. If Celgene is able to announce a big deal or better pipeline results, CELG stock should spike hard. If not, we could see it fall a bit more. And if it does, that might be a prime time to snag-up some shares or to increase a position in CELG stock. The reality is, Celgene still has plenty of time to build-out its pipeline before the cliff hits. It’ll get there. But investors are looking for it to happen today. If they get that, it’s off to the races for CELG stock. As of this writing, Aaron Levitt was long CELG. More From InvestorPlace 6 of the Strangest ETFs You Can Buy 10 Stocks to Buy Instead of Bitcoin The Top 10 Value Stocks in the S&P 500 Compare Brokers The post Why Celgene Corporation Stock Is ALL About the Buyouts appeared first on InvestorPlace . || Price of Gold Fundamental Daily Forecast – Prices Could Weaken if Trump Gives in to Political Pressure Over Tariffs: Gold prices rose to their highest level since February 27 early Monday before settling lower for the session. Investors bought gold early in the session as a protectionist measure against political uncertainty in Italy and on fears of a global trade war in reaction to President Trump’s announcement of tariffs on imported steels and aluminum.
April Comex Goldfutures settled at $1319.90, down $3.50 or -0.26%.
The easing of tensions over Italy and the possibility of a trade war helped boost the dollar, driving down gold into the close. Increased demand for higher risk assets also pressured prices.
The dollar was primarily underpinned by an easing of tensions over a possible trade-war in retaliation to last week’s announcement by President Trump of proposed 25-percent and 10-percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum.
Early Monday, Trump may have opened the door for negotiations on tariffs when he sent out a series of tweets suggesting he remains flexible on the idea.
Trump’s tweets stated, “Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum will only come off if new & fair NAFTA agreement is signed.” Adding that “Mexico must do much more on stopping drugs from pouring into the U.S. They have not done what needs to be done.”
In other news, House Speaker Paul Ryan said he was “extremely worried” about Trump’s trade plan. Congressional leaders, meanwhile, will not rule out potential action if Trump decides to move forward with his tariff plan.
Final Services PMI came in at 55.9, matching expectations. ISM Non-Manufacturing PMI was 59.5, better than the 58.9 estimate, but below last month’s 59.9 read.
Additionally, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Randal Quarles said U.S. financial regulators are working quickly to make “material changes” to the Volcker Rule, one of Wall Street’s most hated post-crisis restrictions.
Gold prices are inching higher early Tuesday on the back of a weaker U.S. Dollar. Traders moved back into gold amid worries about a global trade war even as U.S. President Trump faced pressure from political and trade allies over his plan for steel and aluminum tariffs.
At 0628 GMT, April Comex Gold futures are trading $1324.30, up $4.40 or +0.33%.
While the weaker U.S. Dollar may be supporting prices, rising stock prices in Asia may be putting some pressure on the market.
Traders are also saying that Mexican and U.S. officials are pushing to speed up NAFTA negotiations, with the United States floating the idea of reaching an agreement “in principle” in coming weeks to avoid political headwinds later this year.
The direction of gold will be determined by the U.S. Dollar. Gold prices are likely to retreat on Tuesday if equity prices and Treasury yields continue to rise. This is likely to occur if Trump gives in to pressure to rescind his plans to implement a tariff on steel and aluminum.
If Trump continues to push forward with his plans and turns into a protectionist president then look for the trade-war to begin with retaliation from Asia, Europe and Canada expected over the near-term. This should weaken the dollar and make gold a more attractive asset.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#BTC Average: 8772.64$
#Bitfinex - 8723.40$
#Poloniex - 8727.62$
#Bitstamp - 8725.11$
#Coinbase - 8748.26$
#Binance - 8724.00$
#CEXio - 8912.90$
#Kraken - 8717.90$
#Cryptopia - 8740.00$
#Bittrex - 8720.00$
#GateCoin - 8987.20$
#Bitcoin #Exchanges #Price || 이젠 정말 줄줄 흘러내리는구나. #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/9bT8ZaYGrc || El bitcóin sigue en picada situándose por debajo de los 6.400 dólares - http://bit.ly/2Beo0tJ pic.twitter.com/6UaQf7stOZ || 拡張性の高いBitcoinのアービトラージソフトの紹介 https://crypto-t.net/bot/arbitrage || Bitcoin freeloads on institutions’ trust warns BIS http://kryptouutiset.com/2018/02/bitcoin-freeloads-on-institutions-trust-warns-bis/ … #cryptocurrency #blockchain || Bitcoin freeloads on institutions’ trust warns BIS http://ift.tt/2sa1MGj || New #Crypto Trend. Add a to your name to support #LightningNetwork.
https://twitter.com/lightning
http://www.BitcoinSenpai.com/
#Lightning #Bitcoin #BTC #Ethereum #ETH #Litecoin #LTC #Monero #Dash #Cryptocurrency #Blockchain #Fintech #Investing #Money #Memespic.twitter.com/1LoaSGGv4H || 2018/03/05 05:00
#Binance 格安コイン
1位 #IOST 0.00000301 BTC(3.54円)
2位 #NCASH 0.00000301 BTC(3.54円)
3位 #TNB 0.00000417 BTC(4.9円)
4位 #TRX 0.00000421 BTC(4.94円)
5位 #POE 0.00000470 BTC(5.52円)
#仮想通貨 #アルトコイン #草コイン || ポイントの多かった通貨（ツイート いいね RT合計）
1. $BTC - 659 pt
2. $LTC - 358 pt
3. $XRP - 310 pt
2018年03月07日 11:00 ~ 11:59 pic.twitter.com/I1LikwYMpu || $BTC on the 10 min chart, see how those higher highs, and higher lows. That is the formation you want to see as it's very Bullish. pic.twitter.com/9D5Kpk366k
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Trend: down || Prices: 9578.63, 9205.12, 9194.85, 8269.81, 8300.86, 8338.35, 7916.88, 8223.68, 8630.65, 8913.47
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Bitcoin plunges as much as 20 percent as Chinese yuan soars: By Jemima Kelly
LONDON (Reuters) - A dramatic rally in digital currency bitcoin came to a spectacular end on Thursday with a plunge of up to 20 percent as China's yuan rose sharply - further evidence of an intriguing inverse relationship between the pair.
Bitcoin had gained more than 40 percent in two weeks to hit a three-year high of $1,139.89 on Wednesday, just shy of its all-time record of $1,163 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange (BTC=BTSP). But it dived as low as $885.41 on Thursday as the yuan jumped by over 1 percent in offshore trading and headed for its strongest two-day performance on record. (CNH=D3) [CNY/]
Chinese exchanges have reported high volumes of trading of the web-based "cryptocurrency" over the past year, during which time the yuan has shed almost 7 percent, its worst annual performance since 1994, while bitcoin has surged 125 percent, outperforming all other currencies for a second year in a row.
Bitcoin can used for moving money across the globe quickly and anonymously, and operates outside the control of any central authority. That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as in China, and also to investors who are worried about a devaluation in their currency.
"Given that the yuan's weakness over recent months seemed to correlate with bitcoin's strength more than any other currency, it's no surprise that bitcoin traders have reacted the way they have to the yuan's sudden strength today," said Paul Gordon, co-founder of London-based Quantave, a firm seeking to make it easier for investors to access digital currency exchanges.
Exchanges in China say they account for more than 90 percent of global bitcoin trading, which would help explain why a shift in Chinese demand would sharply affect the price.
But many bitcoin experts say Chinese exchanges overstate their volumes in the digital currency, and attribute sharp moves to speculation by, for example, U.S.-based hedge funds.
Some said bitcoin's fall was a natural reaction to the speed of its previous rise. It is still up more than 50 percent on three months ago, when it was trading at around $600,
"If something goes up very rapidly...people make a lot of money, and at some point they’re going to want to sell, in order to realize their gains," said Marco Streng, CEO of bitcoin mining and trading firm Genesis Mining.
By 1645 GMT (11:45 a.m. ET), bitcoin had recovered some of its earlier losses to trade down almost 15 percent on the day at around $950, still leaving it on course for its worst performance in a year.
On some digital currency exchanges - of which there are dozens - bitcoin did reach record highs late on Wednesday.
"Once we broke through the nominal all-time high, liquidity dried up - no shorts, no sellers, which means a volatile little bubble formed quickly," said Peter Smith, CEO of London-based Blockchain, the biggest bitcoin wallet-provider globally.
"We are seeing the effects of that now as it breaks. It's still fairly thin trading volume though, so who really knows where it goes next."
For a graphic on the bitcoin economy, clickhttp://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/HONGKONG-BITCOIN/0100106X09S/BITCOIN%20ECONOMY%20T.jpg
For a graphic on bitcoin exchange rates, clickhttp://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/1/2097/4051/s3d90f04kz56.htm
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly; Editing by Mark Trevelyan) || Battered bitcoin slides another 12 percent after China warning: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin plunged by as much as 12 percent on Friday after China's central bank urged investors to take a rational and cautious approach to investing in the digital currency, which is on track for its heaviest two-day drop in two years. Bitcoin had been on a tear until Wednesday, gaining more than 40 percent in two weeks to hit around $1,139 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, just shy of its all-time record of $1,163. But the web-based digital currency, which has shown an intriguing inverse correlation to the Chinese yuan in recent months, plunged as the yuan soared on Thursday, falling as much as 20 percent at one point. It continued that fall on Friday, with its losses accelerating after the central bank's warning. It fell as low as $871, down almost a quarter from its peak on Wednesday, before recovering to about $900 by 1455 GMT (9:55 a.m. ET). That still left it down 10 percent on the day and on track for its worst two-day performance since January 2015. The Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) noted in a statement that bitcoin prices had shown abnormal fluctuations in recent days, and said those investing in it should do so carefully, with awareness of the currency's volatility. The PBOC's words carried echoes of its 2013 warning that financial institutions should steer clear of the digital currency, which sparked a $300 slide in bitcoin. The PBOC also repeated on Friday its 2013 view that bitcoin is not a currency and could therefore not be circulated as a real currency in the market. For full statement click: http://beijing.pbc.gov.cn/beijing/132005/3230072/index.ht "This is the Chinese authorities saying: we're watching," said Charles Hayter, CEO of digital currency data analysis website Cryptocompare. "The relative size of the bitcoin market is minor, but trading has reached up to $10 billion a day on the bitcoin-yuan pairs." "The full meaning of the government's comments aren't 100 percent clear, but restrictions and regulation of trading is one avenue that could affect volumes and therefore price." Story continues Hayter said trading between the yuan and bitcoin had made up about 98 percent of the market for the past six months, according to his analysis. Because there are no trading fees on Chinese exchanges, it is much easier to get in and out of trades and therefore creates a higher trading volume, he said. Bitcoin can be used for moving money across the globe quickly and anonymously, and operates outside the control of any central authority. That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as in China, and also to investors who are worried about a devaluation in their currency - one of the reasons often cited for bitcoin's surge in 2016. While the yuan fell 7 percent, its worst year since 1994, bitcoin outperformed all other currencies, with a 125 percent climb. But many bitcoin experts say Chinese trading volumes are overstated and attribute sharp moves to speculation by, for example, U.S.-based hedge funds. "VOLATILE MARKETS" The volatile trading prompted officials from the PBOC's Shanghai branch on Friday to meet representatives of a major bitcoin trading platform in China, BTCC. "On January 6 the People's Bank of China Business Management Department and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Financial Affairs jointly met with the relevant regulatory authorities of the 'currency network'," the PBOC said in the statement. BTCC said in a post on Twitter: "BTCC regularly meets with (the) PBOC and we work closely with them to ensure we are operating in accordance with the laws and regulations of China." "All of our users should be aware of the current policies on virtual goods as well as the risks involved in trading in volatile markets," another Tweet read. Eric Gu, a blockchain expert and founder of ViewFin, a Chinese blockchain start-up, said the PBOC meets the country's major bitcoin exchanges regularly but had previously never made such meetings public. But recent volatility has increased risks and has triggered fears that the market could be used as a channel for money laundering, he said. "Previously, bitcoin trading volume was small, and money laundering was not possible in such a market," said Gu. "Now, the volume is up ... everyday, there are tens of billions of yuan worth of bitcoin changing hands. Volume is still (comparatively)small, but big enough to make the central bank worry." For a graphic on bitcoin price, click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/FOREX-BITCOIN/010031932VD/DataStream-Chart.htm For a graphic on bitcoin economy, click http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/rngs/1/221/2432/AUSTRALIA-BITCOIN.jpg (Additional reporting by Yiming Shen in Shanghai, and Yawen Chen and Kevin Yao in Beijing; Editing by Hugh Lawson) || Hyperledger Wraps up 2016 By Welcoming Eight New Members: SAN FRANCISCO, CA --(Marketwired - December 28, 2016) - Hyperledger Project , a collaborative cross-industry effort created to advance blockchain technology, announced today that eight new members have joined the project to help create an open standard for distributed ledgers for a new generation of transactional applications. Last month, Hyperledger announced it reached 100 active members in less than one year, a huge milestone for the open source project, hosted by The Linux Foundation. "This year has been full of growth for the project," said Brian Behlendorf, Executive Director, Hyperledger. "Not only did we exceed 100 members, Hyperledger met significant development milestones thanks to the community's hard work. As 2016 was a year of exploration, R&D and prototyping, we're excited for 2017 to be the year we start to see case studies of the technology in production environments." Hyperledger aims to enable organizations to build robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support their individual business transactions by creating an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and code base. The latest members include: CA Technologies, Factom Foundation, Hashed Health, Koscom, LedgerDomain, Lykke, Sovrin Foundation and Swisscom. New Member Quotes: CA Technologies "To compete today, every company needs to foster innovation that delivers real business value. Blockchain has the potential to disrupt the way many of CA's customers do business," said Otto Berkes, chief technology officer, CA Technologies. "We're honored to be a part of Hyperledger and look forward to collaborating with other members to help shape open standards for blockchain. It's an exciting time for this because blockchain is not just about Bitcoin anymore, and the range of potential applications with it is vast for of our customers. This partnership will help us influence what that future looks like for both CA and our customers as they embark on their digital transformation journey." Story continues Factom Foundation "We are honored to have been selected to join the Hyperledger Project," said Paul Snow, Founder, Factom Foundation. "We are looking forward to helping build the open source framework for securing data and systems with our blockchain solution." Hashed Health "Hashed Health is a healthcare technology innovation company focused on accelerating the commercialization of meaningful new blockchain and distributed ledger-based technologies," said John Bass, Hashed Health CEO. "Hashed is proud to be a member of the Hyperledger Project, sharing its commitment to creating the foundation for scalable, reliable blockchain solutions." Koscom "We consider blockchain technology as the next generation infrastructure in the Korean capital market. As an industry leader with 40 years' experience in the financial IT field, we are looking to leverage this industry disruptive technology," said Chung Youn Dae, CEO, Koscom. "We will constantly explore the ways to contribute to the blockchain ecosystem, as we collaborate with the Hyperledger community. We also hope to better serve out customers in a more secure and efficient way by integrating blockchain technology and our own Fintech platform." LedgerDomain "LedgerDomain delivers next generation supply chain solutions, harnessing permissioned blockchains to assure supply chain integrity and finished product authenticity through to the consumer for the benefit of all. This highly transparent, trustworthy approach is built upon an industrial-strength Hyperledger Fabric backbone," said Dr. Victor Dods, LedgerDomain. "We're proud to be a part of Hyperledger and its growing community." Lykke "We're looking forward to being part of the Hyperledger project," said Richard Olsen, Lykke founder and CEO. "Our company is building a digital asset exchange. Right now, we're implemented on the Bitcoin blockchain settlement layer, with Ethereum to come within the next few months, but our involvement with Hyperledger isn't just the next step forward. Providing decentralized settlement on the Hyperledger blockchain with multisignature wallets and atomic swap transactions will benefit both of our user communities." Swisscom "We are very proud to be Switzerland's first connection to Hyperledger," said Johannes Höhener, VP, Swisscom's Fintech Cluster. "We look forward to working with a highly professional community on cutting-edge blockchain developments. Our membership and participation will shape our capabilities to develop blockchain solutions -- for our clients and Switzerland." The success of Hyperledger is due to the support of the developer community and member companies. Learn how your organization can contribute to the project here: https://www.hyperledger.org/about/join About Hyperledger The Hyperledger project is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. It is a global collaboration including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and Technology. The Linux Foundation hosts Hyperledger as a Collaborative Project under the foundation. To learn more, visit: www.hyperledger.org || Flow Signs Iconic Caribbean Comedian -- Majah Hype: MIAMI, FL--(Marketwired - Jan 6, 2017) - The Caribbean's iconic comedy star,Majah Hype, is now aFlow Brand Ambassador.
This internationally-recognized comedian is known for his infectious online videos, many of which have become viral sensations depicting hilarious Caribbean characters, including favourites "Di Rass," "Grandpa James" and "Sister Sandrine."
Majah is more than just 'hype.' A Caribbean artist at heart, he identifies with the islands, and has taken on the task of "unifying the people of the region as one" with his own unique brand of comedy. His act, he says, serves as a means of breaking down national barriers and bringing people together with relatable content.
Passionate about connecting Caribbean and diaspora audiences, Majah epitomizes the spirit, energy and dynamism of theFlowbrand and its mission of connecting communities... transforming lives.
Majah Hype joins Flow's impressive cadre of internationally recognized sports, music and entertainment Brand Ambassadors.
Check out Majah Hype onlineand be among the first to like and share his upcoming Flow sketches. You deserve a rip-roaring laugh and he is very much worth the hype!
About C&W Communications
CWC is a full-service communications and entertainment provider and delivers market-leading video, broadband, telephony and mobile services to consumers in 18 countries. Through its business division, CWC provides data center hosting, domestic and international managed network services, and customized IT service solutions, utilizing cloud technology to serve business and government customers.
CWC also operates a state-of-the-art submarine fiber network -- the most extensive in the region -- in over 30 markets.
Learn more atwww.cwc.com, or follow C&W onLinkedIn,FacebookorTwitter.
About Liberty Global
Liberty Global is the world's largest international TV and broadband company, with operations in more than 30 countries across Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. We invest in the infrastructure that empowers our customers to make the most of the digital revolution. Our scale and commitment to innovation enable us to develop market-leading products delivered through next-generation networks that connect our 29 million customers who subscribe to over 59 million television, broadband, internet, and telephony services. We also serve 11 million mobile subscribers and offer WiFi service across seven million access points.
Liberty Global's businesses are comprised of two stocks: the Liberty Global Group (NASDAQ:LBTYA) (NASDAQ:LBTYB) (NASDAQ:LBTYK) for our European operations, and the LiLAC Group (NASDAQ:LILA) and (NASDAQ:LILAK) (OTC PINK:LILAB), which consists of our operations in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Liberty Global Group operates in 12 European countries under the consumer brands Virgin Media, Ziggo, Unitymedia, Telenet and UPC. The LiLAC Group operates in over 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean under the consumer brands VTR, Flow, Liberty, Mas Movil and BTC. In addition, the LiLAC Group operates a subsea fiber network throughout the region in over 30 markets.
For more information, please visitwww.libertyglobal.com.
Image Available:http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3096510Image Available:http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3096512 || Bitcoin extends losses, slides another 12 pct on China warning: LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Bitcoin plunged another 12 percent on Friday after China's central bank urged investors to take a rational approach to the digital currency, which has is on track for its heaviest two-day falls in two years. Bitcoin had gained more than 40 percent in two weeks to hit a three-year high of $1,139.89 on Wednesday, just shy of its all-time record of $1,163 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange . But the digital currency - which has shown an inverse correlation to the Chinese yuan in recent months - plunged as the yuan soared on Thursday, falling as much as 20 percent at one point, before closing the day around 10 percent down on the day. On Friday it fell to $887, having lost almost a quarter of its value since Wednesday's peak. Bitcoin prices had showed abnormal fluctuations, the Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a notice. It stressed bitcoin is not a currency and cannot be circulated as a real currency in the market. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly; editing by Sujata Rao) || Bitcoin's total value hits record high above $14 billion: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - The total value of all bitcoins in circulation hit a record high above $14 billion on Thursday, as the web-based digital currency jumped 5 percent on the day to its highest levels in three years after more than doubling in price this year. The price of one bitcoin reached $875 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange, its strongest level since January 2014, putting the cryptocurrency on track for its best daily performance in six months. That compared with levels around $435 at the start of the year, with many experts linking bitcoin's rise with the steady depreciation of the Chinese yuan, which has slid almost 7 percent this year. Data shows the majority of bitcoin trading is done in China, so any increase in demand from there tends to have a significant impact on the price. Bitcoin is a web-based "cryptocurrency" that can move money across the globe quickly and anonymously with no need for a central authority. That makes it attractive to those wanting to get around capital controls, such as China's. The digital currency is still some way off the peaks it scaled in late 2013, when it traded as high as $1,163 on the Bitstamp exchange. But because more bitcoins continue to be added to the system, currently at a rate of 12.5 every 10 minutes, its total value - or "market cap" - on Thursday surpassed the 2013 peak of around $14.01 billion. That puts its total value at around the same as that of an average FTSE 100 company. Charles Hayter, founder of data analysis website Cryptocompare, said bitcoin had been helped higher by demonetisation in India, and by global political uncertainty. "If that trend continues, bitcoin is a good thematic play on the fracturing of our global norms as a flight to safety," he said. (Reporting by Jemima Kelly, editing by Nigel Stephenson) || Bitcoin extends losses, slides another 12 pct on China warning: LONDON, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Bitcoin plunged another 12 percent on Friday after China's central bank urged investors to take a rational approach to the digital currency, which has is on track for its heaviest two-day falls in two years.
Bitcoin had gained more than 40 percent in two weeks to hit a three-year high of $1,139.89 on Wednesday, just shy of its all-time record of $1,163 on the Europe-based Bitstamp exchange .
But the digital currency - which has shown an inverse correlation to the Chinese yuan in recent months - plunged as the yuan soared on Thursday, falling as much as 20 percent at one point, before closing the day around 10 percent down on the day.
On Friday it fell to $887, having lost almost a quarter of its value since Wednesday's peak.
Bitcoin prices had showed abnormal fluctuations, the Shanghai head office of the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said in a notice. It stressed bitcoin is not a currency and cannot be circulated as a real currency in the market.
(Reporting by Jemima Kelly; editing by Sujata Rao) || How Did Bitcoin Perform This Year?: After a strong showing in 2015, Bitcoin investors experienced another strong year of performance from the popular cryptocurrency in 2016. Bitcoin followed up an impressive +26.3 percent gain in 2015 with a +119.8 percent gain in 2016. A large part of Bitcoins gains has come in the final weeks of the year. Since December 16, the price of Bitcoin has spiked 20.0 percent to $967.94. Tech-savvy investors can buy Bitcoin directly by downloading a Bitcoin Wallet app from Circle, Coinbase, Xapo or other popular services and simply linking their bank account to the app. In addition to these digital wallet apps, investors can buy shares of Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTC: GBTC ), which is a trust that invests exclusively in Bitcoin and trades on the OTC market. Each share of the trust represents on tenth of a Bitcoin. The trust is up 93.6 percent in 2016. The Winklevoss twins have also filed for a Bitcoin ETF that may be approved in 2017. The twins have made a number of tweaks to the proposed ETF since they first filed in order to convince the SEC of the safety and security of the fund. If approved, the Bitcoin ETF would be the first direct way for investors to bet on Bitcoin on a major U.S. public market. See more from Benzinga Should You Be Buying 2016 Market Leaders Or Laggards Heading Into 2017? NVIDIA's Pullback Might Not Last Very Long 2016: TV Media's Year In Review © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. View comments || Hackers Hold Entire Hotel for Ransom, Trap Guests in Rooms: A luxury hotel in Austria recently had to pay hackers a ransom after they managed to access its electronic key system and lock all the hotel guests in their rooms. The cyber lock-in happened on the first day of the winter season at the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt , a 111-year-old, four-star luxury hotel that has a pool, lake views, and a state-of-the-art electronic key system that turned out to be something hackers could exploit, according to The Local . When the hackers accessed the hotels IT system and shut everything down, approximately 180 people were staying at the hotel on that day. Many were locked in their rooms, while others were locked out of theirs. The hackers demanded 1,500, about $1,600, paid via Bitcoin. The hotel decided to pay. "We had no other choice, said managing director Christoph Brandstaetter. Neither police nor insurance help you in this case. After the hackers were paid, the system went back online. Brandstaetter said the hotel planned to downgrade back to old-fashioned keys. || Bitcoin plummets over 23 percent after nearing all-time high as 'volatile little bubble' bursts: Bitcoin (Exchange: BTC=-USS) tanked as much as 23 percent Thursday afternoon after nearing an all-time high earlier in the trading day. The world's largest cryptocurrency by market cap traded as low as $887.47, down from the day's high of $1,153.02, according to CoinDesk data. The high for the day was just shy of $1,165.89 set on November 30, 2013. The price has recovered somewhat from the day's low to about $973.89 at the time of publication. However, bitcoin beat its high on some other cryptocurrency exchanges. Whereas CoinDesk's price index takes into account many different bitcoin exchanges individual exchanges, where users can trade bitcoin, noted their own highest prices were exceeded. Among these were one of China's biggest and most liquid exchanges, BTC China. Industry experts said the rapid rally in bitcoin created a little bubble which is now bursting but the long-term prospects are still positive. "Once we broke through the nominal all-time high, liquidity dried up no shorts, no sellers, which means a volatile little bubble formed quickly," Peter Smith, chief executive of bitcoin wallet Blockchain, told CNBC by email. "We are seeing the effects of that now. It's still fairly thin trading volume though. I expect the market will find a floor and stabilize somewhere in the $850 to $1,000 range, but we'll see." Wild swings in bitcoin's price are not unusual and volatility is a characteristic of the virtual currency. CNBC recently outlined the reason behind the latest rally in bitcoin. One key reason has been the recent devaluation of the yuan as well as the threat of capital controls across many countries. The majority of bitcoin trade comes out of China so it has a big influence. But on Thursday, the yuan rose against the dollar . The reason behind this was a sell-off in the dollar due to uncertainty around the future of U.S. Federal Reserve rate hikes, as well as state intervention by China in its currency. The rise in the yuan led to a fall in bitcoin. Story continues "It is absolutely tied to China. If the yuan goes up, bitcoin goes down," Dan Collins, CEO of technology consultancy firm CCO Global, told CNBC in an interview on Thursday. More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#bitcoin Pockets For Promising 2017 Might Be Good Christmas Current https://news.82bitcoin.com/2016/12/18/bitcoin-wallet-for-promising-2017-may-be-good-christmas-present-2 … pic.twitter.com/tV0v4X2DIF #ResidualBitcoin || MMMBTC || Sell bitcoins using WebMoney with US Dollar (USD) http://bit.ly/2h3zdmp #bitcoin #crypto #news || #Ripple #XRP $0.006214 (-1.80%) 0.00000699 BTC (3.00%) || Bitcoin-Stammtisch München - 04.01.2017 18:00 https://www.meetup.com/Bitcoin-Munich/events/227821925/ … || MMMBTC || MMMBTC || MMMBTC || 1 #BTC (#Bitcoin) quotes:
$766.25/$768.84 #Bitstamp
$758.00/$759.54 #BTCe
⇢$-10.84/$-6.71
$761.54/$769.43 #Coinbase
⇢$-7.30/$3.18 || MMMBTC
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Trend: up || Prices: 920.38, 970.40, 989.02, 1011.80, 1029.91, 1042.90, 1027.34, 1038.15, 1061.35, 1063.07
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2021-05-27]
BTC Price: 38436.97, BTC RSI: 36.41
Gold Price: 1895.70, Gold RSI: 73.52
Oil Price: 66.85, Oil RSI: 59.46
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Elizabeth Warren: 'There's a real issue' with environmental impact of bitcoin: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has questions about cryptocurrency, including whether it takes advantage of smaller investors. The progressive senator also wonders whether bitcoin is too easy to steal. The former presidential candidate has been pushing for government intervention on both of those fronts and, in a conversation with Yahoo Finance's editor-in-chief, Andy Serwer, this week, she raised another growing concern: the impact on the planet that has come with the rapid growth of cryptocurrency. I also think with bitcoin, and with the other cryptocurrencies, I think there's a real issue about the environmental impact as well, this whole notion of how much energy is consumed just to keep the currency tracking going, said Warren, who's out with a new book, " Persist ," which is billed as both a personal narrative and a call for "political transformation." [See also: Robinhood deserves 'close look' from SEC: Elizabeth Warren ] Compared to traditional currency, bitcoin has a relatively large carbon footprint because new bitcoin has to be "mined." Bitcoin "miners" receive bitcoin as a reward for verifying and recording transactions that require massive amounts of computing power which takes massive amounts of real life power. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) questions Xavier Becerra, nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, during his Senate Finance Committee nomination hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., February 24, 2021. Greg Nash/Pool via REUTERS (POOL New / reuters) Crypto miners' energy needs have already disrupted the grid of an entire town , and consumption grows the more popular these currencies become. You don't consume that kind of energy, in order to have money on deposit at a bank or a mutual fund, Warren told Yahoo Finance. In that sense, bitcoin is very different and in a 21st century, we're becoming a lot more sensitive to the worldwide impacts of the choices we make. Warren spoke to Serwer in an episode of Influencers with Andy Serwer , a weekly interview series with leaders in business, politics, and entertainment. 'Going to end badly' There have been different efforts to measure the environmental impacts of bitcoin. The electricity used to mine bitcoin each year exceeds the individual annual electricity consumption of Ukraine, Sweden, or Argentina, according to an ongoing study from the University of Cambridge 's Judge Business School. Story continues Warren is far from alone in expressing concerns over bitcoin. Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who has worked to fund efforts at combating climate change, has also raised the alarm over the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind, and so its not a great climate thing," Gates told Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times in February . It's unclear whether governments around the world will enact regulations to mitigate these impacts, but the industry has taken some steps to regulate itself. In April, energy, cryptocurrency, and fintech leaders signed onto a " Crypto Climate Accord " seeking to have all of the world's blockchains powered by 100% renewables within four years. Meanwhile, payments company Square ( SQ ) has responded to the increasing public pressure by pledging to support greener bitcoin mining practices and to become a zero-net carbon contributor by 2030. Still, even if bitcoin's environmental impacts are reduced, Warren will likely continue to have questions about the cryptocurrency. As she told CNBC in March , agreeing with a sentiment expressed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, "It's speculative in nature and going to end badly." Ben Werschkul is a writer and producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC. Elizabeth Warren responds to Biden's backing of COVID-19 vaccine patent waivers: 'I'm delighted' Facebook board's Trump decision shows Big Tech is 'way too powerful': Elizabeth Warren Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance Follow Yahoo Finance on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram , Flipboard , LinkedIn , YouTube , and reddit . || ESE Signs Content Production Deal with the Bitcoin Vault for Gaming and Esports Talent Show in Asia and South America: Milestone Deal to Produce and Distribute Gaming and Esports Talent Show in China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and Brazil VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 06, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ESE Entertainment Inc. (TSXV: ESE) (OTCQB: ENTEF) (the “ Company ” or “ ESE ”) is pleased to announce that it has signed a seven-figure content production contract with Electric Vault Sp. z o.o. (“ Bitcoin Vault ”) for a major roll out of an esports and gaming talent show (the “ Gaming Show ”). The Gaming Show is scheduled to launch in the following countries: China Japan South Korea Vietnam Brazil According to a report from Newzoo, China, Japan and South Korea are, respectively, the first, third and fourth largest markets in the world by game revenue. 1 Combined revenue in these markets for 2020 is estimated to have totalled more than 59 billion US Dollars. 2 The production deal strengthens ESE’s presence in the global esports and gaming markets and expands its production and media rights capabilities globally. The content will be in a talent show format, highlighting promising amateur esports athletes who are striving to become professionals. Young competitors will show their skills in popular mobile games, which are expected to be PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) and Peacekeeper Elite. These are some of the fastest growing games in esports globally, both of which are developed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. (TCEHY:US). ESE will be responsible for the production and infrastructure of the show, including the development of the project concept, media plan, technology implementation, marketing, and overall campaign roll-out. Other partners involved in the project include VYRAL Producer of Gaming Projects, VidWe, Converters and Next Level Agency. “ESE is actively exploring new and innovative ways to incorporate cryptocurrencies and other blockchain based payment solutions within the gaming and esports world. We are thrilled to run this major gaming talent show with Bitcoin Vault in markets that are global leaders in esports and gaming,” states Jedrzej Steszewski, ESE Director of EU Operations . Story continues “Esport is a rapidly growing industry and driver for fintech based on cryptocurrencies. Those industries are already working together, and we want to contribute our part to the global cryptocurrencies adoption. We are glad that we can work with such an experienced partner as ESE on a shared project dedicated to the global gaming community, where young non-professional players can show their skills. We are happy to support the crypto and gaming communities,” says Radek Popiel, Chief Communications Officer at Bitcoin Vault . About Bitcoin Vault Electric Vault Sp. z o.o. is a blockchain development company that is currently developing the Bitcoin Vault (BTCV) cryptocurrency. The BTCV project launched in 2019 and is considered to be the only Proof of Work (PoW) cryptocurrency that offers a reversible transactions feature on an immutable blockchain, adding a new layer to users’ security. More information can be found: www.btcv.com About ESE ESE is a Europe based entertainment and technology company focused on gaming, particularly on esports. ESE consists of multiple assets and world-class operators in the gaming and esports industries. Capabilities include physical infrastructure, broadcasting, global distribution for gaming and esports-related content, advertising, sponsorship support, and a growing esports team franchise, K1CK Esports. ESE is focused on bridging Europe, Asia and North America. | www.ese.gg Forward-Looking Statements This news release contains certain statements that may constitute forward-looking information under applicable securities laws. All statements, other than those of historical fact, which address activities, events, outcomes, results, developments, performance or achievements that ESE anticipates or expects may or will occur in the future (in whole or in part) should be considered forward-looking information. Such information may involve, but is not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the success of ESE’s partnership with Bitcoin Vault or the Talent Show; (ii) the planned rollout of the Talent Show; (iii) the format of the Talent Show and the games to be included; and (iv) ESE’s adoption of cryptocurrencies or blockchain based payment solutions. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or statements formed in the future tense or indicating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" (or other variations of the forgoing) be taken, occur, be achieved, or come to pass. Forward-looking information is based on currently available competitive, financial and economic data and operating plans, strategies or beliefs as of the date of this news release, but involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of ESE to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors may be based on information currently available to ESE, including information obtained from third-party industry analysts and other third-party sources, and are based on management's current expectations or beliefs regarding future growth, results of operations, future capital (including the amount, nature and sources of funding thereof) and expenditures. Any and all forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Trading in the securities of ESE should be considered highly speculative. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. SOURCE ESE Entertainment Inc. For further information about ESE, please contact: Daniel Mogil, Investor Relations investors@esegaming.com 647-492-1535 ________________ 1 “Top 10 Countries/Markets by Game Revenues” New zoo , newzoo.com/insights/rankings/top-10-countries-by-game-revenues. Accessed May 5, 2021. 2 Ibid. || Here's Why You Should Hold on to ResMed (RMD) Stock for Now: ResMed Inc. RMD is well poised for growth in the coming quarters, backed by rising adoption of digital health solutions and other tools. Solid mask sales, along with strategic deals, are expected to contribute further. However, stiff competition and reimbursement headwinds persist. Over the past year, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock has gained 15.6% compared with 18.6% growth of the industry and 49.5% rise of the S&P 500 composite. The renowned designer, manufacturer and distributor of medical devices and cloud-based software solutions to manage respiratory disorders has a market capitalization of $28.12 billion. The company projects 13.7% growth for the next five years and expects to maintain its strong performance. Further, it has delivered an earnings surprise of 22.21% for the past four quarters, on average. Let’s delve deeper. Strong Q3 Results: ResMed’s robust third-quarter fiscal 2021 earnings buoy optimism. It is encouraging to note that the company witnessed recovery in core patient flow, and rising adoption of digital health solutions and other tools to aid remote care amid the pandemic. In the quarter, the company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) arm performed impressively. Expansion of operating margin buoys optimism. Strategic Pacts: ResMed’s strategic buyouts to boost revenues from the SaaS business raise our optimism. The SaaS business saw a strong growth during the fiscal third quarter, driven by continued strong uptake of Brightree HME resupply solutions. During the fiscal third quarter, ResMed closed the Citus Health (a digital health player specializing in patient engagement solutions for home infusion, specialty pharmacy, home health and hospice markets) buyout, which is expected to boost the company’s SaaS portfolio. ResMed also acquired certain business assets of a Korea-based medical company during the same time. Strong Mask Sales: We are upbeat about ResMed’s strong sales across its mask product portfolio across major geographies over the past few months. ResMed, during its fiscal third-quarter earnings call in April, confirmed witnessing resilience and growth in its mask and accessories sales during the quarter. Further, the company also confirmed recording continued strong ongoing mask and accessory resupply in the United States. Story continues Downsides Stiff Competition: ResMed’s operation in a highly competitive market for its sleep-disordered breathing products with respect to product price, features and reliability, is concerning. The company faces stiff competition from biggies like Philips BV as well as regional manufacturers. Some of ResMed’s competitors, such as Löwenstein Medical GmbH + Co. KG, are affiliates of its customers. This makes it difficult for the company to compete with them. Reimbursement Headwind: ResMed’s ability to sell products primarily depends on the extent to which coverage and reimbursement for the same will be available from government health administration authorities, private health insurers and other organizations. These third-party payers are increasingly challenging the prices charged for medical products and services, and can deny coverage for treatments that may include the use of its products. Estimate Trend ResMed is witnessing a negative estimate revision trend for 2021. In the past 90 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for its earnings has moved 0.9% south to $5.25. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s fourth-quarter fiscal 2021 revenues is pegged at $777.4 million, suggesting a 0.9% rise from the year-ago quarter’s reported number. Key Picks Some better-ranked stocks from the broader medical space are Amedisys, Inc. AMED, Boston Scientific Corporation BSX and National Vision Holdings, Inc. EYE. Amedisys’ long-term earnings growth rate is estimated at 12%. The company presently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Boston Scientific’s long-term earnings growth rate is estimated at 9.3%. It currently carries a Zacks Rank #2. National Vision’s long-term earnings growth rate is estimated at 11.8%. It currently sports a Zacks Rank #1. Bitcoin, Like the Internet Itself, Could Change Everything Blockchain and cryptocurrency has sparked one of the most exciting discussion topics of a generation. Some call it the “Internet of Money” and predict it could change the way money works forever. If true, it could do to banks what Netflix did to Blockbuster and Amazon did to Sears. Experts agree we’re still in the early stages of this technology, and as it grows, it will create several investing opportunities. Zacks’ has just revealed 3 companies that can help investors capitalize on the explosive profit potential of Bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies with significantly less volatility than buying them directly. See 3 crypto-related stocks now >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amedisys, Inc. (AMED) : Free Stock Analysis Report ResMed Inc. (RMD) : Free Stock Analysis Report Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) : Free Stock Analysis Report National Vision Holdings, Inc. (EYE) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research || Cathie Wood Joins Board of European Crypto Platform Amun Holdings: Cathie Wood, CEO of Ark Investment Managment LLC , has announced that she will join the board of Amun Holdings Ltd. The news comes after the CEO personally invested in the operator of 21Shares, a platform specializing in exchange-traded crypto products. Amun Holdings was established in 2018 by current CEO Hany Rashawn and President Ophelia Snyder. The company rebranded in 2020, changing its name to 21Shares while Amun remains as the parent company and ETP provider. 21Shares’ instruments are listed on Austrian, German, and Swiss exchanges. “21Shares is forging a new path for crypto ETPs by leading with research and a keen understanding of this developing asset class,” Wood said in a statement. 21Shares’ Short Bitcoin ETP allows investors to bet against bitcoin while its crypto basket index tracks top cryptos by market value. The company has plans to list its first non-Euro product to expand ETP options by up to 30 products in eight countries, Rashwan says. “Zurich-based Amun’s assets under management have climbed to about $2 billion from $27 million in March 2020,” said Rashwan. “It’s profitable, with $40 million to $50 million in annual revenue generated from both retail and institutional investors such as family offices. We built the company to make crypto as accessible as stocks and have seen tremendous demand for our products,” he concluded. Wood met with Snyder and Rashwan at a conference in 2019 and says she got to talking about the industry, its structure, and the potential for new tech applications to emerge. Snyder stated that “Cathie’s counsel on critical business strategy, product development, and distribution will be critical as 21Shares expands our global footprint.” The company’s other backers include Boost VC, Collaborative Ventures, Graham Tuckwell, Morgan Creek, and Quiet Capital. Wood needs a win after ARK Innovation ETF While the project between Woods and 21Shares is just getting started, her other ventures are struggling to stay afloat. Story continues It was recently reported that Woods’ flagship exchange-traded fund fell by more than 5% on Monday. This wouldn’t be so terrible if the fund hadn’t also tumbled more than 30% since peaking in February. The ARK Innovation ETF is an actively managed fund that invests in disruptive technology. Examples include electric vehicles and driverless cars. The fund has fallen more than 16% YTD. Top holders, including Tesla and Roku, were all in the red as of today. Tesla and Teledoc Heath leading the race toward the bottom, down 5.5% and 7.2% respectively. Ark’s Autonomous Technology and Robotics ETF is the only fund of Wood’s that is up for the year, seeing a 3% gain. || MicroStrategy Buys $15M More of Bitcoin: MicroStrategy, the business intelligence firm that has made bitcoin its main treasury reserve, said it purchased about 253 more of the leading cryptocurrency for $15 million in cash. The Nasdaq-listed firm said it paid an average price of $59,339 per coin including fees and expenses. As a result, MicroStrategy now holds about 91,579 bitcoin at a total purchase price of $2.23 billion, at an average price of $24,311 per coin. The story is developing and will be updated. Related Stories MicroStrategy Buys $15M More of Bitcoin MicroStrategy Buys $15M More of Bitcoin MicroStrategy Buys $15M More of Bitcoin MicroStrategy Buys $15M More of Bitcoin || GameStop jumps more than 16% as 'meme' stocks roar higher: By Sinéad Carew (Reuters) - Shares of GameStop soared 16.3% on Tuesday after hitting their highest level since late March, and other so-called "meme" stocks also rallied as investors shifted back into the retail favorites that had notched big gains earlier in the year. The video game retailer’s shares finished at $209.43, marking their first close above $200 since March 19. Shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings ended up about 20% while Koss Corp gained 22.9%. "Once it goes over $200 the buzz starts," said Dennis Dick, head of markets structure and proprietary trader at Bright Trading LLC. You can “100% peg it to social media." GameStop’s shares and those of other stocks popular on forums such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets have climbed in recent weeks, a move that has come amid a broad sell-off in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, another investment popular among individual investors. GameStop closed 46.5% above its lowest close so far for May, while Bitcoin is down about 35% so far this month and rival cryptocurrency ether is about 42% below its record, reached on May 12 in a sell-off that has come amid increasing scrutiny from regulators in the United States and China. Denizens of WallStreetBets and some Twitter users also speculated that the recent moves in GameStop and AMC may be forcing bearish investors to unwind their bets, an event known as a short squeeze. Roughly 26% of GameStop's float or 14.76 million shares were on loan as of May 24, according to Astec Analytics. More than 14 million shares in the company changed hands on Tuesday, marking its busiest trading day since mid-April. Some 129 million shares of AMC Entertainment, or 28.8% of its float, were on loan on May 24, Astec data showed. A short squeeze helped send shares of GameStop on a 1600% run in January, though the stock pared much of those gains the following month. Users on Twitter, meanwhile, exhorted one another to hold or buy more shares of AMC, many under the hashtag #notapenny, which notched more than 17,000 posts by 4pm ET. (Reporting by Sinéad Carew, Writing by Ira Iosebashvili; Editing by Dan Grebler) || Bombshell Letter: Gaetz Paid for Sex With Minor, Wingman Says: Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos via Getty A confession letter written by Joel Greenberg in the final months of the Trump presidency claims that he and close associate Rep. Matt Gaetz paid for sex with multiple women as well as a girl who was 17 at the time . On more than one occasion, this individual was involved in sexual activities with several of the other girls, the congressman from Floridas 1st Congressional District and myself, Greenberg wrote in reference to the 17-year-old. From time to time, gas money or gifts, rent or partial tuition payments were made to several of these girls, including the individual who was not yet 18. I did see the acts occur firsthand and Venmo transactions, Cash App or other payments were made to these girls on behalf of the Congressman. The letter, which The Daily Beast recently obtained, was written after Greenbergwho was under federal indictmentasked Roger Stone to help him secure a pardon from then-President Donald Trump. A series of private messages starting in late 2020also recently obtained by The Daily Beastshows a number of exchanges between Greenberg and Stone conducted over the encrypted-messaging app Signal, with communications set to disappear. However, Greenberg appears to have taken screenshots of a number of their conversations. If I get you $250k in Bitcoin would that help or is this not a financial matter, Greenberg wrote to Stone, one message shows. I understand all of this and have taken it into consideration, Stone replied. I will know more in the next 24 hours I cannot push too hard because of the nonsense surrounding pardons. I hope you are prepared to wire me $250,000 because I am feeling confident, Stone wrote to Greenberg on Jan. 13. In a text message to The Daily Beast, Stone said that Greenberg had tried to hire him to assist with a pardon, but he denied asking for or receiving payment or interceding on his behalf. He did, however, confirm he had Greenberg prepare a document explaining his prosecution. Story continues In the private text messages to Stone, Greenberg described his activities with Gaetz, repeatedly referring to the Republican congressman by his initials, MG, or as Matt. My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MGs involvement, Greenberg wrote to Stone on Dec. 21. They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage. As part of the effort to obtain a pardon, Greenberg wrote multiple drafts of his confession letter. The Daily Beast obtained two typed versions and an earlier handwritten one. Certified forensic document examiner and handwriting expert Wendy Carlson compared the letter to writing samples obtained through two public-records requests. She said it was her professional expert opinion that the person who authored a 2019 financial disclosure for Joel Greenberg, as well as Greenbergs 2020 Board of Elections form, was the same as the author of the letter. The person who authored the forms has been identified as the person who authored the letter, Carlson said. The Crazy Case of Gaetz Wingmans Fraudulent COVID Relief Loans In those letters, Greenberg detailed his relationship with Gaetz. He confessed to paying young women for sex. And he claimed that he, Gaetz, and others had sex with a minor they believed to be 19 at the time. Greenberg said he learned she was underage on Sept. 4, 2017, from an anonymous tip and quickly contacted Gaetz. Immediately I called the congressman and warned him to stay clear of this person and informed him she was underage, Greenberg wrote. He was equally shocked and disturbed by this revelation. Greenberg continued in the handwritten draft that he confronted the then-17-year-old and explained to her how serious of a situation this was, how many people she put in danger. She apologized and recognized that by lying about her age, she endangered many people, he continued. There was no further contact with this individual until after her 18th birthday. But after she reached the age of legal consent in Florida, Greenberg re-established contact. As The Daily Beast previously reported , about five months after her 18th birthday, Gaetz sent Greenberg $900 in two Venmo transactionsone titled Test and the other titled hit up ___. The blank contained a nickname for this girl, and Greenberg paid her and two other women a total of $900 about six hours later. In his confession letter, Greenberg also admitted he facilitated Gaetzs interactions with college studentsand paid them on his behalf. All of the girls were in college or post college and it was not uncommon for either myself or the Congressman to help anyone [sic] of these girls financially, whether it was a car payment, a flight home to see their family or something as simple as helping pay a speeding ticket, Greenberg wrote. A partial record of Greenbergs Venmo and Cash App transactions suggests that payments were usually for a lot more than gas money. The Daily Beast identified more than 150 Venmo payments from Greenberg to women, as well as more than 70 additional payments on the Cash App, that were generally between $300 and $500though some exceeded $1,000. The Daily Beast also talked to 12 of the more than 40 different women who received money, and they all said they understood Greenberg was paying them at least in part for sex. Greenberg, a disgraced local politician in Florida, currently faces a sweeping 33-count indictment that ranges from stalking to sex trafficking. In March, The New York Times revealed that the initial investigation into the Seminole County tax official expanded as agents looked into his role in arranging paid sexual encounters for his friend Matt Gaetz. Federal prosecutors have not criminally charged Gaetzor even publicly confirmed the expansion of their probe. While Gaetz acknowledges the existence of the investigation, he denies having sex with an underage teen. But at some point, Greenberg began to cooperate with investigators , a development his lawyer has suggested poses a serious problem for Gaetz. That defense lawyer, Fritz Scheller, declined to comment for this story, citing attorney-client privilege. Gaetzs office did not respond. However, Logan Circle Group, an outside public-relations firm Gaetz has hired, sent the following statement: Congressman Gaetz has never paid for sex nor has he had sex with a 17 year old as an adult. We are now one month after your outlet and others first reported such lies, and no one has gone on record to directly accuse him of either. Politico, however, has reported Mr. Greenberg threatening to make false accusations against others, which seems noteworthy for your story and in fact sounds like the entirety of your story. Congressman Gaetz has had no role in advocating for or against a pardon for Greenberg and doubts such a pardon was ever even considered. Photo via Facebook The Politico article referred to in the statement does not say Greenberg was threatening to make false accusations against others, but does say that an associate claimed Greenberg had warned friends that everyone is going to need a lawyer. Neither the U.S. Secret Service nor federal prosecutors with the Middle District of Florida would provide comment for this article either, citing a policy of not confirming or denying the existence of an ongoing investigation. In the final months of the Trump presidency, Greenberg and Stone exchanged several texts about a pardon over the encrypted-messaging app Signal. While images show that the pair frequently set messages to automatically delete, Greenberg regularly took screenshots of their communications. Stone, who received a presidential commutation last July but at the time had not yet been pardoned, communicated with Greenberg for months about the latters desire for a pardon. The messages show that in November, the pair discussed putting together a document, which later took the form of a confession letter and background missive about all the ways in which Greenberg had been loyal to Trump. In their early conversations, Greenberg told Stone that the letter was about 8-10 pages and asked if it should be shortened. No, Stone replied, use as much space as you need to tell the story fully but be certain to include your leader ship [sic] for Trump prominently. Greenberg almost immediately responded that he had killed himself for Trump. And Ive killed my self [sic] for Matt, he said. Obtained by the Daily Beast The letter went through multiple drafts and detailed Greenbergs encounters with Gaetz, but it also focused on Greenbergs early support of Trumps run in 2016, such as posting a Super Trump highway billboard on Interstate 4. (A version of the letter actually includes the image Greenberg used for the billboard.) On Nov. 20, 2020, Stone told Greenberg he had received the document and would show it to the team that got me my commutation . I will review it with them and give you a budget. This is very doable and the time is now, Stone wrote. An update from Stone came just after midnight on Dec. 8: Your thing is being looked at and I will have an answer by Saturday as to whether you have a viable shot for justice and how to go about it. Thank you so much Roger, Greenberg replied. I am very thankful for you. I pray that the Lord will help. I remain optimistic and will wait to hear back from you. Stone quickly sought to dampen expectations surrounding the whole pardon circus. This is treacherous territory with a lot of different players such as Jared and Giuliani playing a hand, Stone wrote, presumably referring to Trump adviser Jared Kushner and the presidents personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. I have two things Im trying to get done. Sit tight. On Dec. 21, Greenberg told Stone that government investigators were pressing him to cooperate. The FBI, DOJ, Secret Service and a bunch of people from DC have repeatedly made attempts to meet with my [sic] lately. I have declined. But they are definitely ramping up pressure. They want me to flip, he continued. They have made offers which Ive declined. I even fired my lawyers this week because they tried to convince me to cooperate and that a pardon was impossible. Greenberg then revealed to Stone that his former lawyers were aware of the whole story regarding Matt Gaetzs role. My lawyers that I fired, know the whole story about MGs involvement. They know he paid me to pay the girls and that he and I both had sex with the girl who was underage. So naturally they think that is my golden ticket, Greenberg wrote. And while I have not had any communication with MG, he absolutely has to know that the sex charge they hit me with would be what they would hit him with, Greenberg continued. A distressed Greenberg told Stone that he felt abandoned" by his allies, but emphasized that Gaetzwho was like a son to the president of the United Statescould save him: One conversation with POTUS and he can get this done and it all goes away. Greenberg said that while he had discussed pardons with Gaetzs lawyer, he had not heard a reply and would have to do whats best for me and my family after Trump left office. You think MG is going to come visit me in prison? he said, then proposed the $250,000 bitcoin deposit. Stone replied that he had considered those points, but cannot push too hard because of the nonsense surrounding pardons. As Trump neared his final days in office, he signaled an intent to issue a wave of pardons, and reports at the time suggested legal reprieve could be had for the right price. Stone communicated with Greenberg about his efforts to navigate the heavy traffic of pardon-seekers. On Dec. 23, Trump pardoned Stone for the crimes from his 2019 conviction. The next day, on Christmas Eve, Stone acknowledged to Greenberg that he was having difficulty with the Gaetz dimension. It is hard for me to understand why MG would do nothing[.] Yes he is potentially damaged if the matter goes forward, Stone wrote. The three menGreenberg, Stone, and Gaetzall shared a friendship dating back several years , and Stone apparently couldnt figure out why Gaetz wouldnt help Greenberg get a pardon. But on the morning of Jan. 13, Greenberg received this text from Stone: Today is the day. We will know by the end of the day. I think you sent me some document but it disappeared. I hope you are prepared to wire me $250,000 because I am feeling confident. There was only a week left in the Trump presidency. Its unclear if money was ever exchanged, but Greenberg offered to pay extra if Stone could, in fact, get him a pardon.If you can get this done today Ill add another 50k, Greenberg texted Stone. In a subsequent message, Stone wrote that White House lawyer Pat Cipollone had taken Greenbergs name out of the list of hundreds of people who might be pardoned. Cipollone didnt respond to multiple requests for comment Thursday, but according to three people familiar with the matter, Greenbergs name repeatedly made it to the Trump White House for a presidential pardon. The Daily Beast was shown an image of one such list, and Greenbergs name and a favorable mini-profile were indeed included. Administration officials swiftly shot down Greenbergs application, however, and several senior White House officials at the time said they were not even aware that Stone was involved in a behind-the-scenes maneuvering. But as Stone explained it in a Jan. 30 texta full 10 days after Trump left officeGaetz was partly to blame. What I dont understand is why MJ would not help me at all and actually told me not to help you which I tried to do anyway. In the end it would not have mattered. Cipollone killed everything we wanted to get done and that includes stuff MG wanted, Stone wrote, immediately clarifying that MJ was a typo and that he meant MG. Ok. He actually said not to help me? Wow, Greenberg replied. If you repeat it youre really going to hurt me, Stone warned. I wont Roger. I dont and havent talked to him. I wont, Greenberg said. Stone acknowledged Thursday night that there may be copies of correspondence between me and Mr. Greenberg, but he questioned whether they were complete, unedited, or accurate. I made no formal or informal effort in regard to a pardon for Mr. Greenberg, Stone said. I recall requesting a document explaining his prosecution The [sic] details of which I was unfamiliar with. I never requested or received a penny from Mr. Greenberg, he added. I recall him offering to retain me and I declined. To be clear I did advocate pardons for a number of people who I had [sic] been unfairly treated by the justice system and was compensated by no one for doing so. Urge you to be very careful, Stone said at the end of his text. I will take any appropriate legal action in the event that you publish anything that is false or defamatory. Sounds to me like you have been presented some kind of cut and paste record. With additional reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng and Matt Fuller Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. || Smart Contracts Could Elevate Cardano to a Top Tier Cryptocurrency: Cryptocurrency has been booming over the past six months, and that’s allowed a lot of seemingly left-for-deal alt-coins to come back to life. For example, takeCardano(CCC:ADA-USD).
Source: Shutterstock
ADA’s price fell as much as 98% from its 2017 peak to its ultimate trough. However, Cardano improbably came back and is now as valuable as ever.
Charles Hoskinson founded the Cardano platform in 2015 and it officially launched in 2017. Hoskinson, for those unfamiliar, was initially a co-founder ofEthereum(CCC:ETH-USD).
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However, he left Ethereum over strategic differences with Vitalik Buterin and launched his own project, Cardano, which he felt would be able to improve upon Ethereum’s framework in several key ways.
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While Hoskinson targeted a few important elements such as better energy efficiency and lower transaction fees, Cardano hasn’t really taken off.
Yes, Cardano’s market capitalization briefly spiked from $600 million to $10 billion in 2017, but the price of ADA went into a long slumber since then. Until 2021, that is. This year Cardano’s price has reached its old highs from 2017. Here’s why.
One of the biggest trends right now is non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These are being compared to digital art.
A creator can put some piece of intellectual property — a tweet, .jpg file, meme, video, or other such thing into a digital token. Then, using the NFT architecture, the unique rights to that property can be auctioned.
While you can obviously reproduce copies of things infinitely on the internet, the NFT secures actual digital ownership of the original content for whoever buys the asset.
Cardano has enjoyedsome trading buzzthanks to NFTs. Hoskinson has been appealing to NFT platforms to consider using Cardano instead of Ethereum for handling these transactions.
That makes sense in theory given the high transaction costs on Ethereum right now. Still, it’s far from certain if Cardano will pick up much NFT business and if NFTs themselves will be a lasting investment category.
NFTs are fun and may boost Cardano’s price for a bit. Like many other crypto memes, however, NFTs may end up gone before long. Does anyone still rememberCryptoKitties?
No, the real driver for Cardano here is smart contracts. the company’s leadership has suggested that it will berolling out smart contractson its blockchain by early May. This is potentially the killer app that could elevate Cardano to the big leagues.
Ethereum has gained tremendously in stature since last year, as it has developed a decentralized finance “DeFi” ecosystem based around smart contracts. This allows a bunch of novel financial arrangements and legal contracts that can be operated seamlessly online.
Recent estimates suggest that Ethereum’s DeFi platform now holds around $40 billion in assets. Cardano hopes to grab a big chunk of that. Its different architecture will allow it to avoid the huge transaction fees that have hampered the adoption of Ethereum.
Hoskinson’s other claims, such as that Cardano is more energy-efficient than Ethereum, could make a big difference if Cardano catches up to Ethereum in terms of its main features.
Out of the second-tier of cryptocurrencies, Cardano is one of the better options. It’s certainly ahead of other currently popular altcoins such asRipple(CCC:XRP-USD) orDogecoin(CCC:DOGE-USD).
Cardano has a well-known founder, an active development roadmap and a number of potentially valuable features. Skeptics will argue that there’s a bit of a speculative element to Cardano, particularly since many r/WallStreetBets folks gravitated to ADA.
However, that’s true of many altcoins lately, and Cardano is far from the most touted of the bunch.
Over time, there still hasn’t been much to demonstrate that Cardano will overtake Bitcoin or Ethereum in importance. And, at least so far, the crypto market has largely rewarded the biggest coins rather than the upstarts. However, the launch of Cardano smart contracts could change things.
If you want to diversify a little outside of the big two, ADA isn’t a bad option.
On the date of publication, Ian Bezek did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
Ian Bezek has written more than 1,000 articles for InvestorPlace.com and Seeking Alpha. He also worked as a Junior Analyst for Kerrisdale Capital, a $300 million New York City-based hedge fund. You can reach him on Twitter at @irbezek.
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The postSmart Contracts Could Elevate Cardano to a Top Tier Cryptocurrencyappeared first onInvestorPlace. || 8 Smart Ways to Analyze Crypto Token Before Investing in It: The world of cryptocurrencies is vast and doesn’t revolve around Bitcoin and blockchain alone. There are over 5,000 cryptocurrencies on the market in existence today, according to crypto market capitalization aggregators, and more are being launched by the day — which makes it a bit challenging for Investors to decide on which to invest in.
In fact, there are many of them out there that aren't real. Scammers have seen the potential opportunities in the crypto space, and they’ve designed some tokens in order to get people’s money. Whether you're a beginner looking to invest in the crypto market or a seasoned investor, below are some techniques that will guide you in analyzing any token.
Related:Here How to Make Passive Earnings Through Cryptocurrency Staking
Note: Scammers are very smart, they are always out to lock into the endless opportunity surrounding crypto tokens; therefore, there are no perfect methods for analyzing crypto tokens. The following are just precautionary ways to help you analyze any crypto token — whether it is currency token, utility token or asset token — and also guide you in making a safe choice.
A token's whitepaper is where you'll find the team's aim for the project and the token's use cases. As such, it'll help you decide if realistic goals have been outlined
And even if you've found realistic goals, you need to be sure they weren’t lifted off the pages of another project's whitepaper. Because let's face it, the latter has happened time and again.
After having a good knowledge of the project's offering, the next step is to assess the team backing the project. Has anyone worked on reputable projects in the past? Are they reputable members of the blockchain ecosystem? What are their qualifications?
The goal of this assessment is to be confident you're investing in a token backed by people who actually know what they're doing. Consider this as a fundamental analysis that'll save you from investing in a company that's only out to cart away gains. But remember, images can easily be lifted off the internet.
A surefire way to invest in an ICO is to keep a close eye on the token's community on social media. Here, you'll get to know if the project has a large community supporting its cause. Facebook, Twitter, Telegram and Reddit would be a good place to start.
Related:The Great Potential Of Decentralized Finance in 2020
On the same note, you'll get to know what others are saying about the project and, thus, make informed decisions. Needless to say, there are bounties out there, whereby people are rewarded to make positive statements about the project. Hence, such reviews may be biased.
So you've found a great token’s ICO to invest in, but you're not allowed to participate due to your jurisdiction. You'd be breaking the law if you still forged ahead to make an investment.
That being said, you need to be sure that regulators in your country have not restricted participation in such offerings. Nevertheless, ICOs are still unregulated in a good number of regions, and regulators in some are working on more friendly rules.
Verifying this is another key factor you mustn’t miss when analyzing a token you are about to invest in because it determines the utility value of a token’s market value. So, as a smart investor, one question you should answer before investing in a token is this: What unique problem is this token solving?
Let’s take, for instance, Atayen Inc. It is redefining the advertising industry and especially the influencer sector with its SaTT solution, allowing anyone to be rewarded for their posts on social networks, with a platform developed at the cutting edge of technology. Another is Vinchain; it’s creating a worldwide blockchain database of used vehicle information that is 100 percent secure, transparent and accessible by all, and so on.
Practically, blockchain projects that uniquely solve a major problem will have more surge in demand, thereby boosting the tradable value of its token.
It's true you may have a lot of work on your hands, and may not always have the time to carefully scrutinize every project. If that's the case, it should not be at the expense of your money.
It'll be useful to follow trusted people in the cryptocurrency space. This should be experienced individuals who have good knowledge about the ecosystem and can give you sound advice. It'll save you from spending hours in front of the screen analyzing a project.
Related:Five Effects of COVID-19 on the Fintech Industry
You do not want to invest in a token and go to sleep, especially when your money is on the line. Therefore, it's good practice to follow the project on various social media channels. You'll find the latest announcements on these channels to keep yourself updated.
What's more, there's a Bitcoin Talk Forum and more forums where most projects publish announcements. And given that anyone is free to comment, you'll garner user sentiment pertaining to such news. It's also a good time to ask questions you may have on the Forum.
Timing is everything. It may come in last on the list, but it's just as important because choosing the best time to invest can impact on your return on investment. Accordingly, you need to know if it's the right time to invest in cryptocurrencies given that there are bear and bull markets.
At this time, it can be said that the market generally is on the boom. The same applies to consider if the ICO industry is on the boom.
To analyze any crypto token isn’t a walk in the park. However, having these tips in mind will guide your selection of potential coins that'll stand the test of time, and yield immense profit in the short and long run. || People Should Own Small Percentage in Bitcoin, says Scaramucci: SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci has revealed that he believes people should own at least a small amount of Bitcoin (BTC). According to reports , the financier, who served as the White House Director of Communications for ten days back in 2017, said he advises his clients to own between 1 and 3% in the cryptocurrency. While quick to state he does not recommend owning their entire net worth in BTC, he advises them not to miss out. Tough times for BTC Scaramucci has always been an advocate of BTC. His company, the global investment firm SkyBridge Capital, has a fund in the cryptocurrency. But the investment advisor’s more recent vocal support has come at a time of struggle for BTC. It may still be the world’s leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, but 2021 is proving hard for BTC. While hitting its all-time high back in April, it has since struggled to regain that kind of momentum, hovering over the $50,000 mark ever since. Furthermore, reports stated this week that the Bitcoin dominance rate (BTCD) has fallen to its lowest since 2018. Matters have not been made better with Elon Musk announcing on May 12 that his company Tesla would no longer accept payments made in BTC. The tech mogul, whose social media presence has gained notoriety this year for driving up the price of Dogecoin (DOGE), revealed his decision was in light of the energy usage associated with BTC was detrimental to the environment. In addition, this year has seen BTC’s competition really rise to the occasion as altcoins catchup in price. Ether (ETH), for one, has risen over 450% this year so far, and surpassed Visa in terms of market capitalization. The aforementioned DOGE has also had astronomical growth. According to data , it has risen nearly 20,000% in the last year. It is currently ranked the 5th most valuable cryptocurrency by market cap. Optimism and support Despite the rise of altcoins, Scaramucci remains optimistic that the odds are in BTC’s favor. He named it “the apex predator” of digital currencies. Meanwhile, he said DOGE is too far off the scale for his clientele. Story continues He is not the only one to voice support for BTC this week. For one, Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square. He issued a Tweet on May 14, stating that BTC changes everything for the better. “We will forever work to make bitcoin better.” This was in response to Square’s Chief Financial Officer Amrita Ahuja, who claimed in a Tweet of her own that Square’s BTC strategy hadn’t changed. Ahuja stated “We’re deeply committed to this community, including working towards a greener future through our Bitcoin Clean Energy Initiative.”
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: no change || Prices: 35697.61, 34616.07, 35678.13, 37332.86, 36684.93, 37575.18, 39208.77, 36894.41, 35551.96, 35862.38
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Blockchain won’t kill banks: Bitcoin pioneer: Blockchain – the technology that underpins the cryptocurrency bitcoin – is unlikely to kill banks despite warnings from top industry executives, the chair of a bitcoin non-profit organization told CNBC on Monday. Last week, Andrey Sharov, a vice president at Russia's Sberbank, said banks would disappear by 2026 due to the rising use of blockchain technology. "In 10 years, there will be no banks, I'm afraid," according to a translation of Sharov's comments by the Coinfox bitcoin news website. But Brock Pierce, the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, said that while the adoption of blockchain will hit parts of a bank, it will ultimately create opportunity. "There are certain aspects of their business that are going to be negatively impacted, but there are also going to be other business units that are going to be positively impacted and new business units that get created that might not even exist today," Pierce told CNBC in an interview on Monday. "And the parts of the industry that are being most negatively impacted are the ones where the bank is not providing much in the way of value, where they are being a toll taker but not really a value creator." Blockchain is the technology that underlies the cryptocurrency bitcoin. It works like a huge, decentralized ledger for bitcoin which records every transaction and stores this information on a global network so it cannot be tampered with. Banks feel blockchain technology can be utilized in areas from remittances to securities exchanges to bring about efficiency. The Bitcoin Foundation positions itself as an organization that is helping to advance the use of the cryptocurrency "through advocacy, education and support of adoption and core development", according to its website. While there is no centralized authority for bitcoin, the organization is trying to create common standards for its use. Pierce has a varied history. He was a child film star who appeared in Disney's "The Mighty Ducks" film in the early 1990s. He has previously run internet companies and is a partner in Blockchain Capital, a venture capital firm that invests in companies in the space. Story continues A number of major financial institutions have been speaking publically about blockchain and touting its potential. A firm called R3 has brought together a group of the world's biggest banks including JPMorgan and Citigroup and is dedicated to researching and delivering new financial technology. Another company called Digital Asset Holdings, founded by an ex-top JPMorgan executive, partnered with JPMorgan earlier this year to explore blockchain technology. Speaking at the Money 2020 conference in Copenhagen last week, Digital Asset Holdings chief executive Blythe Masters, said blockchain technology will be "deployed in a commercial setting in less than a couple of years," but widespread adoption would take longer , a point Pierce echoed. "I think banks are going to take a while to integrate this … it's going to take them years of testing before they start to commercialize aspects of the technology … it's more likely to have an impact in other industries in the short term which are less-regulated and where the stakes are lower," Pierce told CNBC. Pierce also explained that there would be "dozens of different versions of blockchains" deployed for different use cases. The Bitcoin Foundation has had a checkered history. In December, Pierce declared in meeting minutes that the organization was "close to running out of money." And bitcoin itself has had a bad reputation. The cryptocurrency is often linked to allowing people to purchase illegal items anonymously, while one of the world's largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, collapsed in 2014 . While not referring to these specific incidents, Pierce did admit that bitcoin's reputation has suffered some bad publicity, and why the banks are focusing on the underlying technology of blockchain. "Bitcoin's got a major PR (public relations) problem and that's why you hear major banks saying bitcoin bad, blockchain good," Pierce said. "Emerging technologies and the earliest adopters often produce these types of messages. And bitcoin as the pioneer takes the arrows in the back…which is probably not warranted." More From CNBC Top News and Analysis Latest News Video Personal Finance || IFAN Financial, Inc., Netclearance Systems Begin Commercial Deployment Of Smart Beacon Technology: SAN DIEGO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 14, 2016 /IFAN Financial, Inc. - (OTC PINK: IFAN), ("IFAN" or "the Company"), a designer, developer, and distributor of software to enable mobile payments, announced that it has begun commercial deployment of the mBeaconPay and mBeacon2 ("M2") payments technology in collaboration with its strategic partner Netclearance Systems ("Netclearance"). This deployment follows the successful completion of beta testing for these systems.
mBeaconPayis the first mobile OS agnostic cash-based payment terminal for retail, transit, gas and hospitality. The mBeaconPay supports all wireless proximity technologies such as BLE, NFC, QR and Wi-Fi in a single unit and integrates seamlessly with all point of sale system. mBeaconPay was recently nominated for Best Cash Innovation Award by PYMNTS.com, one of the leading publications in the payments and commerce industry.
ThemBeacon2is a dual transmitter beacon that engages Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE devices in proximity. mBeacon2 is ideal for engagement applications and also can be deployed in presence applications. The mBeacon2 transmits a Wi-Fi and BLE signal simultaneously that can trigger events and engage mobile clients regardless of smartphone operating system
J. Christopher Mizer, President and CEO of IFAN Financial commented, "Our mBeaconPay and M2 represent one of the most versatile technologies in our industry. This technology is suitable for small to large scale retail operations, basically any business-to-consumer entity where the company take payments from the customer using any global currency, including Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. It integrates seamlessly with our PayX platform, offering flexible form factors, including white label and flexible power options, and is plug and play with point-of-sale terminals, while supporting multiple enterprise applications.
"mBeaconPay and M2 provide loud connectivity via Wi-Fi, Ethernet or Mesh, and have configurable power transmission and receive sensitivity. We have engineered extended battery-life into our battery powered models, lasting over 5 years without a charge, and all enjoy integrated enterprise security (AES, SHA, ECC)."
Mizer added, "The future is cashless, and we already see this in several of the smaller economies in Europe. There are over 35,000 beacon deployments in Denmark and Norway, with $28 billion in transactions processed. Combined the GDP of both nations is $847 billion, about half of which is consumer spending. This means that beacons are already handling about 5% of consumer spending there already. We look forward to demonstrating the versatility of our platform as we announce further commercial contracts that will utilize the mBeaconPay and M2 technology."
About IFAN Financial, Inc.
along with its wholly owned subsidiaries and joint ventures, design, develop, and distribute technology to enable and enhance mobile and traditional payments. The IFAN Platform consists of proximity based beacons, merchant processing, a mobile wallet, and prepaid card and debit card options. IFAN's consumer facing entity, PayX, includes a portfolio of payment solutions through the mobile optimized platform capable of facilitating on-demand payments, auto-payments, split-funded payments, proximity marketing, and spending of platform funds through a linked card. IFAN and PayX provide businesses with the world's first white label, mobile optimized platform that connects to any point of sale system and enables the next generation of marketing and payments with the capability to remit internationally. For more information, visitwww.ifanfinancial.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although forward-looking statements in this release reflect the good faith judgment of management, forward-looking statements are inherently subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those discussed in these forward-looking statements, including but not limited to our ability to maintain our website and associated computer systems, our ability to generate sufficient market acceptance for our products and services, our ability to generate sufficient operating cash flow, and general economic conditions. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made by us in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time which attempt to advise interested parties of the risks and factors that may affect our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows. If one of more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results may vary materially from those expected or projected. Readers are urged not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this release.
Contact:
IFAN Financial, Inc.Steve SchollChief Financial Officer3517 Camino del Rio SouthSuite 407San Diego, CA 92108Direct: 858-277-9868FAX: 619-923-2907sscholl@ifanfinancial.comwww.ifanfinancial.com
SOURCE:IFAN Financial, Inc. || Bitcoin community disputes the use of 'Internet of Money': Some people in the bitcoin worldthe believers still waving the flag for the leading digital currency, which is currently trading at $427will tell you that the phrase The Internet of Money is widely understood as a reference to bitcoin and its underlying technology, the blockchain. But Uphold, a cloud bank startup that launched in 2014, will tell you it is their corporate slogan. It applied to register the phrase as its trademark for financial services back in September 2015 with the US Patent & Trademark Office , and is far along in the process. Andreas Antonopoulos doesnt like that. The cybersecurity expert and author of "Mastering Bitcoin" has waged a war with Uphold, encouraging his 47,000 Twitter followers to help him find the earliest uses of the words Internet of money. Upholds adoption of the slogan, he tells Yahoo Finance, perverts the meaning of the phrase. The law is on Upholds side; theres not much Antonopoulos can do to stop Uphold from getting its registration. But of all people, Antonopoulos is a loud enemy for a fintech company to have. Bitreserve, now known as @UpholdInc is in my opinion a perfect example of a trademark bully with questionable ethics https://t.co/GAYlkIEkeR AndreasMAntonopoulos (@aantonop) March 16, 2016 To understand the complexity of this feud, we must step back and examine the two sides and their reputations in the financial tech industry. Uphold is a cloud money vault that lets you convert funds between 25 different currencies or four precious metals. When it first launched, in 2014, customers had to make deposits in bitcoin, and the company had a different name: Bitreserve. It has since rebranded, and in a way, ditched association with bitcoin. Uphold customers can still deposit bitcoin or exchange other currencies to bitcoin, but they dont need to start with bitcoin. You could deposit U.S. dollars, for example, and convert them to pesos to send money to a friend in Mexico, never dealing with bitcoin in any way. Story continues Uphold now boasts more than $100 million in funds held in Uphold wallets, and says more than $900 million in transaction volume has been exchanged on the site. It is also part of a pilot program with the Antwerp World Diamond Centre that encourages a large portion of the worlds diamond traders to use Uphold for conversion of funds. Uphold CEO Anthony Watson, whose resume includes executive roles at Citi ( C ), Wells Fargo ( WFC ), Barclays ( BCS ) and Nike ( NKE ), has publicly expressed doubts about bitcoin, which has not ingratiated him to the vocal community of enthusiasts with high hopes for the currency. Ill be surprised if bitcoin is here in five years, he told Fortune last year. Its a means to an end. The value of bitcoin isnt the currency, but the technology. I think once the world becomes more accustomed and attuned to the platform of bitcoin, the noise will go away, and the currency will go away too. On forums like Reddit , bitcoin believers have disparaged Watson and Uphold. From Uphold's web site Here's why the dispute between Uphold and Antonopoulos should matter to the larger financial market: Uphold is one of many fintech companies, along with Dwolla, TransferWise, Venmo, and Xoom, to name a few, that make a similar value claim: shorter transfer times and smaller transfer fees. That has been a popular selling point of bitcoin, toobut bitcoin risks collapsing due to problems with its own infrastructure . Meanwhile, 45 major global banks have signed on to a consortium to test out a form of blockchain, the technology on which bitcoin runsbut a closed version of blockchain, without bitcoin. Anthony Watson -- AP Antonopoulos is highly respected in bitcoin circles, but not a known name in the broader, big-business world. In March, he tweeted at Watson, You are aware that others (e.g. myself) used the phrase The Internet of Money in business long before you did? He asked his followers to find the earliest uses of the phrase related to digital currency, and received many responses. He says people have used it to refer to bitcoin since 2010. Theres just one problem with that: It likely does not matter. The idea that it is relevant to find the first usage of the term is misguided, says trademark attorney Martin Schwimmer, a partner at the firm Leason Ellis. Prior art, he says, is a concept more often applied to patents. Earlier uses of the phrase (not as a trademark) have no bearing on Upholds ability to register it as a trademark. Antonopoulos understand this. Legally, it is irrelevant, he cedes. Morally, taking a generic phrase you didn't invent from an open community and claiming exclusivity is a slimy move. To be clear, Antonopoulos isnt looking to assert exclusive rights to the phrase. But he rejects Upholds right to do so. (One might wonder if he is partially motivated by animosity toward a company that abandoned bitcoin; Antonopoulos says that isn't the case, and says he has an Uphold account.) I've used the phrase for years to refer to bitcoin, long before Uphold existed, he says, And my use of it excluded no one. In keeping with the spirit of bitcoin, which operates on a public, decentralized, anonymized ledger ( the bitcoin blockchain ), Antonopoulos believes the slogan belongs to the public. He even launched an "Internet of Money Tour" to travel around and spread the word. So, lets say the public agrees with him, and doesnt believe Uphold should get to use The Internet of the Money as its slogan. Can it stop the company from doing so? Likely no, says trademark attorney Ed Timberlake, in part because in this case the public, as defined by Antonopoulos (i.e., the relatively small pool of the bitcoin community) is likely only a fraction of the group that the USPTO would define as relevant consumers. (The much larger public is still largely uninformed, and arguably uninterested, in bitcoin.) The Trademark Office doesnt give a huge amount of weight to a factional community, they typically have a broader view of what the relevant public is, says Timberlake, who spent two years working at the U.S. Trademark Office. The key question the Trademark Office will answer is whether the phrase has been so widely used that it has become diluted. Or as Timberlake puts it: When the public thinks of the phrase in the context of the financial technology sector, do people associate the phrase with Uphold? Andreas Antonopoulos (courtesy Antonopoulos.com) Antonopoulos would say no, and many in the bitcoin community might say no, and perhaps the answer is no. But Uphold will probably get the registration anyway. Timberlake says the Trademark Office doesnt so rigidly interpret the question. It's not that the office approves everything, but it leans toward approving applications for registration when the company has demonstrated some use of the trademark. The office doesnt want to make it impossible to get approval. No one wants the headache of mounting a federal lawsuit every time they want to assert trademark rights, Timberlake says. Its not a rubber stamp, but its somewhere between a rubber stamp and a full lawsuit in federal court, in that there are certain things the office is in the habit of recognizing as a pretty good indication [of trademark]. But they dont go out and talk to people to test it. Upholds use of the phrase on its web site is already a pretty good indication that it merits the registration, Timberlake says. If Im the examiner and I look at Upholds web site, it looks to me like theyre getting good legal advice. The phrase is there, front and center, it shows up when you Google them. They look far along enough to get the registration. Nonetheless, Antonopoulos says he is, consulting with legal experts to return the phrase to open use by invalidating the trademark. Watson, for his part, tells Yahoo Finance he has no intention of suing anyone, and has been taken aback by Antonopouloss aggression. An article at CoinTelegraph last month said that Watson had revealed his intentions to sue Antonopoulos; that is incorrect. . @AnthonyWatson Andreas is a vital fig. in t. #Bitcoin community, if U haven't heard of him b4 u prob. haven't heard of Bitcoin either. Emile Schultz (@SchultzEmile) March 15, 2016 Back in November, Watson shared and praised a blog post on Medium , written by Captain Cloud Money, an anonymous Uphold user, that argued, Bitcoin fails as Internet money despite being an IP-based asset, because there is no central authority backing its value. The post appeared to suggest an awareness that the phrase had previously been used to apply to bitcoin. Even though the odds and the law favor Uphold, getting the registration is no foregone conclusion. Uphold already appends a TM to the phrase on its site, but anyone can do that. Once you get a registration, you get to use the R, which is the real indicator of protection. For snooty lawyer types, Timberlake explains, the TM symbol, can seem like small potatoes. It doesnt have any teeth. Uphold seeks teeth. But Andreas Antonopoulos is making it hard to chew. For the time being, Uphold can continue to use the phrase all it wants. And so can others. -- Daniel Roberts is a writer at Yahoo Finance, covering sports business and technology. Read more: How big banks are paying lip service to the blockchain Heres how you can invest in the blockchain Bitcoin's biggest investor just bought its biggest news site Here's a sign that PayPal is embracing Bitcoin || IFAN Financial, Inc., Netclearance Systems Begin Commercial Deployment Of Smart Beacon Technology: SAN DIEGO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 14, 2016 / IFAN Financial, Inc. - (OTC PINK: IFAN), ("IFAN" or "the Company"), a designer, developer, and distributor of software to enable mobile payments, announced that it has begun commercial deployment of the mBeaconPay and mBeacon2 ("M2") payments technology in collaboration with its strategic partner Netclearance Systems ("Netclearance"). This deployment follows the successful completion of beta testing for these systems. mBeaconPay is the first mobile OS agnostic cash-based payment terminal for retail, transit, gas and hospitality. The mBeaconPay supports all wireless proximity technologies such as BLE, NFC, QR and Wi-Fi in a single unit and integrates seamlessly with all point of sale system. mBeaconPay was recently nominated for Best Cash Innovation Award by PYMNTS.com, one of the leading publications in the payments and commerce industry. The mBeacon2 is a dual transmitter beacon that engages Wi-Fi and Bluetooth LE devices in proximity. mBeacon2 is ideal for engagement applications and also can be deployed in presence applications. The mBeacon2 transmits a Wi-Fi and BLE signal simultaneously that can trigger events and engage mobile clients regardless of smartphone operating system J. Christopher Mizer, President and CEO of IFAN Financial commented, "Our mBeaconPay and M2 represent one of the most versatile technologies in our industry. This technology is suitable for small to large scale retail operations, basically any business-to-consumer entity where the company take payments from the customer using any global currency, including Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. It integrates seamlessly with our PayX platform, offering flexible form factors, including white label and flexible power options, and is plug and play with point-of-sale terminals, while supporting multiple enterprise applications. "mBeaconPay and M2 provide loud connectivity via Wi-Fi, Ethernet or Mesh, and have configurable power transmission and receive sensitivity. We have engineered extended battery-life into our battery powered models, lasting over 5 years without a charge, and all enjoy integrated enterprise security (AES, SHA, ECC)." Story continues Mizer added, "The future is cashless, and we already see this in several of the smaller economies in Europe. There are over 35,000 beacon deployments in Denmark and Norway, with $28 billion in transactions processed. Combined the GDP of both nations is $847 billion, about half of which is consumer spending. This means that beacons are already handling about 5% of consumer spending there already. We look forward to demonstrating the versatility of our platform as we announce further commercial contracts that will utilize the mBeaconPay and M2 technology." About IFAN Financial, Inc. along with its wholly owned subsidiaries and joint ventures, design, develop, and distribute technology to enable and enhance mobile and traditional payments. The IFAN Platform consists of proximity based beacons, merchant processing, a mobile wallet, and prepaid card and debit card options. IFAN's consumer facing entity, PayX, includes a portfolio of payment solutions through the mobile optimized platform capable of facilitating on-demand payments, auto-payments, split-funded payments, proximity marketing, and spending of platform funds through a linked card. IFAN and PayX provide businesses with the world's first white label, mobile optimized platform that connects to any point of sale system and enables the next generation of marketing and payments with the capability to remit internationally. For more information, visit www.ifanfinancial.com . Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Although forward-looking statements in this release reflect the good faith judgment of management, forward-looking statements are inherently subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those discussed in these forward-looking statements, including but not limited to our ability to maintain our website and associated computer systems, our ability to generate sufficient market acceptance for our products and services, our ability to generate sufficient operating cash flow, and general economic conditions. Readers are urged to carefully review and consider the various disclosures made by us in our reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time which attempt to advise interested parties of the risks and factors that may affect our business, financial condition, results of operation and cash flows. If one of more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or if the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, our actual results may vary materially from those expected or projected. Readers are urged not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect any event or circumstance that may arise after the date of this release. Contact: IFAN Financial, Inc. Steve Scholl Chief Financial Officer 3517 Camino del Rio South Suite 407 San Diego, CA 92108 Direct: 858-277-9868 FAX: 619-923-2907 sscholl@ifanfinancial.com www.ifanfinancial.com SOURCE: IFAN Financial, Inc. || Coin Citadel to Acquire over $700,000 in Bitcoins: LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / May 16, 2016 /Coin Citadel (CCTL), a holding company, is closing in on acquiring over $750,000 in Bitcoins. We are diligently working on finalizing a transaction for 1,675 Bitcoins which will bring our Bitcoin assets up to 2,251 Bitcoins and closer to a value of one million dollars USD. This will be a Non-dilutive preferred stock transaction. We are extremely excited to be in the Bitcoin Industry. We feel we are in the right place at the right time. We plan to announce more details of this transaction, as well as two additional asset acquisitions, later this week.
New CEO James Pulver stated, "As I said in our last press release, my job is to add value to the company, and to take advantage of opportunities like this. The more prudent acquisitions we make, and assets we have, the more valuable our company will be. With this Bitcoin asset, we will have over $1 million dollars in Bitcoins to complement our new upcoming acquisitions. With everything falling into place we feel we are moving forward in the right direction."
We would also like to update shareholders, as well as working on getting the company back to a current status on OTCmarkets.com. We want to open other lines of communication with shareholders, through social media such as Twitter, and Facebook.
Please be on the lookout for news, filings, and other updates coming shortly.
Forward-Looking Statement:Any statements made in this press release which are not historical facts contain certain forward-looking statements; as such term is defined in the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995, concerning potential developments affecting the business, prospects, financial condition and other aspects of the company to which this release pertains. The actual results of the specific items described in this release, and the company's operations generally, may differ materially from what is projected in such forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any obligation to update information contained in any forward-looking statement. This press release shall not be deemed a general solicitation.
Contact:
James Pulver, CEO
SOURCE:Coin Citadel || Bitcoin has a governance problem, no matter who created it: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - As one would-be father of bitcoin falls by the wayside, squabbling among the web-based currency's lead developers is exposing a fundamental flaw: it must evolve to meet growing demand, but may lack a governance structure to achieve this. The latest bickering erupted after Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright promised to prove he was the mysterious creator of bitcoin - which allows users to move money across the world quickly and anonymously - but then said on Thursday he could not provide further evidence to back this up. Wright stopped short of reneging on his claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, assumed to be a pseudonym for the person or people who launched the digital cryptocurrency in 2009. However, he apologised for damaging the reputations of bitcoin experts who had believed him. Many members of the bitcoin community reckon this is all a distraction and agree with Wright when he said that the identity of Nakamoto "doesn't, and shouldn't, matter". "Satoshi's biggest achievement was to create a system that doesn't require his participation to run," said Peter Todd, one of bitcoin's core software developers. "That's what makes all this stuff kind of funny. It's like searching for the creator of a system that's designed not to require a creator." While grey-suited central bankers print conventional currencies and commercial banks control transactions in them, no one person or entity is in charge of bitcoin. Instead it runs on a decentralised system of shared trust without any third-party verification of transactions - one reason why many people are attracted to it. Critics, however, say it needs a "benevolent dictator" or at least some "adults" to manage the expansion that it needs to cope with the increasing number of transactions. Someone, or some group, must decide how to meet users' requirements, they say. Trades are handled by thousands of "mining" computers around the world which validate blocks of transactions by competing to solve mathematical puzzles every 10 minutes. Story continues The first computer to solve the puzzle clears the transaction and is currently rewarded with 25 new bitcoins, now worth around $11,250.. This is how the computers' owners cover their costs - largely power bills - and make a profit. The system also ensures there is no single point in the system that might fail. CIVIL WAR In practice, there do appear to be people who can make decisions, but it is also possible to be excluded from this magic circle. One of the bitcoin experts who initially believed Wright's claim is Gavin Andresen. Nakamoto handed control of bitcoin's software to Andresen when he stepped aside in 2011, a transfer that kept the creator's identity a mystery as it was conducted in cyberspace without human contact. Andresen later shared that control with others. But when he stated publicly he believed Wright, sceptical developers responded by revoking his "commit access" to a shared repository of bitcoin rules. Initially, these developers justified their move on security grounds, saying his computer must have been hacked - something Andresen denied. When Reuters asked Todd whether Andresen's access would be reinstated, he responded: "Heck no", saying a belief in Wright amounted to "inexcusable incompetence". Andresen admitted to bewilderment over whether he still believed Wright's claims. "Ask me in six months; I don't trust my own judgement right now after all the drama," he said on Twitter. The squabbling is not new. One of the lead developers, Mike Hearn, stood down from bitcoin in January because of a power struggle nicknamed the "bitcoin civil war". Hearn and Andresen had proposed increasing the size of the blocks in which transactions are processed but the other developers opposed this. In quitting, Hearn said that "what was meant to be a new, decentralised form of money that lacked systemically important institutions" had now become "a system completely controlled by just a handful of people". Many investors and start-up firms remain optimistic about bitcoin and are making money from it. But Emin Gun Sirer, a computer science professor at Cornell University, said the appearance of internal conflict was undermining it. "For bitcoin to retain its value, it's important to have hope that there's good management in charge, that there are adults in charge," Sirer said. "When we see opportunistic moves, that's a problem." BENEVOLENT DICTATORS But Sirer also said that any open-source project such as bitcoin, which runs using software that anyone can access, change, and distribute, faces the challenge of governance. "Is it a pipe dream to expect to be able to build a currency system that is completely decentralized and free of any control whatsoever? The short answer to that is yes, but that's not what anyone should have expected anyway," he said. Sirer added that he was concerned that his brightest young students at Cornell were being deterred from getting involved with bitcoin because of the in-fighting and the appearance that developers were unable to agree on change. One other digital currency system which is attracting bright young minds is Ethereum, created in 2013 by Russian-Canadian Vitalik Buterin when he was just 19. It works with the "benevolent dictator model", as Sirer calls it, with Buterin holding the decision-making power. "Over the last couple of years it's become apparent that having a static protocol is just not a viable approach," Buterin told the Consensus bitcoin conference in New York earlier in the week. "Software has to evolve ... and there has to be some mechanism for agreeing on how software is going to upgrade." Most, however, reckon that even if Nakamoto were to be found, the other developers - many of whom have written more code than he ever did in the seven years since bitcoin was launched - would not accept his having ultimate power. "(Nakamoto) would be thanked for creating this amazing thing, but if there comes a time when there's a technical debate over whether we should go one way or the other, his opinions would only be persuasive, not controlling," said Jerry Brito, executive director of bitcoin advocacy group Coin Center. (Additional reporting by Toby Sterling in Amsterdam; editing by David Stamp) || Bitcoin Investing Improved Last Quarter: While Bitcoin may not have ended 2015 on a strong note, things could be turning around for the cryptocurrency. For example, Q4 was "surprisingly anemic," but the first quarter has seen $160 million in investments, according to Mattermark , citing CoinDesk figures. "Bitcoin had its best fundraising quarter in a year," Mattermark's Alex Wilhelm said. "I'm not sure that the industry will ever beat the first quarter of 2015, when more than $200 million went into bitcoin firms, including huge sums into Coinbase and 21. Still, closing well north of the $100 million mark is a big step up from every other quarter recorded last year," Wilhelm commented. Related Link: 10 Of This Year's Hottest Financial Buzzwords "In fact, it appears that the first quarter of 2016 was the second most active period in terms of total dollars raised for bitcoin firms in at least the last two years." Looking Ahead Based upon the transaction volume over the last year and the improvement over last quarter, it's probable that bitcoin may be making its way back into investors' favor. "In the last year, transaction volume across bitcoin to pick a single metric has roughly doubled. That's not the same pace of growth that the cryptocurrency saw in its infancy, but it is material," Wilhelm explained. "Combine that statistic with an increasingly stable price and continued investment and bitcoin look just fine." See more from Benzinga Andrew Left Talked Mallinckrodt And Evergrande On Bloomberg This Morning Twitter's NFL Deal Not A Huge Shock To PacCrest Detroit News Auto Critic: Tesla Model 3 Is 'The Auto Story Of The 21st Century' © 2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Murray Stahl Talks Investments Made Through FRMO: - By Bram de Haas Guru Murray Stahl ( Trades , Portfolio ) is the CEO and chairman of FRMO Corp. (FRMO). Together with CFO Steven Bregman, they report on the investments made through FRMO on a quarterly basis. There is no transcript available yet for the most recent call, but you can listen to the archived call. Warning! GuruFocus has detected — Warning Sign with WMT. Click here to check it out. FRMO –5-Year Financial Data The intrinsic value of FRMO Peter Lynch Chart of FRMO The call can be a little bit chaotic if you are a new shareholder, but they are absolutely worth listening too. Stahl and Bregman are full of valuable insights into the markets and readily share wisdom related to their unconventional approach to value investing. Balance sheet The call starts out with them commenting on the balance sheet. Equity went down by a meaningful amount and the duo got several questions from shareholders about why it went down and whether the decline would be permanent. A meaningful part of the reduction in book value is due to current assets decreasing by $–– million. A deferred tax liability was decreased and the securities sold, not yet purchased program was expanded a little bit. This is a post where they account for short positions in path dependent ETFs. The way I understand it, they had to take their gains in these positions, which triggered a tax. Afterward they initiated the positions again with a new cost basis. The HK multistrategy fund declined in value. Over the calendar year, the fund didn’t do so bad (-–—%), but throughout the reporting period the fund went down by —5%. There were also some redemptions, although they were quick to point out March had been a very good month. Digital Currency Group Stahl talked a little bit about a new investment in the Digital Currency Group. DCG is a corporation devoted to crypto currencies. Stahl expects cryptocurrencies will become a legitimate asset class. DCG owns various venture investments in technologies involved with digital currencies. They own equity in Coinbase (an exchange), Ripple (utilizes blockchain for cross-border transactions) and Grayscale (a money manager of crypto currencies). Governments around the world historically had the tendency to inflate asset prices or currency. Little by little you are purchasing power, a constant threat in history. Being on a metallic standard has historically also caused inflation.� Story continues The blockchain is a ledger and the coins can’t be counterfeited. If more transactions are done in a currency it raises its value. If Bitcoin were to become the new gold (Stahl doesn’t necessarily agree, but raises it as a possibility suggested by others), Bitcoin would appreciate by –………x in value. If it were to become currency for the world, you would make —…………x your money. Even though it is a very small investment, Stahl views it as a really important strategic investment. It's possible the stake would be expanded. Market outlook If oil went to $45 by end of the year, CPI would go to —.‘% and the Fed would have its hand forced and would need to raise rates. This would cause problems in the market. You have to diversify away from stocks. Over the last ‘5 years, interest rates came down and stocks were successful. FRMO is now operating on the premise that two guys picking stocks isn’t going to cut it going forward. The firm keeps a lot of cash on the balance sheet and views it as optionality. When the next crash (Stahl doesn’t actually use the word crash) comes, the firm will profit by having lots of liquidity. One of the reasons they like small exchanges so much is that the optionality embedded in them is huge. If big mergers go through like the one between the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Borsche, these players raise prices and clients are angry and want to move business. Meanwhile there are few licensed exchanges and the small ones are suddenly very well positioned. ETFs Stahl views it as very dangerous to be invested in big dominating companies. Big liquid companies pay out a little bit of dividend and throw the rest at buybacks. These companies have defined benefit pension plans, but the stock has to rise or the company has to put extra money into these plans. This means that when the flows into large cap liquid companies is starting to slow, the effect can be dramatic. Big liquid stocks make up huge allocations in focused ETFs. What’s wrong with that? You take a lot of individual security risk by buying this ETF. At some point an event will make that apparent to lots of people invested in these type of securities. Something else he doesn’t like is the typical dividend ETF. Earnings of the constituents of these products are ever so slightly declining. They have record margins right now, and can’t go up or down by much. These companies are currently saving a lot on the commodity side and not passing this on to the consumer. The risks in ETF land are exacerbated because ETF providers aren’t making money and can’t make a lot of money on these products because the fees are too low. This structure of the industry leads to only a few companies being a major part of all ETFs. An index was supposed to take out risk, and now you are taking on risk by buying into them. Everyone owns the same companies.� Indexation is not in the early innings, it’s in the late innings. It will possibly go into extra innings. This article first appeared on GuruFocus . Warning! GuruFocus has detected 2 Warning Sign with WMT. Click here to check it out. FRMO 15-Year Financial Data The intrinsic value of FRMO Peter Lynch Chart of FRMO || Australian says he created bitcoin, but some skeptical: By Byron Kaye and Jemima Kelly
SYDNEY/LONDON (Reuters) - Australian tech entrepreneur Craig Wright identified himself as the creator of controversial digital currency bitcoin on Monday but experts were divided over whether he really was the elusive person who has gone by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto until now.
Uncovering Nakamoto's real identity would solve a riddle dating back to the publication of the open source software behind the cryptocurrency in 2008, before its launch a year later.
Bitcoin has since become the world's most commonly used virtual currency, attracting the interest of banks, speculators, criminals and regulators.
Worth a total of $7 billion at current levels, it fell more than 3 percent on Monday -- a normal intraday move for the volatile currency -- after the news, to below $440 from around $455, before recovering slightly.
Some online commentators suggested bitcoin's creator could help resolve a bitter row among the currency's software developers that threatens its future.
But Wright made no reference to the row in a BBC interview identifying himself as Nakamoto, and as the protocol bitcoin runs on is open-source and cannot be controlled by any one person, it is unclear whether he would be able to influence the way it develops.
"I was the main part of it, other people helped me," Wright, who is now living in London, told the BBC. "Some people will believe, Some people won't, and to tell you the truth, I don't really care," he said.
Many bitcoiners said Wright had not done enough to definitively prove that he was Nakamoto, who maintained his anonymity throughout his involvement with bitcoin, which he stepped away from in 2011.
But Gavin Andresen, who Nakamoto chose to succeed him, published a blog post in which he described meeting Wright last month and said he is “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Australian is Nakamoto.
Jon Matonis, a founding director of the Bitcoin Foundation now works as a bitcoin consultant, wrote a blog post on Monday which, like Andresen’s, supported Wright’s claims.
“According to me, the proof is conclusive and I have no doubt that Craig Steven Wright is the person behind the Bitcoin technology, Nakamoto consensus, and the Satoshi Nakamoto name,” Matonis wrote. He and Andresen also confirmed they had been responsible for their respective blog posts to Reuters directly.
LEGACY
Nakamoto's biggest likely legacy lies well beyond his control. The blockchain technology that underpins the currency could transform the way banks settle transactions, the way that property rights and other vital data are recorded, and provide a way for central banks to issue their own digital currencies.
The BBC reported on Monday that Wright gave some technical proof demonstrating that he had access to blocks of bitcoins known to have been created by bitcoin's creator.
Researchers believe Nakamoto may be holding up to one million of the more than 15 million bitcoins currently in circulation, which would make the creator worth around $440 million.
In a blog post also dated Monday, Wright posted an example of a signature used by Nakamoto and an explanation of how bitcoin transactions are verified and thanked all those who had supported the project from its inception.
"This incredible community’s passion and intellect and perseverance have taken my small contribution and nurtured it, enhanced it, breathed life into it," he wrote.
However he did not state directly that he was Nakamoto. "Satoshi is dead," he said. "But this is only the beginning."
Bitcoin expert Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Coin Center, said a new message cryptographically signed using the private key associated with the so-called Genesis block, the first ever "mined" would have been more convincing.
The currency's "miners" are incentivized to process transactions every 10 minutes by a possible reward of bitcoins (25 currently), which is how new bitcoins are created.
Wright also spoke with The Economist, but declined requests from the magazine to provide further proof that he was Nakamoto. His representatives told Reuters he would not be taking part in more media interviews for the time being.
"Our conclusion is that Mr Wright could well be Mr Nakamoto, but that important questions remain," The Economist said. "Indeed, it may never be possible to establish beyond reasonable doubt who really created bitcoin.”
Hopes that bitcoin would become broadly used helped buoy its price to more than $1,000 in December 2013, when its market capitalization was $13 billion compared with today's $7 billion.
Wright told The Economist he would exchange bitcoin he owns slowly to avoid pushing down its price.
HOME RAIDED
In December, police raided Wright's Sydney home and office after Wired magazine named him as the probable creator of bitcoin and holder of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency. At the time he made no comment.
The treatment of bitcoins for tax purposes in Australia has been the subject of considerable debate. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) ruled in December 2014 that cryptocurrency should be considered an asset, rather than a currency, for capital gains tax purposes.
On Monday, the ATO said it had no comment while police were not immediately available for comment.
If Wright is Nakamoto he "is now the leader of a movement", said Roberto Capodieci, a Singapore-based entrepreneur working on the blockchain, the technology underlying the currency.
That movement ranges from libertarian enthusiasts to central banks experimenting with digital currencies, all of which pay homage in some way to Nakamoto's writings.
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Wagstaff in Singapore, Matt Siegel in Sydney and Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Nick Macfie, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Philippa Fletcher) || Penny Stocks To Buy: Four Trending Small Cap Stocks on Tuesday April 19: MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / April 19, 2016 / Daily Stock Reporter is issuing a report on four stocks to watch. AVRN, MNTR, CHZP, and AGHI have been added to our watch list today. Continue reading to find out why. - To get daily alerts on top stocks on the OTC, Nasdaq and NYSE subscribe to our newsletter at DailyStockReporter.com. Avra Inc. ( AVRN ) offers a range of solutions that streamline and modernize businesses & merchants by integrating Bitcoin payments & acceptance. As of 10AM EST on Tuesday April 19, the stock has seen well above average volume and increased price movement. From a previous close of $0.13 on Monday (4/18), shares of AVRN rose as much as 54% following early morning highs of $0.20 on Tuesday. Since the beginning of March the stock has increased in price by as much as 785%. Stay Informed and Up To Date On The Hottest Small Cap Nasdaq & OTC Plays . Get Them Here . Mentor Capital, Inc. ( MNTR ) announced earlier in April that it has acquired the international patent for the smokeless administration of THC, CBD and Cannabinoids, from its developer R.L. Larson through Larson Capital, LLC. "We started this patent related effort in 2012, before the cannabis boom, with an eye toward easier more discrete use by cancer patients and the elderly," says R.L. Larson. "As an inventor and cancer survivor with long public company leadership experience, and now as a Mentor shareholder, I am pleased to be working with Mentor Capital because of their medical bias in the cannabis space and solid approach to public company operation." As of 10AM EST the stock has seen early trading volume and intra day price movement of as much as 0.10 above its opening price of $0.54. Enjoy picks like this? Get These Alerts and More on top small cap Companies before They Rally, Text the phrase "StockAlerts" to 635-66 Chess Supersite Corp. ( CHZP ) whose primary business is the development and operation of the chess portal www.chesssupersite.com , announced on Tuesday April 19 that the Company has been selected to broadcast both US Men's and Woman's Championships held in the US capital of chess, St. Louis, Missouri. The U.S. Championship will culminate with the top three players competing in a special blitz round- robin format against legendary chess champion Garry Kasparov. The round- robin tournament will take place over two days upon the conclusion of the Championships. For a little over one week, shares of CHZP have begun to climb in price. On April 11 the stock opened at $0.20 and this morning (4/19) the stock has seen a high of $0.48 to mark a total move to this point of 140%. Volume has also begun to increase in comparison to previous weeks. Story continues Stay Informed and Up To Date On The Hottest Small Cap Stocks; Free To Join Now . Agora Holdings, Inc. (AGHI) announced earlier in April that the company had signed an engagement letter with an independent accounting and auditing firm, BF Borgers CPA PC. The signing of the engagement letter represents a significant step forward for Agora Holdings in becoming a fully reporting entity. Agora Holdings, Inc., together with its subsidiary Geegle Media and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with five business segments: media networks, TV, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. During the last 3 months, shares of AGHI have seen price as high as $0.49 with the highest daily volume being 967.4K shares. Small Cap Stock Alerts: Get Them straight to your Cell Phone. To Receive Our Winning Small Cap Stock Alerts For Free, text "StockAlerts" to 63566. ABOUT US: www.DailyStockReporter.com monitors and scans the markets for stock related signals as well as any external factors that might bring trading opportunities. Through a vast network of IR professionals www.DailyStockReporter.com is often in the know of several large investor awareness campaigns being deployed. Timing is everything when trading Penny Stocks. You can subscribe to the www.DailyStockReporter.com newsletter and start receiving daily alerts. To subscribe by phone and receive messages directly to a mobile phone, text the phrase "StockAlerts" to 63566. Legal Disclaimer Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this article contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. A full disclaimer can be found at www.DailyStockReporter.com/disclaimer. 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[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
#TrinityCoin #TTY $ 0.000013 (-0.18 %) 0.00000003 BTC (-0.00 %) || $455.00 at 19:30 UTC [24h Range: $447.38 - $463.00 Volume: 4861 BTC] || LIVE: Profit = $800.80 (10.00 %). BUY B19.39 @ $420.00 (#VirCurex). SELL @ $454.82 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || Brittany Bendz (the nazi-trans-escort) uses bitcoin weekly. @droplister interviews her at 7:00 ET (Now!) watch it… http://bitcoinregime.com/2016/04/13/brittany-bendz-the-nazi-trans-escort-uses-bitcoin-weekly-droplister-interviews-her-at-700-et-now-watch-it-live-or-dont-watch-it-at-all/ … || #BTA Price: Bittrex 0.00001978 BTC YoBit 0.00001710 BTC Bleutrade 0.00001805 BTC #BTA 2016-05-04 02:00 pic.twitter.com/uN1tHqGMyM || #BTA Price: Bittrex 0.00000000 BTC YoBit 0.00001753 BTC Bleutrade 0.00001693 BTC #BTA 2016-05-10 02:00 pic.twitter.com/gZ0DddNJE8 || LIVE: Profit = $790.38 (9.82 %). BUY B19.49 @ $420.00 (#VirCurex). SELL @ $454.00 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || LIVE: Profit = $813.94 (10.24 %). BUY B19.24 @ $420.00 (#VirCurex). SELL @ $456.16 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || LIVE: Profit = $1,613.86 (1.35 %). BUY B261.93 @ $455.90 (#BTCe). SELL @ $463.00 (#Bitfinex) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || Current price: 424.2$ $BTCUSD $btc #bitcoin 2016-04-14 11:00:05 EDT
|
Trend: up || Prices: 574.98, 585.54, 576.60, 581.65, 574.63, 577.47, 606.73, 672.78, 704.38, 685.56
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
MLP ETFs Climb as IFM Investor Buys Out Buckeye Partners: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
Master limited partnerships and energy infrastructure sector-related exchange traded funds stood out Friday after Australian-based IFM Investors agreed to buyout Buckeye Partners (BPL) for $6.5 billion.
Among the best performing non-leveraged ETFs of Friday, 6.1%,ALPS Alerian MLP ETF (AMLP) increased 3.3%, UBS ETRACS Alerian MLP Infrastructure Index ETN (MLPI) advanced 3.6% andGlobal X MLP ETF (MLPA) rose 3.7%.
The infrastructure-focused investment manager IFM Investors agreed to an all-cash buyout of Buckeye for $41.5 on all shares outstanding, or a 27.5% premium over Thursday's closing price, theWall Street Journalreports.
Buckeye Partner shares surged 28.1% to $41.7 on Friday. BPL makes up 5.4% of AMLP's underlying portfolio, 5.4% of MLPI and 4.9% of MLPA.
“The proposed acquisition of Buckeye is a complementary addition to IFM’s substantial investments in energy infrastructure across North America and globally,” Jamie Cemm, executive director of IFM, said in a note.
The deal will be finalized in the fourth quarter, and after the deal is complete, the companies will still operate independently.
Buckeye owns and operates a range of midstream assets across the East Coast and Gulf Coast regions in the U.S., along with projects in parts of the Caribbean. The firm reported Friday that it produced a first-quarter net profit of $80.8 million, or 52 cents per share, which was down from $112.4 million, or 74 cents a share, for the same period last year. Additionally, its first-quarter revenue was $1.03 billion, or up from $797.2 million a year ago.
Buckeye has made a number of changes that contributed to its attractiveness as an M&A target. The company took several actions toward the end of last year to shore up its financial profile, such as cutting its distribution and selling several assets. The improvement made it a much more palatable acquisition candidate. However, these changes have contributed to its most recent earnings falloff.
For more information on master limited partnerships, visit ourMLPs category.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || Recruit’s Technology Investment Arm RSP has Announced Major Investment in Blockchain Platform COTI: Recruit, the Japanese enterprise-level firm, has publicly announced that it will participate in the COTI platform through investment. COTI, a next generation blockchain provider, has agreed to the terms. Recruit’s RSP funding division will be the participatory arm for the investment partnership. The partnership represents a dramatic win for the COTI platform with connections to a $50 million market cap company like Recruit . RSP, a global trend-setter in technology funding, has created the investment platform to provide leadership and help for startups with genuine platforms in the blockchain space. The connection with COTI is anticipated to help build faster and more secure payment and transaction processing services on blockchain. Recruit JP Per the public announcement, RSP made it clear that the connection is exciting at a technological level. “With a dramatically faster transaction processing speed than conventional blockchain technology, Coti's technology is able to service the processing needs of everyday payments. Furthermore, the transaction history tool developed by Coti allows one to automatically detect payments to potentially suspicious accounts.” COTI and RSP - Matching Vision The partnership represents a connection in vision between the two companies. The current blockchain technology space is limited by scaling issues. Foundational blockchain platforms (i.e. Bitcoin and Ethereum) brought about revolution in ‘trustless’ systems. However, they have not been viable as long-term solutions because of an inability to scale according to the needs of the enterprise level market. With comparatively insignificant transactions per second (TPS), these platforms cannot achieve the kind of market movement that traditional processing firms like Visa Inc (NYSE: V ) and Mastercard (NYSE: MA ) bring to the table. Further, legacy blockchain platforms have lost some credibility in the market due to a lack of user protection. Hacking, instability, and low-grade user protection have created a marked concern among consumers regarding trust. As evidence, the crypto winter of 2018 revealed that the wider consumer was not ready to begin adopting blockchain solutions. The COTI platform, in contrast, has been built to offer enterprise-level TPS solutions with simplicity. The company has already built and tested a blockchain platform with the ability to process at vastly higher rates, a vision that RPS shares for future growth. The platform offers these solutions via COTI’s DAG-based technology, joined with a unique set of algorithms created via machine learning (ML). By offering this level of TPS speed and ML-based trust systems, COTI has created what appears to be the front line for blockchain technology solutions. Story continues Better together COTI, for its part, has been pursuing such funding and partnership to help grow the platform for adoption. Already evidently a unique solution, COTI’s leadership is hopeful that the connection will mean big things in the future. Shahaf Bar Geffen COTI CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen made clear that COTI sees the connection as a major win for the platform, and for blockchain generally. He said, “We’re pleased to have made it on the radar of the RSP Blockchain Fund and its larger mission of making leading blockchain projects known to the world at large. This is a notable accomplishment for COTI and further anchors our belief in the enormous potential of the technology market in East Asia.” Recruit and COTI will continue working together to create industry-leading technology solutions for blockchain and other platforms. Disclosure: None. This article was originally published at Insider Monkey . View comments || The Ledger: Binance's Secret Sauce, Fake Satoshi, Waiting on Bakkt: I’ve written about the tech industry for ten years but never can I recall a firm becoming so dominant so fast as Binance. The exchange came out of nowhere in mid-2017 and rapidly gobbled up a huge share of the crypto trading business, while also launching its own currency—Binance Coin—that now has a market cap over $3 billion, and is the seventh most valuable cryptocurrency in the world. How did Binance pull it off? A big part of its success lies in a feat of regulatory arbitrage , which has seen Binance skip from country to country in order to avoid serious scrutiny from governments. In doing so, Binance further minimized its legal exposure by focusing on crypto-to-crypto trading and avoiding the heavily regulated fiat banking system. Steering clear of regulators is only one reason for Binance’s success. Another key factor is its launch of a cryptocurrency that’s actually useful. In a shrewd move, the company tied the use of Binance Coin to trading discounts, and also introduced a so-called “burn” program to purchase and destroy batches of the coins at regular intervals—a policy akin to share buybacks. More recently, Binance has made holding the currency a prerequisite to participate in its Launchpad platform, which offers a curated list of crypto projects to investors. “What’s unique about Binance Coin is it’s so much easier to value than other tokens,” says Jeff Dorman, a former Wall Street trader who is now Chief Investment Officer at crypto investment firm Arca in Los Angeles. The burn program, for example, “means you could use the same discounted cash flow metrics used to value traditional companies,” he adds. This month, Binance’s ambitions got even bigger as the company plans to nudge companies to move their token operations from Ethereum to Binance’s own blockchain—where they’ll pay fees in, you guessed it, Binance Coin. If CEO Changpeng Zhao can pull this off, Binance will be richer and more formidable than ever. Story continues But one other thing I’ve learned in a decade of covering tech is that market dominance can be transient, and barriers to competition can be an illusion. Overnight success stories can collapse as fast as they rise. This, then, will be Binance’s next big test: It has market power but will it have staying power? If Zhao’s company is still on top a year from now, we could have the crypto version of Facebook or Google —monopolists protected by powerful network effects—on our hands. More news below. *** Speaking of giant crypto companies, our inaugural Brainstorm Finance conference will feature a conversation between the CFOs of the two biggest—Binance and Coinbase—who will tell us what it’s like holding the finance reins. Come join us in Montauk, New York on June 19-20. GOT TIPS? Send feedback and tips to ledger@fortune.com, find us on Twitter @FortuneLedger or email/DM me directly at the contact info below. Please tell your friends to subscribe . Jeff John Roberts @jeffjohnroberts jeff.roberts@fortune.com THE LEDGER’S LATEST Trading App eToro Launches Crypto Versions of 8 Major Currencies by Jeff John Roberts What You Need to Know About T-Mobile’s No Fee Mobile Checking by Aaron Pressman Stripe Backs $40 Million Investment in A.I. Accounting Service Pilot by Jeff John Roberts DECENTRALIZED NEWS To the Moon… ConsenSys seeks $200 million from global investors. Arca asks SEC to approve tokenized T-Bills . New VC fund Proof of Capital raises $50M to back blockchain startups. Chainalysis Series B round reaches $36M . Coinbase expands to 11 more countries and counts Serena as an investor. Shrem and the Winklevoss twins settle $26M suit. A real-world $1 million Bitcoin scavenger hunt . A Venmo credit card . JP Morgan expands use of blockchain. …Rekt. Blockchain journalism meets SURVIVOR . Online lenders fear winter is coming . Coinbase revenue for 2018 is 60% below projections. Kraken boots Bitcoin SV coin. U.S. Bitcoin trader faces death penalty after Thai navy seizes ‘Seasteader’ home. BUBBLE-O-METER $434,000,000 That’s the fall-off in total crypo investments from Q4 of 2018 ($465M) to Q1 of 2019 ($31M). A quarter-to-quarter change is just that, however, and doesn’t tell the full story. The bulging Q4 figure consists mostly of Coinbase’s Series E and, even in the midst of the so-called crypto winter, investors are still on the prowl for deals. As CB Insights (source of the figures above) notes, new hot sectors include “Ethereum killers,” privacy and custody. The research firm also supplied a list of the most active VC investors. The top three: Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Union Square Ventures. MEMES AND MUMBLES Fake Satoshi Smackdown. Crypto Twitter brimmed with delight when Binance CEO CZ delisted an alt-coin created by Craig Wright, a controversial entrepreneur who says he is Satoshi and threatens to sue those who claim—with ample evidence—that he’s not. It didn’t take long for the smackdown memes to roll in: FOMO NO MO’ NYSE’s long wait for Bitcoin . The venerable New York Stock Exchange made a splash in 2018 with its plans to get into the Bitcoin business through a subsidiary called Bakkt. It’s more than nine months later and the project is hopelessly tangled in a regulatory morass with no launch in site. What happened? In an interview with the Chair of the CFTC, Coindesk provides a painstaking portrayal of the specific problems. In short: Bakkt’s initial plan to store bitcoin in its own digital “warehouse” fell afoul of complex custody rules, while also making clearinghouses uncomfortable. undefined We hope you enjoyed this edition of The Ledger. Find past editions here , and sign up for other Fortune newsletters here . Question, suggestion, or feedback? Drop us a line . || AUD/USD Price Forecast Australian dollar continues to slide: The Australian dollar has drifted a little bit lower during the trading session on Friday, as the Australian dollar is a proxy for China, it makes sense as the Chinese Communist Party suggested that the trade talks were going anywhere anytime soon. If thats going to be the case, then of course the demand for the Australian raw materials will drop. Interestingly enough though, we are still in the middle of the major support range, and as a result its going to be difficult to suddenly melt down without some type of catastrophic news. AUD/USD Video 20.05.19 The Australian dollar is highly sensitive to China as you know, but we should also pay attention to the US dollar in general, as its the other side of the equation. If the US dollar does start to sell off, this market may rally but I think at this point it really needs some type of Chinese situation to get better. If we were to suddenly turn around, break above the 0.70 level could send this market much higher. If we break down below the 0.68 level, it would be an extraordinarily negative sign. In the meantime, I expect that the market is going to be choppy and difficult, so ultimately its not a market that Im interested in trading until we get some type of catalyst or a breakout of the 200 point range that I have shown on the chart. The Aussie is essentially dead money at this point. Please let us know what you think in the comments below This article was originally posted on FX Empire More From FXEMPIRE: Silver Price Forecast Silver markets break down again on Friday Bitcoin Cash ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis 18/05/19 Crude Oil Price Forecast Crude oil markets fell at resistance E-mini S&P 500 Index (ES) Futures Technical Analysis Trader Reaction to 2880.50 Will Set Tone into Close Crude Oil Price Update Reversing Down in Sympathy with Renewed Stock Market Weakness Gold Weekly Price Forecast Gold markets fire off a reversal candle View comments || QQQ Isn’t Just Your Run-of-the-Mill Tech ETF Anymore: This article was originally published onETFTrends.com.
As the exchange-traded fund (ETF) world ages, the space undergoes its own maturation process, and that's evident in funds like theInvesco QQQ ETF (QQQ) . While it may be easy to pigeonhole QQQ as being the basic run-of-the-mill technology sector ETF, that is no longer the case.
QQQ made its debut in the capital markets on March 10, 1999 and has provided a long-standing contributions to investors by providing the necessary exposure to some of the most innovative companies to rise up over the years. After 20 years, QQQ has become one of the largest U.S.-listed ETFs with well over $60 billion in assets under management.
Furthermore, its expansive resume makes it one of the most heavily traded ETFs in the U.S. based on average daily volume to go along with one of the longest performance histories available for an ETF.
“Invesco is proud of the 20 years of innovation that have been marshaled through the Invesco QQQ and the access it has provided investors to pioneering companies that impact each of us daily. Through products, such as QQQ, Invesco continues to focus on creating tools to help investors build portfolios that exceed expectations. We look forward to the next 20 years,” Dan Draper, Managing Director, Global Head of Invesco ETFs, said in a note.
Additionally, ETF traders love the QQQ because of its high volume, which makes it easy to get in and out of the fund for tactical purposes.
"It's usually one of the top two or three most liquid ETFs," said Draper.
Despite these accolades, one of the reasons why the ETF has been able to stand the test of time is because it was also able to change with the times--not necessarily the transformational type of change where it loses its identity, but one that stresses evolution as opposed to revolution.
If you look under the hood of QQQ, there's still the momentum-growth component seen in its top holdings:
Its top three investments consist of the who's who in the tech sector--Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. However, these companies have grown from being the momentum-fueled growth stocks into the tech staples with global reach in terms of their products and services.
Amazon, for example, has become a retail powerhouse that's far removed from its days as simply an online bookstore. While the QQQ still maintains its hefty exposure to the tech sector, the companies that it holds are also evolving and in turn, so does the fund.
"It (QQQ) still represents some of the best growth characteristics, particularly of U.S.-based companies with global presence," said Draper. "But it's become more of a diversified index. Obviously, as you look though, the kind of unicorn-type IPOs, many still continue on to the Nasdaq and those are going to be your future constituents if they continue to grow."
"It remains a very vibrant-type of ETF," added Draper.
For more market trends, visitETF Trends.
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READ MORE AT ETFTRENDS.COM > || U.S Mortgages – Down for a 3rd Week in a Row as Trade War Jitters Lingered: Mortgage rates slipped again in the week ending 16thMay. 30-year fixed rates fell by 3 basis points following on from a 4 basis point rise from the previous week. The 3 basis point fall took 30-year rates to 4.07% according to figures released byFreddie Mac.
Following the weekly fall, 30-year fixed rates stood 54 basis points below levels from 12-months ago.
More significantly, 30-year fixed rates have fallen by 87 basis points since last November’s most recent peak of 4.94%.
Economic data released out of the U.S through the first of the week was on the lighter side. April retail sales, industrial production, and NY Empire State Manufacturing figures provided direction.
Weaker than forecast retail sales figures weighed on the Dollar and U.S Treasury yields on Wednesday, supporting the decline in mortgage rates.
Adding to the increase in demand for U.S Treasuries was rising concern over the ongoing U.S – China trade war.
Talks ended without an agreement and China retaliated to the U.S tariff hike by introducing tariffs on $60bn worth of U.S goods.
From outside of the U.S,
Economic data out of China was also weighed and reflected the effects of the extended trade war. Industrial production grew by just 5.4%, year-on-year, in April, coming up well short of a forecasted 6.5%. In March, industrial production had increased by 8.5%. Retail sales also softened over the month. Retail sales rose by 7.2%, easing back from 8.7% in March. Forecasts were for an 8.6% rise, year-on-year.
The weekly average rates for new mortgages as of 16thMay were quoted byFreddie Macto be:
• 30-year fixed rates fell by 3 basis points to 4.07% in the week. Rates were down from 4.61% from a year ago. The average fee held steady at 0.5 points.
• 15-year fixed rates slipped by 4 basis points to 3.53% in the week. Rates were down from 4.08% from a year ago. The average fee remained unchanged at 0.4 points.
• 5-year fixed rates increased by 3 basis points to 3.66% in the week. Rates decreased by 16 basis points from last year’s 3.82%. The average fee held steady at 0.4 points.
According to Freddie Mac, weaker consumer spending and manufacturing data, along with continued jitters around trade policy led to a pullback in interest rates.
In spite of economic indicators raising warning signals, sentiment towards the economy and a solid labor market are expected to support home sales this summer.
For the week ending 10thMay,rateswere quoted to be:
• Average interest rates for 30-year fixed, backed by the FHA, decreased from 4.44% to 4.32%. Points decreased from 0.56 to 0.49 (incl. origination fee) for 80% LTV loans.
• Average interest rates for 30-year fixed with conforming loan balances decreased from 4.41% to 4.40%. Points decreased from 0.47 to 0.40 (incl. origination fee) for 80% LTV loans.
• Average 30-year rates for jumbo loan balances decreased from 4.27% to 4.24%. Points remained increased from 0.23 to 0.27 (incl. origination fee) for 80% LTV loans.
Weekly figures released by the Mortgage Bankers Association showed that the Market Composite Index, which is a measure of mortgage loan application volume, slipped by 0.6% in the week ending 10thMay. The decrease partially reversed a 2.7% increase in the week ending 3rdMay.
The Refinance Index decreased by 1% in the week ending 10thMay. The Index had increased by 4% in the previous week ending 3rdMay.
The share of refinance remained unchanged at 37.9% following a decrease from 38.8% to 37.9% in the week prior.
According to the MBA, while purchase applications eased slightly, they remained almost 7% higher than a year ago. The MBA also noted that increased anxiety from ongoing trade disputes could cause potential buyers to put off home searches near-term.
Earlier in the week, the Mortgage Bankers Association released mortgage delinquency figures for the 1stquarter. According to the latestNational Delinquency Survey,
• The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on 1-4 unit residential properties increased to 4.42% of all outstanding loans.
• While up by 36 basis points, quarter-on-quarter, the delinquency rate was down 21 basis points, year-on-year.
• Year-on-year, the percentage of loans on which foreclosure actions were commenced fell by 5 basis points in the 1stquarter and by 2 basis points, quarter on quarter.
• In spite of the increase, it was the 3rdlowest delinquency rate in the last 12-years.
It’s a particularly quiet week ahead. April existing home sales are due in the first half of the week.
We expect the figures to have a muted impact on yields, with the focus being on the FOMC meeting minutes due out on Wednesday.
The FED has hit pause and FED Chair Powell sees no reason to consider resume rate hikes anytime soon. This week’s minutes are unlikely to deliver too many surprises…
With FED monetary policy in mind, FED Chair Powell is due to speak on Tuesday. Any dovish chatter would support another weekly fall in mortgage rates, assuming there is no resolution to the trade war.
All things considered, sentiment towards the extended trade war will continue to be the key driver in the week.
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Crude Oil, Natural Gas Shine, Gold’s Luster Tarnished || How to buy Litecoin in Canada: There are several ways to easily buy Litecoin in Canada for newcomers to the cryptocurrency space. Cryptocurrencies are completely legal in Canada, meaning users can mine, hold, and trade Litecoin and similar digital assets. Similar to Bitcoin, Litecoin is a digital currency that facilitates global transactions online. Litecoin allows users to send money digitally through the use of blockchain technology, without the need for intermediaries. It can also be used to pay for certain things such as travel and property. Litecoin is one of the most popular digital assets as it offers cheaper transactions than Bitcoin, making it useful for everyday purposes. Buying Litecoin on a exchange Residents of Canada can use a plethora of exchanges to buy Litecoin. Here we will go through some of the top exchanges you can use whether you are a beginner or an experienced trader in Canada. Coinbase Coinbase is available for Canadians to purchase Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies with a debit or credit card. The fees are around 4% for every purchase, and once the transaction is complete, the LTC will be delivered to your wallet instantly. Coinbase provides an easy way for newcomers to get their hands on Litecoin and boasts high liquidity and buying limits. However, be aware that purchases made via a bank transfer can take up to five working days to complete. Bitbuy This Canadian exchange has been Canada’s most trusted choice since 2013. Bitbuy allows users to seamlessly buy Litecoin and uses 2FA for added security. The exchange also boasts a 95% cold storage security policy. It provides instant verification and low fees and also has an advanced trading interface for more seasoned traders. This exchange is also ideal for beginners as it has 24/7 customer support. Binance Binance is a market-leading cryptocurrency exchange in terms of user count and trading volume. Registering an account on this exchange is simple – users will just need to input their email address and password. There is no need to go through KYC on Binance, which makes purchasing your first cryptocurrency a fairly quick and simple process. Other ways to buy Litecoin If you are not interested in signing up to an exchange, there are a multitude of other ways to get your hands on Litecoin in Canada. You can buy Litecoin with PayPal on Crptex24 or purchase Bitcoin on VirWex and then trade it for Litecoin. Canada also allows residents to buy Litecoin with cash. Users can pay in fiat currencies on Coinmama or over the counter at a Western Union location. The local peer-to-peer platform Litecoinlocal.net also allows users to meet up and buy/sell Litecoin in person. Story continues Conclusion Once you have bought your Litecoin, it is important to keep it safe in a wallet and store your public and private keys in a secure place. Remember to never leave your assets on an exchange and always keep up to date with the latest security protocols. Buying Litecoin in Canada is extremely easy and straightforward. The cryptocurrency is available on the majority of exchanges and has high liquidity due to its rising popularity. For guides on cryptocurrencies , exchanges , and blockchain technology , click here . Make sure you take a look at all the latest crypto and blockchain news . The post How to buy Litecoin in Canada appeared first on Coin Rivet . View comments || Infamous Mt. Gox Villain Mark Karpeles Launches New Blockchain Venture: Former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles wants you to trust his new blockchain venture in Japan. | Source: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong $nbsp; By CCN : Mark Karpeles, disgraced CEO of the infamous Mt. Gox crypto exchange, has revealed new plans in the blockchain space. According to Associated Press , he will launch a new venture with a view to making Japan a “global leader in blockchain.” Karpeles was found guilty for manipulating data at Mt. Gox and handed a suspended sentence earlier this year. Now, he’s looking to dip his toes back in the water with a new blockchain business venture. Mark Karpeles: $450 million lost on his watch Karpeles shot to infamy in the crypto space when hackers stole 850,000 BTC from Mt. Gox, the largest crypto exchange in the world at the time. Under Karpeles’ leadership, the exchange collapsed into bankruptcy. Mt. Gox victims protest Mt. Gox victim protests outside Mark karpeles’ offices in Japan after $450 million hack. | Source: AP Prosecutors went after Karpeles for embezzlement and fraud, claiming he siphoned $3 million from client accounts prior to the hack. Karpeles was cleared of these charges, avoiding a ten-year prison sentence. The judge did, however, find evidence of record tampering in the weeks leading up to the loss of funds: Read the full story on CCN.com . || Bitcoin Remains on Hunt for $9K After Defense of Key Price Support: • Bitcoin bounced up from $8,420 on Wednesday, forming a bullish higher low. The 4-hour chart now shows a bull flag breakout. As a result, a rally to $9,000 looks possible.
• A pennant breakout confirmed on Sunday has already created room for a rally to $10,000. On the way higher, BTC may face selling pressure near the key Fibonacci retracement level of $9,442.
• The short-term bullish case would weaken if BTC finds acceptance below the former resistance-turned-support at $8,390. A bearish volume divergence on the daily chart does indicate scope for a price pullback.
Bitcoin (BTC) remains on the hunt for $9,000, having established a bullish pattern at key price support in the last 24 hours.
The leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization is currently trading at $8,730 on Bitstamp, representing a 0.8 percent gain on the day. Prices hit a high of $8,785 earlier today.
Trading kicked off on a pessimistic note on Wednesday, with prices falling below the former resistance-turned-support of $8,500 (July 2018 high) in the Asian trading hours.
Bitcoin Price Eyes Longest Monthly Winning Run Since 2017
However, the drop to levels close to the May 16 high of $8,390 – also a former hurdle-turned-support – was short-lived and prices bounced back to $8,663 by UTC close, according to Bitstamp data.
Essentially, BTC established a bullish higher-low pattern in the key support zone yesterday, strengthening the bullish case put put forward bySunday’s pennant breakout.
The path of least resistance, therefore, is to the higher side. Even so, buyers need to observe caution, as the cryptocurrency hasalready ralliedmore than 60 percent this month. Sudden price pullbacks are usually seen after such stellar rallies.
Bitcoin’s ‘Toxic’ Twitter ‘Culture War’ Explained
BTC witnessed a bull flag breakout – a continuation pattern known to accelerate the preceding bullish move – on the 4-hour chart earlier today, creating room for a rally to $9,940 (target as per the measured move method).
The pennant breakout confirmed on Sunday has alreadyopenedthe doors to $10,000.
On the way higher, BTC may face resistance at $9,442 – the 38.2 percent Fibonacci retracement of the drop from the December 2017 high to December 2018 low.
It is worth noting that BTC created a doji candle with a long upper shadow – a sign of buyer exhaustion – in the four hours to 08:00 UTC, marking a weak follow-through to the bull flag breakout.
Should the doji candle’s high of $8,785 prove a tough nut to crack over the next few hours, a price pullback could be seen.
The case for a rise to $9,000, however, would weaken only if the newly established higher low at $8,420 is breached.
The daily trading volume bars continue to produce lower highs, contradicting the higher highs on price.
That bearish volume divergence takes the shine off the pennant breakout confirmed Sunday and indicates that the rally to $9,000 or above could be short-lived or may be preceded by a correction to $8,000.
Trading volumes need to pick up for a sustained move above $9,000.
Disclosure: The author holds no cryptocurrency assets at the time of writing.
Bitcoinimage via Shutterstock; charts byTrading View
• Korean Government Plans Action Over Risks of Resurgent Crypto Market
• Bitcoin Price Raises Bull Flag in Preparation for Possible Move Higher || Bitfinex Faces Legal Action From NY Attorney General: Heres What This Means: Bitfinex Ny Attorney General The New York Office of the Attorney General (AG) wants to take a closer look into the business operations of Bitfinex and related stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT). According to a legal petition filed with the Supreme Court of New York, the NY Attorney General Office of Letitia James is applying for a court order to investigate Bitfinexs suite of interrelated companies (including its umbrella firm iFinex and Tether Holdings Limited) for ongoing fraud to the tune of $850 million. What does the news mean for Bitfinex, Tether and Bitcoin? What Is the Legal Action About Exactly? Prompted by its findings in a 2018 investigative subpoena, the New York Office of the Attorney General alleges that Bitfinex used funds from Tether (a separate company run by the same management) to mask some $850 million in losses in customer funds resulting from potential theft or mismanagement by payment processor Crypto Capital. Bitfinex ended up relying on the fiduciary services of the Panama-based payment processor following a roulette of troubled banking relationships throughout the years. By mid-2018, Crypto Capital held roughly $1 billion worth of combined business and customer funds on behalf of Bitfinex. The document alleges that Bitfinex entrusted Crypto Capital with these funds without signing a contract or business agreement. Text-based correspondence cited in the document from mid-2018, which was obtained during the AGs 2018 investigation, reveal a Bitfinex employees persistent yet unsuccessful attempts to retrieve funds from Crypto Capital. The payment processor claimed that the funds were seized by Portuguese, Polish and American authorities, though both the Attorney General and Bitfinex question whether this is true. In the meantime, complaints of delayed withdrawals from Bitfinex users were rampant. The court document states that despite its issues with Crypto Capital, Bitfinex falsely claimed that cash withdrawals were unobstructed during this period. In order to be able to continue processing withdrawals, Bitfinex ultimately transferred $625 million from Tethers reserves. Additionally, Bitfinex established a $900 million revolving line of credit with Tether, and both this promise of credit and the prior transfer were conducted without Bitfinex or Tether alerting its users. This line of credit, which Bitfinex can draw from on a need-by-need basis, is collateralized with over 60 million shares of iFinex Inc., one of the Bitfinex brands shell companies. These shares are owned by DigFinex, the majority owner of both Tether and iFinex. Story continues That transaction closed on or about March 19. 20I9. The total accessed under the loan facility as of todays date is equal to $700 million, the document states. This fund shuffling and the capital mismanagement that prompted it are the crux of the legal proceedings, with the letter stating that Bitfinex has produced only limited relevant information regarding Tethers $625 million transfer and $900 million line of credit. In conclusion, the letter reads, OAGs ongoing investigation seeks to determine, among other things, the extent to which New York investors are exposed to ongoing fraud being carried out by Bitfinex and Tether. To make this determination, the application seeks a court order to secure relevant business and financial information, including tax documentation, an official audit, and banking/loan documents and correspondence. Why Is This Legal Pressure Coming Out of New York? Bitfinex nor Tether are based in New York. Neither company possesses a BitLicense needed to operate a cryptocurrency exchange in the state, so Bitfinex officially barred its service to individuals from New York in August 2017 and to businesses in August 2018. However, the New York Attorney General believes that the exchange was still serving (some) New York citizens regardless, and the order explicitly states that it seeks to protect legitimate traders using the Bitfinex platform ... primarily those residing in New York. The New York Attorney General can also invoke what is known as the Martin Act. As securities regulatory attorney Scott Andersen said on Twitter , the Act broadly empowers the NY Attorney General to conduct civil and criminal investigations for securities law violations. With this regulatory power, the AG can obtain a preliminary court order to elicit testimony and evidence from Bitfinex. What Does Bitfinex Say? In a response published on the companys blog , Bitfinex positions itself as a company that is a good corporate citizen and strong supporter of law enforcement, and it condemns the legal action by the New York Attorney Generals Office as gross overreach. The statement reads: The New York Attorney Generals court filings were written in bad faith and are riddled with false assertions, including as to a purported $850 million loss at Crypto Capital. On the contrary, we have been informed that these Crypto Capital amounts are not lost but have been, in fact, seized and safeguarded. We are and have been actively working to exercise our rights and remedies and get those funds released. Sadly, the New York Attorney Generals office seems to be intent on undermining those efforts to the detriment of our customers. Bitfinex further suggests that the New York Attorney Generals time would be better spent trying to aid and support the companys recovery efforts to procure the funds held by Crypto Capital. Is Tether Insolvent? Is Bitfinex? Nobody can know for sure for either company. The request for a court order, in part, hinges on this question, however, and the New York Attorney General seems to believe that Bitfinex siphoned funds from Tethers reserves to cover up a potential insolvency. The document stakes no claim on whether or not Crypto Capital has the funds. Its possible that the payment processor might have the money but is refusing to give it up, just as its possible that they no longer hold these funds in their own accounts or that they were seized or frozen by authorities. It should be noted that even if $850 million is inaccessible, this represents only a fraction of Bitfinex and Tethers total holdings. Twitter reports suggest that Bitfinex withdrawals are still being processed. Were Bitfinex/Tether Critics Right? It depends on which critics and the timing of their criticisms. Over the years, a wide range of accusations have been leveraged against Bitfinex and Tether. One of the best-known and severe of these accusations was that Tether was creating unbacked USDT out of thin air, which it used to artificially inflate the bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets. Some of these accusations go back as far as early 2017. Based on the information that is now available, these accusations appear to be false or at least unproven, and the New York Attorney Generals Office doesnt lend them credence in its letter. More mild accusations focused on the untransparent business practices of Bitfinex and suspicions that the exchange, with the help of USDT, was running a fractional reserve in some way or another. Seemingly corroborating these suspicions for skeptics, Tether updated its website in March to clarify that USDT is 100% backed by [its] reserves, which could include cash equivalents but also other assets and receivables from loans. The old version assured users that each USDT was backed 1-1 with cash. Tether made this change shortly before the $900 million line of credit was established. It appears that from the moment when Bitfinex started running into trouble with Crypto Capital, sometime in 2018, these accusations of fractional reserve practices carried validity. What Does This Mean for Bitcoin? While only time will tell, of course, there is little reason to believe these latest developments will have great impact on Bitcoin one way or the other. Many bitcoin exchanges have historically had trouble finding reliable banking partners, and some of them have even had to shut down because of this. As weve seen with the QuadrigaCX debacle , when an exchange cant secure proper banking partnerships, it might turn to unscrupulous payment processors--to the detriment of both its operations and its customers funds. Similarly, a number of bitcoin exchanges have lost funds due to hacks or otherwise, and in some cases had to entirely close shop because of this as well. While such events have affected the bitcoin price and general sentiment in the short term, its not clear if this will result in long-term effects; in this case, its far from certain that Bitfinex will have to cease operations or accept losses at all. The company itself certainly doesnt think so. So far the bitcoin price has seen a somewhat modest price drop of about 5 percent. Interestingly, even USDT is trading at $0.97 on Kraken, suggesting that the market still has relative faith in the stablecoin and the company behind it (for now). This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine . View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Twitter'ın en güzel tarafı arşiv olması. Bitcoin ölüp ölüp diriliyor, daha da ölüp ölüp dirilecek.
Kaybetmeyi göze alamadığınız miktarda parayı BTC'ye ya da çok riskli başka varlıklara yatırmayınız. || #BTC #BCH #DTA 200 specialists to go after tax evading crypto traders in Japan
...Read more: https://t.co/iPFbUfMQeh || Bitcoin Black v Bitcoin. Get FREE coins ($36 value)! https://t.co/VLdjFD5g1X || This team offers conditions at a first-class level. Best product I've ever experienced! #Shato || 思うことかいたけど、消えたんで
BTC９５での動きに注目する。 || Bitcoin Holds Over $8,000 as Top Altcoins See Minor Losses https://t.co/zyro4VAXZk https://t.co/HeATLcpF2d || 🐦 22-5-2019 5:0:11🐦
💰 $XMR = 88.27 $ - 79.13 € - 69.44 £
💰 $ETH = 257.21 $ - 230.58 € - 202.33 £
💰 $BTC = 7921.68 $ - 7101.79 € - 6231.42 £ || 🌍 Notre adoption progresse à travers l’#Afrique 🌍
Rejoignez @AfricaPac & Drew, le COO de $PAC alors que nous explorons le potentiel de la monnaie $PAC à Lagos au Nigeria. #bitcoin #crypto #btc #cryptomonnaies #hodl #blockchain #fintech #hodl
https://t.co/2MW0ubUL44 || Can you spot #MIOTA #IOTA in the Outperforming Word Cloud? Well check it out with #BTC overlaid. Clearly outperforming as 33% up over the last week. AND it has a Bullish Divergence on the 30m chart! #crypto #trading https://t.co/wHoYk5lQei https://t.co/DOychMZmBO || Take a Look on this Awesome Browser and See how you can Earn Bitcoins for just Using It!!!
https://t.co/jaYp9xGzbn
|
Trend: up || Prices: 7688.08, 8000.33, 7927.71, 8145.86, 8230.92, 8693.83, 8838.38, 8994.49, 9320.35, 9081.76
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis for 2015-08-05]
BTC Price: 281.88, BTC RSI: 51.32
Gold Price: 1085.70, Gold RSI: 28.59
Oil Price: 45.15, Oil RSI: 25.74
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Getting mobile with Bitcoin: This article, Getting mobile with Bitcoin , originally appeared on TechRepublic.com . If you haven't heard of Bitcoin, you might be living on another planet. It's a cryptographic-based currency which isn't actually printed or minted but exists solely in electronic (digital) form. The advantages to Bitcoin are that it is internationally-based (no currency exchange or other fees) and used, it is not subject to laws or regulation from one individual entity, and it can purchase goods or services from businesses and fellow consumers. Bitcoins can be converted into any local currency via exchange rates (at the time of this writing one bitcoin is worth $237.47 in U.S. dollars). You can even generate your own bitcoins through a process called "mining" whereby special high-speed computer systems run software to verify a set of bitcoin transactions (known as a "blockchain"). The more work these systems contribute to this effort, the more bitcoins can be earned (however there is a finite number of bitcoins that the world can generate; approximately 21 million). Bitcoins are generally stored in and utilized by an application or mobile wallet. Two such examples are Bitcoin Wallet for Android and Bither for iOS , either of which can be used to obtain, use, sell and track Bitcoins: figurea.jpg Image: Google Play The concept of Bitcoin Wallet is the same as any other mobile payment system; Bitcoins are accessed via a centralized account (not actually stored on the device per se, meaning your device isn't required nor must be powered up for someone to send you Bitcoins). The app is just a front end to manage the Bitcoins. As it enters its sixth year of existence, the Bitcoin has rolled forward with steady momentum and its popularity continues to grow. As is usually the case with technological advancements, new possibilities are also arising for those savvy enough to stay ahead of the curve. Entire industries are springing up around Bitcoin and one such example involves a merger between two companies called The Bitcoin Shop and Spondoolies-Tech. Story continues The Bitcoin Shop (aka "BTCS") provides Bitcoin (and other digital currency) transaction verification services. It's goal is to build a universal platform for digital currency to provide a single point of access for users to engage in their ecosystem. Consequently, BTCS is investing $1.5m in a transaction verification server manufacturer named Spondoolies-Tech Ltd (aka "Spondoolies"). The motivation behind the merger is to "create the world's first publicly traded company to produce Bitcoin transaction verification equipment and deploy Bitcoin mining resources." I spoke with Charles Allen, CEO of BTCS to find out more about Bitcoin and the details of the BTCS-Spondoolies merger. Scott Matteson: "How do Bitcoin mobile apps work (specifically via Bitcoin Shop's context)?" Charles Allen: "Bitcoin Shop ("BTCS") does not currently have a mobile app. However many digital companies offer iPhone and Android compatible apps most of which are bitcoin wallets or price feeds." SM: "What is the advantage of Bitcoin over traditional currency?" CA: "There are many advantages of Bitcoin compared to fiat currency. Below are some key differentiators: Highly divisible compared to fiat currencies Globally transferable - e.g. in the current system, money can be sent around the world in a matter of days via wires but this is costly for small transactions and slow in today's age. With bitcoin, for example, one can send their bitcoins from anywhere (e.g., from the Japan to the U.S.) instantly for free. Scarce - the supply of bitcoin is predetermined so inflation is factored in. Not government issued - with fiat currencies in a fractional reserve system there is a real risk that a country will make poor decisions over time and devalue their currency." SM: "What security controls are in place to protect customers and vendors/suppliers/businesses (ties into the transaction verification equipment)?" CA: "Apart from sourcing servers and building our data center, customers / suppliers / vendors are not directly involved in the BTCS' operations so I'm not sure the question is relevant to our transaction verification services operations." SM: "Can you elaborate on what to expect from the Bitcoin Shop/Spondoolies merger?" CA: "The digital currency ecosystem is similar to the Internet in 1995, i.e. very few companies are generating revenue. As a combined company, we plan to build a fully integrated transaction verification services business, which will be our revenue and profit engine (similar to Google with advertising) as we explore and develop other blockchain technologies. Spondoolies recently announced 2014 revenue of $28 million, and we believe our fully integrated mining efforts should allow us as combined company to continue to grow revenue and earnings and capture additional margin. Further BTCS has an 83,000 square foot facility to expand mining operations into." SM: "What is the future of Bitcoin?" CA: "Bitcoin - and more importantly blockchain technologies - have the ability to fundamentally change the world in the same way the Internet did. The 'genie is out of the bottle' and it is likely not going away." SM: "Why are hackers/ransomware/cyber-criminals so interested in being paid in Bitcoin?" CA: "Bitcoin is essentially digital cash, and once you have it, you own it. The downside is that every transaction is recorded on the blockchain, so identities can be associated to public addresses, meaning owners of stolen bitcoins can be found. In the long run, bitcoin is a poor means for cybercrime, as there is a public ledger of who owns what." SM: "Can you elaborate a bit more on how BTCS performs transaction verification services?" CA: "Please watch video #1 and video #2 for the best details. BTCS runs ASIC servers (see video #1) in a repurposed 83,000 square foot manufacturing facility in NC - see video #3 (it is now filled with servers, so we are working on an updated video). 93% of our equipment is currently manufactured by Spondoolies." SM: "Can you also elaborate on the Spondoolies server product and how they are specifically tailored towards transaction verifications?" CA: "Currently we do not manufacture ASIC servers. Spondoolies is one of only 4-5 companies that manufacture ASICS servers. There are many companies that run data centers with ASIC servers but very few that manufacture them. The big competitors to Spondoolies are Bitmain, Bitfury, and KNC Miner. However, all of these companies are involved in the design, manufacturing and deployment of ASIC servers. Pre-merger, BTCS is engaged in the deployment of ASIC servers and not the design and manufacturing of them, while Spondoolies is engaged in the design and manufacturing of ASIC servers and not the deployment. As a merged entity, we will be fully integrated similar to Bitmain, Bitfury, and KNC Miner and be able to capture the margin on both sides. To put this in perspective, Spondoolies achieved $28m in revenue in 2014 and many of their customers have had a tremendous return on investment (depending on when they started and their cost structure)." SM: "Can you walk me (briefly) through how a transaction involving Bitcoin via BTCS will work at present? Same question for after the merger (if different)?" CA: "The transaction verification services process is not a business-to-consumer endeavor. We simply maintain the network and are rewarded by the network for doing so. Consumers / users of bitcoin never directly engage with us." SM: "Can you tell me a little more about blockchain technology and how it applies to BTCS? CA: "Bitcoin is based on blockchain technology ( see video #2). Many technologies are being built upon Bitcoin's blockchain and we are a participant in securing the blockchain through our transaction verification services business (or often referred to as mining). In our opinion, this is the core of the technology as well as the cash cow in the business. Many bitcoin companies are "pre-revenue" and will be for years to come. To draw a parallel, Google's cash cow is advertising, hence, they have yet to pollute the elegant and simplistic search interface. Yet they experiment with all sorts of other technologies many of which fail i.e. Glass, Answers, iGoogle, etc. and some that succeed i.e. Maps, Android etc. We believe as a merged company, fully integrated mining / transaction services will be our cash cow which catapults our business to the next level and allows us to venture into other Hopefully you've found this discussion engaging and it has helped advance your understanding of the Bitcoin environment. I'd like to thank Mr. Allen for the time he spent on the topic with me. See also: 5 Bitcoin and finance startups to watch from DEMO 2014 Pay with Bitcoin: 10 of the most interesting places to spend it 10 things you should know about Bitcoin and digital currencies 10 mobile payment systems you need to know || Wedbush Predicts A Bright Future For Bitcoin: In a report authored by Gil Luria and Aaron Turner, Wedbush Securities predicted a bright future for the Bitcoin Investment Trust as well as for the cryptocurrency itself. Though the firm acknowledged the volatility risks associated with bitcoin, it said it ultimately sees the currency continuing to penetrate new markets and expand across the globe. Publicly Traded Bitcoin The Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTC: GBTC ) became the first ever publicly traded bitcoin fund back in March and has since garnered a lot of attention. Wedbush analysts said they see bitcoin's growing popularity pushing GBTC from its current valuation of $30.60 to $40 by next year. Related Link: Bitcoin: The Best Currency For Greece And Other Debt-Ridden Countries? Bitcoin Transactions On The Rise The firm also said that it saw bitcoin increasing in value to as much as $400 in the coming year as more and more people adopt the currency to facilitate online transactions. Wedbush said that the relatively low-cost transaction fees associated with using bitcoin will give the currency a leg up against other e-commerce payment methods like credit cards or Pay Pal . Banking For The Unbanked Wedbush analysts also said they saw potential for bitcoin in developing and struggling economies where the financial system isn't very secure or accessible. The firm cited the situation in Greece and the rise in bitcoin's popularity as capital controls took hold of the nation's financial institutions as a good indicator of bitcoin's potential in that arena. Risks Still Evident While the Wedbush report was mostly positive, the firm did acknowledge the potential for uncertainty when it comes to bitcoin trading. The company underscored that the currency does have a history of volatile price swings and that there is a possibility that bitcoin will lose the majority of its value. Latest Ratings for GBTC Jul 2015 Wedbush Initiates Coverage on Outperform View More Analyst Ratings for GBTC View the Latest Analyst Ratings Story continues See more from Benzinga Which Crisis Is Worse: Greece Or China? Can The Fed Really Raise Rates Amid All This Chaos? When Luxury Goes Digital © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || A massive wave of startups is coming to crush the big banks: (Reuters/Rafael Marchante)Startups are
chippinginto every line of business big banks enjoyed leading up to the financial crisis.
The banks know it. A recentGoldman Sachs report suggestedthat $4.7 trillion of the financial-services industry’s business is jeopardized smaller competitors.
Online brokerages threaten banks’ broker-dealer businesses.Wealth management appshave sprung up to claim millennials that are distrustful of big money managers.
Personal-finance startups are helping consumers balance their checkbooks online. Refinancing startups are taking advantage of cheap debt tooffer students better rates on loans.
All of it is taking bit business away from banks.
And the biggest firms on Wall Street are employing all sorts of tactics to defend their top line from invasions taking place on both coasts.
Virtually every big bank has invested in startups. Increasingly, seed-stage ventures and accelerators have been formed as Wall Street firms snap up a piece of hundreds of pre-IPO companies.
After launching its first finch incubator in Tel Aviv in 2013, by the end of 2014 Citi Ventures had expanded accelerator efforts to Spain, Germany, Singapore, Brazil, and the US. Barclays Accelerator operates in two countries, in part thanks to TechStars’ management expertise. Even Capital One has an accelerator of its own, Capital One Labs.
Wells Fargo has backed a handful of startups through its accelerator. One has the potential to help big banks get slimmer on staffing.Kasistois a platform for financial institutions providing clients virtual personal assistants. And Bank of America hassponsoredtech accelerators in New York, London, and Charlotte. Commerce.Innovated is another accelerator run by Silicon Valley Bank and MasterCard.
(Hardeep Walia, Motif Investing CEOCourtesy Hardeep Walia)
Sometimes banks wind up jointly investing in the same startup, likeMotif Investing, an online broker.Both JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs backed that platform.
JP Morgan also backed Square, along with numerous big banks’ investment arms. (Morgan Stanley joined in that investment, as well.)
And even Morgan Stanley, which has had a relatively muted presence in the investing scene, has struck deals to back companies like the messaging platform Perzo and Eris Exchange. Eris sells interest-rate-swap futures.
Goldman Sachs also backed Square, along with other big startups. Otherdeals for the bankhave included Kensho, a market-data-analytics firm. Goldman is evenbacking Bitcoin startups.
Some view it as Wall Street finally acknowledging that customer acquisition requires their not being deaf to Silicon Valley.Others think it is less about changing culture than it is about suppressing competition.
“Because we’re a not a retail bank, we view all disruption opportunities as being great,” Reetika Grewal,head of payments strategy and solutions at Silicon Valley Bank said. She works with Commerce.Innovated.
But not everyone does. We spoke with a number of players in the startup space, as well as Wall Street veterans. Here’s what they had to say:
• “Banks are looking towards earlier stage investments and opportunities,”says one investor who has worked with banks on deals. “Even if they don’t take equity in the companies but rather use the accelerator as a way to understand the innovation going on outside of their walls, it's totally worth it.The investment is relatively minuscule in relation to the insight they'll gain."
• “One of the reasons some firms may be eager to do more early stage deals is that banks are being regulated out of building larger stakes in pre-IPO companies,”a banking-sector source said. He referred to this in the broader scope of post-crisis regulation like the Dodd Frank Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It requires that banks either fund outside investments entirely with their own money, or with 3% of client funds. That, the source said, makes it very difficult for banks to participate in late-stage investing.
• One investor notes thatpart of banks’ strategy of backing early stage companies is to reap future business. “[Banks] have always tried to service early tech companies as much as possible as lead generation,” one Silicon Valley source said.
• "There’s this appetite for credit that banks can’t satisfy,”the investor said. "Banks either need to build competing products or invest in new ones.”
• “Banks are finally admitting they don't have it all figured out,”says another investor in the space.
NOW WATCH:Google opens up a 21,000-square-foot campus in South Korea for startups
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• DIMON: 'We are creating generations of citizens who will never have a chance'
• DIMON: 'The United States of America is truly an exceptional country,' but 'something is wrong'
• Morgan Stanley just named a Wall Street legend as the head of a new group || A bitcoin start-up has made exchanging currency free: A bitcoin (:BTC=) start-up has launched a service that will allow people to carry out foreign exchange transactions for free, dodging the expensive commission often charged by major financial institutions. Bitreserve, a company founded last year by CNET and salesforce.com co-founder Halsey Minor, allows people to convert bitcoin into normal currencies and precious metals. The start-up used to charge a 0.45 percent commission for bitcoin-to-dollar transactions, but has now cut its fees entirely. The move is likely to give it an edge in the hotly contested "fintech" market where a number of companies such as U.K.-based Transferwise are contesting the currency transfer and mobile payments space. Users of the platform will be able to make currency exchanges in eight major currencies: euros, dollars, pounds, yuan, yen, pesos, rupees, swiss francs. People will also have the ability to convert the currencies into gold, silver, platinum and palladium, depending on the market price. Bitreserve offers the mid-market rate for currencies. "Those in society who can least afford it have to spend so much for things that are so commonplace," Anthony Watson, president and chief operating officer of Bitreserve, told CNBC by phone. "If you look at a Mexican immigrants, they send approximately $30 billion home every year and they pay just under $3 billion for the privilege of sending that money home. That is 10 percent and that is disgusting." Bitreserve's service comes with a catch however - you have to own bitcoin to use the service in order to make an initial deposit and then convert it to another asset. Plus, when users receive money, they can only spend it in bitcoin. This could put it at a disadvantage to other companies that allow people to sign up with bank accounts and send money for still a small commission. One use case of such a technology is remittances, which reached $436 billion in 2014, according to the World Bank. Since its inception in October 2014, Bitrserve has been responsible for $14.5 million worth of transactions globally, according to its website. Story continues But not all experts agree that a free model is sustainable in the currency exchange business. "No business that offers its services for free can do so sustainably over a long period of time without other revenue sources," Stan Stalnaker, board member of the Digital Asset Transfer Authority, a self-regulating body for digital currencies, told CNBC by email. Read More This is why bitcoin won't go away anytime soon "The real question, in an age of free transactions, is about business models - what other products and services can Bitreserve launch that it will charge for, and how successful will that be on the back of very low cost remittances?" Watson said the company was looking to partner with traditional financial institutions to allow people to move the money into traditional bank accounts, as well as retailers so people can buy items using regular currencies. "We are in conversation across the world with not only banks but different financial services providers. We are talking to a myriad of companies. We don't see ourselves as a threat to banks we see ourselves as complimenting what they do," Watson, the former Nike CIO, said. Another use of Bitreserve's technology is to store bitcoin in a stable currency like the U.S. dollar. "A lot of people are putting money on reserve and moving it into currency and moving bitcoin into a stable form of currency. Bticoin bounces around like a jack rabbit," Watson added. A number of companies such as Coincove and ArtaBit are offering similar services, but only allowing people to send bitcoin to converted to one currency. More From CNBC CNBC.com News Page CNBC.com Blogs Page CNBC.com Earnings Central || Fed Stuck In The Middle Of Marijuana Debate: One of the major issues plaguing the United States' newly developing marijuana industry has been banking. Although President Barack Obama has granted states the right to determine their own marijuana laws, the substance is still classed as illegal in the federal government's eyes. For that reason, banks bound by federal law have been unable to engage with marijuana firms even in states where the drug is legal. Fed Lawsuit Last week, Colorado's Fourth Corner Credit Union sued the Kansas City Fed after its application for federal insurance was rejected. The credit union was denied a routing number in order to set up its master account, meaning that Fourth Corner would be unable to operate. The firm said the Fed's decision to reject Fourth Corner is an unreasonable restraint of trade and commerce and that the credit union's receipt of a state charter should have given it access to federal insurance. Fed Pushes Back The Fed has argued that it has the right to use its own discretion when it comes to opening new master accounts. The bank claims it was unable to accurately asses the risks associated with Fourth Corner's business and therefore is allowed to reject the application. Conflicting Laws The legal battle underscored the pitfalls of conflicting laws at the federal and state level. While legalization efforts have been successful in many states across the US, the banking issue will likely continue to plague the industry as long as federal law continues to class marijuana as illegal. See more from Benzinga Australian Government Takes Steps Toward Becoming A Bitcoin-Friendly Nation Tech Firms Gear Up For 2016 Presidential Race Are Tethered Drones The Answer To Safety Concerns? © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Bitcoin May Not Go Mainstream, But Blockchain Will: The challenges associated with using a cryptocurrency have kept much of the public from rushing to adopt bitcoin. Issues related to trust and security have plagued the digital currency after several widely publicized scams painted bitcoin as a tool for criminal activity.
However, while the general population has been slow to adopt digital currencies themselves, blockchain, the system bitcoin runs on, could have a place in everyday life.
Blockchain In Banks
Banks have been receptive to the possibility that blockchain could vastly improve their outdated systems.UBS(OTC: OUBSF) has already jumped on board the concept by setting up a research lab in London that focuses on how blockchain can be used in banking.
Related Link:"Dope" Becomes The First Movie To Allow Bitcoin Ticket Sales
Now,Banco Santander, S.A. (ADR)(NYSE:SAN) is similarly exploring how blockchain could revamp its business with a research team called Crypto 2.0. The Spanish bank believes there is potential for using blockchain to do things like facilitate international payments and develop smart contracts.
Regulation Will Weigh Down Progress
Head of Santander's fintech investment fund InnoVentures, Mariano Belinky toldBusiness Insiderthat the bank could develop a working prototype system that would facilitate real-time international payments in a matter of months, but that it would likely take much longer to pass such a system through the financial sector's strict regulations. The bank says it would also need to partner with a few like-minded banks across the globe in order to make the new system viable, but has already been in talks with several other institutions about the possibility.
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• Marijuana's Pesticide Problem
© 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || Washington D.C. Celebrates Marijuana Legalization With Growing Competition: Five months ago, Washington D.C. relaxed its regulations governing the recreational use of marijuana despite arguments from the nation's lawmakers. The district has since held several events to take advantage of the new rules and this year's state fare is even incorporating pot into the festivities. Growing Contest A state fair conjures up images of homemade apple pies and prize-winning livestock, but in Washington D.C., the event will also include a marijuana growing competition. Fair organizers will give out a "Best Bud" award for the best specimen of a marijuana plant. The contest will run alongside other D.C. favorites like the knit and crochet contest, the pickled food contest and the homebrew contest. Related Link: Surprising Study Shows Lax Marijuana Laws May Benefit America's Youth Embracing Marijuana Rules The fair, set to take place in September, says its inclusion of a marijuana growing competition is an important step toward embracing the district's new laws. Not only will the contest underscore D.C.'s new freedom, but it will give home-growers a chance to show off their talent for sustaining what can be a difficult to grow plant. Judging The plants will be judged rigorously in four categories including appearance, odor, touch and growing method. However, the plants will not be judged on their potency and judges will not sample any of the entries. D.C. law prohibits anyone from smoking in public spaces, and the fair is planning to uphold that law by banning marijuana use on the premises. See more from Benzinga Bitcoin Makes A Musical Debut Starbucks Hopes To Blend In With The Locals Hacking Concerns Give New Life To Cybersecurity Field © 2015 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. || CCEDK and Bit-X Release Nanocard: The First True Crypto-Debit Card: CCEDK has announced that it is coming out with its own Bitcoin debit card BLOKHUS, DENMARK / ACCESSWIRE / July 13, 2015 / In addition to strictly storing the funds as Bitcoin or USD, the user will have the option to store their money as a BitShares BitAsset. Also referred to as SmartCoins, they would be pegged to the value of the dollar or another major currency. "A new generation of 2.0 coins is being used to address the volatility issue. BitShares' SmartCoins will be available as funding options for the NanoCard in the coming months, meaning that customer balances can be safely stored as crypto coins pegged to USD, EUR, CNY or even gold and silver, and converted only at the time of use," explained CEO Ronnie Boesing. This is a fundamentally lacking feature in many card programs available to Bitcoiners, although Bitreserve has come along way to deal with the problem of volatility. The new card will be called the NanoCard and will be broadly available to customers of the exchange beginning today. The NanoCard is a collaboration between Danish bitcoin exchange CCEDK and forex platform Bit-x , which aims to show how virtual currencies are finally coming of age. Ronnie Boesing believes that something like the NanoCard could be a "killer app" for Bitcoin, saying. "Bit-x, CCEDK, Cryptonomex, BitShares: each provides a part of the puzzle and the result is bitcoin's killer app." However, there are a number of other Bitcoin debit cards out there, including some that allow the user to receive part of their pay in Bitcoin, and then still have access to the funds for spending even after the conversion to bitcoin. Regardless, those at CCEDK were excited to r e lease a debit card for their traders to make use of. According to CEO Mr. Boesing, "We have combined the strengths of digital currencies pioneered by bitcoin with the universal acceptance of major credit cards. It's the combination of technologies that makes the NanoCard so powerful. We are extremely proud to have partnered with Bit-x after just a year in business. The result is perhaps the world's first true crypto-debit card. No one can tell you how to use your own money and thanks to Bit-x this will be accepted everywhere." Additionally, CCEDK is partnering with Cryptonomex in order to provide new security measures to protect funds and trading. Part of what Cryptonomex will do is create auditing and transparency layers for CCEDK's customers to have an opportunity to verify what's on the exchange. Transparency is an element of strength for any exchange, as the Bitcoin community learned, through events like Mt. Gox, what a severe lack of transparency can do. "You won't have to worry about our exchange being hacked or whether it is honest or solvent," explains Boesing. Story continues Contact CCEDK | Crypto Coins Exchange Denmark Aps: Ronny Boesing +45-36-98-11-50 ronny@ccedk.com Tyttebærvej 6, Hune, DK-9492 Blokhus Denmark SOURCE: CCEDK.com View comments || Peak Venture Group Adopts the BitShares Network: Peak Venture Group has announced the adoption of the BitShares 2.0 platform to integrate into their existing business LAS VEGAS, NV / ACCESSWIRE / July 1, 2015 / " We're always looking for game-changing opportunities," smiled Steve Tiffany, CEO of Peak Venture Group. "BitShares has the potential to supercharge most of our existing businesses and revolutionize everything about how we start new ones." The Las Vegas based startup incubator has big ambitions that leverage remarkable synergies in the crypto currency, ATMs, remittance, video gaming, and network marketing industries. "BitShares turns out to be the missing catalyst needed to stimulate viral growth across our whole portfolio," said Tiffany. Mr. Tiffany went on to discuss his reasoning for the adoption. "Our original killer concept was to bring together a network of merchants and affiliate marketers by helping them to connect with each other in a double-sided marketplace. Merchants are always looking for ways to sell their products and affiliates are always looking for lucrative new things to sell. We put together a system that helps them find each other. We already have over 17,000 members on our video game site and 8500 marketers in our affiliate system the first year. Whoosh!" "Then one of those affiliates introduced us to BitShares," said Tiffany, shaking his head. "I thought it was just going to be a way to maybe make commission payments within our network a bit more automatic and trust-free. But after talking with BitShares Founder Dan Larimer, I realized his brainchild was going to change everything we do!" "What exactly is it that we do?" "We provide specialized training for an affiliate marketing force and broker connections to all kinds of products they'll find easy to sell. Then we go looking for startup companies with ideas worth investing in, and hand them a marketing outlet on a silver platter! Most startups focus on their products and services, leaving marketing as an afterthought. We deliberately invest knowing that we can add a powerful engine for customer acquisition on Day One. We look for startups that fit into that model, and then harness our marketing horsepower to their front end." Story continues "Take for instance the market we put together for the gaming industry," he said. "And I'm not talking gambling or anything like that. When we say gaming, we're referring to the video game community. One aspect I'm talking about is the Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) - video games in which a very large number of players interact within a virtual game realm. It's a $65B industry world wide!" "We created two symbiotic companies. Our gaming eCommerce store is one-stop shop for everything to do with video games, including ACME laser swords, valuable game items, rare related merchandise, gold, you name it. Then our affiliate program teaches gamers how to do their own viral network marketing of everything that we sell while preserving the gaming atmosphere for our affiliates to keep the fun intact. We motivate the industry's most passionate expert gamers to become its most productive marketers. They wind up building their own game and financial empire at the same time! And we do so by seamlessly integrating real world and game world currencies and empires." "You can see how this led us naturally to crypto currencies, and ultimately to BitShares," he traced a finger from dot to dot, as if the connection was obvious. Tiffany further explained, We needed a way to seamlessly transition real world currencies like dollars and euros and the unique digital currencies used inside many of the games we offer at the gaming site. I figured we could integrate a crypto currency wallet somehow and use that currency as the common denominator and a way to automatically pay affiliate commissions. But BitShares gave us a complete decentralized currency exchange network right out of the box. It even had built-in smart contracts to help automate our affiliate program. This helps us make sure every affiliate gets paid automatically for every transaction made by any member of her integrated game and financial empire. And BitShares can keep up with gaming speeds - Its average transaction time is about a second compared to, say, Bitcoin where it can take the better part of an hour to confirm a transaction. Gamers can't wait that long to get more ammo for their hypersonic reciprocating transmorgifyer when they are pinned down and really, really need it! No other cryptocurrency had all that. It completely changed how we now think about all of our start-ups." He then said, "We plan to use the same model to integrate the crypto universe," he waved as if it were a done deal. "Our Chief of Acquisitions and Visionary Officer, Justin LaFountain, has been spearheading a whole new crypto currency venture maybe even bigger than gaming. Its flagship website will soon debut as a one-stop education and shopping site for everything about crypto. The ultimate goal is to introduce new arrivals to the freedoms of the crypto universe and help spread that freedom across its physical and virtual counterparts. We hope that will lead to many loyal customers." "Originally, we thought crypto-evangelism meant teaching people about Bitcoin, how to get and use crypto currencies, wallets, mining support, and understanding the leading exchanges. But by integrating the industrial grade BitShares Exchange Network directly onto our web sites, there's much more value we can add." After a series of annoucements over summer of 2015, BitShares now has a network of complementary partners like CCEDK.com, BANX.io, Cryptonomex.com making the fusion of all our crypto-savvy products and services available to each other's customers. Transparently interoperable markets and freely interacting customers will exponentially magnify our combined network effect. When asked about what it all means in the end for Peak Venture Group , Steve broke it down to what reqally matters to his company. "Bottom line, our competitive edge as a startup incubator was to integrate affiliate marketing into every one of them. BitShares' smart contract services, financial products, and internal affiliate program will greatly amplify that. It all works together to turn existing customers into affiliate marketers and existing affiliate marketers into uber-productive affiliate mentors." Clearly inspiring himself, his gaze drifted off to the horizon, "Peak Ventures Group can leverage these same BitShares Exchange Network relationships to supercharge every Group of new Ventures we Peak!" Contact Peak Venture Group: Justin LaFountain 763-202-4305 MMOCOCS@gmail.com 101 Convention Center Drive. S 700 Las Vegas, NV 89109 SOURCE: Peak Venture Group || Bitcoin surges as Grexit worries mount, posts best run in 18 months: By Jemima Kelly LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin surged by as much as 7 percent on Tuesday and was on track for its longest winning streak in 18 months, as concerns that Greece could tumble out of the euro drove speculators and Greek depositors into the decentralized digital currency. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras lashed out at Greece's creditors on Tuesday as he defied a string of warnings that Europe is preparing for a "Grexit". The debt-stricken country faces 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in repayments to the International Monetary Fund by the end of June. Bitcoin, a web-based "cryptocurrency" invented six years ago, is not backed by or controlled by any government or central bank and floats freely, fluctuating according to user demand. Though bitcoin's value has previously been highly volatile, it has stabilized over the past six months and is increasingly treated as a legitimate and potentially valuable asset by major financial institutions, and even by governments such as Britain's. Joshua Scigala, co-founder of Vaultoro.com, a firm that holds bitcoin for its customers and allows them to exchange it for gold and vice versa, said that Greeks were buying the currency as their trust in the authorities waned. It is also unclear what currency would be used if a Grexit does occur -- another potential factor driving Greek demand for bitcoin. "Some people aren't waiting for the government to figure out an exit plan and are doing it for themselves," said Scigala. "You have people worrying about their families' wealth or their life savings, and worrying that their money might be locked up in banks ... They'd rather hold money in a private asset like gold or bitcoin." Scigala said over the past two months, with Greece locked in talks with its creditors, the company had seen a 124 percent pick-up in inflows from Greek IP addresses - numerical labels that identify computers and other internet-enabled devices. Bitcoin traded as high as $252.05 on the Bitstamp exchange on Tuesday, its strongest in over two months, before easing a little to $245.21, still up around 4 percent on the day. That marked its sixth straight session of gains -- its best run since January 2014. In March-April 2013 bitcoin's value shot up by almost 700 percent in just over a month, as Cyprus clamped down on withdrawals and seized deposits, rattling faith in fiat currencies. Paul Gordon, founder of bitcoin firm Quantave and a board member of the UK Digital Currency Association, said that although he did not share the view that worries about Cyprus had driven that rally, Grexit fears could be driving the current one, with more people now aware of bitcoin. Story continues "This time round, the worries about Greece could be filtering through. (Bitcoin) could provide an alternative outlet for some people who are concerned about capital controls, along with more traditional methods." Some have suggested that a bitcoin-like digital currency, backed either by Greece's assets or future tax revenues, could be introduced as an parallel currency to the euro in Greece in order to avert an exit from Europe.($1 = 0.8881 Euros) (Reporting By Jemima Kelly; editing by Ralph Boulton) View comments
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
LIVE: Profit = $1,553.05 (1.33 %). BUY B423.74 @ $274.00 (#BTCe). SELL @ $275.80 (#HitBTC) #bitcoin #btc - http://www.projectcoin.org || Current price: 261.77€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2015-07-30 09:00:04 CEST || Current price: 220.47€ $BTCEUR $btc #bitcoin 2015-06-27 18:00:04 CEST || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 15 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $1,422.27 #bitcoin #btc || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 18 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $1,303.51 #bitcoin #btc || Current price: 162.54£ $BTCGBP $btc #bitcoin 2015-07-04 04:00:03 BST || $229.00 #btce;
$227.28 #bitstamp;
Instantly buy GH/s with BTC: http://bit.ly/LN53k1
#bitcoin #btc || Bitcoin traded at $268.1 USD on BTC-e at 11:00 AM Pacific Time || In the last 10 mins, there were arb opps spanning 19 exchange pair(s), yielding profits ranging between $0.00 and $1,110.08 #bitcoin #btc || $243.42 #bitstamp;
$243.00 #btce;
Instantly buy GH/s with BTC: http://bit.ly/LN53k1
#bitcoin #btc
|
Trend: down || Prices: 278.58, 279.58, 261.00, 265.08, 264.47, 270.39, 266.38, 264.08, 265.68, 261.55
|
Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
|
[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Asian Shares Boosted by Trade Talk Optimism: The major Asia Pacific stock indexes closed higher on Friday as investors remained optimistic that U.S.-China trade negotiations would end with a positive outcome. The strength was attributed to a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump that said he is set to meet with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on Friday.
On Friday, in Japan, theNikkei 225 Indexsettled at 21798.87, up 246.89 or +1.15. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index finished at 26308.44, up 600.51 or +2.34% and in South Korea, the KOSPI Index closed at 2044.61, up 16.46 or +0.81%.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 settled at 6606.80, up 59.70 or +0.91% and China’s Shanghai Index finished at 2973.66, up 25.95 or +0.88%.
Shortly after the U.S. cash market opening on Thursday, President Donald Trump said he’s meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He on Friday, fueling optimism about a positive outcome from this week’s high-level trade talks.
“Big day of negotiations with China. They want to make a deal, but do I? I meet with the Vice Premier tomorrow at The White House,” Trump said in a tweet Thursday.
Trump’s comment about a meeting with Liu contrasted with a report from the South China Morning Post that said the two sides made no progress in deputy-level trade talks this week and Liu will cut his visit short.
You know the drill, investors bought stocks on the news, driving the indexes sharply higher in the U.S., in a move that carried over to the Asian session.
Before the markets opened on Thursday, Liu told Chinese state-run media agency Xinhua that China carries “great sincerity” to the talks this week.
“The Chinese side has come with great sincerity and is willing to make serious exchanges with the U.S. on issues of common concern such as trade balance, market access and investor protection, and promote positive progress in the consultations,” Liu said.
“To affirm a temporary trade truce, the second day of trade talks (Friday) will need U.S. President Trump to suspend or cancel the U.S. tariffs that are scheduled to hit on Chinese goods October 15 and December 15,” strategists at Singapore’s DBS Group Research wrote in a note.
Still, in the longer term, the strategists said: “The broader China-US trade war remains unresolved,”
Analysts at J.P. Morgan said in a note they expect four possible scenarios could emerge from the trade negotiations.
First, an “ice-breaking meeting that will lead to a major deal” in the coming months, second, a “mini-deal” focusing on China’s purchase of U.S. products and some structural reforms while new tariffs get postponed indefinitely, third, a no-deal status quo where new tariffs come into play, but negotiations continue, and finally, a break-up scenario, where there’s no deal and no further dialogue between the U.S. and China.
J.P. Morgan analysts said they are expecting a no-deal status quo while “market investors also have high hopes for a mini-deal.”
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• EUR/USD Mid-Session Technical Analysis for October 11, 2019 || Contract Signed With Financial Consultant to Lead Expansion Capital Raise: Contract Signed with Financial Consultant to Lead Capital Raise For Expansion
Corporate Progress
FRUITLAND, ID / ACCESSWIRE / October 2, 2019 /XTRA BITCOIN INC (OTC PINK:TCEL) $TCEL $xtrabitcoin:
XTRA's Board is pleased to introduce our newest team member, Mr. David Chua Soon Li. Based in Malaysia, David Chua has more than 25 years of experience in finance and advisory, corporate consultancy, fund raising, portfolio and fund management across various asset classes including equities, derivatives, bonds, hedge funds, FX, real estate and private equity. He has extensive market experience across Asia, US, Europe, Middle East and Emerging Markets. With strong communication, data and technical analysis skills, he has performed due diligence and participated in mergers and acquisitions, project management, public speaking and management reporting.
As CEO of IPMUDA BERHAD he brought in approximately $500m RM, $125 million USD revenues per year. David has served as VP for investments at Al Mojil Investment in Saudi Arabia, Dubai. He was Senior Manager at SBB Securities during that time, he helped oversee 32b RM, USD 7.2 billion assets. Earlier Mr. Chua served at BBMB Securities from 1991 to 2001 as an institutional sales dealer for the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), Lembaga Tabung Haji, UBS, Goldman Sachs and various investment and mutual funds.
XTRA's CEO Paul Knudson welcomes David to the XTRA Bitcoin Team. We are very excited to David bring his experience and vast connections to guide our capital raise as we grow our company and increase revenues.
XTRA believes his connections and expertise will help us get the best financing terms that benefit the company and shareholders. Management has been working diligently to bring current all filings and has negotiated for reduced interest rate on outstanding debt and the elimination of all convertible debt note. This has removed dilution risk and strengthens the company's financial position as it pursues expansion financing.
Our discussion may include predictions, estimates or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation. Please keep in mind that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. You should also review our most recent filings for a more particular discussion of these factors and other risks, particularly under the heading "Risk Factors".
If you would like more information about this topic, please call Paul Knudson at 1-208-707-1008, or emailpck710@gmail.com. Twitter: @xtrabitcoin TCEL$.
CONTACT:
Paul Knudson1-208-630-6678paul@xtrabitcoin.com
SOURCE:XTRA Bitcoin Inc.
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/561676/Contract-Signed-With-Financial-Consultant-to-Lead-Expansion-Capital-Raise || Bitcoin Cash – ABC, Litecoin and Ripple Daily Analysis – 28/10/19: Bitcoin Cash ABC rose by 2.45% on Sunday. Reversing a 2.14% fall on Saturday, Bitcoin Cash ABC ended the week up 16.8% at $261.26.
A mixed start to the day saw Bitcoin Cash ABC fall to an early morning intraday low $246.65 before making a move.
Steering clear of the first major support level at $236.18, Bitcoin Cash ABC rallied to a late afternoon intraday high $269.5.
Coming up short of the first major resistance level at $277.88, Bitcoin Cash ABC eased back to $260 levels before wrapping up the day at $261 levels.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash ABC was up by 1.22% to $264.44. A bullish start to the day saw Bitcoin Cash ABC rally to an early morning high $275.25 before falling to a low $261.15.
Bitcoin Cash ABC broke through the first major resistance level at $271.62 and 23.6% FIB of $273 before easing back.
In spite of the pullback, Bitcoin Cash ABC steered well clear of the major support levels.
For the day ahead, a break back through the first major resistance level would support another run at the 23.6% FIB.
Bitcoin Cash ABC would need the support of the broader market, however, to break back through to $270 levels.
Barring an extended rally through the day, the first major resistance level at $271.62 would likely limit any upside.
Failure to break back through the first major resistance level could lead to a pullback later in the day.
A fall through to sub-$260 levels would bring the first major support level at $248.77 into play before any recovery.
Barring a crypto meltdown, Bitcoin Cash ABC should steer clear of sub-$240 levels on the day.
[fx-image src=https://www.tradingview.com/x/TN7gHuG4/ originalWidth=761 ratio=1.3 data-zoom-target=https://www.tradingview.com/x/TN7gHuG4/]
Litecoin rallied by 5.31% on Sunday. Following a 0.16% fall on Saturday, Litecoin ended the week up 9.01% to $59.91.
A bearish start to the day saw Litecoin fall to an early morning intraday low $55.77 before finding support from the broader market.
Steering clear of the first major support level at $52.55, Litecoin rallied to a late afternoon intraday high $62.96.
Litecoin broke through the first major resistance level at $62.81 before sliding back to sub-$60 levels late in the day.
At the time of writing, Litecoin was down by 0.62% to $59.54. A choppy start to the day saw Litecoin rally to an early morning high $62.71 before hitting reverse.
Falling short of the first major resistance level at $63.32, Litecoin fell to a morning low $58.41. Litecoin left the major support levels untested early on.
For the day ahead, Litecoin would need to move through to $59.60 levels to support a return to $60 levels.
Litecoin would need the support of the broader market, however, to take a run at the first major resistance level at $63.32.
Failure to move through to $59.60 levels could see Litecoin fall deeper into the red. A fall back through to $58 levels would bring the first major support level at $56.13 into play before any recovery.
Barring an extended sell-off through the day, Litecoin should steer clear of sub-$56 levels.
[fx-image src=https://www.tradingview.com/x/PgO9TuEz/ originalWidth=761 ratio=1.3 data-zoom-target=https://www.tradingview.com/x/PgO9TuEz/]
Ripple’s XRP rose by 1.59% on Sunday. Reversing a 1.48% decline from Saturday, Ripple’s XRP ended the week up 1.42% at $0.2997.
A choppy start to the day saw Ripple’s XRP fall to an early intraday low $0.291 before striking an early morning intraday high $0.30344.
In spite of the early moves, Ripple’s XRP left the major support and resistance levels untested.
A pullback to $0.2920 levels by late morning was short-lived, with Ripple’s XRP finding support from the broader market.
Upward momentum through the 2ndhalf of the day delivered the upside for the day and for the week.
At the time of writing, Ripple’s XRP was up by 0.5% to $0.30119. A mixed start to the day saw Ripple’s XRP rise from an early morning low $0.29790 to a high $0.30648 before easing back.
Steering clear of the major support levels, Ripple’s XRP broke through the first major resistance level at $0.3051.
For the day ahead, a move back through the first major resistance level at $0.3051 would support a run at $0.31 levels.
Ripple’s XRP would need support from the broader market, however, to break out from the morning high $0.30648.
Barring an extended rally through the day, however, the first major resistance level would likely limit any upside.
Failure to move back through the first major resistance level could see Ripple’s XRP hit reverse.
A fall back through to sub-$0.2980 levels would bring the first major support level at $0.2927 into play.
Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Ripple’s XRP should steer clear of sub-$0.29 support levels on the day.
[fx-image src=https://www.tradingview.com/x/yuqbwfI5/ originalWidth=761 ratio=1.3 data-zoom-target=https://www.tradingview.com/x/yuqbwfI5/]
Please let us know what you think in the comments below
Thanks, Bob
Thisarticlewas originally posted on FX Empire
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• Ethereum and Stellar’s Lumen Daily Tech Analysis – 28/10/19 || Bitcoin Superstar als #1 Kryptohandelsplattform gewählt: LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / October 3, 2019 /Genauigkeit ist ein wichtiger Faktor in der Welt des Kryptowährungshandels. Wie viel man verliert oder Gewinn hängt davon ab, wie genau eine Person Trends erkennen und rechtzeitig Trades machen kann. Das ist in der Regel nicht einfach. Als Menschen gibt es Faktoren wie Emotionen und Panik beim Kauf. Das sind Schwächen, die in keiner Weise für den dramatischen Kryptowährungsmarkt von heute geeignet sind. Der Bitcoin-Markt zum Beispiel kann einen dramatischen Preisverfall innerhalb weniger Stunden erleben. In einem dynamischen Markt wie diesem ist etwas Anspruchsvolles erforderlich, um Trades zu analysieren, Transaktionen zu tätigen und riesige Bitcoin-Gewinne als Handelsrenditen zu liefern.Hier ist, wo Trading Bots kommen in.
Handel mit Bots und Handel
Handelsbots sind Programme, die entwickelt wurden, um Trends in den Kryptowährungsmärkten zu erkennen. Diese Programme wurden in vielen Märkten wie Forex verwendet und werden jetzt auf dem Kryptowährungsmarkt verwendet. Sie verwenden Algorithmen, um Marktbewegungen zu analysieren und Transaktionen basierend auf den Parametern der Händler oder dem Parameter des Entwicklers durchzuführen. Obwohl alle gleichermaßen einen Vorteil über den menschlichen Emotionen im Handel haben, haben sie nicht gleichermaßen die gleiche Raffinesse, die es Händlern ermöglicht, die Marktbewegungen zu überwachen, um ihnen zu helfen, der Kurve voraus zu bleiben. Einen effizienten Handelsbot zu finden, um den Handel auf dem Kryptowährungsmarkt zu unterstützen, kann sich irgendwann als schwierig erweisen, vor allem für Bitcoin. Wie es aussiehtBitcoin Superstarist die effizienteste automatisierte Trading-Software gibt es für alle Kryptowährung Händler daran interessiert, riesige Gewinne auf ihre Trades zu erfassen.
Bitcoin Gewinn
Bitcoin Superstarist eine Handelsgemeinschaft, die speziell für Kryptowährungshändler entwickelt wurde. Sie handeln Ethereum, Bitcoin und eine Vielzahl anderer Kryptowährungen. Diese Community verwendet eine gewinngenerierende Software, um Händlern zu helfen, von Kryptowährungen unabhängig von ihrem Qualifikationsniveau zu profitieren. Bitcoin-Gewinn arbeitet 0,01s schneller als der Marktdurchschnitt für Handelssignale.
Das Hauptmerkmal des Bitcoin-Gewinns
Das Herzstück von Bitcoin Superstar ist eine leistungsstarke Handelssignal-Engine. Diese Signal-Engine identifiziert lukrative Handelsmöglichkeiten durch ständiges Scannen der Kryptowährung Markt. Die Entscheidung, welche Vermögenswerte gehandelt werden, wird durch die generierten Signale aus dem Signalmotor herbeigeführt. Zu diesen Vermögenswerten gehörenBitcoin, Ethereum und Ripple. Abgesehen davon, die Signale Motor erzeugt auch Signale, die spezifisch für das Wann zu öffnen oder zu schließen Markt, um Gewinne zu maximieren. Für Händler mit wenig Wissen darüber, wie Kryptowährung funktioniert, ist dies eine hilfreiche Funktion.
Warum Bitcoin Superstar wählen?
Bitcoin Superstar ist sowohl benutzerfreundlich als auch intuitiv: Diese Funktion macht Bitcoin Superstar aus der Masse heraus. Obwohl es mit einem sehr komplexen Algorithmus funktioniert, ist die Benutzererfahrung einfach eine der besten aus jedem Bitcoin-Handelsbot. Die Einrichtung dieser Software ist einfach und Händler können ihren Handel leicht in Gang bringen. Es ist so einfach, wie es geht.
Hohe Erfolgs-Trades-Rate: Bitcoin Superstar hat eine hohe Erfolgsrate von 90%. Dies bietet Benutzern tägliche Gewinne. Möglich wird dies durch die parallelen Trades, die mit kürzeren Anlagen platziert werden. Für jede Einzahlung von '450 können viele gleichzeitige Trades von '45 platziert werden.
Tutorials und Demo-Konten: Nicht so viele Plattformen bieten Demo-Konten an. Einige, wenn angeboten, bieten keine voll funktionsfähigen Tutorials.Bitcoin Superstarermöglicht es Händlern, ein Demo-Konto zu erstellen, um sich mit der Plattform und ihren Funktionalitäten vertraut zu machen. Das Spiegel-Konto, das zusammen mit dem Broker erstellt wird, wenn Händler sich auf Bitcoin Superstar registrieren, ermöglicht es Benutzern, auf viele Tutorials zuzugreifen. Tipps gibt es auch zu Berufen im Bildungsbereich.
Engagierter und reaktionsschneller Kundensupport: Kunden erfahrungsgemäß e.H. Mitarbeiter können entweder über die Homepage oder auf dem Dashboard-Bildschirm des Händlers engagiert werden.
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SOURCE:Algo Signals
View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/561813/Bitcoin-Superstar-als-1-Kryptohandelsplattform-gewhlt || Binance Futures’ Bitcoin trading volumes hit a record high: Number one spot cryptocurrency exchange Binance has seen its futures trading business rocket as of late, with 24-hour trading volume hitting a high of $820m on 15 October. Trading volume has since settled to around $700 million—the same level that occurs on Binance’s highly successful spot trading exchange.
Since thelaunchof Binance futures’ bitcoin derivatives market in September, 24-hour tradingvolumehad mostly settled in the $250-$500 million range. However, since the futures exchange hit a recent volume low of $300 million on 13 October, daily trading volumes have more than doubled in the last 3 days to hit a high of over $800 million.
Futures trading is classified as a type of derivatives market. Unlike spot markets—where the settlement happens immediately—in futures trading, the market only needs to be settled dependent on the specific market’s settlement date. This settlement delay means that high leverage is commonplace for futures trading exchanges.
At the momentBinance Futuresoffers traders up to 20x leverage, with rivals such asBitMEXoffering up to 100x. Spot markets most often have no or very low leverage. The pick up in Binance futures trading could indicate that crypto-traders are increasingly interested in speculating (with high leverage) in cryptocurrency investments.
Interestingly, Binance’s other futures market,Binance JEX, is faring less well. The sister venture, which started trading five days after Binance Futures, splits its US-dollar denominated trading pairs between Bitcoin (52%), Ethereum (20%) and EOS (28%). Binance JEX also kicked off trading with around $300 million worth of 24-hourvolume, but has seen a steady decline in interest, with daily volumes currently at $160 million, and seemingly trending lower.
According to data fromCoinGecko, Binance Futures currently ranks at fifth place in the overall crypto futures trading market, in terms of its daily trading volumes. Ahead of Binance isBybit($710 million) and the three futures heavyweights ofHuobi($1.6 billion), BitMEX ($2 billion) and finallyOKEx($2.8 billion). || Venezuelan Migrants Are Using Bitcoin for Remittances, But Theres a Catch: In 2018, Deimer González packed his college diploma, clothes and a mobile wallet with 1.5 BTC in savings and left Venezuela. What unfolded throughout 2019 offers a microcosm for Venezuelan bitcoin users around the world. As a mechanical engineer from Caracas, formerly employed by Venezuelas state-owned oil and natural gas company (PDVSA), González told CoinDesk that those very same savings allowed him to support his parents as he started to build a new life in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was always able to send money back thanks to my savings, sparing my wages in pesos, he said. Related: Venezuelas Maduro Mandates Petro Use in Funding of Housing Project With an estimated $3.7 billion in remittances sent in 2019, money from abroad is an increasingly large source of income for Venezuelan families. As such, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have assumed a larger role in facilitating cross-border transactions. Additionally, migrants are using crypto during the relocation process itself, since its often hard for jobless immigrants to access financial services in their new countries. Such is the case with Wolfang Barrios, a trader from Caracas who told CoinDesk about his experience arriving in Chile without savings in the local currency. Said Barrios: I didnt have a stable job, enough money or a bank account. I could send the remittances only using crypto. Related: Mastercard, R3 to Develop Blockchain Cross-Border Payments Platform Plus, supporting a family in Venezuela isnt easy, even with dollars. In May, Venezuelan economist Luis Oliveros placed the cost of living in the country as high as $900 a month for a family of five, with a basic food basket costing roughly $300 a month. For context, the minimum wage in Venezuela is currently equivalent to $15 a month , though economists suspect this rate wont last long. In Gonzálezs case, neither his prior $5 monthly wage as a PDVSA worker nor his bitcoin remittances alone offer enough to support his family. Story continues Now I send $50 [worth of bitcoin] and its still nothing, he said, adding that both his parents currently must work to sustain themselves, without further plans to move out of Venezuela. The remittance business Perhaps because of all these challenges, crypto-remittance businesses could start to bloom in Venezuela. One such entrepreneur, who asked to be identified only by his first name Jesús, works for the Peru-Venezuela remittance platform Local Remesas. We receive between $200,000 and $300,000 a month, he said, explaining how the platform currently trades pesos for bitcoin, to be later exchanged for bolivares in Venezuela. As it turns out, niche fiat-to-crypto payment processing is a lucrative business in Venezuela. According to Perus Migrations and Immigrations Police, the country is the second choice for Venezuelan immigrants, with over 865,000 arrivals to date. Even Nicolás Maduros government recently launched its own remittances platform , which uses the blockchain-based Petro (PTR). As for Jesús, he said the trick to exchanging at the best rate is to use direct contacts: LocalBitcoins is about 3 percent more expensive than using my own contacts. Heres the catch However, for many of these bitcoin users, crypto payments are merely a last resort. A daily inflation rate of 3 percent and the constant devaluation of the bolivar has made the exchange of bitcoin very useful for those living in Venezuela. But elsewhere in Latin America, some bitcoin users prefer to use fiat as soon as the situation is tenable. Mariluna De La Concha, a Venezuelan crypto advocate living in México, told CoinDesk that she sent remittances in crypto to her family from 2016 until early 2019. Now she only sends pesos to her mother. Its not convenient to exchange crypto, she said. In Venezuela it has good value due to inflation, but its very expensive for me from here. Her choice to use those expensive-but-compliant exchange platforms was also a matter of safety. Cases of fraud have been reported anonymously in Venezuelan private chats, where American bank accounts of Venezuelan users get reported and blocked after a transaction. An anonymous source told CoinDesk theres even the suspicion that exchange platforms transactions are being tracked by government police to extort bitcoin users. For González, the mechanical engineer who fled in 2018, the situation has prompted him to switch to sending more fiat currency back home. Said González: Im more of a [bitcoin] holder now. Venezuelan Bolivar image via Shutterstock Related Stories Venezuelan Pharmacy Chain to Accept Cryptocurrency Payments PundiXs Crypto Cash Registers Will Be Installed in 49 Retail Stores Across Venezuela || Are Blockchain ETFs Set to Rally?: Though the SEC is not ready give its nod to a formal bitcoin ETF for all, the atmosphere is warming up to digital currencies. Constant endeavors by different companies and countries to promote digital currencies have been noticed of late (read: VanEck, SolidX Pull Out Bitcoin ETF Proposal From SEC Review). Switzerland’s central bank is working with the country’s stock exchange to assess the possible use of digital currencies in trading. On Oct 8, 2019, Swiss stock exchange operator SIX Group said it was partnering with the Swiss National Bank (SNB) on a proof of concept to “explore how digital central bank money could be used in the settlement of tokenized assets between market participants.” SIX Group has been working on a digital exchange that would deploy blockchain, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, issue and settle trades in digital assets. The core idea is to “tokenize” traditional assets like shares and bonds — “essentially creating digital versions of such securities — a move the firm claims would reduce the time it takes to complete a trade, from a number of days down to less than a second,” per CNBC. Other Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Initiatives Not only the Swiss stock exchange operator, Facebook FB is also exploring ways tointroduce its libra cryptocurrency. The social media giant is striving to gain Washington’s support on its crypto plan. In fact, Facebook startled the investing world, regulators and lawmakers on Jun 18 with its announcement of launching its own digital coin called Libra in 2020, per Reuters. Libra will be backed by a spectrum of international currencies and other investments (read: Facebook Crypto Plans in Doubt, Blockchain ETFs in Focus). Vanguard has also collaborated with Nasdaq Ventures-backed blockchain startup Symbiont to develop a trading platform for the $6-trillion currency market, the companies said. With the new platform, Vanguard, intends to cut back on transaction costs for the trillions of dollars worth of currencies it trades annually by “boosting peer-to-peer trading for investors, connecting them directly via blockchain technology.” Major global central banks have been looking into the creation of their own digital currencies, with China’s central bank having recently said that it is close to releasing its own virtual coin. Meanwhile, “Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has proposed a digital alternative to the U.S. dollar to become the world’s reserve currency,” according to an article published on CNBC.com. Story continues These efforts and initiatives hint at an upcoming rally in blockchain ETFs. Cryptocurrencies across the board have been rallying hard in 2019, with Bitcoin gaining more than 120% this year. So, investors can familiarize with the concept through blockchain ETFs like Reality Shares Nasdaq NexGen Economy ETF BLCN, Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF BLOK and First Trust Indxx Innovative Transaction & Process ETF LEGR. Want key ETF info delivered straight to your inbox? Zacks’ free Fund Newsletter will brief you on top news and analysis, as well as top-performing ETFs, each week. Get it free >> Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Facebook, Inc. (FB) : Free Stock Analysis Report Reality Shares Nasdaq NexGen Economy ETF (BLCN): ETF Research Reports First Trust Indxx Innovative Transaction & Process ETF (LEGR): ETF Research Reports Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK): ETF Research Reports To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report View comments || Latest Bitcoin Cash price and analysis (BCH to USD): At the time of writing, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is trading at around $233. Even though last week the altcoin was showing signs of a further drop, BCH rebounded during the weekend. Overall, BCH has gained more than of 5% since last week and, rising 4% in just the past 24 hours. Will BCH start a new consolidation phase above $230? Let’s take a look at the chart of Bitcoin Cash… BCH chart, by Trading View We can see that the price of BCH recovered during early September, before crashing twice towards the end of the month. Unfortunately, the gains of mid-September were lost and the price came crawling back down to below $230 in October, as the huge market-wide meltdown hit the coin hard. At its lowest point over the past month, BCH touched $200 before recovering almost immediately to more than $225. Currently, it’s trading above $22o. Last week , I assigned a higher probability to BCH going upwards, as the price has been claiming higher lows. It did dropped lower towards $211, however, it recovered almost immediately during the weekend, going north of $235. In essence, BCH gained over 10% from its weekly lowest point to its highest. Nevertheless, Bitcoin Cash is trading well below all its EMAs. Looking at the volume profile, we can clearly see BCH has strong support between $220 – $230 and almost no resistance until the $270-$280 level, where the 50-day EMA sits. If the market starts swinging stronger to the upside over the next couple of weeks, some altcoins like BCH have a high chance of making gains since the coin has already lost close to 60% since July, when BCH was trading above $500. For the time being, I expect BCH to fluctuate between $230 and $270. If fresh investment comes into the market over the following days, there’s a decent chance Bitcoin Cash will continue making higher lows while it accumulates to the upside. Right now, volume sits at just below $1.7 billion, around 30% higher than last week. Story continues Safe trades! BCH fundamentals I recently spoke with Bitcoin Cash’s strongest advocate, Roger Ver, and discussed the most recent developments on the horizon for BCH. You can find all the details here , but the most juicy news seems to be the recent spike in adoption due to the implementation of smart contracts. Roger, like myself, believes key components for mass adoption are speed and flexibility. What Bitcoin Cash Oracles offers is a way for any user to easily deploy an “escrow” transaction that can be used to trade globally – without the hassle of trusting the other party. I personally think these “trade escrows” will be key in terms of adoption, especially for work-related tasks. In a way, they do enable milestone-based funding, which may be the new and better way of conducting ICOs instead of simply creating an extra layer of complexity with STOs that require KYC and accreditation – something that goes against what we should be promoting within the crypto ecosystem. Current live BCH pricing information and interactive charts are available on our site 24 hours a day. The ticker bar at the bottom of every page on our site has the latest BCH price. Pricing is also available in a range of different currency equivalents: US Dollar – BCHtoUSD British Pound Sterling – BCHtoGBP Japanese Yen – BCHtoJPY Euro – BCHtoEUR Australian Dollar – BCHtoAUD Russian Rouble – BCHtoRUB Bitcoin – BCHtoBTC About Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin Cash was born out of the idea of making Bitcoin more practical for small, day-to-day payments. In May 2017, Bitcoin payments took about four days unless a fee was paid, which was proportionately too large for small transactions. A change to the code was implemented and Bitcoin Cash was born on 1st August 2017. More Bitcoin Cash news and information If you want to find out more information about Bitcoin Cash or cryptocurrencies in general, then use the search box at the top of this page. Here’s an article to get you started: Roger Ver to launch crypto exchange on Bitcoin.com By Oliver Knight – October 22, 2019 As with any investment, it pays to do some homework before you part with your money. The prices of cryptocurrencies are volatile and go up and down quickly. This page is not recommending a particular currency or whether you should invest or not. You may be interested in our range of cryptocurrency guides along with the latest cryptocurrency news . The post Latest Bitcoin Cash price and analysis (BCH to USD) appeared first on Coin Rivet . || The Brexit effect: How bitcoin, gold and the pound reacted to Europe's biggest story: Brexit might be, may be coming to a close. With theannouncementthat the British government has reached an accord with the EU earlier this week, all eyes are on ‘super Saturday’–the debate in the Houses of Parliament which would decide the UK’s fate on October 31. As a result, we decided to look back at how, if anything this seismic shift in European politics has affected the price of the British pound, gold, and of course,bitcoin.
It all started on 24 June 2016, the day after the shock win for the Leave campaign. With the public choosing to vote 51.9% in favor of Brexit, the pound nosedived—nearly 8% against the US-dollar, 13% against gold—and finally a mammoth 20% against Bitcoin.
On that day, the market cap of Bitcoin surged to reclaim its $10 billion valuation. Prior to Brexit, the digital asset had been steadily growing in value since it fell to a market cap low of $2.9 billion in January 2015. Since that low, the cryptocurrency rocketed over 300% in 18 months, as the network eagerly awaited the project’s next supply halvening—from 25 to 12.5 new Bitcoin’s every 10 minutes.
The 12% rally for Bitcoin against the dollar that day was facilitated byaround$120 million worth of daily trading volume to take the decentralized asset to a high of $660. Back in mid-2016, the most liquid GBP market was the London based Coinfloor exchange. According to data from TradingView, the exchange did around 772 Bitcoins’ worth of volume that day, valued back then at around $4.9 million.
After the pound hit a momentary high of $1.5 against the dollar on the night of the vote, the British national currency fell by around 20% over the next 8 months. After hitting a low of $1.2 in March 2017 the pound rallied 6% in a 4-week period, as the UK Parliament finally voted to activate Article 50 and begin the UK’s two-year countdown to negotiate its exit from the single market.
In the same mid-March to mid-April 2017 period, Gold also saw its own price rise by around 7% against the US dollar. The same cannot, however, be said for Bitcoin. Back in March 2017, having started the year around $1000, Bitcoin had gone on to hit a then all-time high of $1300, based on the expectation that aBitcoin ETFmay potentially be approved. With the rejection confirmed on the 10 March 2017, the digital asset subsequently crashed to a low of $888, at exactly the same time that the EU departure was being confirmed into UK law.
With the countdown clock now ticking to leave the EU, the pound managed to rally 15% over the next 10 months. The rally was aided by the government’s majority party retaining its control during a snap election on June 2017, and the subsequent departure deal the UK government was putting into place with the EU.
Over the same 10 months, Bitcoin had rallied from the March 2017 low of $888 to hit a high of $20,000 in December 2017. The 2200% rally was fueled by the launch of two US-regulated bitcoin futures markets, and a surge in speculation around altcoins and continued coverage in the mainstream media. While the pound and bitcoin saw increased volatility, gold was pretty much flat during the same 300 day period, leveling out around $1350—around the same level following Britain’s initial vote to leave the EU.
As the UK’s Brexit negotiations with the EU deteriorated, so did the Pound against the US-dollar. Between April 2018 to the current day: the EU’s deal was rejected by the UK parliament (January 2019), UK’s Prime Minister Thersa May was forced to ask for a Brexit extension (April 2019) before finally resigning (May 2019), to then be replaced by Boris Johnson (July 2017).
In this period of time, the Pound retraced all of its 15% gains, to fall from a high of $1.43 to hit $1.20 on 3 September. In the same 500 day period of time, gold broke out of its critical $1400 resistance to rally 15% against the US-dollar. Bitcoin, on the other hand, remained flat around $8,000—but the true story of those 17 months included the digital asset falling back down to $3,000 (December 2018) before rallying to hit a high of nearly $14,000 in June this year.
In the final period of analysis, over the last 7-days, based on the Prime Minister securing the endorsement of his Brexit plan at the EU summit, the pound has come back strong to rally almost 6% against the dollar to climb back up to $1.29. Over the same one week period, Gold has fallen 0.4% with bitcoin also down around 4% on the week.
The conclusion from all this seems to be that apart from the shock of Brexit vote, gold and the world’s biggest cryptocurrency seem pretty unaffected by the pounds near-constant volatility over the last 3 years. According to data fromFiatMarketCap, theM3money supply of the Great Britsh Pound is around $3.6 trillion. That money supply is smaller than the physical market cap of gold—around $9 trilliontoday—but a long way short of Bitcoin’s market cap that is over 25 times smaller at just $143 billion today.
Since the day of the initial vote for Brexit, the market cap of Bitcoin has risen by 1400% or $133 billion. In the same period of time, the cryptocurrency’s daily trading volume has rocketed a gargantuan 83 times—from $120 million to over $10 billion. For Gold, the overall change is up 13% or around $1 trillion in market cap. In comparison, the Pound is currently down around 15% from the day after the vote. It’s been a volatile couple of years for all these assets, but for Gold and Bitcoin’s sake, let’s hope a potential canceled Brexit doesn’t end up reversing all those gains. || Victim of OneCoin scam tells of hope that missing ‘Cryptoqueen’ will be found: One of the devastated victims of the OneCoin scam has spoken of her hope that its missing CEO – Ruja Ignatova – will be found after the fraudster’s brother agreed to inform on his sister and members of the Bulgarian Mafia. Konstantin Ignatov pleaded guilty to a string of charges related to fraud last week at New York Southern District Court. However, facing a possible 90-year sentence behind bars for his involvement with OneCoin, the 33-year-old agreed to a plea bargain that means he will face no further charges in exchange for helping detectives. While keen for him to face the full force of the law, one of OneCoin’s victims says the agreement brings into focus the real possibility that the 38-year-old so-called ‘Cryptoqueen’ could be brought to justice. Jen McAdam Jen McAdam Jen McAdam is spearheading a group of victims who have lost huge sums after ploughing cash into what was sold to them as “the next Bitcoin”. Ms McAdam personally lost £8,000 but also encouraged friends and members of her family to plough almost a quarter of a million pounds into the scam. Since speaking out about OneCoin and its elusive Oxford-educated CEO, the 49-year-old has received a torrent of vile abuse from the Bulgarian-based Ponzi scheme’s supporters, with threats of sexual violence and even death. Speaking to Coin Rivet, Ms McAdam said hope was still very strong that Ignatova will be found and face charges in the US. Charged ‘in absentia’, the missing fraudster has been accused of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and money laundering. Ruja Ignatova Ruja Ignatova Further charges could still be brought, but the current set of five accusations would be enough to put her behind bars for 85 years, if found guilty. Further hope “With her brother taking the plea deal, that also brings further hope to victims that when Ruja is caught, the truth will eventually be told in a court of law for all of her devastated victims to hear which, hopefully, will bring some peace their way,” Ms McAdam said. Story continues “At the moment, I speak to victims every day who are either distressed, upset, shocked, devastated, or even suicidal. “This is a multi-billion dollar fake crypto scam that has hit nearly every country worldwide and left so many people with their hearts ripped from them and their families.” Ignatova – who has been on the run since disappearing in October 2017 after raising $5bn worldwide with OneCoin – has, according to her victims, left families utterly ruined by the scam. “Many OneCoin victims sold their homes and used all their life savings to purchase these fraudulent fake OneCoin packages that Ruja created through her fraud,” added Ms McAdam, before heaping praise on the BBC’s Jamie Bartlett and Georgia Catt for turning the spotlight on the scandal with The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast. “The series by the BBC helped to raise awareness, and in doing so has alerted mainstream media on a scale the OneCoin victims did not expect but are so very grateful for. “Maybe as media awareness is raised further the world will become smaller for Ruja Ignatova – the multi-billion dollar fraudster and scammer – to hide, and just maybe she will be found by the authorities and face her charges for her horrendous crimes in a court of law. And just maybe with hope her devastated victims will see justice take place. Recovery fund “When this day comes – if it ever does – we then hope an asset recovery fund could then become available for the OneCoin victims.” Hope, she says, has been the one overriding emotion that has brought strength to the victims she supports in every corner of the world. It is believed 70,000 people in the UK alone fell foul of Ignatova’s Ponzi. “Justice, the truth, and hope are what we hold onto going into the future – we will never, ever, ever give up on that,” she vows. The BBC’s podcast has been widely commended for highlighting what has turned out to be one of the world’s biggest frauds. “Immense thanks to the producers Jamie Bartlett and Georgia Catt for hearing the victims’ voices and investigating the OneCoin scam, which then led them on to produce The Missing Cryptoqueen podcast series,” she praises. “If it was not for these two very kind, caring, and concerned journalists, I am really not sure if the OneCoin victims would have been heard. “Through their investigation and podcast series, they have highlighted this horrendous and devastating scam by Ruja Ignatova and also given the OneCoin victims further hope for justice.” Konstantin Ignatov Konstantin Ignatov, brother of missing ‘Cryptoqueen’ Ruja Ignatova For now, however, all eyes are on the ongoing court case in New York, where legal attention has moved away from Ignatova’s younger brother and back on to former lawyer Mark Scott and his involvement in laundering the gang’s money. Scott even tried to implicate Neil Bush – brother of former US President George W Bush and son of George HW Bush – by attempting to subpoena the businessman. Bush, through his business connections, was paid $300,000 to meet with Ruja Ignatova in Hong Kong over a possible deal involving OneCoin. Bush declined to pursue the interest. Prominent figure Scott had hoped the fact that such a prominent figure was prepared to meet Ignatova gave OneCoin enough credibility for him to believe nothing about OneCoin was untoward. The new focus in the case, though, will do little to distract from the fact that the potential for recovering the lost funds of hundreds of thousands of victims could be put in reach with Konstantin Ignatov’s plea bargain. Despite it being a desperate attempt to avoid spending the rest of his life in jail, he may yet be the key to unlocking his older sister’s dark secrets. “May justice and the full truth come soon,” concludes Ms McAdam. “What we believed was to be a financial dream has become in reality a financial and horrific nightmare. “Never trust in people’s word – always do your due diligence and verify and keep safe from fake crypto scammers and fraudsters like Ruja Ignatova and OneCoin. “People should remember, ‘what sometimes looks like sugar is indeed salt!’” Support group If you’ve been affected by the OneCoin scheme, various support groups with thousands of members can be found. There are also individual groups covering the countries where the Ponzi operated. They can be found here… https://www.facebook.com/groups/1270760729671878/ The post Victim of OneCoin scam tells of hope that missing ‘Cryptoqueen’ will be found appeared first on Coin Rivet .
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
Os bilionários Jack Ma e Pony Ma, que construíram impérios financeiros dominando o setor de pagamentos on-line da China, terão pela frente aquele que poderia ser o concorrente mais forte de todos os tempos: o banco central.
$BTC #Crypto #Bitcoin RIP ⚰️
https://t.co/FLFO5gkN2F || BUSINESS: Asian markets mixed after Wall Street high
#PhatzNewsRoom
#BusinessMorning
#BusinessNews
#WallStreet
#AsiaPacific
#GlobalMarkets
#DAX
#NYSE
#CAC
#FTSE
#Tariffs
#China
#NAFTA
#ECB
#Brexit
#Bitcoin
#ECB
#TPP
https://t.co/NS3BTThmny || This is the best one of these craft ale name challenges I have seen. || $IDOL(BTC)
Price: 1sat
Volume: 0.0 BTC
$IDOL(DOGE)
Price: 0.00012 DOGE(0.00313sat)
Volume: 306735 DOGE(0.083 BTC)
$BTC(JPY)
￥864560 || Leader of Bitcoin-fuelled fake ID ring gets two years in US federal prison https://t.co/gUHTALYRtX || @santisiri @NickSzabo4 Forever thankful to what the old guard did, laying the foundation for Bitcoin, driving decentralization, public money, and all that goes with it forward... || IOTA Price Freezes Around $0.27; Intraday Movement to Remain Boring
#cryptocurrecy #iotamiota #priceanalysis #priceprediction #blockchain #bitcoin #cryptocurrency #crypto...
https://t.co/b1JdKJY9RI || You can lend BTC for interest but the BTC system won't enforce the contract. It wouldn't be any different than money transfers between the two parties. Bitcoin was designed to support many types of transactions and contracts the system can execute. See https://t.co/OMkvbD96OG .. || @TomasinoWeb It’s already a month as I’ve been using new browser. CryptoTab browser, to be exact. Do you want me to ask why? I’ll tell you. It doesn’t just browse well, but allows you to earn Bitcoin with ease! Learn more, follow the link - https://t.co/0yfkDG37ke || ⏰ 18:35:30 #Piyasa #Döviz
▼ USD: 5,8633 ₺
▼ EUR: 6,5229 ₺
▲ GBP: 7,5451 ₺
▲ EUR/USD: 1,1123 $
▲ Bitcoin: 8.092,3 $
▲ Ons Altın: 1.495,17 $
▲ Gümüş: 17,577 $
▲ Gr. Altın: 281,858 ₺
▲ Ç. Altın: 460,8297 ₺
▼ Brent: 58,81 $
#Dolar #Euro #Bitcoin #Doviz #Altın
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Trend: up || Prices: 7047.92, 7146.13, 7218.37, 7531.66, 7463.11, 7761.24, 7569.63, 7424.29, 7321.99, 7320.15
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Analyze the provided historical prices, technical indicators, news, and social media sentiment from the last 60 days. Based on this context, predict the overall trend (up, down, or no change) and the specific daily closing prices for Bitcoin for the next 10 days.
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[Technical Analysis]
Not fully available.
[Random Sample of News (last 60 days)]
Unstoppable Domains Stops Selling .Coin Domains After Realizing They’ve Existed for Years: Unstoppable Domains offers an array ofNFT-based domain names that can point to cryptowallets, profile pages, and decentralized websites viewable in certain browsers. But the startup just scrapped one of its domain offerings after realizing that another company had already been selling similarWeb3domains for eight years.
Thebillion-dollar firmannounced this week that it willno longer sell .coin domain names, and has discontinued services that allow existing .coin domains to function. That’s because another blockchain company, Emercoin, had previously offered its own .coin domains since 2014—but Unstoppable Domains didn’t realize it until recently, after launching its .coin domains last year.
“Emercoin, the platform issuing .coin domains, hadn’t marketed their [top-level domain] extensively, making it difficult to find. As soon as this collision came to our attention, we stopped selling .coin domains while we investigated the issue,” the firm wrote. “The Emercoin team are pioneers in our industry and we regret that we weren’t aware of this naming collision earlier.”
Unstoppable Domains Reaches Unicorn Valuation With $65M Series A Round
Unstoppable Domains said that leaving its .coin services intact could lead to a “potential collision” between the rival offerings. That could cause users to inadvertently send crypto funds to an incorrect wallet, for example, thus losing access to those assets forever.
“Naming collisions are dangerous for the Unstoppable community and forWeb3as a whole,” the firm wrote. “Multiple versions of a [top-level domain] could cause chaos. Imagine sendingBitcointo the wrong nora.nft, or connecting your wallet to uniswap.crypto and getting a scammer’s website instead of the real one.”
Users who purchased .coin domains from Unstoppable Domains as an NFT, or a blockchain token representing ownership of a unique item, will still own those NFTs—but they are functionally useless now. The company has deactivated its services tied to the domains, but the NFTs themselves will still remain within users’ self-custodied wallets.
As a make-good offering, Unstoppable Domains said that it would refund buyers with three times the original purchase price in credits, which users can apply to other domains. The company also claimed that it has implemented more exhaustive methods for tracking down potential conflicts with other existing and future domain offerings.
“Many early attempts at blockchain naming systems were small and built for very specific communities,” it wrote. “Seeking out those early projects has been a challenge, but we've looked into them in extreme detail.”
Unstoppable Domainsraised a $65 million Series A roundin July, bringing its valuation to $1 billion. The firm claims that users have registered over 2.7 million NFT-based domains to date through its service, which is integrated with services like Coinbase Wallet and web browser Brave. The firm’s domains are currently minted onPolygon, anEthereumscaling network. || US stock slide as unexpectedly strong payroll data adds pressure on the Fed to stay hawkish: • US stocks slipped Wednesday ahead of the Fed's interest rate announcement.
• Wednesday payroll data came in better than expected, and wages rose 7.7%, per ADP.
• Markets are expecting a 75 basis-point increase, which would raise the benchmark rate to 3.75%-4%.
US stocks slipped Wednesday morning amid strong payroll data ahead of this afternoon's policy announcement from the Federal Reserve.
Companies added 239,000 positions in October, which beat estimates of 195,000, and showed an increase from the previous month. Data also revealed that wages climbed 7.7% from a year ago.
Stronger-than-expected payroll data weighed on stocks, adding pressure to the central bank to maintain a hawkish policy stance.
At 2 p.m. ET, the Federal Reserve will announce its interest rate decision which is largely expected to be thefourth consecutive 75-basis-point move. A hike of that size would bring the benchmark rate into the 3.75%-4% range, which would be the highest mark since 2008.
Here's where US indexes stood as the market opened 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday:
• S&P 500: 3,841.64, down 0.37%
• Dow Jones Industrial Average: 32,521.17, down 0.4% (132.03 points)
• Nasdaq Composite:10,850.07, down 0.4%
Here's what else is going on this morning:
• Amazon dropped out of the trillion-dollar market cap club for the first time since 2020.That leaves just four stocks with 13-figure valuations.
• Shipping giant Maersk warned "dark clouds" on the horizon threaten toslow down the global economy.
• Wells Fargo said that Americans' pandemic savings will make it harder for the Fed to cool down inflation, as US households hold around$1.2 trillion in excess savings still.
• Market veteran Ed Yardeni said the Fed could signal a 75-basis-point hike in Decemberand then pause to see what happens.
In commodities, bonds, and crypto:
• Oil prices climbed, withWest Texas Intermediateup 0.11% to $88.47 a barrel.Brent crude, the international benchmark, inched higher by 0.15% to $94.97 a barrel.
• Goldclimbed 0.61% to 1,659.70 per ounce.
• The10-year Treasury yieldticked lower by four basis points to 4.048%.
• Bitcoindropped 0.28 % to $20,396.
Read the original article onBusiness Insider || Kraken Joins List of Crypto Firms to Comply With EU Sanctions Against Russia: Crypto exchangeKrakenconfirmed that it will be conforming to the European Union’s new sanctions package.
“Kraken complies with the legal and regulatory requirements in all jurisdictions that we operate in,” a Kraken spokesperson toldDecryptvia email. “Since the EU’s announcement, we have been working to make the changes needed to comply with the latest package of sanctions against Russia."
The spokesperson did not comment on whether Russian users had been banned outright from the platform.
Kraken’s announcement comes after the EUput into play its newestsanctionspackage, aimed at punishing Russia for its aggression against Ukraine, on October 6.
The latest sanctions enforce a blanket ban on all payments flowing from the EU to Russia, whereas previous EU sanctions merely capped transactions at €10,000 (~$9,800).
The ban comes as a wave of other crypto firms move to deny access to users in the country,joining Blockchain.com, Crypto.com, and Local Bitcoinswho all announced they are set to shut access last week.
The news flies in the face of prior statements made by Kraken earlier this year, which said it would keep Russian accounts open, dubbing a ban “unfair” to average Russians who may oppose the war in Ukraine.
In March,formerKraken CEO and co-founder Jesse PowelltoldCNBCthat denying Russian users their account access was “a pretty extreme measure” that is “far beyond turning off someone’s access to their music streaming service, or their photo sharing app.”
Kraken is currentlythe fourth-largest crypto exchangein the world according to CoinGecko, recording around$356 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours. || Bitcoin and Ether Fall Slightly as Macro Clouds Loom Over Market: Crypto markets were lower on Monday, trading in sync with traditional markets as investors awaited a key U.S. inflation report due later this week.
TheCoinDesk Market Index, a broad-based market index that measures performance of cryptocurrencies, was down 1% over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin (BTC) slid 1.0% and ether (ETH) lost 0.9%.
BTC was trading in a range between $19,200 and $19,600. The price slipped below $20,000 afterFriday’s U.S. job growth reportshowed that hiring was slowing but still robust, suggesting the Federal Reserve will need to keep tightening monetary policy to bring down inflation.
A report Thursday from the Labor Department is expected to show Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data slowing to 8.1% in September from 8.3% in August – but still four times the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.
“Today’s movement reflects the general bearish trend across all markets and is likely influenced by some de-risking ahead of inflation figures,” said Riyad Carey, a research analyst at crypto data firm Kaiko.
However, there are some bullish signs. Digital asset investment products had outflows totaling $5 million last week, but the redemptions werefueled by withdrawals from “short” bitcoin products, or those betting on price declines, according to a CoinSharesreportMonday.
Short-bitcoin investment products had outflows totaling a record $15 million, according to the report.
“Bearish sentiment is dissipating,” CoinShares wrote.
Ether-focused funds saw minor outflows totaling $2.2 million last week, “highlighting continued hesitancy amongst investorspost the Merge,” according to the report.
Macroeconomic clouds loom over the market as investors remain cautious ahead of the CPI report.
“Thursday is likely to be volatile, as the inflation number will provide more information on if or when the Fed will begin to pivot,” Carey said. || In Craig Wright Verdict, Reality Prevails: It has been a bad month for bulls**t artists. I won. Welcome to law. — hodlonaut 🌮⚡🔑 🐝 (@hodlonaut) October 20, 2022 Early Thursday, a Norwegian court ruled in favor of Hodlonaut, aka Magnus Granath, in connection with Craig Wright’s claims to be pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. A judge ruled, in part, “that Granath had sufficient factual grounds to claim that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto in March 2019.” This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here . The verdict is expected to help Granath fight off parallel defamation allegations in the U.K., where Wright is already on a yearslong losing streak in the assorted nuisance lawsuits through which he has doubled down on his unsupported claims to be Satoshi. The ruling caps off an even broader string of recent losses for bloviators, fabulists and frauds of various stripes. Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered to pay $965 million in damages to victims’ families early this month, after repeatedly claiming the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting didn’t actually happen. Earlier this week, Do Kwon, a man who managed to trick both the public and himself into thinking he was a genius, gave an embarrassingly evasive interview while on the run from international law enforcement. Even Elon Musk, intermittently the richest man in the world, has given up attempts to escape a trap he singlehandedly built for himself. He recently agreed to buy Twitter at an inflated valuation rather than risk more revelations of exactly what designer drugs do to your brain . See also: Craig Wright's Abnormal Psychology | Opinion It’s almost enough to give a cynic some hope in our supposedly post-truth age. But the fascination of deception is hard to turn away from. With the case of Granath vs. Wright falling in favor of the truth, it leaves one contemplating even deeper questions. Such as: Why exactly is Craig Wright claiming to be Satoshi if he has no evidence? Story continues Bitcoin Faketoshi’s Vision One clue came in early October in the form of a new promotional video from Wright’s Bitcoin SV camp, describing a new “digital asset recovery” system for the irrelevant Bitcoin fork that claims to represent “Satoshi’s Vision.” The system would offer courts direct influence over BSV operations, including the ability to blacklist criminal funds and, even more radically, circumvent private keys to reassign ownership of tokens. This lunatic proposal provides some further illumination of Craig Wright’s bizarre insistence in recent years that blockchain tokens can be moved by court order . This is true in the very limited sense that law enforcement can compel suspects or convicts to hand over their private keys, but Wright has insisted on the much broader and sillier claim that a court order can move tokens entirely without private keys. This is technically impossible on Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency system – in fact, that’s kind of the point. Reading between the lines, the asset recovery proposal suggests the BSV coalition’s long game is to leverage Wright’s claims to be Satoshi to somehow gain control of more than 1.1 million bitcoin (BTC) that were mined by Satoshi early on, and have remained untouched since Satoshi’s disappearance. If that’s their goal, they are still far away from it. The issue is not whether keys alone confer legal ownership – ultimately, they don’t – but whether tokens can be moved or spent without them. Ultimately, they can’t. Wright and Calvin Ayre’s effective control of the low-value BSV blockchain means they can implement whatever ludicrous notary-censorship subroutine they want. But even if they manage to trick some U.S. district judge into thinking that this is how blockchains are supposed to work, the Satoshi BTC keys are not going to simply appear out of thin air. The end of an error With the Norway judgment, it seems reasonable that Craig Wright’s pathetic tale is nearing its last days of even marginal relevance. Anyone who still believes his unsupported claims at this point deserves what they get, as far as I’m concerned. Yet, there is one tantalizing question that still haunts me: to quote the great Aretha Franklin, Who’s zoomin’ who ? Specifically, are Craig Wright and allies like Calvin Ayre and Jimmy Nguyen all in on this together? Or is Wright alone defrauding his nominal allies as well as the public? See also: Why Are We Still Debating Whether Craig Wright Is Satoshi? | Opinion The arcana are definitely not worth most people’s time and energy to sort out, but there is reason to believe Wright saw Ayre as a potential financial savior after the Australian Tax Office uncovered one of Wright’s earlier frauds and levied a big fine in 2015 – just as his claims to be Satoshi became public. It’s easy to imagine Wright convincing Ayre that he’s really Satoshi, and that there was money to be made from it. It’s particularly easy to imagine because Calvin Ayre does not seem like a very smart man . It is obviously unacceptable that Craig Wright has managed to waste so much of everyone’s time, energy and money with his little charade. But there may be some cold comfort in the idea that his biggest victim is a callow billionaire who let greed override his (apparently limited) critical faculties. || Ring doorbell owner taken aback after reviewing nighttime camera footage: 'Unexpected visitor at the front door': Ring doorbell footage in Australia caught the terrifying moment when a spider crawled over the lens and seemingly looked directly into the camera. Bitcoin ETFs: What are they and how to invest in them? Twitter user @fictillius, who was identified as Evan Smith via Storyful , uploaded the video to his Twitter account with the caption “Unexpected visitor at the front door.” See this tiny New York apartment get an impressive redesign in one day with a $1,000 budget: Smith told Newsweek that he lives near bushland, which is known for housing spiders. It’s estimated that Australia has around 10,000 different species of spiders , which are the most widely distributed venomous creatures on the continent. Unexpected visitor at the front door pic.twitter.com/myxC346OtV — Sagittarius A* (@fictillius) April 18, 2022 Australia’s spiders are so large because of the warm climate and because areas like the bushland that Smith lives near provide a lot of food for them. April is also the tail end of what Australians have dubbed “spider season.” Experts say that because November to April is the wettest time of year, particularly in southern Australia where Smith lives, spider populations can increase. “I keep honeybees and native bees in my backyard, so I try not to spray any insecticides around outside,” Smith added. While the specific spider that was crawling on his Ring camera isn’t identifiable, Twitter users were nonetheless horrified at the video. “So you’ve moved out then, right?” one person asked Smith. “House has been torched, homeless now,” he joked in reply. Watch this tiny bedroom get an organization overhaul in just one day: The post Ring doorbell camera captures ‘unexpected visitor’ appeared first on In The Know . More from In The Know: The 8 best carry-ons that will definitely fit in the overhead compartment Story continues 98-year-old grandma sends grandson birthday card: 'Priceless and beautiful' Kids can grow their own native wildflower garden with these DIY seed bombs Mom transforms old paper grocery bags into giant fortune teller || U.S. stocks are mixed as investors absorb inflation news: By Liz Moyer Investing.com -- U.S. stocks were mixed on Friday after staging a massive rally the day before on the news that inflation cooled in October. At 10:50 ET (15:50 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 96 points or 0.3%, while the S&P 500 was up 0.6% and the NASDAQ Composite was up 1.5%. The better-than-expected report on consumer prices on Thursday ignited hopes that the Federal Reserve will ease off its aggressive pace of interest rate increases. The central bank has been monitoring data for signs that its policy moves so far have worked, including four successive rate hikes of 0.75 percentage points. Many analysts now expect the Fed will raise rates in December, but at a lower half-point pace. The S&P 500 jumped 5.5% on Thursday and the Nasdaq surged 7.4%, both notching their biggest gains since the early pandemic. The Dow rose more than 1,200 points. Cryptocurrencies were still getting hammered on Friday, with Bitcoin down another 5% to around $16,526 as the exchange FTX and associated trading arm Alameda filed for bankruptcy and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down from the role. On its Singles' Day mega sale, Chinas e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd ADR (NYSE:BABA) got a boost when the government said it would relax Covid-related restrictions. Alibaba shares rose 1.7%. The University of Michigans consumer sentiment survey for November dropped to 54.7 from 59.9 in October. Economists' forecasts had called for a slight decrease to 59.5. Bond markets are closed today to observe the Veterans Day holiday. Oil rose. Crude Oil WTI Futures were up 3.6% to $89.54 a barrel, while Brent Oil Futures were up 3% to $96.41 a barrel. Gold Futures were up 0.6% to $1,765. Related Articles U.S. stocks are mixed as investors absorb inflation news AppLovin downgraded as mobile app ecosystem weakness prompts cautious tone at BofA Elizabeth Holmes seeks to avoid prison for Theranos fraud || Elizabeth Warren Calls Texas 'Deregulated Safe Harbor' for Bitcoin Miners: Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and a group of six other U.S. lawmakers have requested information on the energy usage and potential environmental impact ofBitcoin miningoperations in the state of Texas.
In aletterto Pablo Vegas, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the senators called Texas a “deregulated safe harbor” for crypto mining firms, adding that the state’s “cheap power and laissez-faire regulation” are raising concerns about the potential for mining operations “to add to the stress on the state’s power grid.”
One specific piece of information the senators requested relates to how much electricity crypto mining operators in Texas have consumed and how much carbon dioxide emissions they’ve released over the last five years.
The lawmakers also want to know how much Texas regulators are paying Bitcoin mining companies in subsidies to turn down energy consumption during periods of peak demand.
“In simple terms, the Bitcoin miners make money from mining that produces major strains on the electric grid: and during peak demand when the profitability of continuing to mine decreases, they then collect subsidies in the form of demand response payments when they shut off their mining operations and do nothing,” reads the letter.
Texas Bitcoin Miners Power Down as Heat Wave Threatens Grid With Rolling Blackouts
Among the companies running a Bitcoin mining business in Texas, the letter cites Riot Blockchain, the operator of a 750 MW facility in Rockdale, which in July this year announced itmade around $9.5 millionby shutting down operations and selling electricity back to the grid.
The senators noted that this was more than the $5.6 million the company made from actually sellingBitcointhat month.
The letter further estimates that Texas is responsible for about a quarter of all U.S.-based Bitcoin mining operations, and 9% of the crypto mining computing power worldwide, ”a share that is expected to reach 20% by the end of next year.”
Around 30 crypto mining companies have come to Texas over the past decade, encouraged by vast amounts of open land, easy access to affordable power, and low state taxes, according to a recent report byThe Texas Tribune.
The increased demand raised fears that the state’s already fragile electricity grid, which crashed during an extreme winter storm in February 2021, could cripple further.
“Cryptomining is adding significant demand to an already unreliable grid, posing enormous challenges to the transmission and distribution system… and contributing to the global climate crisis,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.
This is not the first time Elizabeth Warren, a staunch critic of cryptocurrencies, has spearheadedattacks on the industry, including Bitcoin mining activities.
In July, the senator took aim against New York-based Bitcoin mining firm Greenidge Generation,raising concernsabout the company’s impact on the environment.
Prior to that, Warrentook to Twitterto state that “one of the easiest and least disruptive things we can do to fight the Climate Crisis is to crack down on environmentally wasteful cryptocurrencies.” || First Mover Asia: Alameda Research, FTX Are Bound to Each Other; Bitcoin Trades Sideways, Dogecoin Plunges Late as Twitter Halts Work on Crypto Wallet: Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:
Prices:Macroeconomic uncertainty reigns but bitcoin continued to hold tight comfortably above $20K. DOGE plunged late on Thursday after news that Twitter was halting work on its crypto wallet project.
Insights:Alamedia Research and crypto exchange FTX are bound together, a recent Alameda document underlines.
CoinDesk Market Index (CMI)
1,013.27
+4.9▲0.5%
Bitcoin (BTC)
$20,283
+83.6▲0.4%
Ethereum (ETH)
$1,539
+7.9▲0.5%
S&P 500 daily close
3,719.89
−39.8▼1.1%
Gold
$1,634
−11.7▼0.7%
Treasury Yield 10 Years
4.12%
▲0.1
BTC/ETH prices perCoinDesk Indices; gold is COMEX spot price. Prices as of about 4 p.m. ET
Bitcoin Sails Along; DOGE Plummets Late
By James Rubin
The global economy saw more stormy weather on Thursday as the U.S. Labor Department announced a small dip inweekly jobless claimsjust a few hours after the Bank of England boosted itsinterest rateby a jumbo-sized 75 basis points, matching recent U.S. hikes.
The two unrelated events underscored the difficulties central banks are facing in cooling the still hot job market and stemming inflation, and they sent equities downward.
However,bitcoin and ether,the two largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, continued to sail along at roughly the same levels they’ve maintained for much of the past two weeks. BTC was holding steady at about $20,200, while ETH continued to hover over $1,500 – both up a few smidgens during the past 24 hours. Crypto investors have recently been undeterred by a raft of evidence that conditions are still not ready to settle down.
“Hawkish monetary policy and macroeconomic uncertainty rage on,” CoinDesk crypto markets analyst Glenn Williams wrote. “But crypto investors ultimately have little else on their mind than cost basis.”
A number major tokens spent much of the day trading solidly in the green, with MATIC and LRC recently up nearly 11% and 7%, respectively. But popular meme coin DOGE plunged more than 9% following a report that Twitter's mercurial new owner, Elon Musk, was halting work on the social media platform's crypto wallet. The token spiked 16% last week as Musk, an avid DOGE supporter, neared completion of his $44 billion deal. Musk's activities and utterances have consistently influenced DOGE's price.
The job market may soon offer more concrete evidence that central bank measures to tame rising prices are working. Job cuts by online retail giant Amazon and ride-share service Uber sentequity marketsfalling. The tech-focused Nasdaq dropped 1.7%, while the S&P 500 was off 1%. Amazon warned that business would be declining. Safe haven gold continued a recent series of declines, and was down 0.4%.
In an interview on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover" program, Bilal Little, president of asset management platform DFD Partners, said the Federal Reserve's latest interest rate boost provided markets with clarity and that investors would pivot to next week's Consumer Price Index for the latest read on inflation.
Little struck an upbeat note about bitcoin, saying that investors would be "looking to assets for better returns, in this case bitcoin."
"The market is looking for a nice surprise to the upside," he said.
[{"Asset": "Polygon", "Ticker": "MATIC", "Returns": "+10.8%", "DACS Sector": "Smart Contract Platform"}, {"Asset": "Loopring", "Ticker": "LRC", "Returns": "+7.0%", "DACS Sector": "Smart Contract Platform"}, {"Asset": "Chainlink", "Ticker": "LINK", "Returns": "+3.7%", "DACS Sector": "Computing"}]
[{"Asset": "Gala", "Ticker": "GALA", "Returns": "\u221215.1%", "DACS Sector": "Entertainment"}, {"Asset": "Dogecoin", "Ticker": "DOGE", "Returns": "\u22129.1%", "DACS Sector": "Currency"}, {"Asset": "Shiba Inu", "Ticker": "SHIB", "Returns": "\u22121.8%", "DACS Sector": "Currency"}]
By Sam Reynolds
Alameda Research and FTX, which once both had Sam Bankman-Fried at the top, have tried to create a firewall between the two firms more recently.
In October 2021, SBFhanded over controlof Alameda Research to Caroline Ellison and Sam Trabucco. Concerns about conflicts of interest were rising because Alameda had the tripartite role as a market maker, investor and trader.
Many FTX users didn’t like that SBF, and by virtue FTX, led the firms as they might find themselves lining the pockets of Alameda as they traded a new token it was market making or, perhaps worse, being on the other side of a trade against Alameda.
A firewall was put in place, and the SBF-led empire tried to make Alameda a separate institution from FTX.
The biggest asset
But recently,CoinDesk came into possessionof an internal Alameda document that outlined its balance sheet.
And the biggest assets on the books? FTX’s FTT token.
This makes the two firms bound to each other.
FTT’s token officially gives exchange users discounts on trading fees if they stake it. But, practically, it operates as something akin to stock. In good times, FTT’s token rises; in bad times, it declines. Apropos, whenever bad news about Binance hits the newswires, its eponymous token, BNB, declines.
So now, approximately $5.2 billion of Alameda’s net worth of $14.6 billion is tied up in “unlocked FTT” and “FTT collateral.”
If, for some reason, FTX faces a crisis, or a fierce competitor, Alameda risks becoming less liquid. If there’s a massive market drawdown, the contagion between a crippled FTX and Alameda would create a catastrophe that would make Three Arrows Capital’s “Lehman moment” look like a monthly cyclical correction.
Likewise, there’s still a problematic relationship between FTX and Alameda. Market manipulation is on everyone’s mind, which is why in TradFi such an arrangement would not be allowed.
The dynamic would be similar in theory to the New York Stock Exchange and market-maker goliath Citadel Securities having the same parent, with NYSE and its executives emphasizing stocks being market made by Citadel. Such ingredients would be ripe for a congressional inquiry. But these types of relationships don’t happen because TradFi market makers are bound by registration requirements and some form of transparency.
There’s $41 million of SOL also on Alameda’s books, as Solana was an investment by FTX and a made market by Alameda. Solana has fallen out of favor with traders given its frequent "breakdowns" and thequestionable size of its development community. When Alameda and FTX were pushing this token throughout the summer of 2021, did they know something that retail did not?
Occasionally, over-the-counter deals Alameda is involved in,such as with Reef Finance, sometimes go wrong and retail traders are left to punt around in the shadows of the elites.
Like many crypto companies, Alameda exists as a collection of corporate entities spanning multiple countries from the Far East to Delaware. Has anyone seen a list of shareholders?
8:30 a.m. HKT/SGT(00:30 UTC)Reserve Bank of Australia Monetary Policy Statement
8:30 p.m. HKT/SGT(12:30 UTC)United States Nonfarm Payrolls (Oct)
8:30 p.m. HKT/SGT(12:30 UTC)Canada's Unemployment Rate (Oct)
In case you missed it, here is the most recent episode of"First Mover"onCoinDesk TV:
Bitcoin Slips as Bank of England Hikes Key Interest Rate by 75 Basis Points; Are Crypto Payments in Twitter's Future?
The Bank of England's 0.75 percentage point interest rate hike is its biggest in 33 years. Bilal Little, president of DFD Partners, provided his crypto markets outlook following the U.S. Federal Reserve's decision to also hike interest rates 75 basis points. Plus, as Twitter reportedly plans a massive round of layoffs, speculation swirls around whether Elon Musk plans to turn Twitter into a super app that includes payments. CoinDesk's Emily Parker examined the reasons why payments and other new features may be part of Twitter's future.
US Accounting Standards Board Member Supports Reporting Crypto Swings as Income, Bloomberg Reports:If adopted, the move would mean cryptocurrency gains and losses would directly impact companies’ earnings.
Japan Digital Ministry to Create DAO for Web3 Exploration:The ministry is looking to develop understanding of what such organizations can achieve and probe their limitations.
Fidelity Opens Waiting List for Retail Crypto Product:The launch is another sign of the investment giant's interest in crypto.
Payments Processor Stripe Cutting Over 1,000 Jobs:The firm is cutting 14% of its staff, according to a memo.
India's Crypto, Web3 Industry Forms New Advocacy Body:A previous organization representing the industry was disbanded earlier this year. || Asset management firm Stone Ridge launches Bitcoin-focused accelerator program: Asset management firm Stone Ridge has launched a startup accelerator, In Wolf’s Clothing ( Wolf ), that will be dedicated to growing Bitcoin-focused applications, the team exclusively told TechCrunch. The program will bring four cohorts per year, each consisting of about eight to 12 teams, or about 30 to 50 founders, to New York City from around the world for eight weeks at a time to focus on building on the Bitcoin-centric Lightning Network and Taro protocol, Kelly Brewster, CEO of Wolf, said to TechCrunch. The Lightning Network is a layer-2 payment system built on top of Bitcoin that aims to enable faster payment transactions. Separately, Taro is a protocol that launched in April of this year to help issue digital assets on Bitcoin’s blockchain that can then be transferred to Lightning Network instantly in low-fee transactions. “They’re both generic and usable enough in such a wide range of applications that it’s like saying you're starting an accelerator focused on HTTP,” Brewster said. “It’s a specific technology but the business use cases can be incredibly broad ranging. The fact that we’re very focused is a big part of the leg up and can be a big draw for founders.” Teams in the accelerator will range from small startup teams to early-stage companies. They will receive individual investments of $250,000, while one winner of the cohort will get an additional $500,000 for a total of $750,000, Brewster said. Some themes Brewster is interested in seeing startups expand upon include micropayments and tipping through Lightning and Taro. NYDIG, a subsidiary of Stone Ridge, is also supporting the accelerator, alongside mentorship and investments from Bitcoin-focused venture capital firms and operating companies. The names of companies providing outside capital will not be released, Brewster said. However, he added that all investors and mentors are already working with Bitcoin and Lightning. “That ranges from specialized VCs dedicated to Lightning up through public companies in fintech and banking.” Story continues Prior to this role, Brewster was NYDIG’s chief marketing officer, and he has worked for Stone Ridge for about six years. Before that, Brewster spent almost 10 years at Goldman Sachs “in a variety of roles,” he said. “Over the past six years, I've had the opportunity to help start a number of businesses and I’ve fallen in love with the process of taking an idea and turning it into a real thing.” Lightning Network is a layer-2 payment protocol built on top of Bitcoin that aims to provide instant payments and scalability at a low cost for the blockchain. It allows users to send or receive Bitcoin quickly by making transactions off the main blockchain network or, as Coinbase said, “like an HOV lane on a highway.” “At Stone Ridge, we’ve been watching Lightning for quite a while now,” Brewster said. “The network has hit critical mass over the last 12 months and there’s enough capacity now you can do real-world things pretty robustly on the network.” In the past, the network has been implemented by Twitter for users to send and receive Bitcoin “tips” through Lightning Network-focused payments app Strike. It has also been implemented in the El Salvador government-created wallet, Chivo, so citizens can complete cross-border transactions. “The growth in Lightning over the past year has been extraordinary,” Brewster said. “In some ways, it’s the perfect moment to step back and see where there is signal or just noise. Some of the clearest signals are coming from Lightning. The growth and network capacity has been hockey-sticking.” The news comes at an interesting time for NYDIG, which recently laid off about 33% of its staff, according to a Wall Street Journal report last week. In December 2021, NYDIG raised $1 billion , which valued the company at over $7 billion it said. Brewster declined to comment on the layoffs, but said, “The launch of Wolf should be a clear signal of Stone Ridge’s long-term belief and investment in Bitcoin. It’s obviously a difficult environment out there, but this is the time to make investments looking a couple years out.” There are a number of crypto accelerator programs budding across the ecosystem. Some range from layer-2 blockchain-specific accelerators like Polygon’s to general web3-focused programs like Alliance DAO . While some offer capital like Wolf plans to, others invite investors to demo days in hopes that they invest in the startups’ projects. “In times like this, the companies that get built will capture these secular trends and really take hold as they accelerate,” Brewster said. “So we think this is the perfect moment to build rather than try to do something ourselves at Stone Ridge — we want to help and empower hundreds of other founders.”
[Random Sample of Social Media Buzz (last 60 days)]
None available.
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Trend: up || Prices: 16974.83, 17089.50, 16848.13, 17233.47, 17133.15, 17128.72, 17104.19, 17206.44, 17781.32, 17815.65
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