CBX Weekly Newsletter // 26 February 2020
- Bitcoin falls below $10K amid coronavirus fears
- Shopify joins Libra association
- Justin Sun Bought Steemit, then Steem Limited His Power
Bitcoin falls below $10K amid coronavirus fears
As U.S. stocks tumbled starting the week wiping out last week’s gains amid renewed coronavirus fears, bitcoin barely budged — at least in terms of the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency’s trading history.
Bitcoin (BTC) dropped over 4% to $9,517. And even though this decline represents merely the biggest drop since last week the cryptocurrency’s price is still up about 32 percent in 2020.
“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.”
Weekly and Daily Chart
For now, Bitcoin is still holding support around the mid $9K region. If it breaks the next support will be $9K psychological handle and $8,800. However, usually, Bitcoin doesn’t generally trade around those prices for too long as you can see on the weekly chart.
If Bulls maintain their strength we can expect Bitcoin above $10K again. The Bullish trend will be intact if prices find acceptance above $10,130.
Shopify joins Libra association
Digital commerce platform Shopify has joined the Libra Association.
The company announced the move in a blog post last week, becoming the latest member of the Facebook cryptocurrency platform. This is the first new member of the organization since its formation.
Shopify said in its blog post it intends to “work collectively” to build a payment network that works “everywhere.”
Other members include Coinbase, Xapo, Anchorage, Bison Trails, Creative Destruction Lab, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, Ribbit Capital, Union Square Ventures, Illiad, Farfetch, Uber, Lyft, Kiva, Mercy Corps, Women’s World Banking, Spotify, PayU among others.
Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Booking Holdings, eBay, Stripe and Mercado Pago were originally meant to be part of the project but withdrew before the council was formed. Vodafone remained a member until January.
The blog post said a large part of the world’s existing financial infrastructure was not built to scale sufficiently for the needs of internet commerce.
In a statement, Libra Association head of policy and communications Dante Disparte said the group was “proud” to welcome its new, and now 21st member.
“As a multinational commerce platform with over one million businesses in approximately 175 countries, Shopify, Inc., brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the Libra project. Shopify joins an active group of Libra Association members committed to achieving a safe, transparent, and consumer-friendly implementation of a global payment system that breaks down financial barriers for billions of people,” he said.
Justin Sun Bought Steemit, then Steem Limited His Power
The team who runs the Steem blockchain executed a reversible soft fork this week, stopping one of the largest piles of tokens from voting. This happened just days after Justin Sun’s Tron Foundation acquired Steemit.
The protective measure is a striking one in the blockchain space and shows some of the concerns and realities of delegated governance.
The blog post describing the fork describes:
“In these early stages the most important task for witnesses [Steem’s version of bitcoin miners or EOS block producers] is to ensure the security of the Steem blockchain. To this end, we have updated to a temporary protective protocol to maintain the status quo currently established in regards to Steemit Inc’s stake and its intended usage.”
Steem is a delegated proof-of-stake blockchain (DPoS), much like EOS, which means a smaller number of decision-makers are needed to operate. The community deemed this action as necessary due to security issues that could take over the blockchain, by staking a large number of tokens.
Steemit’s holdings are a source of tension between Steem and Steemit, even with co-founder Ned Scott, the community felt relatively comfortable that he would not intervene in governance, but with a new owner the community fears that things might change.
Sun and his team are organizing an event named STEEMit 2.0 Town Hall for March 6, inviting the top 50 witnesses of the network to take part. A key topic for that meeting will probably be the intentions of Sun between STEEM and TRX.
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