Analysis of the Last Week in Blockchain
(October 17, 2016 — October 23, 2016)
Bitcoin, Ether, & Blockchain Asset Price Movement
Bitcoin drifted down under $630 early last week before a quick late week turnaround and jump of nearly $30.
Beginning the week at $640 and closing around $650, the price jump represented an overall weekly gain of 1.66%.
Year to date, bitcoin is now up 49.60%. Against the years low in January, bitcoin is up 81.16%, and against the year’s high in June, bitcoin is now down -15.40%.
Bitcoin’s upward trend since early August continued this week, now representing a 17.57% increase.
With just under 15.94 million bitcoin mined at this point, the current price represents a total market cap of over $10.3 Billion.
Ether spiked to about $13 early last week in the USD markets before quickly falling back to just north of the weeks open around $12, representing an overall gain of 1.02%.
Year to date, ether is up 1,165% as compared to the dollar after the massive early year rally.
Given bitcoin’s strong performance late last week, the ether price relative to bitcoin fell -1.68%.
Year to date, ether’s value relative to bitcoin is up 736%.
Last week, the LBI rose 2.66% as numerous major constituents posted large positive gains.
Year to date, the LBI is up 55.68%, and since its inception on January 1, 2015, is now up 84.18%.
Last week’s markets were generally positive across the board with the exception of STEEM & DASH.
Blockchain News
Last week was full of numerous exciting events and announcements from across the industry.
- Circle expanded their European presence last week as they released support for linking cards from many regions as well as holding Euros in their accounts.
- Bitfinex, the exchange hacked earlier this year for about $70 million worth of customer funds, published a blog post intended for the thief. The company created several dedicated secure and private communication channels intended to begin a negotiation around a hopeful agreement for some of the money back in exchange for an enormous bug bounty.
- It does not appear the hacker has yet to attempt to negotiate or even communicate with Bitfinex at this time. The story was covered further by Coindesk.
- The Winklevoss Twins, behind Gemini (bitcoin and ether exchange), filed a form (S-1) amendment with the SEC for the “Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust” and details related to “COIN”, the proposed bitcoin ETF. State Street, was listed as both administrator and transfer agent for the trust, and shares will be listed on the Bats exchange.
- Ethereum hard forked last week in response to attacks on the network analogous to a “denial of service (DoS) attack on the Ethereum blockchain”. As attackers continue to modify their assaults on the system and community, many view the subsequent upgrades and plans as continued strengthening of the protocol, where others have criticized the overall design and speed of the changes.
- Zcash, “the first open, permissionless financial system employing zero-knowledge security”, is scheduled to go live for mining in a few days on October 28, marking the birth of a new asset and blockchain backed by numerous high profile investors, engineers, advisors, and more.
- Zooko (the founder and CEO), recently spoke at Devcon2 in Shanghai about the Zcash project, roadmap, and plans to work with Ethereum and smart contract functionality in their expansion.
- It was recently announced that 12 member banks of R3CEV including Barclays, CIBC, Intesa Sanpaolo, RBC, and Santander completed a series of trials using Ripple’s native asset, XRP. The trials, conducted in R3’s lab, were designed to show banks how XRP can help them save money and create additional revenue streams by using the asset to provide liquidity to their numerous accounts around the world.
“The trials were intended to demonstrate that the Ripple network could enable banks to make markets for fiat currencies using XRP and then complete authenticated payments without multiple nostro accounts.”
- Money20/20, “The World’s Largest Payments & Financial Services Innovation Event with 10,000+ Attendees Including 1,000+ CEOs and 500+ Speakers from 3,000+ Companies and 75 Countries”, kicked off with a hackathon last weekend and a slew of speakers, panels, presentations, and more over the first half of this week. Major projects and developments were discussed including Chain open sourcing it’s blockchain platform, BTCC previewing a new mobile app, and speakers and presenters from the blockchain industry including Vitalik Buterin, DCG, Pantera, Bloq, Blocksteam, and more highlighting the current state of the ecosystem.
- The Lawnmower founders were awarded a top prize in the hackathon for the second year in a row!
- Last year with Pagey, developed using Blockchain’s API, and this year with Traxion, developed using Mastercard’s API.
-Alex Sunnarborg
Founder & CFO, Lawnmower.io
This post originally appeared as part of the weekly update on the Lawnmower Blog where you can view more stories and analysis on the blockchain space.
Disclaimer: All viewpoints are completely my own. Nothing presented represents the viewpoints, opinions, etc. of any corporation or organization and all data/charts/analyses are for illustrative and discussion purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as fact, advice, recommendation, or anything of similar nature.
