Official Newsletter of 1/28
As the US Government’s longest shutdown is finally over (at least partially), Bitcoin has slid to its lowest point in six weeks. The future remains uncertain as some analysts predict an imminent boom and some predict a continued slide as consolidations ensue. Anything can happen in crypto. If Crypto-crusader John McAfee, founder of software company “McAfee Associates”, can run his 2020 US presidential campaign from his boat while in exile, anything is possible for the crypto world.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1087772979730239490
Last week marked the 58th of the bear market, and many of the biggest stories encapsulated the skepticism in the market as volume continues to decline from the mid-December spike. The week started with accusations of a blatant pump and dump by the founders of Apollo Currency (APL) which the team disputes, but the charts seem to support. Both the SEC and the CFTC takes pump and dumps orchestrated by platform teams extremely seriously, so co-founder Stephen McCullah insists that no such manipulation occurred while Reddit users contest this. Two of the largest projects disclosed or were found to have sold large amount of their coin reserves, and the go-to BTC over-the-counter platform suffered a phishing attack (more on those below). Better news came with the ending of the US government shutdown, which will allow the SEC and CFTC to pass judgments on Bakkt and ETFs, while three crypto-focused bills are expected to go before the House of Representatives.
(Taken on 1/27/2019 at 23:23:10 PM US East Coast Standard Time from CoinTelegraph)
Monthly Pivots
(Taken on 1/28/2019 at 11:14:09 AM US East Coast Standard Time from DailyFX)
Weekly Pivots
(Taken on 1/28/2019 at 11:14:09 AM US East Coast Standard Time from DailyFX)
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Regulation
Italian and US Governments Continue to Explore Crypto Regulation
The Italian Senate has approved an amendment on regulation on January 24th. This new legislation outlines definitions for Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and smart contracts. Finally, the new document enables legal validation of documents when they’re registered. In the US, the state of New Hampshire’s lawmakers are considering a bill to legalize payment of fees taxes in BTC. The document, NH HB470, is currently going through local government. The final date set for decision is March 14th. New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die”. As their progressive mindset drives their politics, New Hampshire is a potential indicator for the future of US adoption.
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Ripple
Biggest Projects Selling Tokens En Masse
Ripple’s fourth quarter report showed that it had sold 538 million dollars worth of XRP over the course of 2018, the majority of which (364 million) was done programmatically to exchanges. Stellar similarly sent over 100 million XLM to exchanges — mostly Binance and Kraken — an equivalent of over $10 million. Neither case should be surprising given the need to fund operations during the bear market, although both have sold enough tokens to seriously impact the total supply.
Data Analysis Firm ‘Messari’ CEO Receives Threats
After their analysis of Ripple, Messari CEO Ryan Selkis received three threatening phone calls from fans of Ripple. The Messari report said that Ripple is inflating its market cap figures. The self-proclaimed “XRP Army” sent Mr. Selkis threatening calls and messages for trashing their favorite cryptocurrency. This group is made up of all kinds of stakeholders including investors and customers.
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Business
‘Localbitcoins’ Reopens Transactions After Phishing Attack
The most notable OTC platform for Bitcoin trading had its forum and outgoing transactions suspended on Saturday January 26th after hackers exploited third-party feature vulnerabilities to replace the forum with a new, malicious login page. The platform reopened all features by January 27th stating that the attack had been identified and resolved, saying that just six users had been identified as affected by the hack. The attacker’s wallet shows a total of 8 BTC collected, around $28,500 as of weekend prices.
Next Samsung Flagship Expected to Have Built-In Crypto Wallet
Leaked photos of the Samsung Galaxy S10 strongly suggest that a built-in cryptocurrency wallet will be included, along with a keystone for maintaining the associated private keys. No list of 9 supported currencies has emerged yet, although one photo appears to show the setup of an Ethereum wallet. The phone will be launched on February 20th, and given that the S series of phones regularly sells more than 30 million units, this would be a large market for first-time crypto adopters.
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Daily Debunk
What are Altcoins?
Altcoins are based on the original Bitcoin algorithm and technology. There are a few underlying problems with Bitcoin that could decide its future in the long-run, but for now, people have began developing “alternative coins” that try to improve the original Bitcoin idea. For example, some coins like “Litecoin” attempt to speed up the validation process for transactions. Bitcoin transactions can take around 10 minutes to verify, while Litecoin takes around 2.5 minutes. This is more practical for trading as transactions process faster, and there are fewer barriers to trade.
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What’s on the Horizon?
John McAfee Runs Presidential Campaign From Boat
In a video statement from his yacht on January 22nd, McAfee admits to dodging taxes for eight years and plans to continue running his campaign from his boat while also running from authorities.
JPMorgan Takes Another Shot at Bitcoin
Analysts from JPMorgan said that after the latest drop below $4,000 USD, it became uneconomical to mine Bitcoins, thus driving prices lower. This would lower the hash rate, thus driving prices lower than ever in a downward spiral.
