Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group’s cash-settled Bitcoin Futures contract has been up and running for the last two years now and as it celebrated its second anniversary, the CME Group noted an increase in growth in volume and customer interest. As of 17 December 2019, approximately 2.5 million contracts had been traded on CME since its...Read More
Stablecoins have shaped the fabric of how cryptocurrency transactions happen. The idea behind a stablecoin might have arisen out of necessity, to have an easier way to access cryptocurrencies. However, it has since radically morphed and evolved, while still addressing the initial needs. Even though there were multiple stablecoins before Tether, it now holds the...Read More
The past week has been a difficult one for the cryptocurrency market, with many tokens recording a significant slump in their valuations. According to a recent report by Arcane Research, the top ten cryptocurrencies averaged a decline of around 10 percent, with major assets such as Ethereum losing over 95% of its total gains in...Read More
Bitcoin’s price noted an unprecedented price surge on 18 December, one wherein the king coin tried to recover 15.95% of its losses. In fact, within a span of nine hours, BTC’s price jumped from $6,425 to $7,449.68. According to Datamish, a derivatives data provider, approximately $1.651 million long contracts were liquidated on BitMEX, a development...Read More
Bitcoin Futures have garnered a lot of attention from the crypto-industry, especially after the Intercontinental Exchange [ICE] rolled out its digital asset platform, Bakkt, back in September. After the exchange recorded a low of 71 BTC on its first day, many had speculated on Bakkt’s impact on the market. However, the platform was quick to...Read More
The cryptocurrency market has been slipping over the past few weeks, with the prices of top cryptos’ getting axed by the bear. Bitcoin has lost 13.36% of its value in December 2019, while altcoins like Ethereum [ETH] have tumbled by 21.37%. XRP has been trading at a low of $0.1805 after losing 21.09% of its...Read More
Ripple’s collaboration with MoneyGram made headlines in 2019, with the two firms united in their common pursuit to boost cross-border remittances. The American fintech company recently revealed that Ripple made a $20 million investment over its initial $50 million equity investment, after the successful experimentation of Ripple’s on-demand liquidity added a credible foundation to their...Read More
Another underwhelming period of performance took over the crypto-industry this past week. Bitcoin‘s price was significantly below $7000 at press time, whereas Ethereum‘s value was edging close to its year-to-date low with a price of $123.27. Another token that witnessed a similar fall over the last 24 hours was Tezos. However, over the last one...Read More
The cryptocurrency market noted a stable decline in prices over the past week. While Bitcoin [BTC] fell by almost 10%, Ethereum [ETH] fell by 18.17%. The king coin recorded a 24-hour trading volume of $25.01 billion, with its market cap hovering around the $121 billion mark, at press time. Source: CoinStats XRP was one of...Read More
Looking back at 2019, the crypto-industry seems to have had an eventful run as several countries and mainstream companies looked into the prospects of cryptocurrencies and its underlying blockchain technology. While several countries are ready to roll out their own CBDCs, Bitwise’s CEO, Hunter Horsley, believes that these governments have an ulterior motive behind the...Read More
When Bitcoin began gaining prominence, few bodies were as concerned as the United States’ Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC]. A currency that is not tethered to a single person or entity, operating on something that cannot be shut down, and plied by a technology that is immutable, irreversible and transparent, it was the perfect problem...Read More
In light of the fact that the crypto-industry is still in its nascent phase, various studies using different metrics have assessed the market’s trends and performances over the past few years. Although the market draws a common affinity to Bitcoin, other crypto-assets such as Ethereum and XRP have a strong user base and influence of...Read More
India has embraced blockchain technology and many tech-based companies have found use-cases for this decentralized and distributed digital ledger. Infosys, one of India’s premier technology services and consulting firms, announced on 18 December the launch of three comprehensive blockchain-powered distributed applications for government services, insurance, and supply chain management domains. The company defined these three...Read More
Back in October, prominent P2P payments technology company, Circle, made quite a buzz after cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex was delineated and terminated support for customers from the United States. The platform is making headlines again after it announced that it would be pivoting towards and concentrating solely on stablecoins. Stablecoins seem to be garnering immense attention...Read More
DeFi or decentralized finance has seen a new wave of adoption in 2019 and platforms have started to realize its potential and its ability to transform the financial ecosystem. The first and most dominant player has been MakerDAO in the still-nascent DeFi space. According to analytics and rankings website, DeFi Pulse, MakerDAO ruled the leaderboard...Read More
Bitcoin Jesus aka Roger Ver was under the crypto-spotlight recently after the cryptocurrency exchange Bitcoin.com listed an alleged scam token, HEX. While denying that HEX was a scam token, Ver went on to endorse it instead. Since then, many members of the community have listed out reasons as to why listing HEX was a bad...Read More
Ethereum’s price in 2019 has seen a mix of highs and lows. After registering a growth of over 170 percent from January to 26 June, the world’s largest altcoin has now lost all of its positive gains this year after it recorded a depreciation of 8% on 16 December. At press time, Ethereum was priced...Read More
2019 has proven to be a year for the development of the stablecoin ecosystem. The launch of a China-backed stablecoin CBDC, dubbed DCEP [Digital Currency/Electronic Payments] is imminent, but the same cannot be said about its western counterparts. Facebook’s Libra is a prime example of the same, with uncertainty over its launch still looming large....Read More
It would seem that Ethereum is back to square one. After registering a growth of over 170 percent from January to 26 June, the world’s largest altcoin has now lost all its positive gains this year after it recorded an 8% depreciation on 16 December. Ethereum and Bitcoin were the major crypto-assets responsible for the...Read More
You’ve probably heard of the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. To put it briefly, it suggests that 80 percent of the effects come from 20 percent of the causes. For cryptocurrency trading, the principle should be redefined as the 95/5 rule, or the Bitwise principle. The crypto-asset management fund made headlines in the crypto-world...Read More
When volatility picks up, Bakkt is never too far. Institutional investors are gearing up for an early-Christmas party, one which will see more positions in Bitcoin Futures contracts than ever before. Bakkt saw yet another high in its open interest [OI] on 16 December as the underlying cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, dipped below $7,000. According to Skew...Read More
Since peaking on 26 June, Bitcoin‘s price has been on a consistent decline, having lost over 51 percent of its valuation, at press time. Many people in the crypto-community have pointed their fingers at various factors, seeking to find the reason behind such a price decline. While some claim price manipulation by whales and exchanges...Read More
There was a time when institutional investors were reluctant to enter the crypto-market owing to the high volatility and lack of regulatory clarity inherent to the market. However, things are changing for the better in 2019. There has been a proliferation of trading venues that have resulted in dramatic structural changes to the cryptocurrency industry....Read More
MakerDAO has been in the news lately for both good and bad reasons. The launch of Multi-Collateral Dai [MCD] put the platform under the spotlight, following which, a research piece by Coinmonks contested the governance system of MakerDAO that allows MKR token holders to be the decisive agent for the upgrades through votes. However, the...Read More
Ethereum Classic’s developers had previously revealed the roadmap for the much-awaited Agharta hard fork, which is touted to be the second half of the recently executed Atlantis hard fork. According to a recent development, ETC core developers and stakeholders participating in the ecosystem on 12 December have agreed on a target block number for mainnet...Read More
Blockstream recently revealed its plans to make multi-part payments interoperable on the Lightning Network, a development which essentially means that sending large Bitcoin transactions on top of the layer 2 network would be possible in the future. This development is instrumental in terms of the Bitcoin network which has been plagued with scalability woes for...Read More
A lot has been going on with the Ethereum network lately, with the Istanbul hard fork recently going live on the network and Muir Glacier expected to be rolled out by New Year’s Eve. Amid these updates, the Ethereum Core Developers in their 77th meeting discussed several other EIPs, along with Eligible for Inclusion [EFI]...Read More
In a recent video, VP of Products at Blockstream, Allen Piscitello, spoke about stablecoins, the platforms they use, and how they compare to Blockstream’s own Liquid network. During the presentation, Piscitello spoke about how Tether exists on multiple blockchains, but represents the same asset in a bank account. He also spoke about the pre-requisites of...Read More
After maintaining its position above $7000 over the past 2 weeks, Bitcoin briefly breached its support on 14 December. At press time, Bitcoin was above $7000 again, but the difference was very slim. Its valuation remained at $7068.67 as the market continued to consolidate under $7500. However, according to data released by glassnode, the community...Read More
Recently on Twitter, Bitcoin and ETH derivatives data analytics firm, Skew, reported an unusual proportion of puts trading on the Deribit exchange over the last two days. Generally, put options become more valuable as the price of the underlying asset depreciates in value relative to the strike price set on the contract. An increase in...Read More
