Alte.Capital — Weekly what changed in crypto — 5–12 February 2018

Welcome to our next “Weekly what changed in crypto”. Enjoy it every Monday morning!

Whole week major drivers:

Last week’s we could observe market stabilization after Bitcoin crashed to the lowest level since many weeks and then rebounded. There weren’t much price impact news coming to crypto market.

More happened in a “classic” stock and bonds market, where we can observe the combination of a falling stock market and rising interest rates. Such combination is historically and statistically rare. The recent move is unprecedented in terms of how quickly stocks fell from an all-time high. Yet many investors didn’t have time to react, due to the nature of the decline.

Upcoming days will show if the crypto market can follow own direction despite stocks problems. If this will happen we could see interesting moments and crypto could become good diversification option (despite volatility which must be managed).

Price action

Market capitalization also increased after falling and it’s about 440 billion dollars at the time of writing.

Please visit our website, follow us on Twitter and Facebook and share this story. This really helps us.

Most important events

France and Germany insist on tight regulation of cryptocurrencies

French and German finance ministers are still demanding strict regulation of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. According to reports, French finance minister Bruno Le Maire and the interim German finance minister Peter Altmaier wrote a letter to fellow finance ministers of the G20, in which they argue that cryptocurrencies are not only risky for investors but also threaten long-term global financial stability.

Of course, this sentiment can be easily interpreted as coming from authorities from traditional financial institutions, experiencing growing pressure from the rapidly growing and increasingly popular cryptocurrency market, which aims to disrupt traditional financial structures.

Member of the board of the European Central Bank — Yves Mersch — said on Thursday his negative opinion, stating that cryptocurrencies are not money, nor will they be in the foreseeable future. In addition, the head of the Agency for International Settlements — Agustin Carstens — expressed his deep-rooted concerns by asking the central banks to close Bitcoin, claiming that cryptocurrencies are becoming a threat to financial stability.

The new product from the creator of MyEtherWallet

The popular Ethereum MyEtherWallet web wallet interface (MEW) has released an unexpected alternative product — MyCrypto.com, announced one of the original developers. The circumstances surrounding the changes continued to arouse much suspicion and confusion among users.

MEW has become one of the most popular Ethereum and ERC20 web wallet and will continue to exist along with a new project that has an almost identical interface.

Binance back in the game

The popular cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, announced that it completed the modernization of the system after technical problems caused significant delays. The company confirmed that all functionality will return on February 9, offering an additional two-week 70% rebate on transaction fees. Binance gained international fame on the cryptocurrency exchange market in a short, six-month period.

Since January 2018, Binance is the largest trading platform in the world. The number of users is increased by 240,000 an hour. Despite the delay in performing complex procedures used to facilitate the upgrade, Binance assured users through social media that the integrity of their data was not at risk in any moment. The exchange managed to refute accusations of hacker attacks during technical problems that took place on Thursday, February 8.

Millennials prefer cryptocurrencies from the traditional market

According to MarketWatch, over 82% of representatives of the Y generation claim that their investment decisions are influenced by the economic crisis. Many people lost their jobs and at the same time lost large parts of their personal property. Only 33% of millennials claim to have own securities, compared to 51% of the X generation (aged 36–51) and 48% of the baby boom (aged 52–70).

While many older people perceive the volatile digital currencies market as too wild for their tastes, millennials prefer to invest their money in Bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies instead of accepted capital and bonds. Many young people were disappointed with the traditional stock market after the financial crisis in 2008, which was the case when many of them only recently graduated from high school.

Another study asked participants where they would invest $ 5,000 if they could only invest in one investment.13% of millennials chose cryptocurrencies, compared to only 3% of people aged 45 to 64.

SEC and CFTC meeting in the United States

A session with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Futures Commodity Futures Commission (CFTC) took place on Tuesday, February 6. Written testimonies from Jay Clayton and J. Christopher Giancarlo, SEC and CFTC presidents, have been made public. During the long testimonies already available to watch, SEC chairman Jay Clayton reiterates his concern about the need to distinguish ICO as securities and ICO as other financial instruments and points out that markets remain unprepared for Bitcoin ETFs in the near future. During this event, politicians and legislators from various jurisdictions expressed their desire for international cooperation on the regulation of cryptocurrencies, which should take place centrally at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires in March.

Our next “What changed in crypto” is due on February 19th, 2018