Kraken Is Valued At $4 Billion, And Bitcoin Tops Google Search In 2018

The State of The Market — December 13, 2018BTC: $3,440.26 (-1.17%)XRP: $0.304427 (-1.03%)ETH: $90.52 (-0.44%)

After a few action-packed days, the market is relatively calm today. Bitcoin is trading above $3,400 and is not expected to crash below $3,000 anytime soon. With a few more days left for 2018, a short-term rally is possible as institutional platforms launch. The market changed by just $1 Billion today. Dentacoin (DCN) is up by nearly 18%, making it the top gainer in the last 24 hours.

In other news, Basis, a stablecoin which raised $133 million from Alphabet’s venture capital arm GV, Baincapital Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and others, is closing its doors due to regulatory issues, according to The Block. Basis plans to return most of the funds it raised. Also, Allianz Global Investments (Allianz GI) CEO Andreas Utermann has called for a ban on Cryptocurrencies. He said regulators should outlaw cryptocurrencies because it has wiped out people’s savings.

1) According to a recent report from Finance Magnates, American cryptocurrency exchange Kraken is considering a private offering. It has already sent out emails to its high-value customers about the investment opportunity. The exchange is seeing a valuation of $4 Billion, with the minimum investment size being $100,000. Kraken has employed a 3rd party service to take care of running accredited investor checks, execute transaction documents and funding of investments. Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the oldest cryptocurrency exchange. (Read More)

2) Data from Google Trends shows that “What is Bitcoin” and “How to buy Bitcoin” ranked among the top questions people asked Google in 2018. Both phrases ranked highly in global and U.S. Google searches and it appears that more people were interested to learn more about Bitcoin than searches for Donald Trump and Barack Obama. To date, people in the U.S. remain more intrigued by Bitcoin than the Russian collusion investigation of the Trump administration and this comes even as Bitcoin price has dropped by more than 80 percent this year. Market analysts have attempted to correlate Bitcoin search activity to the digital assets price action and previous studies concluded that spikes in Bitcoin activity corresponded with Bitcoin price rallies. (Read More)

3. A new report issued by the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance suggests that the number of “newbies” entering the crypto space in 2018 practically doubled from the numbers listed for 2017 despite bitcoin’s record drops. Though some analysts predict the Bitcoin to fall further, the data shows that Bitcoin is potentially in line for another rally. However, the study confirms that bitcoin is still largely being used for investment purposes rather than for commerce or making purchases. Besides, volatility still remains an issue for Bitcoin, among others. (Read More)

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