The State of The Market — January 29, 2019BTC: $3,438.11 (-0.66%)XRP: $0.291144 (-0.06%)ETH: $105.76 (+0.70%)
The crypto market continued to fall down yesterday, with Bitcoin testing its support at $3,400. While Bitcoin defended the price point, it was not a strong rebound. The market could test the support multiple times this week. If Bitcoin successfully manages to hold on to it, it could result in a significant rebound propelling Bitcoin’s price above $4,000. Meanwhile, most cryptocurrencies have changed by less than 1% in the last 24 hours, and not all of them are following Bitcoin.
In other news, Tether (USDT) has eclipsed EOS market capitalization to take over the #4 spot on CoinMarketCap. Analysts believe the move highlights weakness in the wider cryptocurrency market as sharp downturns typically lead stablecoins like USDT to rally. Also, Nvidia, a Taiwan-based computer hardware producer, has revised its Q4 2019 revenue estimates according to a recently issued press release. Nvidia expects weaker sales from its gaming and data center platforms and Q4 revenue was revised to $2.20 billion from a previous estimate of $2.70 billion. The crypto-bull run of 2017 drove an incessant demand for Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) but as mining profitability and cryptocurrency prices decreased throughout 2018, customers became disinterested in crypto-mining and GPU prices did not drop low enough for new consumers to purchase more affordable cards from Nvidia.
1) On Monday a public sale of 59.8 billion ($7.2 million) BitTorrent Tokens (BTT) sold out in minutes through Binance’s Launchpad. While there was a list of technical issues that angered some users, the sale was viewed as a success. The sale began at 3:00 UTC and purchasers had the option of paying in Tron’s TRX or with Binance’s native exchange token, BNB. At the time or sale, BTT was priced at $0.00012. The minimum BTT purchase was 100,000 BTT ($12). Tron CEO Justin Sun tweeted that BTT’s 23.76 billion token cap for the BNB session was met in 13 minutes and 25 seconds, and the TRX session was completed in 14 minutes and 41 seconds. Data from Binance shows there was 622 participants in the TRX session and 340 participants in the BNB session. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that the sessions would have ended in just seconds if there were no technical issues and he described the demand as being “astronomical”. (Read More)
2) Nearly one year ago, cryptocurrency exchange Bitgrail claimed to have lost 14 Million NANO (worth approx. $170 million at the time) to a hack. An Italian Bankruptcy Court has now declared that the hack was the fault of its owner Francesco Firano (also known as “The Bomber”). The court has ruled that Firano must return as much as possible to his customers. Firano’s assets worth $1 Million and millions of dollars worth cryptocurrencies was seized. Also, the court has appointed several trustees to assist distribution of assets back to victims. Bitgrail victims declared it was a huge victory for the crypto industry. (Read More)
3) Litecoin might be considered the silver to Bitcoin’s gold, but it’s transforming to more closely resemble Monero. Charlie Lee, who is the creator of Litecoin, wants to add Confidential Transactions to Litecoin on an opt-in basis and he is targeting 2019 to do so. Lee pointed to the controversial fungibility feature, which reflects the identical nature of tokens, as “the only property of sound money that is missing from Bitcoin and Litecoin.” He says with the scalability issue in the rear-view mirror, fungibility and privacy are the “next battleground.” Lee went on to announce that he is “now focused on making Litecoin more fungible by adding Confidential Transactions.” While Lee does not expect Bitcoin to go down a similar path, at least not yet, the stars have aligned for Litecoin. (Read More)
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