Weekly what changed in crypto by Alte.Capital — 12–19 February 2018

Welcome to our next issue of “Weekly what changed in crypto”. We are dedicating it to share the most important stuff according to us we’ve seen previous week in crypto world

Whole week major drivers:

It seems that we can observe return investors from South Korea on the markets. The Korean exchanges have recorded a systematic increase in the turnover last week. On February 13 at the Bithumb exchange, the turnover for 24 hours was about 100 million dollars, while on Saturday 16th it was 310 million dollars.

Secondly, the latest data of the bitcoin futures positions of major players was published by CFTC on Tuesday, February 13. The day before the February bitcoin contract series expired. As the latest data shows, short positions still prevail among them. Although their size has recently fallen slightly, they are still relatively large. Coins prices continued to rise despite the negative sentiment of large Wall Street players.

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Price action

Nearly all the major coins have risen last week. It was a specially good week for Bitcoin. Smaller cap coins had more mixed results.

Market capitalization comes back to 500 million dollars levels. This is important level and we should see interesting action at this point. If latest impressive recovery is here to stay for a longer time this area should hold.

Most important events

Spain Seeks to Pass Crypto-Friendly Legislation

While other European countries seek stricter regulations on cryptocurrencies, Spain looks to follow Switzerland’s lead and charge ahead of the curve by proposing crypto-friendly legislation.

The ruling party claims to be preparing crypto-friendly legislation with aims to entice blockchain companies, particularly by including tax breaks.

Canada’s First Platform for Clearing and Settling Securities through Blockchain

The Canadian Securities Exchange (“CSE”) announced that it is introducing a securities clearing and settlement platform that harnesses the unique features of blockchain technology. The platform will enable companies to issue conventional equity and debt through tokenized securities, which would be offered to investors through Security Token Offerings (“STOs”). Unlike blockchain-based cryptocurrencies, the STOs will be subject to full regulation by applicable securities commissions. This can be competition or a good thing for the platforms like Waves or Polymath which key features are listing tokens.

Poland’s Central Bank Secretly Paid Youtubers to Slander Cryptos

The Central Bank of Poland has admitted that “it carried out a campaign on the issue of virtual currencies in social media,” without providing any further comment on the matter. The legality of this action by Poland’s Central Bank is unclear as usually, within a democracy, it is illegal for state actors or contractors to engage in propaganda directed at their own citizens.

Ethereum ASIC miner

There are rumors that Bitmain plans launch the Ethereum ASIC miner in Q3 2018. If the this is true, it will mean a difficult time for all Ethereum miners. This is linked also to rise of Ethereum Classic price last week.

Few Americans report cryptocurrency tax reports

Less than 100 people out of the 250,000 individuals who have already filed federal taxes this year through company Credit Karma reported a cryptocurrency transaction to U.S. tax authorities. The reason for that is that it is difficult to report gains or losses from cryptocurrencies and it takes much time to report it.

Western Union tests Ripple

The financial services provider Western Union is testing transactions with the use of Ripple’s (XRP) Blockchain-based settlement system. WU confirmed they are testing Ripple after a month of speculation that began early January.

Crypto mining instead of ad-blocking

On Monday, February 12 Salon.com started testing a new solution which uses the computer power of users blocking ads to mine coins. When using an ad-blocker, users will see a pop-up that asks you to disable the ad blocker or block ads by allowing Salon to use your unused computing power to mine Monero.

Coinbase creates its own payment system

Coinbase created a new service — Coinbase Commerce, which facilitates payments with different cryptocurrencies for goods and services. Coinbase Commerce allows using the service everywhere to accept Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin payments and accept cryptocurrencies directly into the users’ wallet. Coinbase Commerce has integrated with Shopify, one of the largest multi-channel commerce platforms, and now is actively adding more integrations to make accepting cryptocurrency as easy as possible.

Microsoft will use blockchain to secure identity

Microsoft plans to use blockchain technology to allow users to own and secure access to their online persona. They also want to integrate blockchain with Microsoft Authenticator. After starting cooperation with Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), Microsoft released they want to use blockchain technology to solve some of the challenges we face when managing our digital identity. The new solution aims at improving privacy and better control over our digital data.

Our next “What changed in crypto” issue is due on February 25th, 2018

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