Archive for  January 2021

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The number of projects adopting layer-two solutions for Ethereum’s scaling woes is increasing, with LuaSwap rolling out a new, TomoChain-based exchange engine yesterday.

The change will enable the Uniswap inspired exchange to perform token swaps with greater speed and efficiency than many rival Automated Market Maker ERC-20 exchanges.

TomoChain uses block lengths of two seconds and has transaction costs that are slightly lower than the main net of Ethereum. As such, on TomoChain, trades that might usually cost $10 or $20 on Ethereum can be performed for only a few cents.

Bitcoin (BTC) prices fell 10% today in the last 24 hours to challenge the $30,000 support. This drop below what traders have described as a ‘primary’ support occurred just two days before the expiry of futures and options this month.

With the record-high expiry of $4 billion options being just two days out, today all bull and bear sides traded equal volumes.

The trading volume over the past 24-hours has favoured the more bullish call options by 51%. Nevertheless, this number is polluted by the ultra bullish strikes priced at $37,000 and higher. Considering there’s less than 36 hours before the expiry, these contracts are trading below $50 each.

Ripple Labs, a company behind the Ripple payment protocol and XRP-based products, is facing another lawsuit alleging the firm violated securities laws in the United States.

Florida-based XRP investor Tyler Toomey has filed a federal lawsuit against Ripple Labs and Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, according to a Jan. 25 court filing. The case alleges that by failure to file with the Florida Office of Financial Control, the defendants refused to comply with Florida securities laws.

Toomey noted that Ripple Labs and Garlinghouse were already facing a similar lawsuit for reportedly violating federal securities laws. The $1.35 billion suit was brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 22, 2020.

This year, Bitcoin trading volumes increased significantly, jumping from an average of $2 billion to $12 billion in 2020.

Bitcoin (BTC), the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, remains the most preferred digital currency for investors, according to a new report. Bitcoin inflows accounted for 97% of total crypto inflows so far in 2021, according to a Jan. 25 report by digital asset investing company CoinShares.

Bitcoin accounts for 83 percent of managed digital asset investment products, while BTC investment products account for just 6.5 percent of overall Bitcoin trading turnover. Regular BTC trading volumes have risen dramatically so far this year in the middle of a huge crypto-currency bull run in January, growing from an average of $2.2 billion in 2020 to $12.3 billion this year.

Since peaking at $10.6 billion on Jan. 14, Bitcoin’s (BTC) open interest rose down to $8.4 billion. The monthly expiry of Jan. 29 appears to stand apart, summing up 47% of the options in play.

Although a $4 billion expiry could be significant, one must consider that these options are split among calls (neutral-to-bullish) and the more bearish put options. Furthermore, having an opportunity to buy BTC for $52,000 on Jan. 29 might have made sense a couple of weeks ago, but not so much right now.

Now that the $32,000 and $30,000 support has been lost to Bitcoin, a rising number of observers are predicting that the price might re-test the $24,000 support. One explanation behind the dip suggests that Bitcoin was perceived as a crowded exchange by institutional investors and wanted to take profits.

Scott Minerd, the Guggenheim’s chief investment officer, recently suggested that the price of Bitcoin has “likely put in a top” for 2021 and could see a “retracement back toward the 20,000 level.”

Seven weeks after the start of the beacon chain of Ethereum 2.0 and 2.25 million ETH were deposited in the contract address of ETH2, signaling growing trust in the long-awaited ETH2 rollout.

As part of the Ethereum transformation from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, more than 66,360 beacon chain validators have been established.

The Bitcoin (BTC) price fell sharply from $37,800 to $35,000 overnight, liquidating cryptocurrency futures bets worth $572 million.

There are three key reasons why Bitcoin values have dropped sharply in the past 12 hours. The causes for this are an overheated demand for options, increasing market concerns, and the lack of upside flexibility.

Before the pullback occurred, the Bitcoin derivatives market was extremely overheated. The futures funding rate was hovering at around 0.1%, which is 10 times higher than the average 0.01%.

If the demand has longer contracts or customers, so the funding rate becomes positive. If it becomes optimistic, so every eight hours, buyers must reimburse short-sellers for a part of their contracts, and vice versa.

There is “trader doubt” on the market, according to analysts at Santiment, as to whether BTC will again hit $40.00. They’ve written:

There is a growing amount of skepticism among traders that #Bitcoin is going to revisit $40,000. Yet, based on the activity and amount of trade, the long-term pattern also looks very positive. Keep a close eye on whether the utilization rate of $BTC remains funded.

Bitcoin has been seeing weak reactions from buyers throughout the past several days, compared to the initial rally to $42,000 in early January.

During the early phase of the rally, whenever Bitcoin dipped to key support levels, like $35,000, there was often a big reaction from buyers.

As the biggest altcoin surges into uncertain territories on Tuesday, a three-year hold for Ether investors finally comes nice.

The price of Ether is back after 3 years: data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView revealed that during Tuesday trading, ETH/USD beat its previous high, passing $1,428 on Bitstamp.

As Ether won 15 percent on the day, with year-to-date returns at almost 100 percent, the accomplishment, which resets a market cap in effect since Jan. 13, 2018, came.

Within the background of a wider altcoin revival that started to take form earlier in January, the altcoin gained from competition in decentralized finance (DeFi) trading centered around the Ethereum network.

“#Ethereum $1,400. If this continues running according to Fibonacci, we might hit $1,600,” Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe summarized to Twitter followers on Tuesday.

Van de Poppe had previously estimated that, in the short term, Fibonacci levels could carry ETH/USD to as high as $2,600.

“Ethereum’s daily transaction volume is going parabolic,” Ryan Watkins, a researcher at Messari, said.

The open interest in Bitcoin options has stayed fairly stable over the past two months, even though the figure grew by 118 percent to hit $8.4 billion as the (BTC) price soared to a new all-time high. The effect of the price appreciation of Bitcoin and the increasing open interest on BTC options resulted in a historic expiry of $3.8 billion scheduled for Jan. 29.

To understand the potential impact of such a large expiry, investors should compare it to the volumes seen at spot exchanges. Although some data aggregators display over $50 billion to $100 billion in daily Bitcoin volume, a 2019 report authored by Bitwise Asset Management found that many exchanges employ a variety of questionable techniques to inflate trading volumes.

This is why it is easier to source the statistic from reputable data aggregators while evaluating the exchange value, instead of depending on the data given by the largest exchanges.