Category: cryptocurrency exchange

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Technical Analysis of Bitcoin and Ethereum: BTC Maintains High for Close to 2 Months After Strong US Retail Sales

Bitcoin held near a two-month high on Tuesday as markets digested the latest US retail sales figures. Sales, which represent two-thirds of the US economy, rose 0.7% in September, 0.4% more than expected. Ethereum briefly rose above $1,600.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin continued to trade above $28,000 on Tuesday following a better-than-expected increase in US retail sales.

Despite falling from a high of $30,000 on Monday, BTC/USD traded above $28,600 in today’s session.

Although gains have slowed, they are still considerably above yesterday’s low at the $27,855.21 level.

Overall, the recent uptrend means that Bitcoin is trading at its highest rate since August 18, which comes after the Relative Strength Index (RSI) broke through a key resistance level.

The index surpassed the 63.00 ceiling in yesterday’s session, reaching a peak above the 65.00 mark.

Since then, price strength has receded, although it is still slightly above the aforementioned resistance point.

Ethereum

Ethereum (ETH) fell in today’s session after briefly trading above the $1,600 mark for the first time in nearly ten days.

ETH/USD hit a high of $1,628.16 earlier in the week following a tweet from Cointelegraph suggesting that Blackrock’s spot bitcoin ETF was approved.

After these claims were proven incorrect, the cryptocurrency crashed, falling to a low of $1,570.89 today.

As a result of Tuesday’s decline, bears went on a four-day winning streak and could now reach a low of $1,540.

It is clear from the chart that the failure to surpass the 49.00 ceiling on the RSI indicator also contributed to today’s decline.

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Estate of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX abruptly bets more than $144 million on Solana (SOL)

Property belonging to now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX was just seen betting more than $144 million on Ethereum (ETH) rival Solana (SOL) as the company’s bankruptcy proceedings unfold.

According to blockchain explorer SolanaFM, the address associated with FTX and its trading arm Alameda Research created a new stake of 5,546,217.04 SOL tokens.

Analysis by pseudonymous on-chain researcher Ashpool suggests that FTX subsequently staked all the tokens through Figment, a digital asset staking service built for institutions. According to Figment, Robinhood, Binance.US and Anchorage Digital are also betting on the platform.

On Solana, bettors currently earn around 7% APY (annual percentage yield), depending on the betting platform, and rewards are distributed every two to three days.

FTX ownership already owns roughly $1 billion in Solana, but much of it is locked up until 2028 as part of its vesting schedule agreement.

Solana co-creator Anatoly Yakovenko said last month that if he had the power, he would prefer FTX’s SOL tokens to be given directly to customers of the failed exchange as part of a compensation plan.

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Bitcoin cryptocurrency exchange Cryptocurrency Investment Cryptocurrency news

Bitcoin Lightning Network Growth Increases 1200% in 2 Years

A report from Bitcoin-exclusive River Exchange suggests that increased use of Lightning will play a key role in Bitcoin becoming a better medium of exchange.

Bitcoin’s Layer 2 Lightning Network saw an estimated 1,212% growth in two years, with around 6.6 million transactions routed in August, a significant jump from 503,000 transitions in August 2021, according to data from the River exchange, exclusive of Bitcoin (BTC).

In an October 10 report, River research analyst Sam Wouters explained that the increase in routed transactions (which use more than two nodes to facilitate a transfer) came despite a 44% drop in the Bitcoin price and considerably less interest in online research.

River’s $6.6 million value for Lightning-routed transactions is a lower-bound estimate — the lowest possible value it could value. The company also obtained the August 2021 figure of 503,000 from a 2021 study by K33, formerly Arcane Research, adding that it could not evaluate flash transactions that were private or between just two participants.

As of August 2023, the average Lightning transaction size is approximately 44,700 satoshis or $11.84. River estimated that between 279,000 and 1.1 million Lightning users were active in September.

The company attributed 27% of transaction growth to the gaming, social media advice and streaming sectors.

River said the success rate for Lightning payments was 99.7% on its platform in August 2023 across 308,000 transactions. The main reason for failure occurs when no payment method is found that has sufficient liquidity to facilitate the transfer.

River’s data set consisted of 2.5 million transactions. The nodes in the River dataset represent 29% of the entire network capacity and 10% of the payment channels.

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Bitcoin cryptocurrency exchange Cryptocurrency news

Hong Kong, UAE and Thailand to launch joint CBDC projects by 2024

The central banks of Hong Kong, China, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, together with the HMKA, are working on the development of mBridge, a cross-border central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative.

The project is expected to launch in mid-2024. The initiative could provide an alternative to Swift’s dominant payments infrastructure, setting a precedent for further fragmentation of payments in other regions.

MBridge is coordinated by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The project will involve the participation of several major companies such as Tencent, owner of WeChat Pay, and the WeChat application.

The HKMA is also working on another CBDC-related project known as e-HKD. The digital currency has shown different use cases such as payments, deposits and investment scenarios.

Eddie Yue Wai-man, chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, added that e-HKD could be used in different areas, such as programmable payments, and in new regions, such as deposits and tokenized assets.

Currently the institution is carrying out tests with the participation of 16 large companies. In September, HSBC issued eHKD to around 200 students and staff at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Business School, with the aim of testing the use of the digital currency.

Two of the pilot participants, Standard Chartered and Fubon Bank, have begun investigating CBDC use cases. Fubon Bank has revealed its plans to work with Ripple (XRP) on a real estate tokenization pilot.

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Bitcoin cryptocurrency exchange Cryptocurrency news

Top US Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinbase Adopts an “International First Mindset”

Top US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has increased its focus on international markets amid regulatory uncertainty in the United States, according to the company’s vice president of international policy.

In a recent interview on Zebu Live, Tom Duff Gordon notes that international expansion is becoming “increasingly important” for the exchange.

“We want to work with everyone because we believe that the United States is a really important market. We need to achieve that [regulatory] clarity. It may not happen tomorrow, but I think we are on the right track to achieve it.

But look, there are only 300 million people in the United States. [Coinbase CEO] Brian Armstrong’s big vision… is to attract a billion people to cryptocurrencies. It is a question of economic freedom. Either way, we can’t just do this in America. That’s why we’re now adopting this “international first” mentality.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Coinbase in June, accusing the company of operating as an unregistered stock exchange, broker-dealer, and clearing agency.

Last month, the company successfully registered as a cryptocurrency exchange and custody wallet provider with the Bank of Spain. It also gained approval from the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) to offer digital asset perpetual futures to investors outside the US.