Hodler’s Digest comes every Saturday and helps you keep track of every important news that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, highlights of adoption and regulation, leading coins, predictions, and more – one week on Cointelegraph in one link.
Top Stories This Week
Bitcoin price quickly climbs to $ 31,000, liquidating shorts worth $ 100 million
When 2021 started, Bitcoin was hovering on the edge of $ 30,000 – keep reaching new all-time highs.
There was drama early in the week after BTC crashed by 6.5% in a few minutes with a sales wall $ 28,400 Wipe thousands of dollars from its value.
Bitcoin still had a lot to struggle. As the New Year approached, a sharp surge in the world’s largest cryptocurrency helped Waltz over $ 28,500 and surpass $ 29,000.
And on January 2nd, BTC rose rapidly $ 31,000 – Liquidate a large number of risky positions in the process and inflict great pain on traders betting on bearish withdrawals.
As Hodlers celebrated cracking this psychologically important milestone, numbers indicated that Shorters lost $ 10 million on BitMEX alone.
In another milestone, Bitcoin hit an all-time high against gold – Reach 15.40 gold ounces, beating previous December 2017 high.
BTC’s newly discovered market cap above $ 580 billion Nor were crypto enthusiasts who were quick to point out that their rating now tops that of Warren Buffett’s financial giant Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett famously described Bitcoin as “rat poison squared”.
The supply bottleneck increases as Grayscale buys almost three times the bitcoin mined in December
Grayscale rounded off 2020 with another extravagant Bitcoin purchase. In December, the company snapped up 72,950 BTC – far more than the 28,112 BTC generated by miners.
Overall, the total managed assets of Grayscale in the various crypto funds are now included $ 20 billion – a stark contrast to the $ 2 billion it checked a year ago.
All of this clearly shows a persistent liquidity bottleneck in Bitcoin, with large buyers sucking up all available supplies and withdrawing them from circulation.
Data from Glassnode shows that Bitcoin is becoming increasingly difficult to buy – and the amount of BTC received and spent between companies is decreasing.
Analysts say that 14.5 million BTC is currently classified as illiquid, so only 4.2 million BTC in constant circulation available for purchase and sale.
The US exchanges suspend or delist XRP left and right
It’s getting worse and worse for Ripple. Several major crypto exchanges – including Binance US, eToro, Coinbase, and Bittrex – have stopped XRP trading for their American clients.
All of this comes after the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused the blockchain firm of selling XRP tokens in violation of the Securities Act. Both sides will face each other in a telephone pre-conference on February 22, 2021.
Earlier this week, Ripple accused the SEC of attempting to bring the entire cryptocurrency industry to a standstill in the United States, and said the company had spent years unsuccessfully seeking regulatory clarity on digital assets.
In a defiant statement, it wrote, “The public and press have only heard the story from the SEC, and we will be filing our response in a few weeks to address these unproven allegations against Ripple.”
All of this drama has resulted in XRP more than losing 60% of its worth over the past two weeks.
XRP is the “third biggest breakdown of all time,” says Josh Frank of The TIE
For XRP, it’s been a spectacular crash since its market cap hit an all-time high of $ 137 billion in 2018. According to The TIE, the current turmoil has contributed to the altcoin’s valuation falling 93% since then – below $ 10 billion.
TIE CEO Joshua Frank said this spectacular descent made him the third biggest collapse of all time … bigger than Enron and WorldCom, and not far behind Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual.
Frank told Cointelegraph it was “sad and unhappy” for individual investors who lost “unimaginable amounts of money,” adding:
“The founders of Ripple dumped their tokens for years and made hundreds of millions of dollars.”
In the short term, XRP is facing three major historical support levels $ 0.224, $ 0.1743 and $ 0.1471.
The NY Times report claims that in the past, Coinbase has discriminated against payment
A New York Times report has claimed that Coinbase paid black employees roughly 7% less than people in similar positions.
The entitlements are based on 2017 salary data and averaged across the company as a difference of $ 11,500. When considering stock options, the remuneration gap was closer 11%.
It is also alleged that there were gender pay gaps. Data suggests that women on the stock market were paid an average of 8% less than their male counterparts this year. In terms of money, that’s $ 13,000.
NYT reporter Nathaniel Popper wrote: “The wage gap at Coinbase seems to be much bigger than it is across the tech industry and the few other tech companies that have had to publish data.”
Coinbase Chief People Officer LJ Brock was quick to respond to the allegations. He said “significant work” has been done to create transparent and fair wage policies.
Winner and Loser
At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $ 31,289.06, Ether at $ 755.05 and XRP at $ 0.23. The total market capitalization is $ 815,536,576,911.
Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies are the top three altcoin winners of the week Keep rights, Speckle and Dogecoin. The top three altcoin losers of the week are SwissBorg, XRP and currency.
For more information on crypto pricing, see Market analysis by Cointelegraph.
Forecast of the week
“Bullish year ahead” – Bitcoin is poised for gains in the first quarter of 2021, according to the strength index
Bitcoin’s monthly relative strength shows that the world’s largest cryptocurrency is poised for another rally.
The RSI measures whether an asset is overbought or oversold. When the RSI exceeds 75This signals that the asset is overbought and if it falls below it 30thThis means that the asset is oversold.
“Crypto Capo,” a pseudonymous trader, said Bitcoin’s monthly RSI was near 80 when December came to an end. Historically, a strong rally followed.
They write: “When this happens, the upward trend continues with an average. Return of 1010.87%. Each cycle is shorter. “
Cointelegraph Markets’ analyst Michaël van de Poppe is among those who revised their Bitcoin forecasts for 2021. He announced that a bullish year was ahead and announced that he now expects BTC to be in between $ 65,000 and $ 85,000 until December.
The options market calculates a 22% Chance to hit bitcoin $ 120,000 See you next year but some cautious traders say the ideal scenario is to wait for BTC to consolidate $ 25,000… Or occur after the next price increase.
FUD of the week
Congressmen penalize the Treasury Department for making a new proposal on crypto surveillance
Nine Congressmen have written to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin telling him to hold his horses on proposals that would force registered crypto companies to get more customer information.
The measures discussed met with widespread outrage among the crypto community. Not only is Mnuchin imposing this rule weeks before Joe Biden joins the White House, but only 15 days have been allowed for public comment … well below the typical 60-day consultation period.
In a letter the legislature wrote: “A comment period of eight working days on two public holidays is not suitable for regulating an industry and can lead to the stakeholders not being able to react sensibly.”
The coverage log announces a compensation plan after an attack on a mining contract
The Cover Protocol has released a compensation plan for token holders and liquidity providers affected by a recent hack.
Eligible liquidity providers for Uniswap, SushiSwap and Balancer will receive new cover tokens based on their share of the liquidity pool on these platforms.
The compensation plan also revealed that prior to the hack, token holders would receive new cover coins on a one-to-one basis with their initial wallet balance.
All of this happens after the Cover Protocol suffered an infinite coin attack that caused prices to drop. Several companies exploited the vulnerability, with the first attacker reportedly consuming more than $ 4 million from the log.
Alleged kingpin of a 25 million rupee crypto scam arrested in India
A 60-year-old man was arrested at a Delhi airport and charged with leading a 25 million rupee ($ 340,000) cryptocurrency fraud.
Police claim Umesh Verma, along with his son Bharat, persuaded hundreds to invest in a program called Pluto Exchange, which provides monthly returns 20% -30%.
The system issued a “cryptocurrency” called Coin Zarus in exchange for investments. However, shortly after the program launched in November 2017, returns dried up and Verma reportedly fell off the radar and eventually reappeared in Dubai in 2018.
Best Cointelegraph properties
Crypto transactions need to be easier. That’s it. That’s the headline
The gap between users and those who design cryptocurrency service platforms needs to be bridged before the masses make the leap, argues Luke Stokes.
The US lost the 2020 crypto regulation race to Europe
When it comes to crypto regulation, the United States continues to fall behind more progressive and visionary nations. This is Johannes Kaske.
The XRP price faces a rocky road to recovery ahead of the SEC’s ripple process
Although Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is ready to challenge the SEC over their lawsuit, Shiraz Jagati warns that getting back from the knock could be difficult.
