Out of service computer https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-out-service-sign-graphic-concept-image76832992
A number of major cryptocurrency exchanges reported technical issues and system outage on Wednesday, following a massive increase in users activity. Top crypto trading platforms like Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini were all affected today.
Some exchanges worked today, some didn't. Remember those that worked.
The publicly traded US exchange Coinbase reported an “intermittent downtime” on its status webpage on Wednesday.
We’ve put a fix in place and are monitoring the results, however you shouldn’t run into any more trouble logging into Coinbase and Coinbase Pro. We sincerely apologize for any trouble caused by this issue, and we thank you for your patience with us today.
— Coinbase Support (@CoinbaseSupport) May 19, 2021
Gemini had to undergo emergency maintenance, citing issues of stale market data. According to Gemini’s status webpage however, “a fix has been implemented and we are monitoring the results”.
We are aware of the issues our users have experienced this morning. All customer accounts and funds remained completely secure. Gemini mobile, web, API and AT interfaces are now back up and running. Please view our status page for more information: https://t.co/9gNdlyBPqn
Kraken suffered connectivity issues. The users also complained that their crypto wallet balances weren’t updating after completing transactions. The exchange also confirmed issues with funding via Debit / Credit Cards, all of which are being solved and monitored.
The scheduled maintenance has been completed and we're fully operational again. We thank you for your patience.
The system outages and technical issues with these exchanges aren’t surprising, given that many crypto investors and traders have been scrambling to close their positions due to the bearish state of the market. Major cryptos like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin and Litecoin, all dropped by more than 15 percent in price.
At the time of writing, the entire crypto market capitalization was $1.77 trillion USD, with a 16 percent decrease over the past 24 hours.
Global Crypto Capitalization Charts. [CoinMarketCap]
This week was the rough for Bitcoin, as data shows that over 30,749,89 (around $1,469,578,437.99 AUD) were sold, making it the biggest BTC selloff since March 2020.
The global crypto market has lost approximately $1 trillion USD following Bitcoin and Ethereum massive selloffs across exchanges —which trailed most cryptocurrencies with them, including Dogecoin (DOGE).
Bitcoin is currently at around $50,000 AUD while Ethereum $3,500 AUD. The market lost around $250 billion USD on Monday, but panic selling seems nowhere to stop as over $8 billion USD liquidations were triggered over the last 24h.
Environmental Concerns
There are many possible reasons as to why the crypto market has plunged this week, starting with Elon Musk backtracking on Bitcoin, announcing Tesla will not accept BTC payments due to “environmental concerns”.
The announcement caused an adverse reaction to most cryptocurrencies in the market. Most altcoins were enjoying a steady altseason as BTC was losing over 60% in market dominance. However, most coins are now in the red.
Source: Quantify Crypto
Polygon (MATIC) is the only coin that survived the crash, which surged 10% in the last 24 hours, reaching a new all-time high at $2.4 USD a few hours ago. However, it did suffer a $46 million USD liquidation.
Blackouts in the Xingjian region caused a hashrate drop of over 45%, producing transaction delays in the Bitcoin network and another adverse price drop. Since then, BTC has struggled to break its previous $60k barrier.
Chinese Crypto Whispers
Another event that propelled the crash was that Chinese regulatory bodies reiterated their stance on banning financial and payment institutions from providing banking services to crypto-related entities and traders alike.
However, most rumours circulated that China had “banned crypto” —which is not exactly true, but that didn’t stop it from causing more damage to the market.
A $60M USD Rekt
Data shows that over 80% of liquidations were leveraged traders, meaning, they borrowed capital to invest in higher prices. In just 24 hours, nearly 1 million traders got liquidated.
This is by far the biggest selloff the market has ever experienced. Some analysts call this event a “capitulation”, which means the market could be oversold by now giving institutional capital and large holders the opportunity to buy again.
While many sold their cryptos, others like MicroStrategy did not hesitate to buy the dip whatsoever. As reported, the firm bought an additional $10 million USD worth of BTC.
Following on from my article about 5 Crypto Coins That Could Have a Great 2021, I’ve had a lot of questions lately about what cryptos I like at the moment. So here is the shortlist, and the reasons why I like them.
Disclaimer: Before you continue reading, please note that I am not a financial advisor, nor do not recommend you buy any of these cryptos mentioned below. I also change my positions constantly and may or may not be holding these coins. This is just a list of those coins which I like at the moment and providing some commentary for educational purposes only to help people learn about these exciting projects.For the latest coin prices see the cryptos page.
BTC is the first cryptocurrency and the godfather driving the market. Over the years, I’ve learned that it is foolish not to have some BTC in the portfolio, because it tends to act independently to the other cryptocurrencies. What percentage of BTC of the total portfolio is totally up to you, something around 50% is not unusual to see.
With its inelastic supply and growing demand, it’s hard not to see continued upside as it averages around 200% per year over the past 10 years. We’re also seeing lots of institutional money flowing into BTC as big companies add BTC to their balance sheets as a “hedge” and “store of value”.
I would also say that there is also speculation that BTC may eventually replace the US Dollar and become unit of account for the worldwide economy. Could we be comparing the price of goods in Satoshi’s in future years to come?
While Bitcoin is seen as a “store of value”, Ethereum is powering the new crypto economy. Bitcoin currently has scaling and environmental issues while Ethereum is quickly evolving to address those issues.
As a computer programmer myself, as soon as I heard “Ethereum is programmable money”, my eyes opened wide and I saw the potential of cryptocurrencies for the future of the economy.
Ethereum has some very promising use cases especially with Decentralised Finance (DeFi), Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs), and Decentralised Exchanges (DEXs).
Compared to Bitcoin’s 200% average return per year, Ethereum has averaged 400% per year so far and is on target to outperform BTC once again this year.
Binance has evolved into a worldwide cryptocurrency exchange juggernaut since it started in 2017. At the moment, it is the easiest and best place to do your crypto trading. Before it came along, other platforms were terrible and hard to use with high fees.
They are also starting to expand their services into other markets such as DeFi with Binance Smart Chain, crypto loans, and crypto debit cards coming to Australia later this year.
It’s crazy to think that BNB was only $2 back in 2018 and now it is over $600. I can only see upside for Binance as their ecosystem expands rapidly as they buy up big companies such as CoinMarketCap and are set to Acquire 20-30 Crypto Startups Yearly.
Chilliz launched in 2020 to power the new sports fan token economy. These tokens act like a royalty program for fans and also can provide other benefits such as voting, connecting fans directly with clubs and players.
Since launching, CHZ has already increased over 7,000% in price and I can only see more upside for the project. My research into this coin revealed that there are currently no major competitors in the space. Their business model also looks quite clever, as they list new tokens (like in the case of UFC) on pre-sale, then the coin is actually added once the partnership is officially approved.
As clubs see the potential to raise funds through this new revenue stream, they will launch their tokens and form partnerships with Chilliz and Socios as a way to not only raise funds but engage with their fans. We’ve already seen big football clubs join such as Manchester City, Barcelona, Juventus and other sports such as UFC and Formula 1.
Chainlink is a project that connects real-world data with blockchain data. As a computer programmer, I can see the power of this technology and the need for timely, accurate, and trusted data.
Moving forward I can see a huge demand to sync the real world and the virtual world. This could be something simple like a weather forecast, or more complicated like tokenized partial ownership of real estate.
Together with this and its exceptionally regarded oracles that manage the security and integrity of the network it can only be a very strong “middleman” for the further advancements of blockchain and decentralized finance.
Basic Attention Token is a decentralized platform built on Ethereum. It rewards you for your attention, if you see an ad, you get paid in BAT through the Brave Browser.
The utility of rewarding people for their attention is quite a powerful concept, especially if you are shown the ads your interested in.
The project is currently advancing by developing a DEX (decentralized exchange) which should add tremendous value to the project’s already 3 million monthly users.
Theta is one of the leading projects that is providing decentraliszed bandwidth through peer-to-peer networking. Other features of Theta include Decentralised Video Streaming, Staking, Theta TFUEL, Guardian Nodes, CDNs, Voting, and more.
As more adoption comes to cryptocurrencies and blockchain, one would assume we will need more bandwidth to support scaling worldwide. Theta software was also included in the new Samsung Galaxy S20 smartphones to assist with video streaming and rewarding watchers with TFUEL tokens.
The hypothesis is that as crypto usage grows, then Theta adoption should grow with it.
Cardano is a decentralized blockchain platform, similar to Ethereum. It’s already a proof-of-stake platform which is more environmentally friendly and has implemented further unique scaling technology.
The QTUM project is a decentralized platform and blockchain similar to Ethereum. Its purpose is not to compete with Bitcoin and Ethereum, but to bridge the gap between them helping scale transactions at low cost.
The project is heavily committed to DeFi and supporting DeFi projects offering $1 million dollars in rewards to developers who build applications using the Qtum blockchain.
Personally, I think Decentralised Finance (DeFi) is going to be a huge disrupt to how we currently do finance worldwide. Frameworks like Ethereum and Qtum, which support DeFi projects can only have an upside in the future as they contribute to the rise of DeFi.
Ripple (XRP) is a cryptocurrency platform and blockchain similar to Ethereum. The project is attempting to become the facilitator for global payments between financial institutions.
XRP has had both good and bad press over the years. Initially, the sentiment was very bullish due to the rumors that banks may use it for liquidity and large global transactions. However, since then, it has been involved in lawsuits lessening its appeal.
Recently they announced plans for Ripple To Go Public After Lawsuit Settlement which has shed some light that there may be some potential for a comeback in sentiment. After running crypto news for the past few years I’ve seen that the 2 most popular coins in Australia are DOGE and XRP.
Dogecoin (DOGE) started as a joke when a developer cloned Bitcoin’s code and stuck a dog meme as the logo, back in 2013. Since then it has gained tremendous popularity and it seems you can’t go a single day without seeing that cheeky dog face.
I generally don’t invest in “jokecoins”, also referred to as “shitcoins” that have little to no utility. However, DOGE is an exception, due to its strong social appeal. Its “meme value” is so high within the crypto community and this provides free marketing for the coin.
Back in 2017, I underestimated the power of social media when DOGE was only $0.00023, and this year it almost reached $1 earlier this year – that’s over 400,000% gain in just 3-4 years.
As the crypto market grows and more people join in the frenzy, DOGE could be the one they buy as a speculation. However, I think it will only end badly for those people buying DOGE at all-time high prices, when the market turns, the shitcoins could drop to nothing, only the quality projects will survive long term.
Conclusions
It’s crazy how back in 2016 the prices were so low compared to now. I wonder if we will be shocked again in another 4-5 years from now…
If you’re interested in buying any of these coins then head over to one of our trusted Partners: CoinJar, Swyftx, or Binance to get started. You can compare the exchanges here.
Stock and Crypto Market Values https://unsplash.com/photos/fiXLQXAhCfk
After more than a week of Bitcoin losing value, a report by Glassnode shows that Monday saw the biggest sell-off since March 2020.
That was when panic selling occurred due to fears about the market brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Such event subsequently became known as Black Thursday in the crypto scene.
Retail Investors Sell vs. Institutions Buy
Despite the massive sell-off, prices haven’t tanked as much as one would expect. In total, 30,749.89 BTC were sold on Monday. But as retail investors sold their BTC, companies and institutions have taken the opportunity to buy it.
As a result, Binance – a popular exchange especially between private traders – registered an inflow of around 26,000 BTC. Coinbase, on the other hand – one of the exchanges preferred by institutional investors – registered a net outflow of 146 BTC.
Although 146 BTC isn’t an enormous amount, it shows that, overall, more BTC is being bought than sold on the exchange often preferred by institutional investors. At current daily transactional volumes, Coinbase is still seeing more BTC being bought than sold.
Coinbase has seen almost entirely net outflows of BTC since breaking last cycles $20,000 USD all-time high, a trend that has continued this week. Coinbase is the preferred venue for U.S. institutional accumulation and given the scale of typical daily withdrawals (10,000 to 20,000 BTC per day), it suggests that larger buyers remain in active accumulation during this correction.
It’s also worth mentioning that the sale of BTC to Binance and other exchanges does not necessarily mean that people are looking at getting rid of their cryptocurrency. Many of the Bitcoins sold may simply be exchanged for other cryptos, given the gains Ethereum (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies have also made recently.
This provides further indication that the recent inflows are likely to be driven by both new market entrants (panic sellers) and potentially due to capital rotation into other crypto assets.
Glassnode “The Week On-chain (Week 20, 2021)”
Overall, more Bitcoin is being sold across all exchanges – This data seems to suggest that the market may start recovering sooner rather than later, possibly thanks to institutional support.
It seems that Elon has done a complete backflip on his bullishness towards Bitcoin and is now asserting his power and influence to wage war against the very asset that has made him and his company billions.
Elon launched a negative attack on Bitcoin’s fundamentals to stir mass hysteria and fud on the entire crypto industry.
Michael Saylor has joined the debate to shed some light on the truth and offer some real facts over claims that Bitcoin is “bad for the environment”.
Michael Saylor intelligently articulates that while Bitcoin mining does use energy, it is actually powered by “wasted energy”: the 30% of lost excess energy generated by the world’s power grid. He argues that stopping Bitcoin mining would have no effect on reducing the amount of energy already being wasted in the world.
“The least energy intensive, most efficient technology that we have perhaps discovered, ever, in the history of the human race.”
Michael Saylor
The beneficial advantages that the blockchain solves in our society makes it’s energy usage justified. For Bitcoin, this energy expenditure is a small price to pay for a censorship-resistant digital bearer asset, one that lets citizens of the world to escape a broken centralized financial system and improve people’s lives exponentially.
He also explains that Bitcoin mining will decrease in the near future; as the last of the 21 million Bitcoins in existence are mined. Every four years, the revenue and the block rewards for Bitcoin are falling, so by the year 2035, 99% of the world’s Bitcoin will have been mined. This means that over time, Bitcoin brilliantly becomes less energy-taxing on the environment.
If you take all the energy of used in the Bitcoin network it amounts to 25 basis points of all the wasted energy. So 1/4 of 1% of the wasted energyin the world, offers the hope of a decent life to 8 Billion people and solves an economic problem”.
Michael Saylor
To slander crypto-mining as an inherently dirty business, appears intellectually dishonest and deliberately deceptive. Is Elon looking to get enter the cryptocurrency market himself and partner with Dogecoin to save the world from the ‘harmful environmental impact’ of Bitcoin mining? For starters, if Dogecoin was ever to be a serious contender for the ‘currency of earth’, or mars for that matter, it would want to be deflationary (as Bitcoin is) and also decentralised (as Bitcoin is), ie: not having 30% of the circulating supply owned by one person (as Doge is).
Following a bizarre poll on Twitter on May 11, asking followers if they wanted Tesla to accept Doge; Elon took to Twitter again on May 13- this time to condemn Bitcoin, renouncing BTC purchases for Tesla due to ‘environmental concerns’. As cryptic as Elon’s tweets often are, you don’t have to be a genius to read between the lines; as he clearly hints at an alternative cryptocurrency being a more favourable alternative; stating: “we are looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction”.
Working with Doge devs to improve system transaction efficiency. Potentially promising.
What is Elon Musk’s agenda here? Is he really concerned about the burning of fossil fuels, in particular coal, used to mine Bitcoin, or is he carefully turning the debate to focus on something much bigger? Is it about creating further hype around Dogecoin, or something else that would hugely benefit Tesla’s financial interests?
If you’re going to focus on environmental issues, particularly those centred around the world’s consumption of coal, there are a lot of other places to start, than criticising the use of energy required to mine Bitcoin.
Will we see Bitcoin go to a proof of work model like Ethereum 2.0 which is greener and better for the environment.
One of the world’s largest collector car auction company, Mecum Auctions, has announced that it now accepts payments in Bitcoin and other major digital currencies from bidders during online auction events.
You Can Bid on Collector Cars With Cryptocurrency
Per the announcement, the company will accept bids in about ten cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (BTC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ethereum (ETH), and stablecoins such as USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD, and others.
This is made possible following Mecum Auctions’ partnership with one of the industry-leading crypto payment processors, BitPay. The development today will enable bidders to experience the “convenience of an end-to-end digital experience”, according to Mecum.
Mecum Auctions will now accept cryptocurrency for payment via @BitPay, the world’s largest provider of #Bitcoin & #cryptocurrency payment services!
Additionally, the company believes its crypto payment service will enable them to attract new customers and sales, as it opens doors to new massive crypto marketplace.
We recognize the growing acceptance of cryptocurrency for commerce and are confident that by accepting crypto for collector cars, it will widen our scope of influence and introduce the Mecum Experience to an entirely new audience.
Sam Murtaugh, Chief Operating Officer at Mecum Auctions [source]
Aussies Can Buy Cars With Bitcoin
Mecum is not the first company to accept Bitcoin payments for purchasing cars. Only a few weeks ago, Crypto News Australia reported that CarBuyers.com.au is allowing Australians to buy and sell their vehicles using Bitcoin.
Tesla also previously allowed people Bitcoin payments for its products. Not until May 12, when the founder Elon Musk tweeted that the company will no longer accept payments in Bitcoin due to environmental concerns. The announcement preceded the massive drop in the price of the cryptocurrency, as people began to panic-sell their coins.
While Bitcoin (BTC) price struggles below $45,000 USD, MicroStrategy is stacking up more coins in the dip. On Tuesday, the publicly traded business intelligence company announced it purchased additional Bitcoin, worth about $10 million USD.
MicroStrategy Now Holds Over 92k Bitcoin in Reserve
On Tuesday, MicroStrategy purchased an additional 229 Bitcoin at an average value of $43,663 USD per coin, according to the tweet by the CEO, Michael Saylor.
MicroStrategy has purchased an additional 229 bitcoins for $10.0 million in cash at an average price of ~$43,663 per #bitcoin. As of 5/18/2021, we #hodl ~92,079 bitcoins acquired for ~$2.251 billion at an average price of ~24,450 per bitcoin. $MSTRhttps://t.co/fU6LN4WbKI
Following this recent purchase, MicroStrategy currently holds 92,078 BTC in its reserve, remaining one of the largest corporate Bitcoin investors. Just last week, the company acquired 271 BTC for $15 million USD, at an average of $55,387 per Bitcoin. This follows Tesla’s announcement that it has suspended accepting Bitcoin payments for its vehicles over environmental concerns.
The massive correction in the price of Bitcoin, however, didn’t deter MicroStrategy from buying the dip. This goes to show how confident the company is regarding Bitcoin.
BTC Dominance Drops to 40%
For the past few days, Bitcoin has been struggling below $50,000 USD, as people panic-sold their holding. The cryptocurrency was trading at $43,644 USD on CoinMarketCap, during the time of writing. Its market capitalization has dropped down below $1 trillion amid the massive price decline. BTC shaded about 22.61 percent in value over the past seven days.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin’s dominance has also dropped to 40 percent. On the other hand, there has been a rise of altcoins.
Sony Interactive Entertainment, the video game and digital entertainment company of Sony Group, has published its patent application for an eSports betting platform that will support Bitcoin payments.
Sony to Support Bitcoin in New Betting Platform
The patent was published this month, although it was initially filed by the entertainment firm in 2019, according to the report by IGN. The information on the patent states that the company is considering developing a betting service for livestream eSports events. The platform will basically enable viewers to bet on live streaming events like fighting game tournaments.
In the patent, the company mentioned Bitcoin (BTC) as one of the options (wager) through which viewers can place or earn from a bet.
Wagers may be pecuniary, e.g., money or bitcoin, or maybe non-pecuniary, e.g., game assets, digital rights, and virtual currency.
The platform will be powered by a machine learning algorithm that can be used to learn correct odds based on a training set from past proposition bets. This algorithm will equally help identify essential events in the simulation for better proposition bets.
Once the proposition bets are defined, the odds for those bets are established either by a human or by an algorithm accessing the game analytic data of some or all of the simulation participants.
It remains unknown when the proposed eSports betting service will be launched. However, it looks like a company’s effort to onboard more fans into the esports community.
The world of cryptocurrency and gaming is getting closer and stronger as more firms continue to support and integrate digital currency in their services.
While tumbling in price, Bitcoin (BTC) has taken the vast majority of cryptocurrencies with it. Outside of Solana, AAVE and a few others weathering the storm, everything looks in the red.
The chart may be looking quite grim now – after a rough week that sent the price of 1 BTC plummeting from $59,434 USD to $43,974 USD (at the time of writing). Although Bitcoin price fall doesn’t seem to have come to a halt yet, this is not the first time it happens to BTC and in the past it has always recovered, eventually.
Routine Blow-Offs Of Around 30%
Below is a table showing that drastic drops in value are recurrent events.
Date
BTC price % drop
January 2017
35%
March 2017
33%
May 2017
32%
July 2017
40%
September 2017
41%
November 2017
30%
December 2017
21%
December 2017
23%
December 2018
84%
January 2021
31%
February 2021
26%
May 2021
32%
A drop in value almost as big as the current one took place as recently as January – and the market promptly pushed the price to a new all-time high not long after.
Of course, cryptocurrency trading remains high-risk, high-reward – and panic selling may not be the best move, as we see big corporations continue buying the dip.
In the past week Bitcoin (BTC) has gone through a few price dips – the kind of situation that could scare new investors causing them to sell-off their assets in fear of losing everyting.
Has anything actually changed though? Has something triggered the drop in price? Is there a reason to panic?
The market has shown various times that when public sentiment about cryptocurrency lowers due to some public figure or negative news there are people who sell their assets. This looks like an emotional reaction with little regard for fundamentals.
In a post by Glassnode they state that there are “strong signals that short-term holders are leading with panic selling”. Bitcoin which is down to $44,757 USD at the time of writing from $55,000 USD one week ago is seemingly being driven by weak hands.
[…] weak hands traders have predictable buying and selling behaviors as they are driven by fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).
While the long-term price action seems to be driven by the monetary preferences of the world changing from fiat money to crypto, short-term price action is driven by leverage and derivatives markets.
As the price of Bitcoin has dropped to around $44,000 USD, it looks like institutions are buying the dip. The recent three-month consolidation can be thought of as bitcoin simply moving from weak hands to strong ones.
Bitcoin: Number of Accumulation Addresses [Glassnode]
There is also an increase in accumulation addresses, which are thosethat have at least two incoming transactions but have never spent any coins. This suggests that long term investors are buying this dip too.
The Importance of Research
An important phrase in the crypto world is “Do Your Own Research” (DYOR), meant to encourage people to understand what they are buying so that they get to know the project or technology they are investing in. By not just following sentiment, investors can feel more secure about their decisions.
DYOR seems to be applicable beyond the crypto world – due to the amount of misinformation floating around, one needs to keep a keen eye on the sources, or get professional advice.
