Bitcoin Took a Hit Last Week But These Cryptos Fared Worse

bitcoin hogged the limelight in the cryptocurrency markets last week as it fell to one-month lows below $8,000.

Yet, while the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization suffered a 3.6 percent week-on-week drop in prices, it still outclassed other major names like bitcoin cash (BCH) and EOS, which both reported double-digit losses.

Meanwhile, the previous week’s winner zilliqa (ZIL) fell almost 20 percent to become the biggest loser among the top 25 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

On the plus side, privacy-focused zcash rallied 50 percent and topped the list of winners as investors cheered a new exchange listing.

Top 3 losers (May 11-18)

Zilliqa (ZIL)

Weekly performance: -19.82 percent
All-time high: $0.2306
Closing price on May 11: $0.1677
Current market price: $0.1455
Rank as per market capitalization: 25

Zilliqa dropped close to 20 percent in the week ended May 18, having rallied 13.8 percent in the previous week. However, the cryptocurrency was overdue for a healthy correction after a solid rally to record high of $0.2306 on May 10.

While the investor community is keenly eyeing a Singapore meetup at which the zilliqa developers will give a preview of its new smart contract language Scilla, the pre-event excitement has not put a bid under the token.

ZIL/BTC daily chart

A break below the May 18 low of 0.00001608 BTC would establish a lower highs and lower lows (bearish setup) pattern and allow a deeper drop to 0.00001430 BTC (50 percent Fibonacci retracement). The 10-day moving average is trending south in favor of the bears.

EOS

Weekly performance: -15.77 percent
All-time high: $22.89
Closing price on May 11: $14.90
Current market price: $13.60
Rank as per market capitalization: 5

EOS fell to three-week lows below $12 last week, according to Bitfinex, indicating the excitement surrounding the coming mainnet launch is no longer boosting its price. However, the cryptocurrency did defend the 50-day moving average (MA) and moved back above $13.00 as seen in the chart below.

Daily chart

Notably, the ascending trendline (in red) is still intact, and EOS is trading well above the 50-day, 100-day and 200-day moving averages, suggesting the long-run technical outlook remains bullish.

A high volume break above the descending trendline resistance, currently at $15.62, would allow a re-test of record highs around $23.00. On the downside, acceptance below the rising trendline would signal a bearish trend reversal – i.e. the rally from the March 18 low of $3.87 has ended.

bitcoin cash

Weekly performance: -14.36 percent
All-time high: $4,330
Closing price on May 11: $1,372
Current market price: $1,250
Rank as per market capitalization: 4

bitcoin cash (BCH) ran into offers around $1,500 on May 13/14 and fell to a low of $1,128 on Bitfinex on Friday – the lowest level since April 22.

A planned software upgrade (or hard fork) to introduce new features came into effect on May 15 as expected, but around 20 percent of nodes have still not upgraded – perhaps negating any potential price boost from the news.

Subsequently, the weekend’s rally in bitcoin prices seems to have had a positive impact and BCH did regain bid tone, but it failed to cut through the key moving average, as seen in the chart below.

4-hour chart

BCH is now back below the head-and-shoulders neckline, having faced rejection at the descending (bearish) 50-candle moving average hurdle. As a result, the recent low of $1,128 could again be put to test.

A daily close below that level would mean the rally from the April low of $600 has ended and could yield a drop to levels below the $1,000 mark.

However, a move above $1,500 (last week’s high) would put the bulls back in the driver’s seat.

Roller coaster image via Shutterstock

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Published at Mon, 21 May 2018 14:35:47 +0000

Markets[wpr5_ebay kw=”bitcoin” num=”1″ ebcat=”” cid=”5338043562″ lang=”en-US” country=”0″ sort=”bestmatch”]

August 3, 2017

BitDice: Not Gambling On Fairness

BitDice is looking to “prove the fairness” in crypto-gambling as the Blockchain gambling platform differentiates itself from the competition who are being questioned about their own fairness in results.

[Note: This is a press release.]

By diversifying their technology, and even opening themselves up to the use of fiat currencies, BitDice will meld the cryptocurrency betting world, which already makes up roughly five percent of the entire online gambling industry, with fiat gambling by alleviating fears of the “Black Box” phenomenon.

Beyond a Single Technology

Besides allowing the user to choose if they want to play with fiat currency or digital, BitDice is even offering players the choice in technology. In other crypto-gambling platforms, the single technology is essentially a clone of a simple dice game that is run on the Ethereum network and its smart contracts – this comes with its limitations.

The Smart Contracts can be cumbersome, especially in a gambling environment, as the speed and transaction fees can infuriate and frustrate players. Ethereum networks impose higher latency speed for validating wager results and on top of that comes a transaction fee a user must pay with each wager.

By diversifying its technology, BitDice can run its games free of charge on the server with publicly observable and provably fair algorithms that include different types of cryptocurrencies and are capable of processing up to 20 wagers a client per second.

Providing Absolute Fairness

Of course, when gambling online, the biggest fear is that the games are rigged, and there is no fairness involved. This is especially an issue with crypto-gambling as the Random Number Generation (RNG) algorithm cannot be invoked within the Blockchain.

It leads to outsourcing to other parties, which in themselves, are also outsourcing, which clearly leaves plenty of gaps for tinkering with results. Each layer of data transmission can be intruded upon an affected to the benefit of the casino.

This is where BitDice has stepped up the game by successfully implemented the “provably fairness” concept that serves its purpose and eliminates risks of cheating without outreaching any third-party provider.

A client-seed, generated and known by the user, is linked with the server-seed to create an unhackable random outcome which can be verified immediately after the bet is made, but cannot be known in advance by any party.

Standing Out From the Crowd

Traditional casinos, of course, have their limitations, as do Smart Contract casinos, but BitDice has addressed many of these shortcomings in order to put themselves head and shoulders above the competition.text

Yes1 – One should apply a top-skill technical expertise to understand and interpret the code of the smart-contract. Smart-contracts can be easily twisted without being noticed by an average user.

No2 – To accommodate high-roller players the funds shall be readily available and kept in hot wallets (online), which is a very insecure way of holding crypto assets. Last examples – Edgeless and Dao.Casino wallets were drained because of mistakes in the code.

Website: https://ico.bitdice.me
Email: contact@bitdice.me

Images courtesy of BitDice, AdobeStock

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