In the past seven days, the trading in a range between $7,500 and $6,500, closing the week effectively unchanged and unable to sustain above $7000. The altcoin market largely moved in tandem with its pioneering predecessor and no major gains or losses were made in leading digital assets.
While the bulls believe that the worst is behind us, the bears consider it a very real possibility that we could see new lows in the coming months before the market turns around again. Experts cite the remaining Mt.Gox BTC/BCH bankruptcy funds that still need to be sold as well as traders cashing out profits to cover upcoming capital gains tax payments as the main reasons for the heavy market in recent weeks.
While price action remains rather muted for crypto standards in the past week, there was enough controversy to keep the community entertained.
It came to light that outspoken entrepreneur John McAfee has been getting paid over $100,000 to promote altcoins on his Twitter account, which has often led to price spikes for small unknown coins.
The past week also saw his thoughts on the heated debate between Roger Ver and Samson Mow during the Deconomy Conference in Seoul, South Korea. The debate itself brought the bitcoin scaling debate and the bitcoin versus bitcoin Cash feud back into the forefront of the community.
Buterin also during the conference, asking the organizers: “Why is this fraud allowed to speak at this conference?,” a view shared by Lightning Network creator Joseph Poon.
This week’s contributions have been provided by , , , and .
Coinbase is set to launch an early-stage venture fund for crypto and blockchain startups. The fund was made known to on Thursday, April 5, 2018, by Asiff Hirji, the President and COO of the firm. According to Hirji, the investment fund is already worth $15 million at the start of the initiative, and it is expected to grow. Hirji declared that the investment fund is coming right out of the company’s balance sheets.
The fund will be used to provide seed-stage investments in a number of blockchain and crypto startups starting in the next few days, according to Hirji. Coinbase wishes to provide the necessary funding catalyst that will spark the emergence of viable ideas into potentially profitable blockchain and that will benefit the industry.
In other Coinbase news, the company recently announced that it would begin to offer withdrawal support for certain in the coming months. The update was made known via a on the company’s Medium account on Thursday, April 5, 2018.
Online messaging – notably – is facilitating the trade that involves some 20 traders at various houses. Reuters that mostly bigger investors try to avoid generating turbulence on the online exchanges and are rather doing business via Skype.
The founder of crypto-focused hedge fund Galois Capital, Kevin Zhou, said that “Generally, you would go trade through an OTC desk when you have a large block trade you want to do without moving the market too much or incurring too much slippage.”
The traders identified all work at visible players in the industry, firms such as financial service provider Circle, Cumberland Mining, a division of the proprietary trading firm DRW Holdings and the Digital Currency Group’s New York broker-dealer Genesis Global Trading. Circle is the -backed company that, in spite of the parent company’s supposed aversion, recently acquired the exchange.
It appears George Soros has made a U-turn on his stance regarding the crypto market or, at the very least, is prepared to get in on some of the action. This news is based on a report that his family office is set to begin trading in cryptocurrencies. George Soros like a number of prominent figures in the mainstream financial scene once described bitcoin as being a . While people like appear not to be going near cryptos anytime soon, it seems George Soros has had a change of heart.
According to a recent on Bloomberg, Adam Fischer, the macro investment manager of the Soros Fund Management firm has been given internal approval to begin trading cryptocurrencies.
The Soros Fund Management firm is reportedly worth $26 billion. Unconfirmed reports also reveal that though Fischer has been given the go-ahead, no trades have been made as of yet and there is no official word on when trading will commence.
Despite his reservations about and cryptocurrencies in general, Soros has indirectly been placing wagers on the market. The Soros Fund Management firm has been able to amass a considerable portion of .
In a startling move, the Reserve Bank Of India () virtually banned cryptocurrencies on April 5, 2018, as they passed a mandate which bars banks and regulated financial institutions from providing services to any individual or business dealing in digital currencies.
As part of its , the bank gave an ultimatum of three months to all banks in the country to allow them to cut ties with, and stop services for any cryptocurrency businesses including exchanges and wallet providers.
The report acknowledged blockchain technology and it would promote the decentralized public ledger for use in the country’s financial sector. However, the RBI noted that virtual currencies, also variously referred to as cryptocurrencies and crypto assets, raise concerns of consumer protection, market integrity, and money laundering.
The move was taken after “three warnings” were given to the public against dealing with cryptocurrencies. In a short-sighted statement, the RBI deputy said, “If [cryptocurrencies] grow beyond a critical size they can endanger financial stability.”
Early in February 2018, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that the government does not consider cryptocurrencies as legal tender and will take all measures to eliminate payments used to fund nefarious activities in the country.
According to , a task force backed by the Japanese government has formulated guidelines aimed at regulating and legalizing (ICOs).
On April 5, 2018, Japan’s Business Research Group drafted a proposal requesting that the government regulate ICOs in a non-draconian way that would protect investors’ interests and encourage the growth of the nascent ICO industry.
As reported by , Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) will take a critical look at the proposal a few weeks from now. If everything works according to plan and the bill gets accepted, it could become law in a few years time – a development that will undoubtedly restore Japan’s lead in the ‘cryptosphere’ and that have the nation due to recent regulatory bottlenecks may likely come back.
“ICOs are groundbreaking technology, so if we can implement good principles and rules, they have the potential to become a new way to raise funding,” Kenji Harashima, a researcher at Mizuho Research Institute.
On April 6, Monero conducted its bi-annual scheduled upgrade, or hard fork, to increase the minimum ring size and alter the Proof of Work to nullify Bitmain’s ASIC miners. As for the success of the move, the next ten days or so will inform us of the effectiveness of the controversial decision by the Monero developers to stamp out ASICs.
The hard fork took place on the morning of April 6 on block number 1,546,000 after a on the desirability of a move to nullify ASIC miners. It is thought that the massive increase in ’s hashrate toward the end of 2017 were ASIC miners mining secretively. Bitmain only their miners for sale on April 3, after the developers decided to change the Proof of Work algorithm as indicated by a post from February. The tweak does not affect GPU or CPU miners, but only affects ASICs.
The Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria (), more commonly known as the Agencia Tributaria, the tax agency of the Spanish government is set to take a hard-line stance on what it suspects to be tax evasion activities aided and abetted by cryptocurrencies.
According to reports in the local Spanish media, the country’s tax agency has for names and trading data pertaining to crypto traders. These requests have been made to a total of 60 finance companies.
Commenting on the development, an unnamed source revealed that the firms that have been asked to turn over crypto buyer information include banks, crypto trading platforms, and even securities firms.
It is reported to be the most significant action ever taken by the government in its quest to prevent cryptocurrency from being used as an avenue for tax evasion and money laundering activities.
The move is reported to have come about as a consequence of an investigation carried out by the . The investigative probe examined the bank accounts of foreign-exchange platforms.
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, the world’s first company to provide bitcoin ETFs, aims to introduce another blockchain-focussed fund on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The fund would invest in, and track growth of, the promising Chinese blockchain market.
New Markets, New Opportunities
Earlier in 2018, Reality Shares made headlines when it announced the launch of its : The Reality Shares Nasdaq NexGen Economy. The California headquartered company, which reportedly manages $250 million, announced the start of a new fund to target blockchain cryptocurrency startups in Hong Kong and China. Currently, the company awaits regulatory clearances.
to the company, its blockchain focused funds are “designed to measure the returns of companies that are committing material resources to developing, researching, supporting, innovating, or utilizing blockchain technology.”
Wall Street Notices Reality Shares Performance
When Reality Shares was launched, it ended up being so popular that a total of $100 Million was invested in the fund just ten days after its launch.
The news soon reached Wall Street ears, whose “experts” questioned if such a fund could be a solid investment. To their credit, the volatility of cryptocurrencies, coupled with artificial market manipulations, looks like a wild ride to the traditional finance industry.
The industry, as of yet, is keeping away from blockchain investments but is nonetheless carefully studying the market. In a out to clients in January 2018, UBS said that blockchain is “too nascent a technology to properly capture in a fund.”
“What we believe is important to consider when investing in a fund targeting an emerging industry is that, often times, pure-plays do not exist.”
Identifying What Companies to Include in the Fund
To an industry observer, it is immediately apparent that there is no company built exclusively on a blockchain; they just don’t exist yet.
Hence, bitcoin and blockchain focussed ETFs and funds look to invest in small and medium-sized businesses that use the technology to some extent in their companies. This is irrespective of that company’s core business.
To further explain, one of the Reality Shares blockchain ETF includes , which has already been investing in blockchain startups but has its primary business in e-commerce.
Altogether popular media reports suggest that China is against cryptocurrencies and blockchain, but this sentiment is far from the truth. Under the surface, the country is quite keen on the idea of digital currencies, and the underlying .
“The market for blockchain in China is actually developing quickly,” added Blockchain Global’s .
“Developers, founders, corporates, are all clamoring to build on, understand and develop use cases for blockchain.”
Chinese Involvement as of Late
On April 2, 2018, China utilized a blockchain to complete a gasoline shipment to Singapore. The cross-border trial marked the first step towards implementing a distributed ledger in China’s energy and petrochemical industry.
On March 28, 2018, the People’s Bank Of China (PBoC) laid forth an that acknowledged blockchain and called for increased R&D in the central bank’s digital currency. The development was classified as “top-priority” for the PBoC.
Two of China’s most prominent internet players, Baidu and , are also instrumental in showing the government’s support for blockchains. Baidu its blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platform in January 2018 to facilitate companies seeking to develop applications using the innovation.
Similarly, Tencent announced in March its intentions to build a “suite” of blockchain products, apart from the BaaS platform it launched in September 2017, called .
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