Market Analysis Report

Crypto Market Update

The cryptocurrency markets achieved another successful day on Tuesday, despite speculation that China’s bitcoin crackdown will extend beyond order-book exchanges. But, regardless of the increasing regulation and restriction on Bitcoin trading and usage imposed by the Chinese government, OTC and P2P bitcoin trading activity is increasing.

After beginning the day close to $132 billion, the total cryptocurrency market cap rose to $141 billion–its highest mark since September 13. The market cap dipped after peaking at that point and currently sits at $136 billion, which represents a daily gain of about $4 billion.

The Bitcoin price registered a 4% gain for the day, rising as high as $4,094 early Tuesday morning. However, the markets pulled back slightly later, reducing the bitcoin price to a present value of $3,960, with over $395 M worth of Bitcoin exchanged in the past 24 hours on the BTC USD pair, which has a 32.99% share of daily volume, second to JPY at 48.34%. This brings Bitcoin’s market cap to $65.5 billion.

The Ethereum price rose just 2% on Tuesday, but this was sufficient to place it within striking distance of $300. The Ethereum price made a run at this checkpoint early Tuesday morning but was unable to break past $296 before the market dipped.

At present, Ethereum is trading at a global average of $286, with volumes of $145 M worth of ETH exchanged in the markets in the last 24 hours on the USD pair which holds 36.45% of trading followed by Korea at 32.70%. This translates into a $27.2 billion market cap.

Regarding the altcoin markets, they also generally trended up. The Bitcoin Cash price rose 2% to $470, while the Ripple price experienced a minor pullback to $0.185. The Litecoin price climbed 4% to about $54, raising its market cap to $2.8 billion.

Dash fell less than 1%, enabling its price to hold above $325, while NEM posted a 6% gain. IOTA and Monero both declined, falling 3% and 1%, respectively. Ethereum classic, on the other hand, received a 6% bump.

Read more here and See live charts here

Ethereum's Byzantium Testnet Just Verified A Private Transaction

zkSNARK technology, a zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge, is used to prove that data is valid without actually revealing what that data is. The technology sits at the heart of the Zcash network, and recent months have seen developers moving to integrate the privacy tech into Ethereum.

Earlier today, the zkSNARK part of a Zcash transaction was verified on the Byzantium Testnet. While only a trial, the development is a critical step toward bringing that kind of functionality to the public Ethereum network. Christian Reitwiessner, leading zkSNARKs developer for Ethereum stated:

"What is missing after that is basically everything that was missing on top of the Ethereum Virtual Machine in the early times of Ethereum. We need practical implementations of all the other components of a zkSNARK system (apart from the verification)."

Read more here

SegWit2x, NYA Bitcoin Agreement Loses Another Signatory

Bitcoin peer-to-peer lending platform Wayniloans has withdrawn its support for the SegWit2x Bitcoin scaling proposal and the New York Agreement (NYA).

The company, which was the first peer-to-peer Bitcoin lending platform in Latin America, made the announcement in an email distributed to the Bitcoin-segwit2x mailing list. Wayniloans co-founder, Juan Salviolo, wrote that when they signed the NYA, they did not realize how contentious the scaling proposal would be. Specifically, they cited concerns that Core developers universally oppose it and that it is unpopular in Latin America.

"On Wayniloans part of our business is achieved thanks to Bitcoin, and on May we agreed to a sentence to reach consensus for the good of the ecosystem. At the time we didn’t know that existing developers wouldn’t support it, or that most Latin American Bitcoin users, our customers, would view it as a contentious proposal."

Read more here

$700 Billion Senate Defense Bill for Blockchain Cybersecurity

Yesterday, the US Senate passed a $700 billion defense bill that includes a mandate for a blockchain study to be conducted by the Department of Defense.

Public records show that an amendment included in that bill, proposed by Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, would "require a report on cyber applications of blockchain technology" if signed into law. According to the official Congressional website, the amendment was agreed to by unanimous consent ahead of the defense bill's final vote. The research effort, according to the amendment's text is described as:

"A report on the potential offensive and defensive cyber applications of blockchain technology and other distributed database technologies and an assessment of efforts by foreign powers, extremist organizations, and criminal networks to utilize these technologies."

Read more here