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For the past few days, major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have maintained momentum without recording losses. The market is continuing its move towards the $300 billion region, after dipping below $243 billion last week.
April could be the month of partial recovery for the market considering Bitcoin managed to bounce back from $6500 to almost $7500 in just one day. However, over the past 24 hours, Bitcoin has declined by more than $700 from $7,500 to $6,700. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading just below $6,900, representing a market cap of $117 billion.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI), a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and change of price movements, is currently at 37.1, which signifies a neutral zone for Bitcoin. If the RSI of Bitcoin continues to decline to 30, it would mean that traders have oversold the cryptocurrency. Other momentum indicators such as moving average convergence divergence (MACD) also show a neutral zone for Bitcoin, and a lack of momentum for a strong short-term performance.
While technical analysis and momentum indicators point toward a weak short-term trend for Bitcoin, fundamentals remain significantly strong. Earlier this week, Augur co-founder Jeremy Gardner stated that the demand towards Bitcoin from investors in the over-the-counter (OTC) has spiked substantially over the past few months, as the price of bitcoin rapidly declined.
In other news, with the election of Yi Gang as the head of People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the country’s central bank, some market experts believe that the Chinese ban on cryptocurrency trading might be overturned.
South Korean regulators are finalizing the taxation framework for cryptocurrencies and will most likely throw some light on the probability of a full-scale regulation of the cryptocurrencies after mid-June.
The next resistance level for Bitcoin lies at $8,200, which will, of course, be defended by the bears.
Top Stories from the Crypto World
1. bitPico claims responsibility for Lightning Network DoS Attack
Mysterious Bitcoin developer bitPico has confirmed rumors that they have launched an attack against the Lightning Network’s nascent mainnet implementation.
The pseudonymous individual or group made the announcement on the bitPico Twitter account, describing the attack as a “stress tool” for the LN software – which just entered beta – and claiming that it had discovered 22 attack vectors.
Core developers had been monitoring the attack — a Denial-of-Service (DoS) exploit — for nearly two weeks, which saw the previously-unidentified individuals probe the security of network nodes by flooding them with requests to open payment channels.
However, the attack was not intended to have a financial incentive, supporting bitPico’s claim that it was altruistic in nature. User funds remain safe, and the method in which the attack has been carried out forces the attackers to spend their own funds spamming the network with payment channels.
2. SEC charges Floyd Mayweather backed ICO with fraud
The SEC complaint alleges that the Centra ICO was an unregistered securities offering and that its co-founders “engaged in fraudulent conduct and made material misstatements and omissions designed to deceive investors.”
The Miami-based company — founded by Sohrab “Sam” Sharma and Robert Farkas — raised $32 million through an ICO last year. According to the SEC, Centra lied about having relationships with large financial institutions — including Visa, Mastercard, and Bancorp — firms which sent Centra numerous cease-and-desist letters.
So much so that several of the executives depicted in Centra’s promotional materials were fictional.
3. John McAfee charges $105,000 per tweet for promoting crypto projects
The infamous computer programmer and founder of the eponymous antivirus software, John McAfee, who drew his focus toward digital currency over recent years, disclosed that he charges $105,000 per tweet to promote cryptocurrency projects and products.
Last week, McAfee tweeted that the McAfee Crypto Team team has produced and published a guide on how the promotional tweets work on their website. The Team is a marketing agency for promoting initial coin offerings (ICO) and other projects in the cryptocurrency industry.
Interestingly, according to data provided in the guide, a series of polls carried out by McAfee reveals that 259,000 of his followers on Twitter “have more than 50 percent of their total assets in cryptocurrencies” and 224,000 followers represent “at a minimum, $4.48 bln in crypto investments.”