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Bitcoin price started an upward trend today and continued the momentum till it crossed $4600 mark. The prices settled into a short consolidation phase in the morning and we got a breakout slightly ahead of the open out of Europe.
Most of the top cryptocurrencies had a green day today. Bitcoin rose to as much as 7% in the last 24 hours, Ethereum 10% and Litecoin 15%. The entire market cap also started showing some signs of recovery from China’s ICO ban news yesterday — at the time of writing hovering at $ 161 billion.
Stochastic is moving higher to suggest the presence of bullish momentum. There is chance Bitcoin will follow suit and test the next resistance level of $4800.
Not to forget, geopolitical risks are still in play with North Korea tensions rising. This could mean that we may see Bitcoin price trading sideways until things settle down a bit. It’d be interesting to see how many countries follow China’s take on ICOs and how the market will react to such news in the future.
Top Stories from the Crypto World
1. Ethereum’s Raiden enters testing stage
Ethereum’s plan of scalability is as good as unlimited capacity, something that would be the biggest breakthrough in this space. They are to also scale by utilizing Lightning Network like second layer protocols, such as Raiden or Plasma.
Raiden has been in development for quite some time now. It can be utilized in an internet of things context whereby through a Raiden connected smart contract electricity is charged dependent on use.
It has finally entered live testing — the final stage before it’s deployed in production.
Why it matters: This is a big news for Ethereum. Whether it be Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum, they are all struggling to find the right scalability solution. Bitcoin is following Bitcoin Core’s approach by forming a settlement system through second layer protocols, like the Lightning Network (LN). Bitcoin Cash is prioritizing on-chain scaling first.
Ethereum, on the other hand, is to follow both approaches, with equal priority, on the same chain and currency. Also, switch from PoW (Proof of Work) to PoS (Proof of Stake). While we have other assets that are already running PoS, but it’s great that Ethereum is deploying this approach at scale. That’s the only way to know if this scaling solution will work or not.
2. ICOs are not going anywhere after China ban
In the wake of China’s complete ban on ICOs, Blockchain CEOs remain defiant and say “there is no going back” on advancements. On Monday when Chinese regulators halted country’s $400 million ICO industry, the news was floating around that this might be the beginning of the end of ICOs.
To everyone surprise, startups outside of China working on ICOs at present have come out saying that China ban does not affect them in any way. Luis Cuende, co-founder of business management platform Aragon said:
“Some governments and incumbents will try to shut down this movement and come to unreasonable extremes in order to do so. However, thanks to the Internet and cryptography, there’s no going back,”
3. Ripple opens new office in Mumbai
Ripple is expanding to India with a new office in the country’s business capital, Mumbai. Their solutions have already been implemented by two Indian private banks – Axis Bank and Yes Bank.
A good thing to know: India is going through an unprecedented digitization in finance following a cash ban that rendered nearly 90% of banknotes obsolete overnight in November last year. Ripple would want to use this to their advantage and persuade more banks to get on board to use Ripple’s blockchain for money transfers.