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The three largest Chinese Bitcoin exchanges OKCoin, Huobi and BTCC reassured their users that they have always successfully complied with the government’s requests and policies regarding Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Hence, none of the three trading platforms will be shut down by the financial regulators.
This uncertainty of Chinese regulations lead crypto markets to bleed more than $20 billion in market cap. As soon as Caixin’s report on China’s decision to ban Bitcoin was released, Bitcoin price plunged to $4,075 within hours.
But immediately after the statements of the three bitcoin exchanges were published, Bitcoin price recovered swiftly to $4,310 in a single day. At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading $4340 a piece — looking to aim for its major support level of $4500.
In the past few days, Bitcoin has showed some strong resilience towards the Chinese market. First the government banned ICOs and then supposedly shut down Bitcoin exchanges. At both events Bitcoin price did dip, but quickly recovered. This just goes to show Bitcoin is getting less and less impacted by the events happening in China than it did a few years ago.
Blockstream Chief Strategy Officer Samson Mow went so far to say that even if China does ban bitcoin and its local exchanges, it will not work on Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency will continue to sustain its upward trend.
Top Stories from the Crypto World
1. R3 and Ripple file lawsuits over Crypto contract dispute
Two of the enterprise blockchain leaders, Ripple and R3, have become embroiled in a new legal battle, with both startups filing lawsuits related to a contract dispute between the two firms.
On Friday, R3, a consortium of more than 80 financial institutions across the world, sued its partner Ripple, over an options contract to buy more than $1 billion worth of XRP. Ripple countersued the same day.
As per R3, the companies entered into an agreement, part of which gave R3 the option to purchase 5 billion XRP at an exercise price of $0.0085 between then and September 2019.
Ripple, on the other hand, alleges that the company terminated its agreement because R3 had failed to deliver on another parallel technology partnership agreement to give Ripple access to its network of banks and help promote its technology.
A good thing to know: XRP has soared in value to $0.20 (a 3000% increase) since the companies entered the options agreement — making the contract worth more than $1 billion.
2. SEC may still approve Bitcoin ETF
The first Bitcoin ETF was submitted for approval by the Winklevoss twins in March of this year, was rejected by the Commission.
However, last week when the SEC announced Dalia Blass as a new Director of the agency’s Division of Investment Management, the chances of Bitcoin ETF again hitting the market increased.
Kathleen Moriarty, partner at the law firm who helped to develop the very first Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), Arnold and Porter, made it clear that the SEC is still waiting for more stability from the Bitcoin marketplace before allowing a fully crypto ETF to be approved.
3. Ethereum Metropolis upgrade to come in September
The Byzantium testnet will be deployed on September 18. It is the first of two phases in the ‘Metropolis‘ update, set to be followed by ‘Constantinople’ at a later time.
Vitalik Buterin, said during the meeting that he anticipates the Byzantium test phase will last between three and four weeks. So we can expect ‘Constantinople’ in October unless something goes wrong with testnet.