In the traditional Sunday digest - a flat of Bitcoin, the explosive growth of Binance Coin, the launch of the custodial service from Fidelity Digital Assets and the scandal around the purchase of startup Neutrino by the company Coinbase.
Bitcoin price
The first cryptocurrency started the week with a negative note, dropping below $ 3,800, and the capitalization of the digital assets market collapsed to $ 4 billion in just a few hours. However, despite some analysts, there was no further decline, and Bitcoin played the lost position on March 5, almost lost returning to $ 3,900. Since then, there has been a flat in the range of $ 3860- $ 3950.
The capitalization of the cryptocurrency market, meanwhile, remains at the level of $ 134 billion.
It is noteworthy that the cash flow indicator (MFI), which is based on the asset price and trading volumes, according to analyst CoinDesk Markets, indicates that bitcoin reached the price bottom in December 2018, and the probability of rally closer to halving increased. This statement was supported by the MACD histogram, which reached the highest value since January 2018 at the level of 102.38.
At the same time, the gross margin of the miners of the first cryptocurrency showed growth since the beginning of 2019, which had a positive effect on their net profit. In China, meanwhile, the miners are moving to Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, where in the summer tariffs per kilowatt / hour can fall to $ 0.037.
We add that in China, the demand for the secondary market of equipment for the extraction of cryptocurrency has significantly increased, and the most popular device remains the Antminer S9.
This week, the ChainDD portal published disappointing news about the centralization of the hashrate of the first cryptocurrency. Thus, 74.48% of the bitcoin network hashrate is controlled by six mining pools, half of which are directly or indirectly controlled by the Chinese company Bitmain.
The latter, according to Samson Moe’s CSO Blockstream, has big financial problems. In particular, I mean debts to suppliers and production contractors, because of which the Beijing company is forced to sell Antminer S15 models 30% cheaper than the cost price.
Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to draw positive news for Bitcoin and the industry as a whole. By the end of 2019, according to the source of the publication The Block, the international coffee chain Startbucks intends to provide US customers with the opportunity to calculate Bitcoins.
Moreover, Fidelity Digital Assets reported that it was already testing a custodial solution for a limited number of clients. At the moment, the storage only supports Bitcoin, but the company's customers show interest in Ethereum. Tom Jessop, President of Fidelity Digital Assets, stressed that the wishes of users will be taken into account, but the company needs to follow the state of the second most capitalized cryptocurrency network after hard forks.
Binance Coin Successes
Undoubtedly the native token of the Binance Bitcoin Exchange - BNB became the star of the week. Its price over the past 7 days has grown by almost 30%, it overtook Tether in terms of capitalization and ranked seventh in the CoinMarketCap rating. Also, analysts said that BNB does not correlate with the price trend of Bitcoin, unlike other digital assets.
At the same time, Binance launched the Russian-language version of the platform for holding Binance Launchpad tokensails. The next IEO on site will conduct a Celer Network project. Start of sales is scheduled for March 19.
CEO Binance Changphen Zhao also hinted that he could launch the next crypto-fiat exchange in Argentina. The reason for optimism was the decision of the local labor ministry to finance blockchain startups, which had previously attracted investment from the Binance Labs venture capital unit.
Effect of constantinople
The average time spent by the blocks in the Ethereum network after the hard forks of Constantinople, as a result of which the activation of the complexity bomb was postponed, fell to 12.5 seconds. This was the lowest in the history of the network. At the same time, the hashrate almost did not change, and the daily issue increased slightly.
At the end of the week, the founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin took the initiative to increase commissions in order to provide stable financial support for developers.
"I propose to consider the possibility of supporting the idea of introducing a norm for the community, providing that customers and wallets can and should take a gas commission of 1 gwei when sending transactions," - he wrote.
This, in his opinion, will allow the developer of various software on Ethereum to raise an additional $ 2 million per year.
Note that the activation of the CREATE2 option in the Constantinople code provoked a new round of debates about conducting Ethereum hard forks in order to restore access to the frozen funds on Parity smart contracts.
Positive news can also be considered the start of trading in exchange-traded product (ETP) based on Ethereum on the Swiss stock exchange SIX Swiss Exchange.
Continuing the story of Coinbase and Neutrino startup
After Coinbase, the largest American company, bought an Italian analytical startup Neutrino, a real scandal broke out. It turned out that the founders of the latter were key figures of the Hacking Team, known for its hostility to privacy and dubious cooperation with dictatorial political regimes.
So, Coinbase was forced to dismiss Giancarlo Rousseau, Marco Valleri and Alberto Ornaga, but the wave of criticism is far from over.
“Initially, we focused on the technology and security of Neutrino, but did not consider the situation from the point of view of our mission and values as a cryptocurrency company. This decision was not easy, but after discussions with the start-up team, we agreed that the former members of the Hacking Team would leave the company, regardless of whether they are currently related to such activities, ” - the press release said.
Then the media published the details of the transaction for the purchase of Neutrino. Three of the above co-founders owned a share of 22% each. The total amount of the transaction was $ 13.5 million, therefore the trinity will get $ 2.951 million.
New initiative of the State Duma
The deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation plan to prescribe in the draft law “On digital financial assets (CFA)” a norm that requires special identification for operations with cryptocurrencies.
The specific procedure mechanism and the authorized body responsible for its implementation have not yet been determined, but it is assumed that after passing the identification, the owner of the cryptocurrency will receive a certain “visa”.
Thus, the draft law “On the CFA” wants to be correlated with the norms of the legislation on counteracting money laundering.
“Transactions by unidentified participants will be a sign of illegal schemes. The punishment for violating the AML law can reach 15 years in prison, ”said Anatoly Aksakov, chairman of the State Duma Finnish Market Committee.
