Most important stuff we’ve seen previous week in crypto world with personal thoughts
Major developments
Last week in the crypto market, there were only one notable development. Almost all coins gained and we saw continue of recovery from March bottom levels. It is not clear for us why recovery play out so fast. It can be linked to end of US tax season (as we wrote about that two weeks ago already), but right now it looks more like some new capital is coming into crypto and ICO’s project stopped to sell crypto for fiats. Perhaps, most ICO’s already have enough budget for 2018, so they don’t need to sell more.
Another reason can be that many of current ICO’s (or pre-ICO’s) are rising money with Fiat only, so they don’t need to dump crypto later. For example biggest current ICO of Telegram, which we think can be very bad for investors, raised already 2.4 billion dollars, but not in crypto.
Lastly, recent moves can be linked to portfolios rearrangements and moving more engagment into altcoins. See below how Bitcoin dominance shrinked within two weeks.
Price action
All major coins have traded firmly in recent week. Bitcoin raised 10% and TOP 10 coins raised between 20–30% with the only exception of Bitcoin Cash which has risen by about 82%. This can be linked to upcoming fork which will introduce new features.
Weekly crypto performance — 16–23 April 2018 (by coin360.io)
Market capitalization hit almost 400 billion dollars and worth to note is that Bitcoin market share started to fall mostly for rising altcoins. One such example can be Zilliqa (ZIL) which gained about 40% within 2 weeks.
Weekly crypto market capitalization — 16–23 April 2018 (by coinmarketcap.com)
Major events in week 16–23 April 2018
New York Attorney General requested information from 13 crypto exchanges Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Tuesday (17th April) informed that he sent letters to a dozen crypto exchanges seeking information on their internal controls and how they protect customers. The“fact-finding inquiry” is part of his Virtual Markets Integrity Initiative, a program intended to “increase transparency and accountability” on platforms used to trade digital currencies and inform regulators, investors, and consumers.Kraken responded on their site that “regulators should introspect themselves” by posing a list of hard-hitting questions to Attorney General.
**Coinbase ends cooperation with WikiLeaks**WikiLeaks, claims that one of its official stores has been taken down by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase. It’s not clear what, exactly, prompted the cutoff, though the financial crimes network noted in Coinbase’s statement has a mission of preventing money laundering. WikiLeakshas begun calling for a boycott of Coinbase on Twitter.
Group of crypto companies in talks with SECThe venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz helped assemble a group of investors and lawyers that met with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late March. The group met with the S.E.C. to present their idea for a “safe harbor” that would allow some tokens to be categorized as “utility tokens” rather than securities. The proposal says a token is fully functional when it can be used for its intended purpose on a computer network and is not useful as a speculative investment, which is the case with many tokens today.
Amazon launches new AWS blockchain templates Amazon cloud Blockchain Templates provide a fast and easy way to create and deploy secure blockchain networks using popular open source frameworks. Templates enable focus on building blockchain applications instead of spending time and energy on a manual setup of blockchain network. Similar templates were already introduced in Amazon competitor Microsoft cloud Azure.
EU introduces new customer verification for cryptocurrency exchanges European Parliament voted for stricter regulation of the crypto sector and an updated version of the EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive. The new measures also address risks linked to prepaid cards and virtual currencies. In a bid to end the anonymity associated with virtual currencies, virtual currency exchange platforms and custodian wallet providers will, like banks, have to apply customer due to diligence controls, including customer verification requirements. These platforms and providers will also have to be registered, as will currency exchanges and cheque cashing offices, and trust or company services providers.
Coinbase acquired Cipher Browser and Earn.comCoinbase, which hired its first mergers-and-acquisitions boss in March started new partnerships to expand its opportunities in the crypto market. Cipher Browser team with the team for its own decentralized mobile browser, Toshi, and features from the Cipher Browser will be integrated into the Toshi browser. Similar plans are for Earn.com. Earn.com puts it’s token launch on hold and will instead focus on integrating with Coinbase’s infrastructure and scaling up service.
Next “What changed in crypto” letter is due on April 30th, 2018
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