Weekly letter of most important stuff we’ve seen previous week in crypto world with personal thoughts
Whole week major drivers
Last week was full of rumors about that Bitmain is going to start to deliver ASIC based miners for the Ethash algorithm or even they already started to mine Ethereum using them. Still, these are unconfirmed news, but if true they can affect long-term mining profitability and centralization of mining and in a result, this can affect prices. This raised many concerns and discussions in communities for projects which are using Ethash, mainly about if they should modify their algorithms to prevent ASIC mining. That could lead to last week sell-off, especially if Bitmain mines Ethereum already and sell them instantly on the market. But, it could be also opposite. It can remind situation from past (2012–2015) when Bitmain announced and started to ship Bitcoin ASIC’s which lead to huge prices increase.
Another reason for downturn was continued cashing out by ICO’s. As stated in our letter 2 weeks ago (see: http://bit.ly/letter-19-03-2018):
without ICO projects succeeding in mass adoption the economy of tokens is broken. Hope we will soon see mass few projects gaining mass popularity.
For example, according to this source (https://sanbase-low.santiment.net/projects/ethereum), last week EOS moved about 615k ETH from their Crowdsale contract. This is a huge amount in terms of current market conditions. Probably they do this to sell part of ETH on the market and pump EOS token price later.
Ethereum cashout by EOS on 26th March 2018 (https://sanbase-low.santiment.net/projects/ethereum)
Lastly, there are few developments linked to tax-havens countries which are finishing their works to become crypto friendly. For example Malta and Belarus. See news below.
Price action
As stated in past we hit major resistance at 280 billion dollars market cap and we passed it. If we won’t see bounce up soon we can drift below that area for a longer time.
Crypto market capitalization below 280 billion dollars (https://coinmarketcap.com)
That was another week of sell off for an almost whole market. Major coins noted drops between 15% and 30% in value. And right now most coins are on the November 2017 price levels. In November 2017 these prices levels were starting point for big up moves.
Weekly performance — 26–02 April 2018 (by coin360.io)
Major crypto events in week 26–02 April 2018
Malta to allow use of crypto by gambling industryThe Malta Gaming Authority, one of the world’s biggest authority when it comes to online gaming (mostly because of its tax breaks), has just issued a white paper to consult on the use and acceptance of crypto by online gaming companies. By allowing gaming companies to start accepting crypto, Malta once again has placed itself on the forefront as a crypto jurisdiction. This follows the news of other European “tax havens” (e.g. Luxembourg or Belarus) which are planning to become more crypto friendly.
Crypto business is now legal in BelarusBelarus may become another crypto-friendly offshore zone. Comprehensive regulations, largely legalizing the crypto sector, are now officially in place. Entrepreneurs and corporate entities from the crypto industry are free to do business in anywhere in the world, as long as they register as residents of the Belarus High Technologies Park. Decree introduces tax breaks and other incentives for crypto businesses until January 1, 2023. No taxes will be imposed on companies that profit from mining, issuing, and placement of digital coins.
Bitfinex plans to move to SwitzerlandOne of the biggest cryptocurrencies exchanges probably will move headquarters from Hongkong to Switzerland. The reason for these changes may be growing barriers to trade in cryptocurrencies in Asian countries. Unlike Switzerland, it is increasingly called “crypto-nation”. Second important change is the introduction of trade to stock exchange new fiat pairs Japanese Yen (JPY) and British Pounds (GBP).
Monero releases new update ASIC resistantMonero releases a new update which major release feature is linked to tweak their algorithm to prevent mining by ASICs. This has been heavily requested following the community.
Coinbase announces plans to add trading for Ethereum-based tokens to GDAXThe announcement comes with the remark that ERC20 tokens will not work with their payment processing product Coinbase Commerce. Coinbase will only add coins to Coinbase after they have been listed on GDAX. After evaluating factors on GDAX such as liquidity, price stability, and other market health metrics, the company may choose to add an ERC20 asset to the Coinbase wallet.
New crypto payment gateway for the big e-commerce platform80,000 new European merchants which are using open source e-commerce solution Prestashop will be able to accept crypto. After setting up an account with Coingate, the team promise merchants a payment module capable of installation in “a few clicks.” Settlements are made in Euros real-time the next day. Both companies are experienced in payment and crypto sectors.
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Next “What changed in crypto” letter is due on April 9th, 2018
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