The State of the Market: On August 22 the SEC made an earlier than scheduled announcement to deny 9 Bitcoin-ETF proposals from 3 applicants. The news of a rejection was expected and seemed price into Bitcoin price as the cryptocurrency did not correct sharply and managed to defend the $6,230 resistance quite well. Fast forward to August 23 and the SEC shocked everyone by stating that SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and the board of commissioners will reviews the orders of rejection issued by SEC staffers to ensure that the appropriate decision was made. Bitcoin and a handful of select altcoins have reacted positively to this new and Bitcoin appears ready to have a go at $7,000 over the short-term.
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A glitch in the BitMEX system hurtled Bitcoin prices from $6,500 to $8,000 within a few minutes. The fact that trades were not initiated during this time suggests that the bug had something to do with visuals but cryptocurrency investors are slightly irked as constant inexplicable events on cryptocurrency exchanges could lessen the likelihood of a Bitcoin ETF being approved by the SEC. Popular YouTube technical analyst, Don Alt asked BitMex to “please, stop teasing” and complained that the fact that the entire market rallied $40 on this bug adds another reason “why we should have alternatives.” While the visual glitch did not impact or execute trades, BitMEX is one of the largest cryptocurrency platforms and controls more than 40% market of the Bitcoin-USD market. (Read More.)
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CNBC Fast Money analyst, Brian Kelly, has used his infamous crystal ball to predict that a Bitcoin ETF will likely be approved by February 2019. The prediction comes right after the SEC denied nine BTC-ETF proposals from three applicants on August 22. According to Kelly, the SEC chose to delay a decision on the VanEck — SolidX BTC-ETF until September and the SEC actually has the right to re-defer this decision until February. The SEC explicitly explained that it’s concerns over manipulation and BTCs listing on numerous unregulated exchanges factored in to the recent rejection. Kelly believes that “When the SEC talked about fraud and manipulation, it wasn’t so much about preventing it, but how do they surveil it? Do they have an arrangement with other [globally or nationally regulated] exchanges [that would enable them to] surveil what’s going on? Kelly agrees that the BTC futures markets are “not mature enough” but he also believes that yesterday’s SEC announcement to review the recent ETF denials shows that we are “incrementally closer” to an ETF approval in the near future. (Read More.)
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Jimmy Watson, the CEO of Team McAfee, recently wrote a lengthy guest article on NullTX where he accused Team McAfee accountant, Luke Jenkins of stealing cryptocurrencies worth $50 — $100 million. Jenkins primary role was to “receive, account for and hold tokens or payments received by John McAfee and Team” and according to Watson, Jenkins is “refusing to give back” the digital assets. In his letter, Watson points out that each claim is backed up by evidence comprised of “chief executive sworn statements”, emails between team members, accounting details, eyewitness accounts, smart contracts and publically available transactions. Team McAfee also alleges that HitBTC, TopBTC and Yobit were involved in the embezzlement of huge amounts of cryptocurrency. (Read More.)