Crypto Brief Jan.21: Bitcoin Whale moved $445,000,000 in BTC for only 23 Cents plus Ripple, Bitfinex, Algorand, Holochain, TronWallet, Fidelity, Libra
From Bitcoin price may soon surge higher to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) is seeking to oversee stablecoin projects like Facebook’s controversial Libra. These are some of the prominent news in the crypto space.
Bitcoin News
Whale Moved $445,000,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) for Only 23 Cents
A Bitcoin Whale is flexing its muscle after sending $445 million in Bitcoin between two wallets in a single transaction.
The lone whale moved the 51,511 BTC on Monday. The transaction fee cost 0.00002860 BTC – which amounts to just 23 cents. According to the crypto tracker Blockstream, the fee would have been 16% lower if the sender had used the Bitcoin scaling solution known as SegWit-Bech32.
This is the second mega Bitcoin transaction in a month. A separate whale recently moved 123,447 BTC worth a mind-blowing $1.1 billion.
Whale activity has picked up in the last week as BTC grows increasingly volatile. Here’s a look at the largest Bitcoin transactions in the last 24 hours.
- 1,471 BTC worth $12.6 million transferred from Binance to unknown wallet
- 674 BTC worth $5.8 million transferred from unknown wallet to Binance
- 700 BTC worth $6.0 million transferred from unknown wallet to Binance
- 2,009 BTC worth $17.1 million transferred from Coinfloor to unknown wallet
- 1,000 BTC worth $8.6 million transferred from Bitfinex to unknown wallet
Bitcoin Price May Soon Surge Higher
Trader TrendSpider recently tweet that Bitcoin’s weekly chart, coupled with a volume profile anchored to the ascending wedge that sent Bitcoin from $4,000 to $14,000 in a few months’ time, is printing a bullish sign: the price of Bitcoin has settled on top of a high volume node per the volume profile, indicating that support has been found in the mid-$8,000s on a macro basis.
$BTC #BTC Not a lot of supply above until $10k. Volume creating a base here with the volume profile anchored from the original ascending wedge breakout. Did some case studies for @scottmelker this week in his newsletter, make sure to check it out!! pic.twitter.com/Owq4IcetL7
— TrendSpider (@TrendSpider) January 20, 2020
Not a lot of supply above until $10k. Volume creating a base here with the volume profile anchored from the original ascending wedge breakout, he said.
With there being little liquidity supply until $10,000, any move higher from here or any influx of buying pressure could kick off another rally in the Bitcoin market that will push Bitcoin towards the key resistance near the boundary between four digits and five.
It isn’t only the volume profile that suggests bulls remain in control of the cryptocurrency market.
Ripple News
XRP Liquidity Index on Bitso Hits Another ATH
On January 20, some positive news landed for the community of XRP investors. The Liquidity index of this asset on the largest Mexican crypto exchange, Bitso, reached a new all-time high of 10,249,983.
Previously, the old ATH on Bitso was replaced with a new one on December 31, last year.
Liquidity Index for Bitso XRP/MXN (28-day moving trend)
Day progress: 4%
Today so far: 8,395,151
All Time High: 10,249,983
Data: https://t.co/v07j0Xh3s1 pic.twitter.com/L63blOw7XB— Liquidity Index Bot (@LiquidityB) January 21, 2020
The new all-time high that was achieved on Bitso yesterday totals 10,249,983. Bitso is a partner of the MoneyGram and Ripple giants in their financial and remittance corridor from the US to Mexico. Besides this, last year Ripple made a direct investment in Bitso.
1,382,002 is the current all-time high on MoneyGram’s XRP corridor to the Philippines. On Monday, the new high came close to the ATH but failed to beat it.
Bitfinex News
Bitfinex, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges, has introduced a bleeding-edge feature that lets traders use up to 100 sub-accounts under one “master account.”
Bitfinex claims that its implementation is necessary to address the growing institutional demand for cryptocurrency trading. The ability to create a multitude of accounts will benefit sophisticated traders who need to manage large trading volumes.
“There is huge pent up demand among institutional traders for a more sophisticated way of accessing crypto markets,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO of Bitfinex.
The exchange states that fee discounts will apply to all accounts based on their total trading volume, which is the main benefit for those who want to try out the new feature.
Algorand News
Licensed e-money issuer Monerium will support the blockchain protocol Algorand in 2020. News of the two firms’ non-exclusive partnership was announced in a press release on January 21.
The cooperation will see Monerium issuing its programmable e-money on the proof-of-stake Alogrand protocol, created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and Turing Prize award-winner Silvio Micali.
As reported, Algorand released an upgrade to its protocol in November 2019 to include more tools for enterprise-scale decentralized applications, or Dapps.
The upgrade also focused on developing new scalable blockchain-native solutions for real-world use cases, such as asset tokenization.
Holochain News
Holochain denies ICO funds were used for bondage studio
Holochain has had to clarify that no funds raised in its $20 million ICO were used to build a bondage studio in Denver, run by Holochain executive director Mary Camacho.
Sleuths on notorious internet forum 4chan discovered that Camacho was the owner of Studio Friction, described as “Denver’s home for rope and aerial art,” on Sunday. Subsequently, Holochain’s social media profiles were inundated with comments, including a claim that funds from the ICO could have been used to build the bondage studio.
Clearly been hidden from $HOT investors and wouldn’t be surprised if she used the funds to fund her sex shop… really not about what her “kinks” are. More about hiding from investors and potentially using their money for personal ventures ?♂️
— Lucky. L {Capo Dei Capi} (@LLLuckyL) January 19, 2020
The news does not appear to have affected the price of Holochain’s cryptocurrency HOT either. While its price fell seven percent yesterday, that mirrored a sudden market drop, led by Bitcoin.
TronWallet News
TronWallet, the decentralized peer-to-peer (p2p) multi-currency crypto wallet with Bitcoin and easy to use, has recently announced the release of TronWallet 3.1.0, which reportedly comes with new built-in Support Center and robust bug fixes.
According to the update, the newest version 3.1.0 is now live on Apple Store and Google Play. This version is adorned with an improved and optimized SWAP feature for BTC, TRON, and TRX-based tokens.
It also comes with lots of design enhancements, some bugs fixes, coupled with a brand new built-in support Center for mobile and desktop apps.
After the launch back then, the team that develops and maintains TronWallet kept receiving input, feedback, and suggestions from the dedicated users as to what to add, remove, and bugs to fix in this newly released version.
Fidelity News
Asset management giant Fidelity, with over $7 trillion in client assets, is seeking a bitcoin mining engineer to scale its operations.
According to a job posting on its website, Fidelity is hiring for the role to help design, build, and maintain the infrastructure to run and scale its bitcoin mining operations.
The role requires candidates to have 3 to 5 or more years of experience in DevOps (development operations)/engineering. Knowledge of databases, such as SQL and MongoDB, is also required, among other expertise.
The job posting was published on Fidelity’s website last month and on LinkedIn last week. The Block has reached out to Fidelity to know more about the role and will update this story if we hear back.
Venezuela News
President of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro, announced on Friday the opening of a new crypto-run casino in a battered country where betting halls have all but gone extinct.
Maduro said Ávila National Park’s Hotel Humboldt will soon be home to an international casino that will operate with Petro, Venezuela’s state cryptocurrency, and that proceeds will fund the country’s public health and education sectors.
The announcement comes less than a decade after Maduro’s mentor, former president Hugo Chavez, ordered the closure of all betting places as harbors of prostitution, drugs and crime. Since 2011, as the then-relatively-prosperous country has degraded, only a limited number of online platforms have allowed Venezuelans to gamble.
Libra News
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) is seeking to oversee stablecoin projects like Facebook’s controversial stablecoin Libra.
In an official proposal to the Senate published on Jan. 20, APRA submitted a possible regulatory framework dedicated to fintech and regulatory technology (regtech) covering topics ranging from digital wallets to data protection.
The proposed framework, “is intended not only to be fit for purpose for the current financial system but also be able to accommodate future developments and technological advances, such as proposals for global stablecoin eco-systems that have been the subject of significant attention in recent months.”
Overall, APRA admits that digital wallets are an increasingly important part of the financial system thanks to the growing popularity of mobile applications and online purchases. Still, the regulator sees two distinct types of digital wallets:
“Some, but not all, digital wallets hold stored value on behalf of customers and are pre-paid facilities. Others (such as Apple Pay) hold customers’ credit/debit card details and only facilitate payments from that nominated account.”
In the paper, APRA states that it would oversee digital currency wallets that are widely used for payments and value storage, such as Libra’s corresponding Calibra wallet, while excluding wallets that are mostly used to pass payments through, such as Apple Pay.
For wallets that actually hold the user’s value, APRA has started developing a new principles-based prudential standard to simplify the regulatory requirements for new types of fintech businesses.
Other News
Turkish City Developing Crypto and Blockchain Solutions for Public Services
Konya, the city of the world-famous poet Rumi, might not come to mind when talking about technology, especially blockchain and cryptocurrencies. As one of the major cultural centers of Turkey, Konya is known for its rich history, gorgeous mosques, and historical sites.
But that has not stopped the Anatolian city from setting up its “Science and Technology Valley,” under the umbrella of Konya Science Center, and building a team to apply blockchain to municipal services.
First revealed by Konya Metropolitan Mayor Uğur İbrahim Altay during a local smart city congress in Ankara on Jan. 16, this Turkish city is looking for ways to develop a “City Coin” and create a blockchain-based financial ecosystem around it.
EIDOS Transaction Volumes Skew 2019 DApp Market Report
The transaction volume going through the EIDOS decentralized application (dApp) has massively skewed the results of the 2019 dApp Market Report, published Jan. 20. The token airdrop dApp on the EOS blockchain, saw almost three times as many transactions in 2019 as all of the other dApps on nine leading platforms combined.
Perhaps the most notable aspect about this statistic is that EIDOS did not launch until 1st November 2019.
In the two months of 2019 that it was active, EIDOS racked up almost 2.4 billion transactions. For the whole of 2019, the total number of transactions registered on all DApps across the top 9 platforms was over 3.26 billion. Just 872 million of these transactions were not using EIDOS.
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