Increase in the 50 percent energy rate for Crypto Miners

A new progressive augment of up to 50% for crypto miners is approved in the central state of Washington. The first year of 15%, the next 35% and the third 50%.

https://news.bitcoin.com/energy-rate-hike-crypto-miners-washington-state/

Fewer people are looking up the term “Bitcoin Price” on Google than at any point for more than a year. Data from Google Trends reveals that the search term is approaching historically low levels of popularity not seen since 2015.

Full article on CCN

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple along with Steve Jobs, recently announced his participation in a crypto startup. During the interview, Mr. Wozniak (Woz) also spoke about cryptocurrencies and why he is excited about their prospects for the future.

Apple’s Wozniak is Very Excited About Cryptocurrencies and their Future

“I like to keep up with things,” Steve Wozniak, 68, famed computer engineer and co-founder of Apple explained at the Chainxchange blockchain convention recently in an interview. “Bitcoin caught my attention. It had so many unusual aspects for any technology I had ever heard of. Nobody is really known to be the creator. It doesn’t have any centralized [component]. It’s based on mathematics. There’s a certain number of Bitcoin that can ever exist.”

Woz is best known in computer history lore as the right hand man to business visionary Steve Jobs. The two founded Apple, presently the most valuable company in human history, in 1976. Mr. Jobs handled the entrepreneurial aspects such as financing, Woz was the brains, building personal computing revelations, ushering in an industry that literally changed everything. 

“Mathematics to me is like nature,” Woz continued in his admiration for Bitcoin. “It’s much better than human beings… I trust those things of nature more than what man makes up. Man makes up currencies, controls them, issues new US dollars every year; Bitcoin was immune to that.”

Read more: https://news.bitcoin.com/apple-co-founder-crypto-world-like-the-internet-when-it-was-brand-new/

Bitcoin looks to have fought off a recent bear market breakdown that saw prices landing just above the yearly low of $5,755.

Bitcoin dropped to $5,858 yesterday at 02:00 UTC, just $103 shy of this year's bottom, according to Bitfinex data.

The suffering has been even worse for much of the altcoin market, some of which have been bleeding out to new yearly lows and seeing drops between 2–15 percent.

Major cryptocurrencies such as ether and XRP dropped by 2.95 and 9.6 percent respectively, before the world's largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization took an about-turn, stabilizing prices and reversing some of the damage from yesterday's chaos.

At time of writing, bitcoin is up 5.16 percent over a 24-hour period, according to CoinMarketCap, and is changing hands at $6,375.


Daily chart

Glaring out on the daily chart, the relative strength index (RSI), used to judge the momentum of a trend, has formed a bullish divergence (Aug. 8–14), whereby prices moved lower, but the RSI moved higher creating a 'divergence' from the current bearish setup.

This is this first positive move from the daily RSI since June 23, when the last divergence foretold of the July pullback from the bear trend, which saw bitcoin climb 40 percent.

Further, the MACD (moving average convergence divergence), also used to judge and interpret a trend, is printing bullish signs with the histogram (purple bars) ticking up in favor of the bulls.

The %K and %D lines (blue and orange) representing health and position of a stock are also itching to cross – a bullish signal that only strengthens when viewed from higher timeframes.

Monthly chart

A monthly low slightly higher than the yearly low of $5,755 reveals the bears are becoming exhausted in their attempt to drive down prices with declining volume apparent since the middle of May.

It is also worth noting that the monthly RSI is at its lowest since October 1, 2015 – a level that may have potential to trigger a buying frenzy, reversing the bearish trend seen since Jan 1.

A drop below recent monthly lows would expose bitcoin to the yearly low of $5,755 as it fails to cement a higher high.

View

A bullish divergence can be seen on the daily RSI – a sign of a potential reversal in the current bear market.
The daily MACD shows promising signs with the histogram ticking up in favor of the bulls and threatening a bullish cross from the %K and %D lines.
Declining bear volume on the monthly chart since the middle of May – keep an eye on the monthly close to see if bears fail to match or top the previous month (July volume), signaling exhaustion.
Monthly RSI is at its lowest levels in two years.
A drop below recent monthly lows would invalidate the bullish perspective.




See more: https://www.coindesk.com/breakdown-over-bitcoin-indicators-suggest-price-outlook-is-improving/

Bitcoin has long been at the forefront of the crypto industry; and it seems with the market’s most recent move downwards, Bitcoin’s dominance over the rest of the market may continue, or at least for a little while longer.
Full article on NewsBTC

Bitcoin is no stranger to the endorsement of industry giants, attracting the support of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel, and former hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz. But the most resounding endorsement yet comes from a slightly more obscure financial titan—Jeff Specher, the Chairman of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) which owns the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and many other exchanges internationally.

Bakkt—a play on the word ‘backed’ from the phrase ‘asset-backed securities’—is Specher’s latest venture, and aims to achieve nothing short of making bitcoin a trusted global currency by creating a federally-regulated crypto ecosystem.

This vision is supported by Microsoft, who will lend its cloud expertise; Starbucks, which will help pioneer mobile payment, and the Boston Consulting Group, who will assist ICE in forming the new company—an all-in-one bitcoin exchange for trading, custody and delivery, that will use  ICE’s existing trading infrastructure to cater to retail investors, institutional investors and consumers.

With the full force of these industry leaders behind them, the launch is planned for November,  after fourteen months of behind the scenes preparation by founder Specher and his wife Kelly Loeffler, who is Bakkt CEO.


By providing an approved custody solution combined with a regulated exchange, Bakkt propose to make settlement, storage and delivery of bitcoin as simple as it is for stocks. This could mean that as soon as November, fund managers will be able to buy and hold bitcoin for their clients.

For retail investors, this will significantly broaden the scope of bitcoin investment choices—allowing baby boomers to put bitcoin in their 401k with insurance against hacks or failures, and paving the way towards a range of different bitcoin-backed ETFs or mutual funds.

For institutional investors, Bakkt plans to provide a fully regulated onramp, which will combine a major CFTC-regulated exchange with CFTC-regulated clearing and custody. Although this is still pending approval from the commission and other regulatory bodies.

“Bakkt is designed to serve as a scalable on-ramp for institutional, merchant and consumer participation in digital assets by promoting greater efficiency, security and utility,” said Kelly Loeffler, CEO of Bakkt. “We are collaborating to build an open platform that helps unlock the transformative potential of digital assets across global markets and commerce.”

See more - https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-and-the-nyse-unpacking-bakkts-big-plans/

Tuur Demeester is an economist and investor.

The following article references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for that.

Despite an already six month cool-off period, for 2018 we see more sideways and downside potential in the bitcoin price due to sluggish retail demand, hesitation from institutions and a current market cap that seems too high relative to the activity occurring on available blockchains.

Many investors and advisors are on record stating that $5,700 was the bottom in bitcoin for this year, and that higher prices lie ahead. While we are very bullish on bitcoin's long-term prospects, we do heed caution for more short-term price optimism.

To find the starting point of the historic parabolic rally in bitcoin that ended at $20,000 we have to go as far back as August 2015, when bitcoin traded at below $200. This past rally was a stupendous, historic move. Even in secular bull markets, the collective of economic actors need time to absorb the information embedded in its characteristic high volume rallies.

As I've indicated in my 2018 outlook, I think chances are high for this year to be remembered as a shakeout year: a lemon market in altcoins, regulators catching up and infrastructure growing pains.

Short-term bearish signs
Since January, the bitcoin mining hashrate (aggregate computations per second made to secure the network ) has tripled, which means that a huge amount of new or more efficient mining rigs have come online. In combination with declining prices, this means that miners who weren't able to upgrade their machines or find cheaper electricity have been faced with a steep decline in profitability, a 90% drop in 7 months (altcoins have faced similar or steeper declines).

With profit margins under heavy pressure, it's not unlikely that miners are and will stay responsible for a significant amount of selling in the market.

See more: https://www.coindesk.com/dont-expect-new-bitcoin-price-highs-in-2018/

The government of South Korea and local financial authorities are planning to pass the country’s first crypto and blockchain legislation as early as possible, to legitimize and strictly oversee the local cryptocurrency industry.

The newly drafted regulatory framework which covers a wide range of businesses and ventures from blockchain projects to crypto exchanges, is expected to fuel the development and deployment of decentralized applications (dApps), and facilitate the rapid growth of cryptocurrency exchanges in the local market.

Crypto Exchanges are Not Prepared in Terms of Security

Hong Seong-ki, the head of virtual currency response team at the country’s main financial agency Financial Services Commission (FSC), said in an interview with Bloomberg that cryptocurrency exchanges  in South Korea are not ready to store and manage billions of dollars in crypto assets such as bitcoin and ether, due to their substandard security measures.

In June alone, two major South Korean crypto exchanges Bithumb and Coinrail were hacked, each losing more than $40 million in user funds. Fortunately, both trading platforms had enough capital to cover the amount stolen by hackers whose identities still remain unknown. But, the two security breaches were sufficient to convince local financial regulators that a regulatory framework to protect investors is in desperate need to protect investors.

“While crypto markets have seen rapid growth, such trading platforms don’t seem to be well-enough prepared in terms of security. We’re trying to legislate the most urgent and important things first, aiming for money-laundering prevention and investor protection. The bill should be passed as soon as possible,” said Hong.

Throughout the past two years, the government of South Korea has contemplated the potential outcome of regulating cryptocurrency businesses and the blockchain sector, and refused to pass a proper policy to regulate the cryptocurrency market because it feared that investors in South Korea would consider it as an act of endorsement and acknowledgement of cryptocurrencies.

Hong emphasized in his interview that the bill itself is not targeted at growing crypto exchanges and digital asset trading in general, but protecting investors and implementing robust internal management systems to prevent large-scale hacking attacks.

Read more: https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/07/26/korean-authorities-to-legitimize-crypto-market-as-soon-as-possible-to-prevent-hacks/