The cryptocurrency market has been on a downward trend since last weekend. The value of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency has fallen by over 15%. As may be expected, the general sentiment among the digital currency industry has altered. In fact, some players in the industry have gone as far as to suggest; that the 2020  bullish trend is gone and investors should prepare for the worst-case scenario.

Moreover, in a matter of just three days, the cryptocurrency market has plunged by over 15%, with the market capitalization moving from  $264 billion to as low as $223 billion. It is correct to say that the digital space have had better moments than this. A massive $41 billion of cryptocurrencies have been wiped off.

Indeed, the value of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency, has fallen by over 10% in 24 hours.

Cryptocurrency market sentiment follows the price

As the market regularly plummets, the general sentiment among cryptocurrency industry players follows the progress of the price. According to the crypto monitoring tool, Santimentfeed, the consensus gentium has shifted from positive to increased negativity. After monitoring the keywords in crypto-related dialogues, they draw the inference that the use of  “sell,” “selling,” and “sold” has escalated on the major social media platforms. The crypto monitoring resource uses platforms such as Discord, Twitter, Reddit,  Professional Traders Chat and Telegram.

Furthermore, the research by Santimentfeed claims that the previous time cryptocurrency discussions reached such a critical level was in November last year. During the time, China insisted that digital currencies were illicit, resulting in BTC losing $1,000 of its value in a matter of hours.

Fear and Greed index suggests acute fear

The fear and greed index indicates the domineering gloom-ridden opinion of extreme fear in the cryptocurrency market. This index calculates and comprehends different types of data such as volume, social media, surveys, BTC dominance, and volatility; to determine the present mood in the market. It indicates the interpretation from 0 which suggests extreme fear to 100 (extreme greed).

In fact, at press time the fear and greed indicator pointed at 16. This is a representation of the current state of increased fear in the cryptocurrency market.

Is this an opportunity?

As a matter of fact, the price action tends to move opposite in the reverse direction as the public sentiment. This happened back in December 2019 as a result of the losses traders make over time.  In fact, the ‘whales’ are always conscious of the situation and act duly. It is correct to say, the public opinion is not always a rational indicator of price in the cryptocurrency market.

Billionaire Warren Buffet once said,  “When everyone is fearful, be greedy.” Maybe that is how he accumulated his billions. Still, for us in the space, we can see redemption on the horizon because of the decentralized nature of our commodities which cannot be dictated by governments or politics.

Maybe there is greed in getting out of the clutches of organized centralized financial communities, but mostly, it is survival of the fittest. If we continue to believe in a good thing, no matter the hindrances, we will soon be out in the light.

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Digital assets spot and derivatives exchange Kraken has made a pledge to rebuild services in India, after the country's supreme court overturned a two-year banking ban for cryptocurrency firms a week ago.

In a somewhat vague blog post Monday, the San Francisco-based exchange recommitted to the potentially massive market, which has seen its crypto industry suppressed by the central bank's order in April 2018 that prevented banks providing services to firms such as exchanges.

As such, India represents a huge earning opportunity for companies that can now speedily establish themselves in the near vacuum left by the ban. Several exchanges were forced to close due to the banking restrictions and others eked out a living on crypto-to-crypto trading or other means.

In its post, Kraken said it was "thrilled" to see the Reserve Bank of India's ban overturned, and would "recommit resources to grow its service in the region through new features and offerings." Among those was a hint that it may target the massive remittance market in India, with Kraken keen to help Indians save and "send value" to friends and family overseas.

For more precise information on its plans, we'll have to wait till later in the year, Kraken wrote.

While the court ruling was exciting news for the crypto space, the regulatory situation in the nation is still not rosy, however. The central bank has reportedly said it would return to fight the supreme court ruling, though that may be a long shot. More worryingly, the country's government has been mulling cryptocurrency regulation for years, with some reports suggesting an outright ban.

Even if untrue, India's crypto and blockchain industry can't fully thrive and find the investment it needs until the situation has been made clear.

Local exchanges said this month there is a strong appetite for cryptocurrencies and derivatives in the nation. Before the supreme court ruling, some international crypto companies like Binance and OKEx had already made moves to satisfy that hunger, announcing local services via acquisitions or partnerships.

Now Kraken, too, has shown it is keen not to miss out on its slice of the potentially lucrative market.

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It’s no secret that the past few weeks have been rough for Bitcoin, with the top digital asset by market capitalization seeing significant downside that has severely damaged the bullish market structure formed throughout January and February.

Although analysts are skeptical that this ongoing selloff could extend that much further, there is a myriad of simple factors that lay out a reasonable worst-case scenario for the cryptocurrency in the near-term.

These mining-related factors seem to suggest that Bitcoin may face some intense bearishness throughout the next 60 days as its highly anticipated “halving” fast approaches.

Bitcoin mining metric elucidates skepticism from miners regarding the recent rally

The rally seen throughout the early part of 2020 that led Bitcoin from lows of $6,800 to highs of $10,500 appeared to be incredibly strong, with many investors pointing to its upcoming mining rewards halving event as one reason why the cryptocurrency would continue climbing higher.

In spite of this, data regarding changes in miners’ BTC inventory seemed to elucidate some skepticism amongst miners regarding the longevity of the rally.

As originally reported by Coindesk, miner’s rolling inventory (MRI) figure shows that miners were not selling heavily into the market, suggesting that they were cynical about the strength and liquidity of the market despite its consistent growth from a price perspective.

It does appear that this cynicism was warranted, as Bitcoin’s intense buying pressure seen throughout all of January and the first half of February has all but disappeared, with the benchmark crypto being just a hair away from trading below where it opened the year.

In the near-term, in order for bulls to recoup some of BTC’s recent losses, it is imperative that they defend $7,700, as this has been an important support and resistance level for the cryptocurrency on multiple occasions throughout the course of its recent rally.

These simple factors show the downtrend may be far from over

Jesse Proudman, the founder of the Seattle-based crypto hedge fund Strix Leviathan, recently mused a few simple factors relating to miners that could mean the ongoing selloff is far from being over.

    “Bitcoin Miners: – Income about to be cut in half in ~62 days. – Ability to obtain debt or equity capital becoming constrained. – Balance sheet of other investments eviscerated. Walk me through the bullish scenario here in the next 60 days? And S2F isn’t it…”

The counterargument to this analysis is that while Bitcoin’s inflation rate will be decreased from 3.66 percent to roughly 1.8 percent, the demand will remain the same or grow, thus being a catalyst for growth.

The effects of this, however, will take quite some time to be seen, and the crypto could see significantly further downside in the weeks leading up to, and following the halving.

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The term “black swan” event refers to a random, extremely negative occurence for which there is no way to predict that it might happen and no precedent to predict what it might result in.

The term, which was popularized by former Wall Street trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2001 book, Fooled by Randomness. It has been used to describe the 2008 crash of the housing bubble in the United States (and the recession that followed it), the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the dissolution of the Soviet Union–the list goes on.

Now, the term has found a new application. A number of analysts and news sites have referred to the spread of the coronavirus and the economic cliff dive that has followed as the latest black swan to have landed in the modern world: an event that could not have been predicted, and for which there is no modern precedent.

The effect of the coronavirus has been felt on markets far and wide–and, because its effects have been so unpredictable, its effects on a number of financial markets are teaching the world that in many ways, it didn’t know what it didn’t know.

This includes the ongoing narrative in much of the cryptocurrency community, which has long slated Bitcoin as a “safe haven” asset–something that, like gold, could be turned to in times of crisis in order to protect the value of its users’ wealth.

However, the price movements that have ensued amid the ongoing spread of the coronavirus seem to tell a different story–not only for Bitcoin, but for financial markets across the board.

In these uncertain times, what really constitutes a safe haven? And what will happen should the virus continue to spread?

The nature of the beast

It seems that almost nothing is safe from the reach of the coronavirus–every corner of the market has been affected in some way.

This is because the nature of the financial crisis that has resulted from the spread of the coronavirus is somewhat unique. Kehan Zhou, chief executive of investment strategy firm Wall Strategies, explained to Finance Magnates that “initially, [the spread of Coronavirus] was thought of as purely a health crisis, but the market eventually realized that the lack of production in China means that US companies are running out of inventories.”

Indeed, prior to the havoc that the outbreak has wreaked on global financial spheres, “we were in a raging bull market.,” Mr. Zhou said. This may have fueled the sell-offs that have occurred over the last several weeks: “many investors have profits that they want to protect, which led to a quick sell-off at the first sign of a recession.”

Efforts to lessen the blow of the outbreak have some had much of an effect, Zhou explained: “the rate cut from the Fed was not impactful. This is because the coronavirus is a shock to the supply side of our economy not a problem with demand. People have money, and in fact, they are piling up their carts now as we speak.

“In short, the market has been really complacent due to the bull market we were in–but now people are finally beginning to understand the implications of Corona on companies around the world.”

The week began with carnage in oil prices and stock markets

The biggest shock of the week so far came no Monday morning with the news that oil prices had crashed: Brent Crude fell over 31 percent shortly after the open on Monday morning, while West Texas Intermediate dropped 34 percent–the largest crash that had been seen since January 17th, 1991–the start of the first Gulf War.

The collapse, which was triggered by a conflict in the OPEC+ alliance following Russia’s refusal to make cuts to its production as a result of the coronavirus. Bloomberg reported that “not only will those reductions now not happen, but the current curbs will expire at the end of this quarter.”

Saudi Arabia is also “aggressively opening the taps to flood the market with cheap crude”–meaning that prices could fall even further throughout the month, and possibly beyond. As a result, prices fell to $27.34 a barrel–the lowest levels that the industry has seen since 2016.

At the same time, stock markets are continuously falling across the board. The New York Times reported that the S&P500 crashed nearly 8 percent, alleging that “the mayhem is threatening to roil the underlying global financial system and the abilities of companies large and small to survive a potential economic monsoon.”


Effects on Bitcoin prices have been severe, but not as severe as in other markets

So–how has this affected Bitcoin?

“Bitcoin, while it hasn’t sold off to the same degree as some single stock equities, hasn’t demonstrated the same resilience that many commentators were expecting,” said Jon Deane, chief executive of  physical commodity digitization firm Infinigold, in an email to Finance Magnates.

Indeed, while crypto markets shed a whopping $38 billion over the weekend–starting at $263 billion at 05.00 GMT on Saturday, March 7th, to $225 billion at the same time on Monday, March 9th (a decline of roughly 14.4%)–Bitcoin wasn’t quite as deeply affected as the total market cap.

(And, notably, not as deeply affected as the price of oil.)

Bitcoin’s market cap fell from $166 billion to $143 billion (roughly 13.8%) over the same 48-hour time period. As a result, the price of Bitcoin has plummeted from roughly $9,100 on Saturday, March 7th (05.00 GMT) to $7,840–a price level that BTC hasn’t seen since January. At press time, the price had stabilized around $7,900.

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Ripple partner and global remittance player TerraPay has just been acquired for an undisclosed amount of money. The company also raised $9.6 million from Prime Ventures, IFC, and Partech Africa, for global expansion, as part of the acquisition deal.

Will TerraPay bring XRP to millions of new global users?

TerraPay is a local, regional and global payments fintech startup that was incubated by Comviva, a mobile solutions provider based in India. TerraPay is a new payments infrastructure provider which links financial institutions, banks, mobile money operators, money transfer operators, into the same payments network to reduce costs.

TerraPay has secured more than 25 licenses to operate in over 60 countries, and currently exists in Africa, Europe, and Asia, with plans to expand globally with the $9.6 million they raised.

TerraPay will also be able to offer banking-like services to industries typically excluded from traditional payment processors and credit card systems. They’ll also make it possible for mobile money accounts to be used by businesses to pay employee salaries and allow for remittance payments to settle in real time.

TerraPay has actively pursued partnerships with global payments networks and remittance services like Visa, Xpress Money, MoneyTrans, Paga, Ria, Instant Cash, Ripple and MoneyGram.

Ripple and TerraPay are partners, but no mention of XRP for TerraPay

Unlike many other Ripple partnerships, which leverage Ripplenet technology for cross-border payments, TerraPay has its own payments network and settlement system.

TerraPay also has partnerships with many of Ripple’s direct competitors in the global payments market, like Western Union.

TerraPay may utilize XRP or some other Ripple payments tech in the future, however as it stands presently no plans for such a joint-venture have yet been announced.

Ambar Sur, CEO of TerraPay spoke on Terrapay’s mission.

    We believe in our mission to address financial inclusion by making real time national, regional and global payments accessible to everyone. We are excited by this validation from our marquee investors, and look forward to growing rapidly and reaching most of the world’s underserved in the coming years.

While TerraPay and Ripple share similar goals of making remittances cheaper and more accessible, it remains to be seen just how much overlap in these shared goals will be leveraged by the TerraPay/Ripple partnership.

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The US judge presiding over the Craig S Wright vs Kleiman case has ordered Wright to produce a list of requested documents by March 12. The latest filing on March 9 relates to Wright’s refusal to give details of how he obtained the list of Bitcoin addresses purportedly holding Satoshi’s estimated 1.1 million BTC, claiming both attorney-client privilege and spousal privilege.

“I Am Lawyer”

Since that refusal back in February, Kleiman and Wright’s lawyers have been arguing back and forth over whether the privilege claims are invalid or not. So it is nice to finally have the judge step in and put an end to this nonsense.

Bizarrely, to back up his claims of attorney-client privilege, Wright had produced an un-notarized sworn declaration from Denis Bosire Mayaka, a lawyer in Kenya, which read:

    I am lawyer and obtained my bachelor of law degree in 2007 from Moi University in Kenya… I have represented Dr. Craig Steven Wright since 2012 on, among others, investment matters. Specifically, I represent Dr. Wright and Wright International Investments Ltd in connection with the Tulip Trust documents, including the Tulip Trust dated July 7, 2017.

He also produced a printed out LinkedIn profile to ‘confirm’ Mayaka’s qualification.

Craig Wright Doesn’t Fool the Judge

Unsurprisingly to everyone (and this must surely also include Wright), Judge Bruce Reinhart gave short shrift to Mayaka’s statement.

    First, as finder of fact, I disregard the Mayaka Declaration because it has not been adequately authenticated. Particularly given my prior finding that Dr. Wright has produced forged documents in this litigation, I decline to rely on this kind of document, which could easily have been generated by anyone with word processing software and a pen.

Perhaps Craig Wright had been hoping the judge had forgotten that he had produced forged documents previously?

Even if Mayaka did have an attorney-client relationship with Wright’s wife, Ramona Watts, which the judge did not establish, the information was intended to be provided to Kleiman. There was no intention for the information to remain confidential, and hence attorney-client privilege does not apply.

For the same reason, the judge threw out Wright’s claim that spousal privilege applied when Ms Watts gave the information to him.

Wright now has until March 12 to provide the information about how he obtained the list of Bitcoin addresses.

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Let’s talk about Tezos (XTZ). For a long time, the joint United States–Swiss altcoin has had a strong reputation, yet a checkered past. Only recently has the price begun to reflect the faith that many already had in the protocol. However, is the rapid rise of Tezos justified, or is it another case of crypto “FOMO”?

Let’s talk about the market

Tezos hit an all-time high of $3.70 earlier this year in February. The price has subsequently pulled back, but overall, XTZ is still outperforming the majority of altcoins. This drop does not appear to represent a lack of interest from the market.


Talk Tezos to me

Tezos was conceived in 2014 by Arthur and Kathleen Breitman. In July 2017, it held a wildly successful initial coin offering that raised $232 million, making it the largest ICO for a brief time until it was overtaken by Filecoin a few months later. The organizational structure was pure 2017: the Switzerland-based, nonprofit Tezos Foundation held funds, while a U.S.-based firm, Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc., did the work and was paid by the foundation. In the halcyon days of 2017, many firms thought this structure would allow them to minimize — or even avoid — taxes, but this has largely been proven to be false.

Throughout 2017 and early 2018, the Swiss nonprofit model was considered “vanilla” for ICOs at the time. It was hoped that such structures would give the appearance of respectability, but it was here that things started to go wrong.

As Wired Magazine reported in 2019, the then-head of the Swiss nonprofit, Johann Gevers, found himself in a dispute with the Breitmans, which derailed both the project and its timeline. It was largely because of this very public, very messy dispute that Switzerland’s Crypto Valley and the Swiss nonprofit model lost their luster. Tarred by the public spat, Tezos languished in development hell.

XZT turning around?

However, in early 2019, things began to change as the foundation quietly began to get back on track. What was driving this performance? Much of the fundamental attraction of Tezos remained the same: a three-layered platform comprising a network, transactions and consensus, a proof-of-stake protocol rather than proof-of-work, and support by market players such as Tim Draper.

But what has changed? One key area driving interest is the ability to stake the coins on large exchanges such as Coinbase, which provides a handy revenue stream for holders and drives some demand.

A number of people who spoke with Cointelegraph mentioned that much of the interest is coming from three key points, one of which is the “STO Pipeline” of projects that are in the process of announcing — or will soon announce — development on the Tezos platform. These will all drive XTZ demand in some way, whether for transactions or directly for purchases of the new security token offering tokens. The second driver is how well-capitalized the foundation is, while the third is around Tezos’s technology — but more on that later.

Here come the STOs

Many in the crypto community believe Tezos will power the next generation of STOs. According to one view, over $2.6 billion worth of STOs are currently in the process of being spun up using the Tezos protocol. The three reasons this perspective puts forward for the mass adoption of Tezos for STOs are the security of smart contracts, custody and upgradeability.

More recently, the very active Tezos Commons page posted a comparative study as to why Tezos will outperform Ethereum when it comes to STOs. Mason Borda, the CEO of TokenSoft, even went so far as to say that within a year, 25%–35% of all STO issuances through TokenSoft would be on Tezos.

Some back-of-the-napkin mathematics indicate that, if those aforementioned projects are valued at $2.6 billion, the market would be looking at $500 million of sales ready to go four months down the road.

Alison Mangiero, the president and co-founder of the Tocqueville Group, a New York-based blockchain firm that operates under the name TQTezos and advances the Tezos platform, said:

    “Over the past six months, it has been clear that Tezos is a major destination for securitized assets. Companies like Vertalo, BTG Pactual and tZERO have all announced offerings on Tezos in just the last two months. Additionally, the Tezos community recently voted to approve the Carthage amendment to the protocol — marking it the third on-chain upgrade since the launch of Tezos.”

Money talks

The second driver is the rumored $600 million the foundation is sitting on. With XZT performing at almost six times its ICO price of $0.47, the foundation’s war chest is filled to the brim.

In addition to the well-capitalized foundation, a significant driver of XTZ interest has been the introduction of opportunities for holders, such as “staking” XTZ on Coinbase or other opportunities that allow users to earn while holding on to their assets. With the amount of interest currently being expressed in “coins that earn'' features, these types of staking or loaning options have been on the rise. Cointelegraph spoke to Ryan Rabaglia, a head trader at Hong Kong-based OS Limited, Asia’s largest cryptocurrency over-the-counter desk, who said:

    “I believe Tezos is gearing up for a strong 2020. As we exited 2019, the market experienced a major shift in appetite for yield generating products, such as lending out idle assets and staking-as-a-service offerings. Based on interest we've seen and a shift in appetite, I believe the current trend will continue throughout the year, with volumes outpacing peers in the top 10–20.”

It’s the technology

The third — and perhaps most controversial — driver is the programming language itself. Tezos uses an ultra-obscure programming language called Michelson that has both proponents and detractors. Many pro-XZT members of the crypto community think this niche approach protects both the code and the platform, as fewer coders means less chance of malicious code or attacks.

Meanwhile, those who are anti-XZT believe that fewer users in the field means that a small base of developers will push Tezos into a place of obscurity, making innovation hard and lessening the chance that the community will reach a critical mass.

It is worth noting that the language Tezos compiles with was chosen because it supports formal verification. There are several higher-level smart contract languages that compile down to the base language so that developers don’t need to learn it. In a recent thread on Twitter, user djangobits, who writes for Tezos, said:

    “You don't have to write Tezos smart contracts in Michelson. There are other languages like SmartPy (Python), LIGO, Liquidity, Morley (Haskell), Fi (JavaScript / Solidity), Archetype (Ocaml) and compile those to Michelson.”

Jose Perez, founder of the crypto-chat app Whalechat, spoke to Cointelegraph about the technical aspects of Tezos:

    “As a blockchain developer, one of the most important factors to pick a smart contract platform for my project are the abundance and quality of the development tools, the documentation and the community. Other platforms, such as Ethereum and EOS, currently surpass Tezos in these areas. If we judge the success of a smart contract platform by the number of people who use it, building the node client and the smart contract reference implementations in uncommon languages is arguably not the best way to achieve that goal.”

The final decision on whether using an obscure language is a blessing or a curse hasn’t been decided yet. Tezos has been very active in this regard, offering developer training courses and issuing a series of grants to teams building applications on Tezos, or to those contributing significant amounts of code to the smart contract database. While the developer community for Tezos may be relatively small compared to other protocols, they are active.

Is Tezos the future, or is it just FOMO?

One word that came up a lot when discussing Tezos is “fomonomics”: the idea that the implied benefits of the project, the well-funded foundation, the list of upcoming possible STOs on the platform and the hype found on Twitter and Reddit have all combined to increase the fear of missing out to such a degree that the market treats these implications as fact.

Yet, in the case of Tezos, it seems like much of the interest is genuinely driven by continuous progress from the project’s team toward concrete milestones, which are indicated in the roadmap. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Ryan Lackey, the head of security for the Tezos Foundation, said:

    “Big goals for Tezos and for Tezos Foundation in 2020, including STO strategy, payments and updates in the core protocol for privacy, improvements to the storage engine and other under-the-hood aspects, increased adoption in various places around the world, hiring 30+ people throughout the ecosystem, developer tools and developer experience, improvements in test and QA, etc.”

Where does that leave Tezos?

The interest in Tezos over the last quarter has been sustained and significant. While the slight pullback in the market that has been observed thus far in March has corrected the price from its all-time high a month ago, there is still a lot of goodwill in the project and support from the wider community.

The message from the people involved in the project seems to indicate that they feel the recognition is well deserved. However, the immediate benefits of Coinbase staking and active trading are also having a significant impact on the price of XTZ. It is currently unclear just how much of this interest is coming from each of these drivers.

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A non-profit organization, Better Business Bureau (BBB) in its BBB risk tracker, has revealed the riskiest business in the world and cryptocurrency stands second on the list. The report claims that crypto investment or trading is the second most risky scam currently in trend. The organization, which is an authoritative source in providing business-related information to American and Canadian citizens, only listed cryptocurrencies as an option two years ago.

However, the newly listed option after employment scam ranks second in terms of risk, as announced recently. The BBB risk tracker report on the riskiest business in the world states that around 32 percent of cryptocurrency scams occur in the process of buying these digital assets. In comparison, scams that happen in the process of investing in these assets amount to 23.4 percent.

An exchange firm, C2CX in the BBB risk tracker reports, is involved in the highest amount of crypto scam accounting for around 31 percent of these scams.

Riskiest business in the world giving way to scams

As contained in the BBB risk tracker report, most of these scams are performed through emails on unsuspecting victims. Cryptocurrency scams perpetrated through fake romance amounted to the highest average loss worth around $3,000. This amount is three times more than $900 victims lost in 2018.

As earlier mentioned, it doesn’t rank 1 in the most popular scams currently in trend. Just over 200 victims reported cryptocurrency scams to the BBB. However, over 9,000 people reported scams relating to online trading activities.

As crypto scams victims are not as much as other scam victims, 66.5 percent of victims lose money only when exposed to them.

Riskiest business in the world: Jose of Arizona’s story

The BBB risk tracker report on the riskiest business in the world report includes the story of a defrauded Jose who lost around $1,200 to crypto scam. He got duped by a pseudo-Elizabeth on Instagram about trading cryptocurrency as she guaranteed to handle the business side of things as he was asked only to send some BTC.

Jose narrated that after about eight weeks, he wanted to make withdrawals and got a bank site that looked fake. He was later asked to pay another $500 to get a code from the bank to make a withdrawal of $25,000 in his account, after which he found out it was a scam.

Jose’s advice for people not to fall, victims of such scam, is to tell others or folks before deciding on making such investments. He admitted he was at fault by not involving anybody.

Crypto scam rate around the globe

The BBB only report scams in North America. However, a Nov report states that people get defrauded of their cryptos most in Indonesia, Nigeria, the US, and Vietnam.

This is according to the security director at MyCrypto, Harry Denley. He found out that around 14 percent of crypto scam victims are in Nigeria, with 11 percent in Indonesia, US 9 percent, and 8 in Vietnam.

Featured Image by Pixabay

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