Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has halted an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) launched by AriseBank, a 'decentralized' bank, which had purported to offer trading in over 700 crypto- currencies - including Bitcoin and Ethereum - and had raised around $600m towards a $1bn funding goal.

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Impending legal action or media frenzy?

Continuing its volatile 2018, crypto markets are facing another round of volatility—with many claiming this new drop is related to recent news stemming from comments India Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made regarding cryptocurrencies during a Feb. 1 budget speech.

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Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple broke important levels

For Bitcoin, 7888 in confluence with the 200-day MA may bring some relief, but not looking for it to do much more than that. Rallies are expected to be short-lived events, rather than sustaining moves higher. With that said, the November low at 5555 is the next big downside target.

Chart 1 – BTC/USD

Litecoin is dropping sharply after breaking out of a wedge, it’s trading below the Jan 17 level of 137.57 noted as important, which brings us to 110. The 200-day, as is the case with Bitcoin, also arrives around price support. Perhaps a relief bounce soon, but look for more weakness to follow.

Chart 2 – LTC/USD: Daily

The Ripple ‘drip-drip-drip’ price action is turning into a waterfall. The 87-cent threshold has been broken as of the time of this writing, with the 50-cent area next up. At some point it looks like the rally from the wedge that formed during the second half of 2017 will get fully erased, taking Ripple back down to around 25-cents, or so.

Chart 3 – XRP/USD: Daily

Ethereum is finally breaking too

Ethereum has been a hold-out for the most part, but that is quickly changing. The short-lived rise which ended back on Jan 28 is now turning out to be a major lower-high. The November trend-line is quickly coming into play, with a break expected.

Chart 4 – ETH/USD: Daily

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Peach Aviation, which operates more than 90 daily flights in 12 domestic and 13 international routes, offered the option to book seats using cryptocurrency to attract more tourists from other parts of Asia.

"There have been some reports today on our company retracting its plan to enable airline tickets to be purchased with Bitcoins; however, this is not something that was announced by our company and is not a fact. We are currently considering our start period in aiming to introduce such a service," said the Osaka-based budget airline company.

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China's major social media networks and search engines reportedly do not appear to be publishing paid adverts for cryptocurrency-related products or companies. South China Morning Post quoted Weibo as saying that it does not currently allow advertising relating to cryptocurrencies, In September, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) had banned ICOs. Keywords such as "bitcoin" do not return paid ads.

Keywords such as "bitcoin", "cryptocurrency" and "ICO" do not return paid advertisements or obvious sponsored posts on China's largest search engine Baidu and on Weibo, a Twitter model Chinese-language microblog.

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Investors have pointed to many different factors as causes for the drop. “At first, people said it was Bitcoin futures expiring,” says Kyle Samani, managing partner at Austin-based crypto investment firm Multicoin Capital. Some have cited reports that China is planning to ban crypto-asset trading on all exchanges, including those based in other countries. Others discussed impending U.S. regulation or claimed that people were selling to pay taxes, according to Samani. And Monday’s steep drop in the U.S. stock market might have caused more people to sell their crypto to lower their portfolio risk, he acknowledges.

But he thinks there’s a simpler reason at work: “The crypto market got overheated,” he says. “November through January was insane. Especially some of the altcoins—it was ludicrous.” He points to Ripple, whose XRP coin reached a market value of more than $140 billion, even though Ripple’s technology was only being piloted at some banks, and not fully adopted.

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Regulators may need more power/clarification from Congress to control Bitcoin says Senate Banking Committee Chair Mike Crapo. SEC Chair Jay Clayton left the door open to asking for it. He said appropriate federal regulation of cryptocurrencies may include: data reporting, capital requirements, cybersecurity standards, measures to prevent fraud and price manipulation and anti-money laundering and “know your customer” protections.

He said the risks of investing in ICOs and cryptocurrencies are significant because many promoters are not complying with US securities laws and because investors who put money into them may have their money could be sent overseas without their knowledge.

Another risk to investors, said the regulator, is the SEC and state securities regulators may not be able to effectively pursue the overseas bad actors in the products.

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The head of the Bank for International Settlements is forecasting a gloomy future for cryptocurrencies. "While perhaps intended as an alternative payment system with no government involvement, it has become a combination of a bubble, a Ponzi scheme and an environmental disaster," says Augustin Carstens, General Manager of the BIS. He was speaking at Goethe University House of Finance in Frankfurt.

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The Northern Territory Racing Commission (NTRC), the Australian regional gambling regulator, is set to ban gambling using cryptocurrency in Australia. NTRC is against adding cryptocurrencies to Australian Gambling Websites.

The chairman of the NTRC has reportedly sent out an informal email to all sports bookmakers and betting exchange operators in the Northern Territory asking them to immediately cease and desist from transacting in cryptocurrency.

These include ban of cryptocurrency ads by Facebook, and India as well as other regulators around the world taking strong stance against it. The price of bitcoin has more than halved from its all-time high around $20,000 in mid-December 2017. No different are other major digital currencies.

Banking majors around the world, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi, and Lloyds Banking, have also banned their customers from buying cryptocurrencies using credit card.

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What caused Bitcoin Cash's sharp rally?

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