The bitcoin price has corrected from just over $3,000 on June 12th to $2,500 today. It is currently at a key technical support level, but has additional support around the $2,100 and $1,800 price levels. The most bullish outcome would be for the bottom leg of the converging triangle pattern to hold up as support and for the price to push upward through the downward sloping leg. These patterns usually indicate that a big move is upcoming, but do not indicate direction clearly. So, as the legs converge, we can expect increased volatility ahead. I think the breakout is most likely going to be to the upside as a continuation of the prior trend, but we will have to wait and see.
The ethereum price corrected from over $400 to support around $220 before bouncing. It is currently trading around $285. The chart shows support in the $200 to $220 range, which was prior resistance. The converging triangle pattern is similar to bitcoin and is setting up ETH for a big move in the days and weeks ahead. As with bitcoin, my expectation is for the breakout to be to the upside and quick test of the previous high at $400. We first want to see support at the bottom support trend line hold. A drop below $200 would be very bearish and imply a test of $160 and potential panic selling to $100. Ethereum started the year at just $8, so even a pullback to $100 would still result in a year-t0-date gain in excess of 1,000%.
After several observers came out to say bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general were in a short-term bubble, many are now saying there is a buying opportunity on the current dip.
There was even more news for ethereum this week as debates started to pickup on how to scale the network as price is currently hovering just under $300. Bitcoin has been undergoing this debate for the last couple of years, and now it has just started for ethereum. There have been only preliminary ideas on what scaling might look like, which include technical upgrades to mining changes. We’ll know more about these details in the coming weeks and months.
Cryptocurrency Experts say Ethereum Set to Eclipse Bitcoin
Since Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to launch, it has enjoyed many benefits of that fact. It’s true many others launched shortly after including Litcoin and Dogecoin, which are still going strong. But many have insisted that there will be “one chain to rule them all.”
That’s what has made Ethereum’s growth so interesting, and now the price movement as well. Just a couple years ago, it was unthinkable that Ethereum would ever surpass Bitcoin’s market cap. Ether, coin of Ethereum, has risen more than 5,000% in 2017. It peaked at just over $396. Investors first attributed the surge in the Ethereum price to its faster platform, which processes transactions more quickly than Bitcoin, but transaction times are just the tip of the iceberg.
Smart contracts, initial coin offerings (ICOs), variable block sizes all swing to Ethereum’s favor. Even major institutions are siding with Ethereum. For instance, the Central Bank of Russia is currently testing an Ethereum fork for its own monetary system. This will effectively create the world’s first national cryptocurrency, a service that Bitcoin is currently incapable of providing. It’s unclear if Bitcoin will be able to scale to the way Ethereum already can.
In many ways, Ethereum casts a wider net than just money. It fulfills the true potential of Blockchain technology by expanding beyond money, beyond Bitcoin. Many innovators will be drawn to Ethereum’s smart contracts, ICOs and faster transaction speeds and they have to use Ether tokens on the platform, suggesting that ETH prices will continue to skyrocket.
GDAX to Compensate Customers Who Lost Money in ETH Flash Crash
Ethereum experienced intense volatility last week, leading to its price crashing as low as $0.10 on GDAX. The exchange now says that it intends to compensate customers for whom stop-losses were triggered during the fall.
Reasons for the crash
Ethereum has been one of the star performers in the cryptocurrency space, rising over 40x in 2017. However, network congestion and two ICOs resulted in price volatility last week. Problems at exchanges also contributed to the uncertainty, resulting in Ether price falling. A large sell order (96,100 ETH) at GDAX resulted in the price slipping from $317.81 to $224.48. This resulted in stop-loss orders and margin positions getting triggered, resulting in the price slipping momentarily to as low as $0.10.
GDAX’s VP Adam White writes in a blog post: “We will establish a process to credit customer accounts which experienced a margin call or stop loss order executed on the GDAX ETH-USD order book as a direct result of the rapid price movement at 12.30pm PT on June 21, 2017. This process will allow affected customers to restore the value of their ETH-USD account to the equivalent value of their ETH-USD account at the moment prior to the rapid price movement.”
Vitalik Buterin says Ethereum Ether Issuance: “Whatever It Needs To Be” For Security
In a series of Tweets this week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has confirmed his reasoning behind Ethereum’s issuance and the unlimited supply of coins.
The Twitter exchange with Ethereum Classic fund creator Barry Silbert and cryptocurrency enthusiast Kalle Rosenbaum, shed light on information everyone has been wondering about. Buterin said the issuance of ETH tokens “is whatever it needs to be to ensure reasonable [level] of security.” Buterin went on to say that a future issuance rate for Ethereum could go “below 0%” once additional features became live.
Ethereum development has come under pressure in recent weeks as trading activity served to choke the network and create volatility. The popularity of ICOs has also raised questions about Ethereum’s ultimate value, which means the number of tokens being uncapped with billions of dollars at stake.
Hedge Fund Numeraire Moved From Bitcoin to Ethereum Network
Hedge Fund Numeraire announced this week that it moved over to the Ethereum Network. This was big news at it had been pushing Bitcoin for some time and before this said it had no plans to change.
Earlier this week, Numerai migrated its platform and deployed the Numeraire smart contract to the Ethereum network, sending 1.2 million tokens to 19,000 data scientists globally.
It was back in December of 2016 when Richard Craib introduced a concept called Numeraire The system is a Blockchain and cryptographic token-based ecosystem where data scientists are incentivized to create a more efficient market for traders.
Over 12,000 data scientists within the Numeraire ecosystem were issued one million crypto tokens to construct an artificial intelligence hedge fund. The goal is to focus on learning more effective and practical methods of trading financial securities.
Craib revealed that all of the Numerai hedge fund’s data is shared across its network of data scientists in an abstract manner. He said, “We give away all our data. But we convert it into this abstract form where people can build machine learning models for the data without really knowing what they’re doing.”
Fidelity Charitable Raises $9 Million in Bitcoin Year-to-Date
Fidelity Charitable, the donor fund connected to mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments, has raised nearly $9 million in Bitcoin year-to-date, according to its annual report.
After raising $7m in bitcoin during 2016, Fidelity Charitable recently experienced a marked uptick in donations, bagging roughly $2m more than that figure in the last six months alone. According to the report: “This is more money given to charities over the first half of the year than ever before in the organization’s 26-year history,” the organization said in the report.
The increase comes on the back of some promotion from Fidelity at several Blockchain related events this year including CoinDesk’s Consensus 2017 blockchain conference. The Fidelity CEO discussed the firm’s deep interest in the technology, particularly in public blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Fidelity’s charity effort first began accepting bitcoin in late 2015, but it hadn’t really taken off until now.
Mark Cuban Set to Participate in His First ICO
Mark Cuban, who called out Bitcoin’s price for being frothy just a couple weeks ago, is now bullish on Ethereum and his first ICO from a company called Unikrn based in Seattle, Washington.
The “Shark Tank” VC has opened up to the ideas of blockchain and he’s joining the ranks of traditional investors who support the idea that their own portfolio companies could raise additional capital by selling cryptographic tokens.
According to an article revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, “Cuban portfolio company Unikrn is currently circulating an update to its investors about a forthcoming ICO intended to supplement the venture capital it has already raised.”
Founded in 2014, the Seattle-based Unikrn is an e-sports betting platform that has already raised $10m from investors also including Ashton Kutcher, Elisabeth Murdoch and 500 Startups.
Coindesk goes on to report that, “The 1 billion new tokens – called UnikoinGold – that will eventually be minted will adhere to the ERC-20 ethereum standard and, based on a timeline in the investor update, the formal marketing of the token will begin no later than August. A launch of the live coin integrated with an underlying infrastructure and wallets is set to go live on 31st August.”
We reported earlier this month that social network Kik announced its own ICO after raising $120 million in equity venture capital.
CNBC Runs Story on “How to buy Bitcoin in seconds from your smartphone”
Some might say the ultimate bullish signal for bitcoin has arrived. CNBC columnist Adam Jeffery published a story this week on CNBC.com about how to buy Bitcoin on your smartphone.
According to the article, he said “You’ve seen all the headlines about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rising in value. Maybe you want to get in on the game. But how do you even start? We’ll show you.” The article shows a step-by-step process of how to buy Bitcoin along with Ethereum on the Coinbase App.
Mr. Jeffery also warned, “My bank called me within 5 minutes to verify my attempt to buy Bitcoin. You may face the same situation, just approve the purchases and you should be good to go.”
Articles such as this from large financial outlets show the bullishness of investors on cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrency ICOs Create Investment Fever
Cryptocurrency investors have been tripping over each other to get into early-stage initial coin offerings (ICOs). In fact, sevearal have sold out in just minutes, with investors sending tens of millions in ether or bitcoin to companies that have yet to create a product. In the past week Civic, EOS and Status all completed ICOs, with the Status ICO largely to blame for congestions on the ethereum network.
The highly-anticipated Tezos ICO starts tomorrow and has been backed by billionaire investor Tim Draper. Get more details here: https://www.tezos.com/
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