Calm on the cryptocurrency market and other important events of the outgoing week (10.22.2018 – 10.28.2018)

In the traditional Sunday review, Bitcoin has a record low volatility, the launch date of the Bakkt platform, the destruction of 500 million USDT and a new format of special projects from BlockchainJournal.

The lull in the market

This week, the price of the first cryptocurrency was trading between $ 6450 and $ 6550, showing a record low volatility, which reached the levels of March / April 2017. Then the average daily volatility of Bitcoin was only $ 33, and price movements occurred in the range of 2.75%. Over the past seven days, average volatility fell to 0.86%.

CoinMarketCap data

It is noteworthy that the cryptocurrency market also did not react to the next round of correction in the American stock market, although earlier Bitcoin had repeatedly shown a fall along with leading indices.

A study by CBOE Options Institute analyst Kevin DeWitt also states that 20-day historical volatility (HV) of Bitcoin is 31.5%, while Amazon’s share is 35%, Nvidia 40%, Netflix 52%.

Meanwhile, the number of [Google] searches for “Bitcoin” dropped by 93% compared with the peak values ​​of December last year.

Note that this week a memorandum was published about a meeting of employees of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and representatives of VanEck and SolidX companies held on October 9 who are trying to get permission to launch Bitcoin ETF.

VanEck and SolidX stated that they eliminated the reasons that were indicated in the previous regulator failure. At the same time, they stressed that the SEC “constantly changes the rules of the game”, speculating on the concept of “significance” of the market.

Nevertheless, there have been positive developments in the field of industry regulation. For example, the leading US cryptocurrency company Coinbase, which allegedly plans to enter an IPO, has received approval from the New York State Financial Services Authority (NYDFS) to create a custodial unit Coinbase Custody Trust Company LLC. The new organization will provide services for the qualified storage of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic and XRP.

It is worth adding that the listing of the platform Coinbase.com appeared the first stablecoin – USDC, and Coinbase and Bitcoin startup Circle announced the creation of a consortium CENTER to promote a “programmable dollar” and create a more open financial system.

This week, the South China Branch of the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission in Shenzhen ruled that Chinese law does not prohibit owning bitcoins, and residents have the right to send / receive bitcoins. Moreover, representatives of the arbitration said the state should ensure the protection of these rights, since the first cryptocurrency has economic value and property properties.

Developments

Director of consulting firm Bitcoin Advisory Pierre Roshard announced the launch of a plug-in for Microsoft Excel, with which it will be possible to carry out Lightning transactions directly from the application. The need for such a solution he described as follows:

“Reality: 99.99% of accountants and financial employees are on the desk with Excel. They also send the largest number of payments. The user interface for open, decentralized finance is Microsoft Excel. A plugin is a necessary initial condition for any crypto project. Integration with gRPC API Lightning with C # is pure pleasure! ”

This week, the provider of the popular BitGo cryptocurrency wallet, the developers of the Kyber Network platform and the Republic Protocol platform, announced the launch of a fully Bitcoin-supported Ethereum token called Wrapping Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, the developers of the popular hardware wallet Trezor, in partnership with the ShapeShift and Changelly platforms, have added the direct exchange of cryptocurrencies without having to leave the device interface.

It also became known that the payment giant Visa integrates Hyperledger Fabric technology into the corporate payment service B2B Connect, which is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2019.

Bakkt on the horizon

The launch of the Bakkt cryptocurrency platform from the operator of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) company Intercontinental Exchange will be held December 12, 2018.

The first product of Bakkt will be Bitcoin futures contracts with a physical asset supply. Next week, the platform operator may receive approval from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

A comprehensive overview of the prospects for Bakkt can be found here .

Mining

Bitmain, the largest manufacturer of mining equipment, introduced software for Antminer S9 devices with support for AsicBoost optimization algorithm.

Also, representatives of Bitmain promised to soon release updates for all devices based on the BM1387 chips, including the models Antminer R4, S9i, S9j, T9 and T9 +.

The Slush Pool immediately called upon the owners of Antminer S9 not to upgrade to the latest firmware, because it is incompatible with the BIP130 standard and the pool. Representatives of the organization promised to solve the problem as soon as possible and soon presented a new version of the operating system Braiins OS Wolfram.

Bitfinex / Tether

Earlier this week, a non-existent USDT / USD trading pair was found on the CoinMarketCap page of the Bitfinex Bitcoin Exchange, with daily trading volume reaching $ 30 million.

Then it turned out that this pair represents the total turnover of deposits and withdrawals of funds in USDT to / from Bitfinex, and CoinMarketCap independently monitors and interprets information received through the API.

Note that Tether Ltd. " Burned " 500 million US dollars tokenized USDT allegedly in accordance with the provisions of the draft white paper.

ZCash on the threshold of privacy by default

On October 29, a hardfork Sapling is to be held in the network of the privacy-oriented cryptocurrency ZCash, the implementation of which will allow facilitated customers to conduct secure transactions. It is expected that the amount of memory required for such transactions will be reduced by 100 times, while the speed will increase by six or more times.

For some time, the ZCash protocol will support the addresses of the old (Sprout) and new formats, but then the developers will present a special tool for migrating all balances to Sapling addresses, during which a global network audit will be conducted.

New format of special projects from BlockchainJournal

The BlockchainJournal publication presented an interactive format of special projects that are being created in conjunction with representatives of the blockchain industry.

At the same time, a special project was launched to create its own cryptobusiness: the stock exchange, broker and processing.

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