The worst month for Bitcoin, problems of the mining industry and other key events in the world of cryptocurrency

Summing up not only the week, but the month. And for the crypto market, alas, they are not too bright.

November of this year was the worst month for Bitcoin in the last seven years. In just one month, the first cryptocurrency fell in price by more than 37%. Even during the week, she behaved rather unstable – barely starting the recovery and rushing to the $ 4,500 mark, Bitcoin again dropped below $ 4,000 , returning above this psychological mark on Saturday, December 1st.

Despite the fact that the seven-day bitcoin segment completes all the positives that experts, including managing partner of venture capital firm Morgan Creek Anthony Pompiano, believe that the first cryptocurrency can reach a “bottom” at 85% below its historical maximum, that is, at about $ 3,000. The same mark as the next key support level is indicated by CoinDesk analyst Omkar Godboul.

Returning to the results of the month, it should be noted that the fall of Bitcoin has traditionally provoked the collapse of the entire market. Thus, from the first 25 cryptoactive assets CoinMarketCap, only Bitcoin Cash fork, Bitcoin SV, showed a positive trend in November.

Meanwhile, China has published another rating of cryptocurrency. It was again headed by EOS and Ethereum, and this time, Bitcoin rose to 13th place (last month, experts gave the first cryptocurrency 19th place in the rating).

Mining

The founder of the mining pool, F2Pool, Mao Shisin, said that from mid-November, in conditions of a collapse of the market and a declining hash rate, between 600,000 and 800,000 bitcoin miners were disabled. According to him, most of the miners who have stopped work are likely to use outdated device models, such as Antminer T9 + from Bitmain or AvalonMiner 741 from Canaan Creative. The production capacity of these devices is about 10 TH / s, and according to F2pool calculations, in the current situation, their work is unprofitable.

Somewhat earlier, Mao Shisin published a video in which a huge number of mining devices are simply unloaded onto each other near an unknown building.

It is noteworthy that this week the service of free ads "Yula" calculated that amid a sharp fall in the price of Bitcoin, the Russians began to sell mining equipment. So, on November 19 and 20, the number of mining device ads increased by 25%. At the same time, Russians began to look for ASIC Antminer three times less frequently than in January, and the request for mining farms decreased by 2.5 times. Yula data also shows that the number of requests for searching for mining cards decreased by 24% compared with the data of the beginning of the year.

Despite all this, mining continues to be the focus of attention of many entrepreneurs. This confirms, for example, the agreement between the Government of Paraguay and the South Korean company Commons Foundation, under which the latter will build the “world's largest” data center for mining cryptocurrency. Within the framework of the project “Gold mine”, the authorities will provide the Commons Foundation with five land plots with a total area of ​​50,000 square meters. The Itaipu hydroelectric station will provide energy for the future data center. In addition, the company undertakes to create a cryptocurrency exchange.

In addition, Munich-based investment firm Xolaris has announced the launch of a private fund for direct investment in the Bitcoin mining business in Europe. Additionally, the company plans to open another fund in the Asian region. It is planned to attract 30 million euros to the first fund, 50 million euros to the second.

Bitmain, which launched the Bitmain Crypto price index to track the dynamics of the 17 most liquid cryptocurrencies in real time, took care of its users.

We strongly recommend not to miss our exclusive interview with the co-founder of the first and oldest pool Slush Pool and the current Braiins CEO Jan Chapek:

Slush Pool – the oldest mining pool told how collapse in the markets affects the profitability of mining Bitcoin

Regulation

At the end of the G-20 summit on Saturday in Buenos Aires, the heads of the participating countries signed a final declaration , which, in particular, noted the need to regulate cryptocurrency and create a unified tax system for digital assets. Thus, the document confirmed that the regulation of digital assets is necessary for building an “open and sustainable financial system” and will be carried out in accordance with the standards of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF).

Declaración de Líderes del # G20Argentina (inglés)
– # G20 Leaders' Declaration https://t.co/UHzrbEL9jv # G20Summit2018

– G20 Argentina ?? (@ g20org) December 1, 2018

This week’s publication of RBC reported that according to the latest amendments to the Russian draft law “On digital financial assets”, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation will regulate the issue, accounting and circulation of tokens. The definition of mining and the turnover of existing cryptocurrencies are completely absent in the draft version prepared for the second reading. The bill also does not spell out the concept of "token". Instead, it includes digital financial assets (CFAs), which include monetary claims, equity securities and digitized rights to participate in capital.

It should be noted that the Council under the President of the Russian Federation on the codification and improvement of civil legislation stated that the adoption of the draft law “On digital financial assets” in the current edition will return the Russian financial market in the 1990s, and recommended that the State Duma’s financial committee return the draft law to the first reading for its many flaws

Meanwhile, the administration of the High Technology Park (HTP) of Belarus, with the assistance of the aforementioned FATF, has developed rules for regulating the cryptoindustry in the country, according to which all the HTP residents must meet the standards agreed with the National Bank of the country. According to the new requirements, cryptoplatform operators must conduct mandatory customer identification (KYC) in order to comply with AML / CFT rules and provide reports on funds in each customer’s accounts. The authorized capital of cryptocurrency platforms must be at least 2 million Belarusian rubles, for ICO operators this amount is equal to 500 thousand.

The head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Jay Clayton, spoke about the position of the regulator regarding the initial offers of coins, noting that, unlike many ICO tokens, bitcoin does not have the properties of securities. According to him, in order for the ICO organizers not to have problems with his SEC, they should hold their tokensails abroad. Clayton also mentioned the possibility of holding to the closed offers of coins, where up to 35 investors are participating. In this case, the tokens do not qualify for the securities, but restrictions are placed on the possibilities of promoting such a project.

Finally, it became known that the Estonian Ministry of Finance is preparing to amend the recently adopted Law on Combating Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, which will also be aimed at tightening regulation of the cryptocurrency industry. Previously, the provisions of the law included “service providers in the field of making payments using alternative payment mechanisms,” but now they will be expanded to “virtual currency exchange service providers” and “virtual currency service providers”.

Tether resumed account verification and the possibility of direct withdrawal of USDT in Fiat

Tether, the issuer of the most popular steakblock of USDT, has opened verification for new users.

We have a big announcement! Proud <br> we are today has been to launch the redesigned a platform for the verification of the customers new and direct redemption of Tether to buy fiat Via https://t.co/XS46TbUCuL .

To find out more, head to https://t.co/Nn3WUrnRuA .

– Tether (@Tether_to) November 27, 2018

In addition, users can now use the updated platform for direct withdrawal of USDT tokens to fiat dollars. As noted in the company, previously direct conversion was temporarily suspended due to a significant increase in transactions that continued over the past year. Now, thanks to a partnership with Deltec , Tether has the opportunity to return to the “original vision,” according to which users can directly perform operations on the platform without relying on intermediaries.

Nasdaq and VanEck will launch Bitcoin Futures 2.0

The second largest stock exchange in the world, Nasdaq, has entered into a partnership with investment firm VanEck to launch “regulated futures contracts version 2.0”.

As VanEck Director for Digital Asset Strategy Gabor Gurbach said, new financial products will be launched next year and will use the SMARTS control system developed by Nasdaq. In this case, the price will be formed on the basis of the MVIS index developed by VanEck . Such an approach, I am sure Gurbah, "will give confidence to regulators and organizations seeking to enter the cryptocurrency market."

It is not yet known whether the new futures will be settlement (as on CME or CBOE) or deliverable (as on Bakkt, which is about to launch).

Coinbase added support for Zcash

The leading US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced this week the beginning of support for the privacy-oriented cryptocurrency users Zcash. The first step was to add Zcash to the Coinbase Pro Stock Exchange, trading started on Friday, November 30, and is still available to users in the United States, the European Union, Canada, Singapore and Australia. Other jurisdictions may be connected to trading at a later stage.

Note that the withdrawal of funds at the initial stage is only available at transparent (protected) addresses. In the future, Coinbase will consider the possibility of withdrawing funds to anonymous addresses in those jurisdictions where legislation allows it.

As of Sunday evening, the price of Zcash for the 7-day segment increased by 20% and is in the region of $ 78.5.

Additionally, a number of media outlets reported that Coinbase, without undue publicity, made the option of withdrawing fiat currencies to the PayPal account available.

YouTube

This week we launched the video project “Bitcoin and New Finances”. In the first video, we talked about the reasons for centralizing the exchange of cryptocurrencies with the developer of the consensus algorithm Pandora Boxchain Andrei Sobol, IOHK researcher Roman Oleinikov and already very well-known to our audience trader and analyst Ton Weiss.

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