Bitcoin Looks for Price Support After Failed $10K Crossover

•  40

 

NEWS

Omkar Godbole   

 May 7, 2018 at 11:00 UTC

Bitcoin's (BTC) pullback in prices over the weekend has dampened the immediate prospects for the bulls, the technical studies indicate.

Having witnessed a bullish pennant breakout last Friday, the cryptocurrency looked set to scale the $10,000 mark in a convincing manner over the weekend.

However, the bullish move unexpectedly ran out of steam at $9,990 at 13:00 UTC on Saturday, according to Bitfinex, and had retreated to $9,258 earlier today.

As of writing, bitcoin is changing hands at $9,400, representing a 2.67 percent drop from the previous day's close of $9,658.

While the pullback is not good for the bulls, only a drop below $8,650 would give the bears the upper hand.

4-hour chart

The above chart shows the pullback occurred after BTC was rejected (marked by a circle) at the inverse head-and-shoulders neckline resistance of $9,950.

As noted above, BTC had looked on a solid ground following the bull pennant breakout, so the drop to $9,300 came as something of a surprise and has neutralized the immediate bullish outlook.

That said, a rebound from the ascending (bullish) 100-candle moving average (MA) in the 4-hour chart could put $10,000 back on the map.

Daily chart

The daily chart shows that the 10-day MA is sloping upwards (bullish), providing more cause for bull optimism, especially if today's candle closes (as per UTC) above the 10-day MA (located at $9,468).

On the other hand, if BTC closes below the 10-day MA, then the case for a further drop towards $8,652 (April 26 low and pennant low as seen in 4-hour chart) would strengthen.

View

The pullback from $9,990 to $9,258 has dampened the immediate bullish outlook.

Repeated failure on the part of the bears to keep prices below the ascending 100-candle MA on 4-hour chart, and a close today above the 10-day MA of $9,468, could yield re-test of $10,000.

A close above the inverse head-and-shoulders neckline resistance seen today at $9,980, would open the doors to $13,475 (target as per the measured height method), although the target looks far-fetched for now. In the short-run though, BTC could rise to $11,700 on the back of an inverse head-and-shoulders breakout.

Bearish scenario: A break below $8,652 (pennant low) would add credence to rejection at inverse head-and-shoulders neckline resistance and signal a short-term bullish-to-bearish trend change. In such a case, BTC will likely drop to levels below $8,000.

Bitcoin chart image via Shutterstock

Read More

The Next Generation of Crypto Exchanges Has One Big Missing Piece

•  180
•  1

FEATURE

Ian Allison   

 May 7, 2018 at 04:00 UTC

2018 could end up being a banner year for a much-hyped cryptocurrency creation.

Heralded as a way to put true custody back into the hands of traders, decentralized exchangeshave moved out of R&D phase and are enrolling early adopters. But before users can start rejoicing, there's a serious chicken-and-egg problem, one that entrepreneurs believe is preventing the model from challenging the Coinbases and Krakens of the world.

In short, you need liquidity to get adoption, yet in order to get adoption, liquidity must be good, a fact acknowledged by even those who see the potential in more high-tech trading offerings.

But more broadly, it's worth looking at how centralized exchanges solve this problem. Oftentimes, they make deals with market makers to incentivize them to create liquidity. These incentives usually come in the form of a rebate or reward that's exchanged for the guarantee a certain amount of what traders call "order book depth" is maintained at all times.

Some centralized exchanges will even employ temporary strategies to solve the problem, such as market making themselves with their own capital, and will basically replicate order books from other more liquid exchanges (plus a spread) to try to attract traders.

There are some practical issues: decentralized exchanges are limited to trade in cryptos only. That means people can't actually use regular US dollars to buy a token. They first have to go to a regulated exchange to put in US dollars (or other government-backed currencies) to buy bitcoin or ether.

Then, with bitcoin or ether, they can go to a decentralized exchange to buy the more tokens. As such, it's perhaps no surprise that to those familiar with more user-friendly Wall Street solutions, this can all seem a bit much.

As Daniel Cawrey, CEO, Pactum Capital explains:

"Most investors/traders are already intimidated by bitcoin. So, to have them jump through hoops to trade on a decentralized exchange to trade a token with a tiny market cap causes a lot of people to give up."

Cawrey characterizes it as a question of cost and benefit. Essentially, most tokens don't do much in the way of volume, which makes the set-up hurdles even more pronounced.

That said, there have been early successes.

For example, AirSwap, the decentralised marketplace for ethereum tokens that launched last week, handled over $1 million worth of transactions on its first day of trading.

A different take

Still, those working to bring the business model to life see it differently.

AirSwap, co-founded by former Virtu Financial trader Michael Oved, goes so far as to use a bulletin board-style system that emulates the way traditional foreign exchange traders interact directly with each other, peer to peer.

The platform replaces the traditional order book with a kind of search engine called an "indexer," whereby traders can announce their intent to trade, making them discoverable by their peers using smart contracts. It currently trades some 25 tokens and that number is growing.

In this way, AirSwap co-founder Don Mosites believes this selection is enough to overcome the issues Cawrey discussed, by offering a selection of markets that may be small today, but have been growing in volumes of late.

Mosites said: "There are people all over the world looking to make trades, often in large amounts, but may not have the tools."

"The first-day volume was a testament to the global community we've built, our 'peer discovery' system and the smart contract used by peers to make trades. There is a ton of demand for a simple and secure OTC system like this," he continued.

Other approaches

Yet, this isn't the only approach - smart developers are dropping IP all over the place with different ways to decentralize ethereum token trading, while attracting the necessary liquidity.

For example, KyberNetwork (launched in April), has also gotten rid of the order book, and maintains a reserve warehouse controlled by a Kyber smart contract.

In order to attract as much liquidity as possible from Singapore's burgeoning token economy, Kyber operates an open model - anyone can be a market maker or taker by interacting with the smart contracts.

"We solve the liquidity problem by bringing the market makers to our platform - anyone with a substantial amount of idle assets or even the token issuers themselves," said Loi Luu, the co-founder of KyberNetwork. "They can get more profits on their idle assets by market making on our platform."

Also looking to leverage the explosion in ethereum tokens is the 0x protocol, which offers exchange operators (relayers) building on top of its smart contract system, the choice of being open or closed.

Using 0x in an entirely open and decentralised way, aspires to capture a networked liquidity effect. This means the smart contracts that essentially clear and execute trades are set so that the maker and taker of trades can be filled by any user.

But 0x can also be used to create a closed order book, or matching model, where the smart contract is set so the taker of any trade is always the relayer.

Trade-offs

As with most things in a decentralized context, there are trade-offs.

While openness may solve liquidity issues over time, it opens up an easy way of front-running trades. This can happen on ethereum when users observe market-moving orders and set a gas price for their own transaction higher than the transaction they're seeing.

Amir Bandeali, the CTO of 0x, pointed out this issue shouldn't be put completely on decentralized exchanges.

"This is not a problem that's specific to trading; front running is one of the larger issues of blockchains in general. If anyone submits a transaction to the blockchain, the entire transaction is public before it is mined," he said, adding:

"But since decentralized exchanges are one of the first working use cases of blockchains, they have been getting a bad rap for this."

To fortify the open approach, 0x is looking at introducing features like a trade execution coordinator, or an embeddable trade widget for open order books that can allow wallets and other applications to monetize by simply rebroadcasting orders from other relayers.

Kyber, which is also open, removes the incentive to front run by limiting the transaction value per trade. The trade size is currently capped at SGD 5000 ($3,800) per trade for non-KYC'd users and SGD 10000 SGD for KYC'd users.

Combining the 0x protocol with a closed order book model is Paradex, founded by trading platform veteran Ron Bernstein. In this design settlement of trades takes place on the ethereum blockchain, but a closed matching model seeks to retain features that professional traders require such as best-price guarantees and price/time priority.

"The matching model does come with trade-offs," said Bandeali. "It makes your relayer much less accessible to smart contracts. One of the main benefits of the open order book model is that you can execute trades atomically with other transactions, including other trades. You can't really benefit from this using the matching model."

Bernstein acknowledged that matching prevents Paradex from participating in 0x's aspiration for beneficial shared liquidity, but he insisted the trade-offs are incomparable.

"There's a very small chance that aggregated or shared liquidity will be a mass adoption solution. It may be a temporary benefit while bootstrapping very new trading ecosystems like decentralized token trading," said Bernstein, adding:

"Liquidity is solved by partnerships with professional liquidity providers, like those already operating on centralized exchanges - and we're courting a bunch of them."

Missing piece image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups

Read More

Paper Wallet of bitcoin

Why Create a Paper Wallet?

Exchange accounts can be hacked, mobile wallets breached, and smartphones lost, stolen or destroyed. But paper? It’s impervious to all digital attack vectors. It’s not foolproof – fire, water damage, or theft can still take their toll – but if you’re careful where you stash your paper wallet, it’s one on the safest ways to store cryptocurrency. Be it as a backup of an existing hardware, mobile or desktop wallet, or as a standalone wallet that exists solely offline, paper is perfect.

The ultimate form of cold storage, a paper wallet simply consists of a printout of the private and public keys to your address. (These can even be handwritten if you don’t trust printers or have access to one). Suffice to say that while the public key can be shared so that others can send you coins, you shouldn’t share your private key with anyone. Thus, once you’ve printed your wallet, you need to store it somewhere only your eyes can view it. That could be a safe, a bank vault or a sly hiding place in your home.

If you’re ultra cautious, you can even split your paper wallet into parts and store it in separate locations. Not much use if you’re a day trader, admittedly, but if you’re a hodler for life, a distributed paper wallet (with at least one duplicate to ensure redundancy) is about as safe as cold storage gets.

https://coinbizz.blogspot.com/2018/05/another-company-moves-hc-against-rbi_5.htmlbitcoin rbi news

How to Make a Paper Wallet

There are numerous websites that allow you to create a paper wallet in seconds before printing it off. Choose a favorably reviewed site whose code is open sourced to prevent the sort of scams that are all too prevalent in the crypto space. Examples of paper wallet generating sites include the following:

Bitaddress.org: A simple but effective open source Javascript wallet generator. Select the BTC wallet type you’d like, generate some entropy, choose how many addresses you want and hit “Print”. You can also create vanity, bulk, split, and brain wallets.

Bitcoinpaperwallet.com: A self-explanatory site that allows you to create BTC and BCH paper wallets. There’s a useful section on paper wallet security tips and you can order tamper-proof holographic stickers for creating your own folding paper wallet. When it comes to print out your wallet, the sensitive details – namely the private key and QR code – are securely taped shut and sealed with a sticker. That way, you know that no one’s accessed your paper wallet and peeked at your private key.

https://coinbizz.blogspot.com/2018/05/nvidia-just-killed-its-controversial.html

Disclaimer: coinbizz does not endorse nor support these products/services.

Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the mentioned companies or any of their affiliates or services. coinbizz is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article

Read More