Korea’s Biggest Cryptocurrency Exchange Bans Trading in 11 Countries

Global Stock Markets

Citing money laundering concerns, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb has banned trading in 11 countries including North Korea, Iran, Iraq.

In an announcement on Monday, the exchange said it will comply with global anti-money laundering norms by blocking all transactions of residents in jurisdictions belonging to the Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCT) blacklist.

The 11 NCCT countries are seen by the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force (FATF) as nations that have taken insufficient measures to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other threats to the international financial system.

The countries, in addition to North Korea, include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Vanuatu and Yemen.

The measure took effect on May 27 with Bithumb no longer accepting new users from the 11 nations listed by the NCCT initiative. Existing users from those nations will also see their accounts disabled from June 21.

According to data from Coinmarketcap, Bithumb is Korea’s largest and the world’s fifth largest cryptocurrency exchange with over $400 million in tokens traded over a 24-hour period.

In addition, Bithumb says it has strengthened its own anti-money laundering policies by implementing the recommendations of authorities from the South Korean government and the Korea Blockchain Association, a self-regulatory industry working group.

Established in December, the body introduced a number of measures including ethical codes in an effort to foster transparency in domestic crypto trading markets.

The industry body also mandated strict rules to prevent market manipulation and insider trading.

A number of major exchanges including Bithumb and Upbit will undergo periodic evaluations.

For international users, Bithumb is in the process of mandating a mobile verification process to avoid any instances of falsification of user information, the exchange added.

Bitcoin slips again on reports of US DoJ investigation

Global Stock Markets

Bitcoin shed another 4 per cent of its value after a media report that the US justice department had begun criminal investigations into potential price manipulation of several cryptocurrencies, taking its losses for the week so far to 14 per cent. 

The largest of the cryptocurrencies, bitcoin was trading around $7,300 on Thursday morning, according to Coinbase figures, down from $8,500 on Monday.

Bloomberg reported the move by the Department of Justice earlier on Thursday. Other digital coins also fell on the news — Bitcoin Cash, a bitcoin clone, lost 6 per cent, while ether, the cryptocurrency used on the Ethereum blockchain, was down some 6.5 per cent.

Regulators across the globe have become increasingly vocal about cryptocurrency risks.

But enforcement actions, led by the US’ Securities Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission, have so far focused on policing initial coin offerings — the novel fundraising mechanism which gained popularity last year, as a way for entrepreneurs to raise digital money while providing scant, if any, guarantees for investors.

 There have long been fears that unregulated cryptocurrency markets are vulnerable to manipulation by traders. After crashing from a $19,000 high in December to $7,200 by February, bitcoin rallied back up to $11,000 in March. It did not hold the high ground for long: it dipped below $7,000 in April.

Investors are going to buy bitcoin whether advisors like it or not - Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan

Global Stock Markets

JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon has called bitcoin a fraud, and Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley told CNBC in an interview: You will never see a fund from Vanguard on bitcoin.

However, advisors need to brush up on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology so they can properly address questions from their clients, says Lex Sokolin of Autonomous Research.Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a good way to add alternatives to allocation, on the order of 3 percent to 5 percent of a portfolio.

Many investors wonder when the right time will be to put some money in bitcoin. It's a question that financial advisors increasingly hear these days.

Yet advisors, for the most part, don't recommend investing in digital currency, or in the investment vehicles that have cropped up around it, at all. In fact, earlier this year, Merrill Lynch banned bitcoin buying across the firm. JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon called bitcoin a fraud (he later softened some of his comments), and Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley told CNBC in an interview: You will never see a fund from Vanguard on bitcoin.

There's no doubt that bitcoin has been wildly volatile, so for now, many advisors apparently remain wary and urge investors to avoid cryptocurrency investments altogether.

Cryptocurrency is very controversial, but it's really here to stay, he said. And the underlying [blockchain] technology is really fundamental to the types of companies that people are building right now.

It's important for individuals who want to invest in cryptocurrency to first understand what it is and also how blockchain technology works, Sokolin explained.

To be sure, one of the most compelling things about cryptocurrency is actually blockchain, he added. To that point, Amazon just announced that its cloud computing arm is partnering with a start-up called Kaleido to make it easier for customers to put their services on blockchain.

It's volatile right now, so you should not just go and fill your entire portfolio with cryptocurrencies, he said. But it is a good way to add alternatives to your general allocation, something like 3 [percent] to 5 percent of your portfolio.

Sokolin warned financial advisors that their clients are going to buy bitcoin whether they like it or not.

So [advisors] can choose to say that this whole thing will fall apart and not get educated about it and not help [investors], but that's really irresponsible, he said.

Advisors need to take the time and brush up on the subjects of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology so they can properly address questions from their clients, Sokolin explained.

Advisors really need to start to understand the basics of how blockchain works, he said. Start to understand why there are different cryptocurrencies.

What's the difference between a payments coin, like bitcoin or ethereum? Sokolin added. All of these things are different, so advisors have to spend the time so they can actually help their clients make sense of this.

Two Chinese bitcoin mining equipment makers plan $1 billion Hong Kong listings

Asian Stock Markets

Two Chinese bitcoin mining equipment makers plan to raise up to $1 billion each from Hong Kong listings this year, riding on strong global interest in cryptocurrencies, IFR reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the plans.

Canaan Creative filed a listing application to the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong on Monday, IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication, reported.

Zhejiang Ebang Communication has also started working with advisers on a proposed Hong Kong float of up to $1 billon, reported IFR.

Ebang listed on China’s National Equities Exchange and Quotations, also known as the New Third Board, in 2015 and was

delisted from the over-the-counter market in March after announcing in January that it would seek a Hong Kong listing.

Chinese bitcoin mining equipment makers are hungry for capital to fund their growth as the heightened interest in cryptocurrencies has led to a surge in demand for their machines.

Canaan, which sells “Avalon” mining machines with customised super-fast ASIC chips, made revenue of more than 1 billion yuan in 2017. Although cryptocurrencies can be mined using regular computer equipment, specialised processing devices dedicated to mining are more effective and can generate more income.

The company’s co-chairman Jianping Kong told Reuters in April that he expected China’s push to promote the domestic chip industry to help drive growth for the company.

Credit Suisse, CMB International, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley are joint sponsors for Canaan’s float, according to IFR.

Canaan Creative declined to comment. Ebang could not be immediately reached for comment. All the banks didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Canaan’s IPO valuation has yet to be set as there is no listed comparable and the prices of cryptocurrencies have

fluctuated a lot, reported IFR. It was valued at $500 million in mid-2017, IFR said, attributing it to one of the people.

Ethereum May Take Over Bitcoin As the Most Popular Cryptocurrency

Global Stock Markets

Roger Ver, aka Bitcoin Jesus, predicts that Ethereum will soon take over from Bitcoin as the most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.

Roger Ver, a cryptocurrency advocate who has been actively involved in the cryptoverse since 2011, believes that cryptocurrencies that are more technologically secure like Bitcoin Cash, and, Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin in time.

While this cryptocurrencies will have a massive increase in value, the price of Bitcoin will only see modest gains, according to Ver. This will lead to what analysts refer to as “The Flippening”. This marks a time when Bitcoin will no longer be the leading cryptocurrency with the highest market capitalization.

During an interview with The Independent, Ver said:

“The Flippening is imminent, and I see it happening. Before the end of 2020, I see Bitcoin Cash overtaking Bitcoin, and before the end of this year, Ethereum will do the same.”

Ver talked about the obvious issues with the Bitcoin technology citing that it was unable to scale through the problem of slow transaction speed and high transaction fees that came along with increased popularity.

Is a Take Over Possible?

Over 1,500 cryptocurrencies have been created since Bitcoin was launched in 2009. Each one was created in a bid to improve on Bitcoin’s flaws.

Within the last 12 months, the price of Bitcoin has gone up from $1,700 to about $9,360 which reflects a 450% increase in price. Ether had a 1,000% increase in price with its current value at $764. Bitcoin Cash, on the other hand, hiked from $500 in August last year to $1,655.

Even if the price of Ether is still far from the price of Bitcoin, Ether is in circulation five-times more than Bitcoin. The market capitalization of Ethereum is just about half of the market cap for Bitcoin.

Despite Ver’s opinion, some other experts in the market believe that Bitcoin cannot lose its position because it is already well established in the industry.

Although Ver said that there is a chance that Bitcoin will continue to dominate the market, he doesn’t believe it is likely.

Ex-Trump Advisor Predicts 'Global Cryptocurrency'

Global Stock Markets

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who led Donald Trump's National Economic Council until last month, weighed in on bitcoin and blockchain technology on Tuesday.

I'm not a big believer in bitcoin, I am a believer in blockchain technology, says Cohn

He then made a bold prediction about the future of the tech, telling the network:

Cohn clarified that this global cryptocurrency would not be "based on mining costs and costs of electricity and things like that," a reference to the power-hungry mechanism that bitcoin and other blockchains utilize.

It will be a more easily understood cryptocurrency that will probably have some blockchain technology behind it, but it will be much more easily understood how it's created and how it moves and how people can use it, he remarked.

Cohn was prompted by a question about Goldman Sachs' decision, revealed last week, to launch a bitcoin futures trading desk.

Cohn became Goldman Sachs' president and chief operating officer in 2006. He remained in the post through the aftermath of the financial crisis, which his firm was widely seen as contributing to through its mortgage-backed securities business.

When Trump took office in January 2017, Cohn left Goldman to serve as director of the National Economic Council. In March 2018 it was reported that he would resign, a decision that likely reflected his opposition to the Trump administration's proposed tariffs. Cohn left the post on April 2.

Crypto update: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP) bounce back

New Zealand Stock Markets

The cryptocurrency market has managed to steady the ship and is up slightly over the last 24 hours.

This means the value of the entire market has edged higher to US$408.4 billion according to Coin Market Cap.

The Bitcoin (BTC) price has pushed 0.2% higher over the last 24 hours to US$9,116.31 per coin, lifting its market capitalisation to almost US$155 billion. The world’s largest cryptocurrency appears to have shaken off recent media reports labelling it a scam. Former Paypal CEO Bill Harris told ReCode that Bitcoin was “the greatest scam in history” and dismissed its use as a means of payment and store of value due to the wild swings in its price.

The Ethereum (ETH) price has climbed 1.3% higher since this time yesterday to US$648.43 per token. This gives the popular alt coin a market capitalisation of US$64.2 billion. Traders have responded positively to news that key developers have expressed an interest in working together on the technical direction of the coin after recent infighting.

The Ripple (XRP) price has pushed 1.6% higher during the last 24 hours to 84.4 U.S. cents, giving XRP a market capitalisation of just over US$33 billion.

The Bitcoin Cash (BCH) price has risen 1.4% over the last 24 hours to US$1,359.59. This latest move higher has increased Bitcoin Cash’s market capitalisation to over US$23.2 billion.

The EOS (EOS) price has slipped ever so slightly lower during the last 24 hours to US$15.01 per token. This gives EOS a market capitalisation of just under US$12.3 billion.

It was a similar story outside the top five with small gains being made by Litecoin (LTC), Cardano (ADA), and NEO (NEO). While Stellar Lumens (XLM) and IOTA (MIOTA) have been the best performers on the market with a 7% and 4.4% gain, respectively, during the period.

Sequoia sues Crypto Billionaire after funding deal goes awry

Asian Stock Markets

A legal dispute between Zhao Changpeng, founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and a unit of Sequoia Capital is offering a rare glimpse into one of the digital-asset industry’s fastest-growing startups.

Sequoia sued Zhao over a funding deal gone awry, according to Hong Kong court filings on March 26 and April 24. The filings shed light on Zhao’s interactions with big-name venture capital firms and reveal details about how they’ve valued Binance, the exchange that Zhao started just nine months ago.

The trading platform’s meteoric rise has been one of the virtual currency industry’s most remarkable growth stories, landing Zhao on the cover of Forbes magazine and helping him amass a personal fortune that he claims is worth as much as $2 billion. Binance has also attracted scrutiny from regulators, who’ve been clamping down on digital-asset exchanges around the world amid concern that the venues may be flouting securities laws.

According to the Hong Kong court filings, Zhao and Sequoia began negotiating terms of an investment in Binance in August. The deal would have given Sequoia a nearly 11 percent stake and valued the exchange at about $80 million.

Talks continued over the next few months, the court documents show, a period in which cryptocurrency prices and transaction values soared to all-time highs. But in mid-December, as Bitcoin traded at a record near $20,000, the negotiations broke down.

On Dec. 14, Zhao’s team told Sequoia that Binance’s existing shareholders thought their proposed deal undervalued the exchange. Around the same time, Zhao was approached by another VC firm, IDG Capital, with an offer that would have injected two rounds of funding into Binance at vastly higher valuations: $400 million and $1 billion, respectively.

At issue is whether Zhao’s talks with IDG Capital violated his exclusivity agreements with Sequoia. While Sequoia and Zhao are planning to settle the dispute in arbitration, the disagreement became public after Sequoia turned to Hong Kong’s High Court to successfully secure an injunction barring Zhao from negotiating with other investors. Further hearings will be necessary to establish whether Zhao was at fault, the court said on April 24.

Zhao and a spokeswoman for Binance didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Menlo Park, California-based Sequoia, which has backed companies including Google, Airbnb Inc. and Dropbox Inc., declined to comment. IDG said in response to questions from Bloomberg News that it hasn’t invested in Binance and has no relationship with the firm.

Zhao has previously told Bloomberg News that Binance doesn’t need outside money and that he’s only interested in partnering with VC firms if they can help the exchange work with regulators to secure operating licenses.

He has said Binance is conservatively valued at about $3 billion and that the company earned $200 million in its second quarter of existence, while declining to share the exchange’s financial statements or provide proof of his personal wealth.

Zhao keeps the locations of Binance’s offices and servers secret, though he has previously said that the exchange is based in Hong Kong. Last month, Zhao announced that Binance was setting up operations on the European island nation of Malta.

Binance hosted about $3.4 billion of cryptocurrency trades over the past 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap.com.

While that’s the most among fee-charging exchanges tracked by the data aggregation site, turnover on Binance has slumped about 70 percent from its peak amid a broad selloff in digital assets. Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, has lost about half its value since hitting an all-time high in mid-December. 

Bitcoin price jumps to two-week high, leads broad crypto surge

Global Stock Markets

Cryptocurrency prices jumped on Thursday, led by a surge in bitcoin to two-week highs, with people active in the market citing a squeeze on traders who have bet against prices, given a lack of obvious news to trigger the gains.

On the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange BTC=BTSP, bitcoin rose as much as 17 percent at one point in mid-morning European trading. By 1250 GMT, it was up 11 percent at $7,705, its highest level since March 29.

Other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum .MVETH and Ripple .MVXRP also rose sharply, gaining more than 10 percent. EOS, another virtual currency, rose more than 30 percent, according to CoinMarketcap.com, which tracks the industry.

After rocketing to almost $20,000 in December, bitcoin’s price has fallen this year on the back of worries about a regulatory clampdown and concerns it is a speculative bubble that is now deflating.

That has prompted some traders to bet heavily against - to short - bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
After their prices stabilised in recent days and rose earlier on Thursday, those shorts were squeezed out of their positions, forcing the price upwards.

Two people active in the cryptocurrency market said the biggest moves in trading of bitcoin had occurred on the Bitfinex exchange before spreading to other platforms.

Other analysts said there was no obvious news behind the move, although one cited recent reports prominent billionaire trader George Soros had decided to start trading cryptocurrencies.

Investor immunity to cryptocurrency 'disease' is growing, says Barclays

Global Stock Markets

The investment mania for cryptocurrencies is like an infectious disease whose transmission rate may be declining, Barclays said on Tuesday, concluding their combined market capitalization has probably already peaked. 

Cryptocurrencies hit a collective value of close to $800 billion in December and January, when prices jumped.

Since then a sharp selloff has left them with a capitalization of around $260 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com, $115 billion of that being in the biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, bitcoin.

The combined figure was unlikely to climb back beyond a range of $660 billion to $780 billion, the British bank said in an analysis, with any long-term demand for cryptocurrencies coming from “low-trust” sectors of the global economy.

Barclays (BARC.L) based its findings on a model that compared crypto-hysteria to “the spread of an infectious disease” through a population of investors.

The bank divided them into three groups: “Infected individuals, susceptible individuals who are vulnerable but not yet infected and those who are immune,” said Marvin Barth, head of global FX strategy.

“Like infection, transmission is by word-of-mouth, via blogs, news reports and personal anecdotes,” he told journalists. 

The bank said that former cryptocurrency holders were developing “immunity to further investment.”
Critics say digital currencies are little more than a giant Ponzi scheme and regulators have warned investors that all their money is at risk. With prices BTC=BTSP dropping after financial authorities promised a crackdown, several banks and analysts have already called the market a bubble that is now deflating.

Supporters say cryptocurrencies and the technology behind them have the potential to do away with traditional fiat currencies and transform how we store money and pay for goods.

Barclays said that it had reached its market capitalization estimates using generous assumptions of money demand for transactions and wealth storage in “low-trust sectors”

Bitcoin rises from six-week low as G-20 weighs cryptocurrencies

Global Stock Markets

An international group of central bank regulators and government ministers has told the G20 countries that bitcoin poses no threat to global financial stability, sending the cryptocurrency market higher. 

The Financial Stability Board’s chairman, Mark Carney, who also heads the Bank of England, has sent a letter to the G20, saying that the organization doesn't see bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a threat to the global economy.

The FSB is an international body that monitors and makes recommendations about the global financial system.

he letter comes ahead of the 2018 G20 meeting in Argentina, starting on Monday. At the summit, the participants will discuss bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, and their influence on the global financial stability.

 A number of leading economies – France, Japan and the US – have called for a joint response to the speculation around bitcoin and other digital money.

Bitcoin reacted bullishly to Carney’s letter.

The cryptocurrency surged over 6 percent to $8,200 on Monday, which is still over 50 percent off the $20,000 peak seen in December 2017.

Ripple, ethereum, bitcoin cash, cardano and other cryptocurrencies were also trading in the positive zone, buoyed by the surge in bitcoin. More than 90 of Coinmarketcap’s top 100 cryptocurrencies were gaining on Monday.

Ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin slump after torrid week

Global Stock Markets

The price of bitcoin and its competitors has fallen dramatically over the last three days, with all but two of the top 50 cryptocurrencies further tumbling in value this morning.

Bitcoin, ethereum, ripple and bitcoin cash have all dropped in value by at least 7 per cent in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap, having slid steadily since Monday.

One bitcoin is worth $8,118 (£5,826) at the time of writing, down 7.15 per cent compared to Wednesday morning, 13.48 per cent on this time last week and 4.41 per cent on mid-February, going by Coinbase data.

Of CoinMarketCap's top 50, only tether and digixDAO - two comparatively obscure coins - saw any growth at all.

The biggest slumps were suffered by nem and steem, which lost 25.06 per cent and 17.93 per cent of their values respectively in 24 hours.

The virtual currency market has endured a torrid week, with Google announcing plans to cull cryptocurrency advertising from its search results, purging initial coin offerings and other speculative investment promotions on the grounds that they represent "deceptive content" consumers cannot trust.

The crypto-sector was also prominently mocked by John Oliver on his popular HBO show Last Week Tonight and saw security questions raised after an attempted heist on China's Binance exchange.

Binance has since offered a $250,000 (£179,000) bounty for information that led to the thieves' arrest, a gesture doing nothing to quell comparisons between the unregulated digicoin scene and the Wild West.

The spectre of regulation continues to cast a shadow, with India's former Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das the latest to reassert doubts about the market's safety, arguing that online coin transactions were too complex to regulate and should instead be banned outright.

China and South Korea have expressed similarly conservative attitudes towards cryptocurrencies in recent months.

ASX: Can Ripple (XRP) disrupt the Commonwealth Bank of Australia?

Austrlian Stock Markets

Investing in cryptocurrencies today is like investing in the internet in the 1990s. There will be big winners and big losers, but the underlying blockchain technology supporting some of these cryptocurrencies will most likely be a game changer.

Consider the business of transferring money across the world. Western Union has been prominent in it and so have the big banks Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA), Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC), Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ASX: ANZ) and National Australia Bank Ltd. (ASX: NAB).

These traditional global transfer systems can take up 3 days to process the transaction and it is expensive because currencies often first have to be converted to a common global currency like the US dollar.

That was supposed to be the OFX Group Ltd (ASX: OFX) point of differentiation. OFX specialises in global money transfers made within one day at rates that are cheaper than the big banks.

In fact, OFX provided a positive trading update to the market today showing that the volume and average value of transactions had increased in 2H18 compared to 1H18.

What is interesting in the update, was OFX’s view of their competitive advantage in the market as shown below.

Having a cheaper service compared to the big banks underpinned by a strong risk management framework with excellent client service is clearly what makes OFX competitive and they are reaping the benefits of that.

Now consider Ripple (XRP), the cryptocurrency with a scalable network that can enable real time payments and money transfers anywhere in the world. The maximum time it takes for it to process a global payment is 4 seconds. That’s quick!

According to its website, Ripple consistently handles 1,500 transactions per second, 24×7, and can scale to handle the same throughput as Visa.

Ripple’s scalability and transfer speed could really disrupt OFX and other more traditional money transfer businesses but it could also benefit them if they can successfully adopt the technology. Moneygram did just that by announcing a partnership with Ripple earlier this year.

Bitcoin price prediction: $10.000 as the key level to watch for BTC/USD

Global Stock Markets

Bitcoin reached $8479 on Saturday night, setting up a "W" formation, statistically bullish. New regulative actions keep coming, positive in the mid-term but growing doubts in the day-to-day basis

The Crypto sphere is starting the week with more problems for trading platforms, now coming from Finland. The Scandinavian countries have an important role, because there are several Cryptocurrency mining projects stablished there because of the climatic and energetic edge.

The Finnish banks have temporarily blocked the Crypto trading platform accounts, complying with local laws that demand the capital sources of bank accounts to be identified.

Bitcoin is still trading in a technically complicated area, with positive and negative forces colliding, thus complicating the analysis. BTC/USD has drawn a "W" structure during the weekend, which statistically should trigger a turning point to the upside. For now, this is only another ingredient of our analysis, with multiple mixed signals that should be taken into account when drawing a strategy to trade Bitcoin.

Bitcoin price is moving around a congestion zone, an area where the price level attracting more action is $9500. BTC/USD has stopped at this level up to seven times in the last two months, only trading below there in early February, when it set the relative low at $5896.


Looking at key levels for Bitcoin, the first to watch on the upside is the psychological $10000 mark, followed by $10500, where BTC/USD should take back the bullish channel lost on March 7th.

Above this level, another complicated area, where the price could find resistance at $11450 at first, and then at $12000 as the last barrier preventing price from escaping the current negative outlook.

On the downside, BTC/USD is trading inside a tight bearish channel, with the base at the $8900, followed by long-term trends that rule the current bearish leg and are targeting $8500 and $8000.

If buyers don't take reigns of the price action, Bitcoin could fall down to the area where several bearish trendlines are converging, right at $7700, a projected bearish target for the end of this month.
MACD in the Bitcoin 4-hour chart is crossed up, coming from lows.

It is showing a bullish divergence in the candlestick close, but not in the absolute lows, so it lacks some strength. The indicator has some room to grow before facing the equilibrium line.

Directional Movement Index still is not showing any control by the buyers, despite the increase of long positions in the most recent hours. Sellers have fallen a bit, but they are still outnumbering buyers. ADX is sliding and it should follow going south for the time being.

Conclusion
After the recent price action, BTC/USD has gained some bullish potential, but the big number of hurdles leaves some doubts to the bulls. Just those ones with the possibility of taking immediate positions with no delay should now be aggressive, as the key levels are pretty tight and the scenario could worsen quite rapidly. For those that can operate with ease, tight stops below the key levels are recommended.

Bitcoins and Volatility

Global Stock Markets

The cryptocurrency market is a notoriously volatile one, and many virtual currencies have experienced a dip in price in 2018.

This includes the major ones as well, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and Litecoin.

Perhaps the most notable is the number one cryptocurrency; Bitcoin.

The digital currency has plunged by around $1,000, which is approximately 2% of its value. So, why is the price of Bitcoin as volatile as it is? One of the main reasons that they are under so much pressure is because of the new regulations that have been brought in by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

They have recently announced that exchanges will now have to register as a national securities exchange.

 This has sparked fear though that more regulations could be introduced, which has reduced the value, causing the price to drop.

Another reason is because of the Coinbase announcement of introducing a weighted index fund for cryptocurrencies.

When the ETF is launched it will help in reflecting major trends in the cryptocurrency market, similarly to how equity index gives a sense of what’s happening in the economy. This will only be available to customers in the US.

Finally, the Bank Of England has also issued a warning regarding the crackdown on cryptocurrencies, which includes Bitcoin.

 The banks have said that virtual currencies are not able to perform the most basic function of money, so the banks believe that by properly regulating them will reduce the amount of illegitimate activities.

Japan suspends trade on 2 cryptocurrency exchanges

Asian Stock Markets

Japan’s Financial Services Agency has ordered two cryptocurrency exchanges — Bitstation and FSHO — to stop doing business for a month. Five others, including Coincheck, were instructed to improve internal controls and report back to the regulator.

The action follows an investigation into digital currency exchanges that found poor compliance with anti-money-laundering standards, badly trained staff and “misappropriated” cryptocurrencies.

The probe followed a $500m theft, in January, at Coincheck, one of the largest operators.

The crackdown is likely to prompt a shake-up in Japan’s booming market for cryptocurrency trading as weaker exchanges go out of business or team up with larger, better-organised competitors.

Financial companies often struggle to bounce back from a business suspension order, making it a potent regulatory punishment.

It also raises questions about the quality of the FSA’s original regulatory scrutiny at the 32 cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan. Sixteen are operating with full licences and a further 16, including Coincheck, rely on provisional authorisation to trade.

 Although the FSA’s on-site inspections are not complete, it has found cases where exchanges did not follow anti-money-laundering rules or had inadequate internal controls.

It ordered Bitstation to halt its business until April 7 and report on improvements to its handling of user funds. At FSHO, based in Yokohama, the regulator said that staff were inadequately trained and did not follow internal procedures.

FSHO was also ordered to suspend trading until April 7 and make the necessary notifications of suspicious transactions. Hackers broke into Coincheck’s systems in the early hours of the morning on January 26 and stole about $500m of the cryptocurrency XEM belonging to 260,000 customers.

Coincheck has vowed to repay customers from its own resources but the credibility of that plan is still unclear.

The company has restarted yen withdrawals, letting customers with cash on deposit remove it. However, trading in cryptocurrencies remains suspended until Coincheck improves security.

Japan is one of the only jurisdictions in the world to embrace and regulate cryptocurrency trading. The resulting boom in activity put the country at the heart of a tenfold surge in the price of bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, during 2017.

Investors are waiting to see if the FSA’s crackdown spreads from tighter enforcement of the existing rules to changes in the permissive regulatory environment.

US Judge Rules - Cryptos Are Commodities,

Global Stock Markets

A U.S. district judge has backed the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission in defining cryptocurrencies as commodities.

According to a Memorandum & Order for a court case that the CFTC had brought against cryptocurrency business operator Patrick Kerry McDonnell, Judge Jack Weinstein from a district court in New York ruled that "virtual currencies can be regulated by CFTC as a commodity."

"Virtual currencies are 'goods' exchanged in a market for a uniform quality and value. ... They fall well within the common definition of 'commodity'," the judge wrote in the order on Tuesday.

At issue in the case was whether the CFTC had the authority to regulate cryptocurrency as a commodity in the absence of federal level rules, and whether the law permitted the CFTC to "exercise its jurisdiction over fraud that does not directly involve the sale of futures or derivative contracts," according to the document.

In both instances, Weinstein answered in the affirmative, meaning the case can be brought against the defendant.

The judge further granted a preliminary injunction barring the defendant from further engagement in cryptocurrency investment as the case continues.

As previously reported by CoinDesk, the CFTC defined cryptocurrencies as commodities as far back as 2015, a decision that has led the agency to recently target cryptocurrency businesses that it considers are hoaxing investors.

In one of several cases filed in January this year, the CFTC sued McDonnell and his company CabbageTech for allegedly absconding with customers' digital assets.

The agency said at the time that McDonnell branded himself as a cryptocurrency investment expert with trading advice that could result in highly attractive returns on investment.

Yet soon after customers sent in money and cryptocurrencies, the defendant allegedly misappropriated the funds, according to the case.