Crypto Highlights Week #48 – Negative Bitcoin headlines affect speculators

Crypto Highlights: Bitcoin back at $19k, Chinese police seize $4.2 billion in PlusToken scam, Exclusive interview with SaTT CEO, Facebook’s Libra set to launch in January 2021: There is more in this week’s Crypto Highlights.

Top Headlines Of The Week

• After a long wait, Facebook’s Libra is set to launch in January 2021, providing support for a USD-pegged stablecoin. 
• Following the notorious PlusToken scam in 2018/2019, the Chinese police have allegedly seized $4.2 billion assets linked to the scheme. 
• Bitcoin crashed to the $16k mark: three reasons for the fall and why it’s a considered healthy correction. 

Top Stories Of The Week

Negative Bitcoin headlines affect speculators, not HODLers says Morgan Creek CEO

Following the retracement of Bitcoin to the $16k levels in the past few days, there has been a myriad of negative headlines trailing the noble asset with most traders calling the 2017 scenario of a massive retracement after hitting an all-time high. CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management Mark Yusko believes negative Bitcoin headlines only affect speculators and not HODLers. 

Yusko believes most financial institutions are obviously afraid of Bitcoin’s disruptive impact and as such, they are deploying whatever means available to attack or slow down mass adoption: 

“When threatened, incumbents always turn to influence of governments to try and slow adoption of new technology through onerous regulation”

With China seizing $4.2 billion worth of crypto assets and Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong foretelling of potentially damaging Bitcoin regulations, there is never a shortage of bad news. Such occasions are likely to take a negative toll on speculators who are looking at near term gain from the digital assets. Bitcoin holders are much notorious for their low time preference, meaning they defer immediate gratification for long-term gain. Yusko further commented. 

Chinese police seized crypto assets worth $4.2B today from PlusToken Ponzi

To date, the PlusToken scam stands in history as the largest crypto heist ever masterminded which saw billions of dollars in crypto assets being whisked away. In the recent development unfolding, 109 individuals linked to the PlusToken scam have been allegedly arrested by the Chinese police, consequently resulting in the seizure of crypto assets worth a staggering $4.2 billion at today’s prices.

According to the filing issued by the court on Nov. 19 and published by The Block, authorities seized a whopping 194,775 Bitcoin (BTC), 833,083 Ether (ETH), 79,581 Bitcoin Cash (BCH), 1.4 million Litecoin (LTC),  6 billion Dogecoin (DOGE), 74,167 Dash, 487 million XRP, 27.6 million EOS, and 213,724 Tether (USDT) from seven individuals convicted in the case.

The ruling from the Yancheng Intermediate People’s Court stated that gains from the seized crypto assets will consequently be forfeited to the national treasury. Broader details of how these assets will be dealt with in accordance with national laws haven’t been made known to the general public yet. 

The PlusToken scam debuted its whitepaper back in Feb. 2018, portraying itself as a South Korean crypto exchange and wallet provider that could service users with a mouth-watering investment capable of generating between 8% and 16% returns monthly. The scheme drew in 2 million members between May 2018 and June 2019 before pulling out an exit scam.

Exclusive From SaTT

Exclusive interview of SaTT project CEO, Gauthier Bros

Since making it to the center-stage of the crypto airwave, we have been tactical in our approach to the issuance of a decentralized advertising product. From closing a record sum in our token sales to getting listed on 5 exchanges within a week, we are now out of our path to full decentralization. 

While we remain committed in this journey to major adoption of decentralized advertising products, we have deemed it necessary to always share our progress with the community and talk about what we are building. In our most recent interview, Cryptonomist takes it on with SaTT CEO  Gauthier Bros as he talked extensively about what we have been working on since 2018. 

When asked why SaTT ICO was massively successful despite the ‘fallen’ ICO market, Gauthier pointed out that SaTT has been very focused on issuing a working product. It was natural for success to accompany hard work: 

“I do believe the fact that we have focused very hard on having a working platform is one of the main reasons that investors decided to back the SaTT project. Our core team comes from Atayen, Inc and we have already provided technology solutions such as our Facebook pages for business apps, so we understand what it takes to deliver these kinds of solutions. All of these factors played into our successful fundraising.“

“SaTT is a project that is committed to delivery and we are not interested in being a flash in the pan. We want to be a solution widely adopted by our industry,” Gauthier further reiterated. 

This Week’s Market Sentiment

3 Reasons Bitcoin Crashed by $3,000 – And Why It’s Still Bullish

The past weeks have been phenomenal for Bitcoin as the digital rallies to near-record highs, but as we all know nothing goes up forever in this space, Bitcoin inclusive. Amidst the euphoria that accompanied the massive rally, Bitcoin came crashing on the 26th, shedding almost $3k of its gains in the recent weeks. 

Three reasons seem to be responsible for the massive fall:

1. Excess leverage: Data from Bybit shows that almost $2 billion worth of derivative positions were liquidated as Bitcoin crashed to the $16k region. The unwinding of the leverage trades was duly anticipated as ‘funding rate’ (the cost of holding long positions) saw a multi-month high of 0.098% in the past few days, a pointer to overleveraging in the market.

2.Technical Pullback: Bitcoin’s legendary rally to the $19k neighborhood was obviously overstretched. The momentum propelled Bitcoin to trade above its 10-day moving average (MA) throughout the ascent, despite an overbought reading on the 14-day relative strength index (RSI). Such moves are accompanied by pullbacks which are considered healthy.

3. Some FUD amplified Sell-off: A tweet from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong suggesting that the Treasury Department is making moves to track owners of self-hosted cryptocurrency wallets weakened the bullish move, causing a panic sell-off across the market. 

As at the time of writing, Bitcoin has pushed beyond the Fibanocci retracement level of $18,210 and has pushed past $19k according to CMC, reaching a record 3 year high of $19,736.

Top Adoption Of The Week

Facebook’s Libra to reportedly launch in January 2021 as USD stablecoin

Libra is back in the news as the Facebook-backed digital asset is set to launch in January 2021, a report from the Financial Times allegedly claims. Following more than one year of intense scrutiny from the U.S and global financial regulators, Libra will launch in the form of a U.S. dollar-backed digital currency.

Relying on information gathered from three people involved in the Libra project, the Financial Times further revealed that the Libra Association will initially kick-off support for USD and will subsequently add support for other well-known fiat currencies to the basket of assets that backs Libra’s value. 

As we look forward to January, the exact date is yet to be communicated. Such information will be largely based on when the Libra Association receives regulatory approval by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, or FINMA, to operate as a payments service. But for the time being, everything looks great for Libra. 

Ethereum 2.0’s Genesis Day Is Officially Set for Dec. 1

Hope for ETH 2.0 launch heightens as the Ethereum contract address reaches the minimum threshold required to kickstart the genesis block on December 1. Its confirmation came in during the early hours of Tuesday, November 24. 

The genesis block is now set to go live on 2020-12-01 at 12:00:23 GMT with a validator of 21,063 counts.  ETH 2.0 launch will issue in the Beacon chain which is an interim blockchain that will operate alongside the current network as it begins the first of four migration phases to the new network.

“I would say we are comfortably half-way through the overall effort to make ETH 2 feature complete,” Drake Justin, an ETH 2.0 researcher told CoinDesk over a direct message.

“The research (which lasted years!) is largely done and the phase 0 genesis is definitely a significant implementation milestone. Phase 0 lays the heavy-duty foundations (signatures, Merkleisation, networking, Eth 1 deposits, randomness, PoS, etc.). Many of the upcoming hard forks will layer relatively thin infrastructure on top of these foundations.”

Meme Of The Week

We hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of crypto highlights. For a peek at our last edition of crypto highlights & blockchain news, click here.