The cryptocurrency market remains range-bound with a slight bullish bias. Bitcoin (BTC) continues to hover around $9,500 levels, but lacks the necessary momentum to break above the psychological level of $10,000. At the time of writing this article, Bitcoin was trading at $9,547.04, down 1.7% in the past 24 hours. Ether (ETH) has lost 1.1% to trade at $211.28. XRP has lost 0.8% to trade at $0.2028.
Other major altcoins which have gained in the past 24 hours include ChainLink (LINK-$4.15, 2.1%), Cardano (ADA-$0.0567, 1.9%), OKB (OKB-$5.24, 0.9%), Stellar (XLM-$0.0709, 1.5%), Bitcoin Cash (BCH-$241.77, -1.8%), Cosmos (ATOM, $2.71, 2.5%) and LEO (LEO-$1.11, 2.4%). Altcoins which have lost ground in the past 24 hours include Ethereum Classic (ETC-$6.51, -2.1%), Dash (DASH-$78.08, -0.1%), Tezos (XTZ-2.84, -0.7%), Binance Coin (BNB-$16.97, -1.5%), EOS (EOS-$2.60, -1.7%), IOTA (IOTA-$0.2002, -1.0%), Tron (TRX-$0.0151, -2.1%), Huobi (HT-$4.08, -1.5%), Litecoin (LTC-$44.43, -3.0%), and Monero (XMR-$64.82, -2.8%).
Government level initiatives
The Central Party School of China have published a cryptocurrency book
The Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which trains ruling Communist Party officials in China, has published a book focused on cryptocurrencies. The institution, also referred to as the Central Party School, released the book as a portion of a book collection on disruptive innovations. Other books in the collection include “A Dialogue With Party Leaders About AI” and “A Dialogue With Party Leaders About Blockchain.”
The objective of the book collection is to provide necessary knowledge about emerging trends in disruptive technology to ordinary people and party officials. Chinese central bank and commercial banking executives, and regulators were welcomed to write the preface for the crypto book published recently.
Initial chapters in the book explain the history and origin of fiat currency. It is followed by an overview of the prevailing currency system and its disadvantages. That leads to chapters on cryptocurrencies and the creation of Bitcoin. The book also talks about the future of digital currencies and also details about cryptocurrency exchanges and ICOs. Finally, the book highlights the regulatory issues related to disruptive technology.
Private sector initiatives
The Atari Group joins up with the Litecoin Foundation
The Atari Group has entered into a collaboration with the Litecoin Foundation with a view of capitalizing on blockchain technology’s advantages in the gaming sector. Beginning with the pre-sale phase of its ICO (initial coin offering) until now, Atari has received 74.19 Bitcoin (BTC) as funding for its project, primarily from its business associates. Atari has evinced interest in accepting investments in the form of Litecoin (LTC) and Ether (ETH) as well, but gamers will be offered a discount only if they pay in Litecoin for its forthcoming Video Computer System (VCS), which can be purchased at the online store of the Foundation.
Atari’s CEO, Frederic Chesnais, believes that the Litecoin community will have an optimistic view of the partnership: “I hope [Litecoin’s] is a big community. There’s a good overlap. At the end of the day, we are just hoping that people will take advantage of the discounts, and will take advantage of the opportunity to use Litecoin as well.”
Huobi now offers crypto purchases using debit and credit cards
Crypto exchange Huobi’s wallet is now facilitating the purchase of cryptocurrencies using debit and credit cards. Before the arrival of this facility, the wallet users had no provision to exchange crypto or access decentralized lending. Even a fiat-on-ramp facility was not provided.
Will Huang, CEO of Huobi Wallet, stated that the app now provides the much needed basic facilities for crypto investors: “[The app] has become a one-stop app for users to buy, store, swap and transfer crypto on the go, while retaining complete control of their assets.”
Being one of the largest apps in the Asia Pacific region, Huobi Wallet supports more than 18 cryptos, in addition to numerous tokens. The app serves more than 500,000 users in 200 countries.
Miscellaneous
Only 95 Bitcoin blocks generated last Sunday
Last Sunday, only 95 blocks were generated on Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain, as per data published by digitalik.net, a pseudonymous Bitcoin analyst. Specifically, the analyst pointed out in his tweet that there were only eight days with less than 100 blocks in the past decade. Interestingly, the third quarter of 2017 saw the maximum number of days with less than 100 blocks.
Digitalik.net blamed the recent halving event and the drop in the Bitcoin hash rate as the main reasons for the decline in blocks. “Many miners cannot generate a profit now because their expenses are still the same and income cut in half.”
Following the halving event, BTC block generation varied between 100-120 blocks per day, but then declined to 95 blocks last Sunday. The block generation speed is dependent on Bitcoin mining difficulty and hash rate. The mining difficulty gets modified every 2016 blocks such that it takes 10 minutes to mine a single block.
Nevertheless, the professional is cynical about a rebound in the block generation speed to normal levels in the near future as Bitcoin is unable to break above the $10,000 level.
“I don’t think [the] next diff adjustment will bring it back to 10 min/block. Because adjustment is done based on [the] entire period average (since the last adjustment). And this average is not a real current picture because it includes also one week before halving.”
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