📰 Weekly Crypto Meta: CBOE Will No More Provide BTC Futures Market, XRP Army Consist Of 10000+ Bots, Ex Bitcoin Core Developer Must Reveal Satoshi's Personality and more

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Bitcoin Bull Trend Tests: Closing This Week At $4000

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At the end of this week there is a short-term bullish trend in the market. Now the price of the first cryptocurrency can be fixed on the psychological mark of $4000; however, analysts are not in a hurry with forecasts that would help us form a complete picture. The market capitalization of Bitcoin currently is $71 billion, while daily trading volume reached $8 billion.

The recent growth of the altcoin market has also been replaced by a correction. However, so far only Tom Lee is ready to give his positive assessment of what is happening:

"I think 2019's a year about repair [...] We have a risk-on rally in global markets that's positive for bitcoin; it was a headwind last year. And the dollar isn't surging like it was last year. That's a headwind that's gone away."

— CNBC

At least a few points can affect the price of Bitcoin at the moment:

• New ecosystem offers, products and platforms presented by large companies;
• Possible transformation of Bitcoin futures markets;
• The new trend in the form of token sales supported by exchanges, such as Binance Launchpad, which may lead to increased demand for new altcoins.

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CBOE Refuses To Launch March Bitcoin Futures

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Important news this week is, of course, the refusal of further work with Bitcoin futures from one of the largest providers of this market, CBOE. The Chicago Board Options Exchange will not add new Bitcoin futures this month, formally explaining this by revising its views on cryptocurrency assets:

"CFE [Cboe Futures Exchange] is assessing its approach with respect to how it plans to continue to offer digital asset derivatives for trading. While it considers its next steps, CFE does not currently intend to list additional XBT futures contracts for trading."

The Bitcoin derivatives market, which is the futures market, still raises questions for all industry participants: from traders to enthusiasts. In most cases, the release of the first BTC futures is associated with the continuing bear market.

It is difficult to estimate how the cancellation of futures can affect (or help predict) the conditions of the cryptocurrency market in the near future. However, it can be said that derivatives definitely can influence the price of Bitcoin, since large exchanges, such as CME, set a fairly high threshold for entering the market, respectively, these volumes can be quite large.

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CME Won't Stop Providing Futures Markets For Bitcoin

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However, another major market provider, CME, is not going to refuse its futures offer. According to statistics, the daily trading volume of BTCH futures on CME exceeds the same amount traded on CBOE by 2 times, so this could mean losing a significant share of the derivative market.

As a spokesperson for CME told to Coindesk:

"[the exchange has] no changes to announce our bitcoin futures contract"

What other news can signal the redistribution of funds within the market of derivative assets tied to Bitcoin? Probably the new offers, such as physical futures soon to be released by Bakkt. The newest Bakkt will provide futures for the supply of physical Bitcoin after the expiration of the relevant contract. Today it is also believed that deliverable futures can increase the price of the first cryptocurrency.

It is curious that before the launch of this financial product in 2017, the exchange concluded that futures would stimulate the price of cryptocurrency.

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OKEx Is Planning to Open Its Own Token Launch Platform

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The new trend is coming — the largest digital asset exchanges are launching their own ICO platforms (or aimed to do so). Following Binance Launchpad, OKEx is almost ready to open a token launch platform, but additional information is not yet known.

Many has asked if we'll do a token launch platform. The answer is YES. We've prepared it for months. And now it is ready to launch. I'm as excited as everyone for this move. Can't wait to see more innovative projects to join the blockchain revolution through @OKEx.#OKJumpStart

Andy Cheung OKEx (@AndyC0125) 12 марта 2019 г.

Why did the idea of exchange-powered coin offerings become so popular? The platform helps to raise funds for promising projects, thereby speaking as someone like a confidant in this chain, so users can at least receive their funds and even hope for a token growth (as it happened at Binance Launchpad).

At the same time, trends may change. An increase in the offer of exchange-backed token sales can make adjustments to this hype. Trading platforms are also likely not always able to evaluate the project, especially if this trend will be repeated by smaller exchanges we may probably notice this. Binance is still the leader of this area, but this situation is likely to be transformed in the future.

Notice that Bittrex International has cancelled the IEO of the RAID token. However, they are likely to follow this trend in the future.

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Deutsche Börse Is Aimed to Back The New Digital Assets Ecosystem

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Deutsche Börse (one of the largest exchange organizations in the world, Germany), Swisscom (Swiss telecom provider) and Sygnum (fintech company with roots in Switzerland and Singapore) enter into strategic partnership to build the new digital assets ecosystem. Behind these abstract words are concrete plans, such as the release of new assets and the creation of connected services, both trade and custodial.

"The tokenization of assets, the next major phase of asset digitization, has the potential to reshape global financial markets".

After the union receives all regulatory approvals, first products and platforms from well-known brands may appear later this year. As is known, Deutsche Börse now is quite active in developing solutions for the cryptocurrency market; however, as we remember, big companies today are accustomed to delay the launch of new solutions. Therefore, while there is no exact information about which products may appear in the near future.

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Ex-Bitcoin Core Developer Will Testify Against Craig Wright

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Hidden connections

Ex-developer of Bitcoin Core Jeff Garzik will testify in a case against Wright, who is accused of stealing 1.1 million BTC. The situation is remarkable for several reasons: first, the community is most likely to receive information about the links between Satoshi Nakamoto's unknown personality, Wright's involvement and his fault in stealing a huge amount of BTC and how this can all be connected in general.

According to Garzik, Dave Kleiman, who passed away in 2013, was the creator of Bitcoin, so it is the only person to which pseudonym Satoshi belongs (remember what Wright claimed earlier). On the other hand, as it may turn out, Wright, who stood behind Bitcoin Cash and its recent fork, Bitcoin SV, can probably have a large amount of Bitcoins and control the market using various schemes.

Early mining

In this situation, it is important to note that the court obliges Garzik developer to testify, thus providing the necessary information to the investigation (including the one that is likely to affect our current understanding of the crypto market). The US services are likely to have a broader view of what information should necessarily be disclosed.

So, the developer must provide information on "All documents, agreements, and communications regarding the mining of bitcoins between Jan 1 2009 and April 2013".

Related incidents

Garzik was obliged to provide information about such organizations as Silk Road, Liberty Reserve, Mt.Gox and Prometheus Project. Moreover, Garzik must also provide the authorities with data on the links with Roger Ver, Ian Grigg and Richard Zaluski. These are probably different points of the same scheme, with the help of which the authorities will assemble puzzle. But some of them may also have nothing to do with the case.

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Kraken Vs. The Block: What's Behind This Conflict?

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Media allow users to learn quite a lot, however, the content and sources of information may raise questions. In the cryptocurrency space, conflicts between media and large trading platforms are not so rare.

The Block in its article "Suspicious behavior on Kraken exemplifies the gap between crypto and legacy market structure" reported on possible falsification of trading volumes on the Kraken exchange, citing a major anonymous trader.

Citing arguments in favor of a possible policy related to insufficient liquidity on Kraken, the Block received a response from the exchange itself [a more detailed description can be found in the original article]:

Gonna leave some facts right here.

We will not be intimidated by your Trump rhetorical tactics.

This is truly beneath a 100 follower anon crypto troll nevermind a major crypto exchange CEO.

Pretty sad stuff dude. Embarrassing really.https://t.co/kCSQxC1LSi

Mike Dudas (@mdudas) 13 марта 2019 г.

It was also suggested that this article is a response to the newly #DeleteCoinbase action organized by Kraken, which is related to the conflict regarding cooperation with Neutrino, startup connected with Hacking Team, the group involved in the privacy violation practics and so on.

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Ripple (XRP) Uses The Big Army Of Bots Not To Get Out Of The Crypto Agenda

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Previous studies

Geoff Golberg, an independent researcher focusing on Twitter manipulations reports that not all XRP supporters that can be observed in social networks are real people. Of course, today there is nothing surprising in the fact that companies use all the tricks to make users buy their product, mostly guided by social adoption/marketing, and this also concerns tokens.

G. Golberg wrote:

astroturfing = the deceptive tactic of simulating grassroots support for a product, cause, etc., undertaken by people or organizations with an interest in shaping public opinion #xrparmy #xrpthestandard #xrpcommmunity #xrpthebase #xrp cc: @yoyoel @vijaya @JoelKatz @CoryTV pic.twitter.com/H3s9PfuiwM

geoff golberg (@geoffgolberg) 4 декабря 2018 г.

After collecting data from Twitter and simulating a network of users, the researcher concluded that at least 8,000 bots "work" for Ripple. Most of them are associated with commanders or main accounts belonging to Ripple, such as GiantGox and Emi Yoshikawa (lead of Ripple’s global business expansion strategy).

Ripple uses different strategies to control the bots, probably some of these strategies are more simple, some more complex. So, there are many bots created to increase the number of subscribers - they are all the same and even specially numbered.

Here are 87 accounts created in 2019 which follow @haydentiff and have XRP in their usernames #XRParmy

Examples: @XRPeedmyself @GivesAwayXrp @xrpcuck @XRPHome @allinxrp @xrpslut @smalltownxrp @xrpstar @dailyxrpnews @xrpbigfoot @silver_foxrp @XRPwow @XRP49140672 @xrpdeathstar pic.twitter.com/BCGw25YTee

geoff golberg (@geoffgolberg) 10 марта 2019 г.

New reports

New reports on XRP bot army also concern the use of other social networks and services. So, an illustrative example is the Cryptopanic case, where XRP-related news of the same type appears too often.

Usually this news covers the following topics:

• Partnerships;
• Hardly assessable statistics, estimates;
• Very encouraging predictions;
• Statements made by Ripple staff at meetings;
• Something quite abstract, but promising;
• etc.

Excessive suspicion?

The use of bots in Twitter is quite common. Besides the fact that artificial identities are created by cryptocurrency projects, In general, all socially important or just commercial tweets can be accepted, destroyed or commented out in any way by bots.

The commonly known term 'Astroturfing' just refers to a similar process. Fake accounts are hard to identify; they can demonstrate quite normal activity, communicate, including among themselves, and so on.

💲 IBM does not deny that it will launch its own stablecoin in the future | Tether has changed the USDT tokens policy
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💸 Kakao raised $90 million through a private coin offering
🏛 Canadian financial regulatory authorities may change crypto exchange policies

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