Crypto Market Update (4 October 2017)

Market Analysis Report. 14 oct 2017

Market Update

This week, a few popular Chinese Bitcoin exchanges, BTCC, Bitkan, and Viabtc, shut down and stopped cryptocurrency trading operations. The closures followed the recent government decision to legislate virtual currencies on the 1st of October. Speculators believe domestic exchanges in China will be back after the nation’s virtual currency regulations are enforced.

The Bitcoin price pulled back yesterday, dipping nearly $200 at 9:00 AM. The Ethereum price retreated by a similar degree, causing the wider markets to contract by more than $6 billion.

However, at press time, Bitcoin price is sitting at $4,346, having already recovered 1.27% in the last 24 hours, with over $280M worth of BTC exchanged on the BTC/USD pair, representing a 29.10% share of daily volume, second only to the JPY at 54.23%.

Ethereum is also showing some gains in the last 24 hours. Currently sitting at $295.26, the Ethereum price rose 1.02% yesterday, with over $78M worth of Ethereum exchanged in the past 24 hours on the ETH/USD pair, which has a 38.42% share of daily trading volume.

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Bittrex’s Bitshares Bombshell: Bittrex Delists Five Pairs

Yesterday, Julian Yap of Bittrex stated that the following pairs would be delisted: BTC-BTA, BTC-BTS, BTC-DAR, BTC-DRACO and ETH-BTS. The biggest market capped coin being delisted, Bitshares, has come as a huge shock to cryptocurrency community. Bitshares market cap, despite the recent trade-off, is sitting at $100 million, but once peaked at $900 million earlier this year.

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Sweden’s Largest Online Stockbroker Avanza Bank Adds Bitcoin Services

This week, Avanza Bank, Sweden’s largest online stockbroker with over 600,000 customers is now providing clients with the ability to track bitcoin and other digital assets using their account interface. According to CEO Johan Prom, Avanza customers will be able to view both Bitcoin and Ethereum holdings.

“More and more of our customers are investing in cryptocurrencies, and therefore it is natural that they can follow the value directly with us.”
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Oracle Joins the Blockchain Craze, Uses Hyperledger Fabric

Oracle Corporation opened its annual conference ‘Oracle OpenWorld’ announcing its new Blockchain service. Yesterday, the SaaS giant joined the likes SAP to compete directly in Blockchain cloud services. Its new Blockchain cloud service aims to give enterprise customers who want to get involved with the Blockchain a fully managed approach. According to Amit Zavery, senior vice president at Oracle Cloud:

“There are not a lot of production-ready capabilities around Blockchain for the enterprise. There [hasn’t been] a fully end-to-end, distributed and secure Blockchain as a service.”
Read more here

Malta's Government Is Putting Academic Certificates on a Blockchain

Malta's government is set to trial blockchain for keeping track of academic certifications. The Ministry of Education and Employment has struck an agreement with blockchain startup Learning Machine Technologies to build a prototype platform that will allow users to securely store and share their academic documents – as well as prove that the credentials belong to them. The system will be built using the Blockcerts open standard, which was developed by Learning Machine Technologies and the MIT Media Lab in 2016. Evarist Bartolo, Minister for Education and Employment in Malta, stated in a press release:

"This is a win/win for Malta, whose skilled workforce is among the primary drivers of its economic success."