Crypto Today: Bitcoin bears force critical

Here's what you need to know on Thursday

Markets

BTC/USD is currently trading at $8,400 (-3.40%) in the afternoon in U.S. hours, as markets bears break critical $8500 price mark, allowing for a wave of further downside pressure. 

ETH/USD is currently trading at $161.58 (-4.30%), a critical daily support at $160 at risk of being breached by the bears. 

XRP/USD is currently trading at $0.2247 (-4.30%), narrowing nine day range block is being breached by the bears. 

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, the best of the day are CENNZ $0.0077108 (+37.95%), SXP $0.712816 (+18.49%) and CKB $0.006281 (+15.27%) and The day's losers are GNT $0.037227 (-14.50%), KMD $0.658056 (-11.49%) and BCD $0.539637 (-10.30%).

Chart of the day: BTC/USD 4-hour chart (price action extending below critical near-term trend line) 

Market

Miners on the Bitcoin Cash network appear to be preparing a plan to finance the protocol’s development using their own block rewards. The controversial plan would see 12.5 percent of the total BCH coinbase go towards those building on the network.

Recent research shows that Ether (ETH) was the cryptocurrency most correlated to the rest of the crypto market in 2019. In a report published on Jan. 22, the research arm of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance suggests that throughout 2019, ETH had an average correlation coefficient of 0.69. The paper, which compared correlation data of 20 top cryptocurrencies, reads: “Ether (ETH) is the highest correlated asset. With an average correlation coefficient of 0.69 throughout 2019, it is consistently among the most correlated assets. The coefficient started at 0.69 in Q1 and rose to 0.72 in Q4 (Q2: 0.65; Q3: 0.74).”

Tech startup Runtime Verification has reported the successful completion of formal verification of the Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract. As per the announcement, the deposit contract is a ‘gateway’ to join Ethereum 2.0. Validators on the new proof of stake Beacon Chain need to deposit some ETH by sending a transaction over the Ethereum 1 network to the deposit contract.

Ethereum Classic Labs (ETC Labs), an incubator that claims to be focused on accelerating innovative projects powered by the Ethereum Classic (ETC) blockchain network, has announced a $1 million donation to the UNICEF Innovation Fund. The money will enable Unicef Innovation to develop highly functional distributed ledger technology (DLT) solutions to support its humanitarian activities.

Regulation

The Russian Federation has a new prime minister, Mikhail Mishustin. The former head of the Russian tax agency has made comments about cryptocurrencies on multiple occasions. He made it clear he viewed digital currencies as financial instruments that should be taxed as such. Meanwhile, the Russian Direct Democracy Party plans to find solutions to numerous issues that concern the crypto space.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has obtained approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to become a reporting company, thus registering the company’s shares with the Commission.

Industry 

In a filing with the court of the Southern District of New York the SEC responded to Telegram’s earlier motion for summary judgment. In it, the SEC disparaged the Telegram Open Network (TON) — Telegram’s blockchain — as well as the operation’s Gram (GRM) token.  “Telegram Has Put Forth No Evidence Regarding the TON Blockchain’s State of Development at Launch,”as per the document, Adding;“Telegram Marketed Few, if Any, Expected Uses for Grams.”

Quote of the day

In the future, people won't spend so much time "investing," they'll just keep their money in Bitcoin and work on building stuff.

Jimmy Song