Crypto Today: Bitcoin makes another growth attempt; a move towards $7,000 is a possibility

Here's what you need to know on 

Markets:

BTC/USD is changing hands at $6,630. The coin attempted a recovery above $6,700 during early Asian hours but failed to hold the ground. Currently, BTC is moving within a short-term bearish trend amid shrinking volatility. 

At the time of writing, ETH/USD is changing hands at $137.30, mostly unchanged since the beginning of Thursday. The second-largest coin hit the Asian high at $139.00. Now ETH/USD is moving in a short-term bearish trend amid low volatility.

XRP/USD stays above $0.1770, but the upside is limited by the intraday high of $0.1784. The coin has been moving in a tight range with a short-term bullish bias. 

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, Digitex Futures (DGTX) $0.0383 (+26.6%),Quant (QNT) $4.62 (+15.7%), Blockstack (STX) $0.0934 (+8.6%) are in the green zone. The day's losers are IOTA (MIOTA) $0.1476 (-4.6%),Maker (MKR) $289.8 (-4.0%), Bytecoin (BCN) $0.00019 (-1.8%).

Chart of the day:

BTC/USD, 1-hour chart

Bitcoin won't be correlated with equities forever, the recent Binance Research shows. A research department of the cryptocurrency exchange published a report where they outlined the effects of the current financial crisis on global financial markets. The team came to certain conclusions based on the general performance of the crypto market in the first quarter of 2020.

According to the data, BTC lost over 37% and hit the low at $3,700. It, however, quickly recovered, ending the quarter down less than 11%.

Despite Bitcoin displaying a significant positive correlation with US equities in the first quarter of 2020, this high correlation coefficient remains very unlikely to persist in the medium to long term.

Industry

BTSE, a British Virgin Islands-based crypto exchange, announced the launch of its debit card with fiat support. According to the press release, the card will.           support four stablecoins – USDT, TUSD, USDC, and DC - as well as numerous digital coins. Also, card owners will be able to store fiat money on the accounts linked to their cards. The supported fiat money includes the US dollar, euro, British pound, Hong Kong dollar, and the Singapore dollar, to name just a few. Users of the debit card will also be able to withdraw funds in over 1 million ATMs across the globe.

Jonathan Leong, co-founder and CEO of the exchange, commented:

With the BTSE Debit Card, we set out to solve issues that repeatedly arise with a large percentage of people, crypto and fiat holders alike that face obstacles when attempting to access their funds globally – obstacles that I see as unjustified.

Huobi Wallet will offer cryptocurrency lending and borrowing services in partnership with Cred. A Barcelona-based company will integrate its decentralized crypto lending services with  Huobi Wallet. Huobi Wallet is a subsidiary of one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It supports over 1000 coins and tokens including eight stablecoins. The services will be rolled out and made available for users in late summer this year.

He Huang, chief executive of Huobi Wallet, commented: 

We are so excited to partner with Cred as we share a mutual vision to make our services more accessible to the users. And I believe our partnership will be further enhanced with their team experience and achievements in compliance.

A cryptocurrency company Paradigm has received $3.6 million worth of MKR tokens in the auction held by Maker between March 19 and March 28. The decentralized finance (DeFi) company organized the auction to cover the undercapitalized debt to the tune of around $4.5 million. The gap was caused by a sudden Ethereum price collapse in March.

The company raised a total of 5.3 million DAI and Paradigm received nearly 68% of the total sold tokens. DAI is a stablecoin issued by MakerDAO. It is pegged to the USD. Meanwhile, MKR is the protocol’s governance token.