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Disclaimer: The information presented does not constitute financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice and is solely the writer’s opinion Litecoin could see a pullback in the coming days Technical factors showed that LTC would retain a bullish outlook even if the pullback occurs Litecoin saw a huge surge from $54 to $70 earlier […]
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Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson has announced the formation of an internal action force aimed at countering scammers. This comes as a report from fraud prevention firm Bolster showed cryptocurrency scams almost doubled in 2020.
“One of the things we’ve been thinking about is setting up some sort of dedicated body in the Cardano ecosystem that does nothing but builds tools to help people report scams and propagate the knowledge that a scam has occurred.”
Last month, a frustrated Hoskinson hosted a live stream in which he warned the Cardano community of giveaway scams. He reiterated the point, one made many times before, that he nor Cardano will ever giveaway ADA.
“If you fall for this, you will lose your ADA, these are criminals, these are scammers, these are people who are trying to steal from you. Use common f*cking sense. You don’t get something for free. You don’t get something for nothing.”
Cardano is now taking an active role in combating the fraudsters with the newly formed anti-scam task force. Not only is it tasked with reporting and spreading awareness of scams, but Hoskinson also spoke about an investigative element to their operations as well.
“… do some targetted investigations into ventures that have entered into the Cardano space, that we feel may be fraudulent.”
Without going into specifics, Hoskinson said, following complaints raised by community members, the task force has investigated a fund suspected of fraud. Initial results indicate the fund in question may be a scam. However, he did not disclose the name of the fund at this time.
“We started conducting an investigation and the preliminary results indicate that that fund may actually be a scam. So in two weeks time, we’re going to release our first output of this internal working group.”
Fraudsters are flocking to crypto as markets continue booming. Research conducted by Bolster confirms that cryptocurrency fraud is on the rise. The firm points out that this is one of the most significant barriers to mainstream success.
Co-Founder and CTO of Bolster Shashi Prakash said crypto scams are the fastest-growing category of scams. He warned that this is just the start of a “new wave of digital theft campaigns.”
We continue to see scammers being opportunistic and designing campaigns focused on real-time, surging trends when people are likely not to be on guard because it’s so new.”
By analyzing 300 million websites, Bolster found more than 400,000 related to crypto scams over the last year. The firm predicts this figure will go up by 75% for this year.
Other key findings note that fake prizes, giveaways, or sweepstakes were the most prolific type of scam, with Bitcoin, Chainlink, and Ethereum being the top three most targetted tokens.
The Cardano anti-scam task force is a step in the right direction. However, as Hoskinson mentioned, it’s no substitute for common sense.
Source: ADAUSD on TradingView.com
The market value of the US dollar-pegged stablecoin Tether (USDT) has soared in recent weeks, which may have helped push the price of Bitcoin (BTC) to near historical highs recently.
Bitfinex and Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said on Twitter on Thursday that the supply of USDT increased by $1 billion in nine days, the second fastest increase in its history. The highest record was set on September 4, 2020, when the circulating supply of USDT increased by $1 billion in 8 days.
As of press time, Tether’s market value is close to 19 billion U.S. dollars, that is to say, there are approximately 19 billion U.S. dollars USDT in circulation at a price of 1 U.S. dollar.
CoinMarketCap data shows that Tether’s market value has increased nearly four times since the beginning of 2020.
Judging from the current circulating supply, Tether’s market capitalization ranks fourth among all cryptocurrencies.
USDT and other stable currencies provide legal currency entry for the cryptocurrency market, thereby minimizing price volatility and ensuring easy exchange of digital assets once they are sold. Although USDT is believed to be pegged to real dollar reserves, Tether’s bank accounts have never been fully audited.
In 2019, a Bloomberg report stated that Tether’s USDT is not fully pegged to the US dollar, but cash and short-term securities support 74% of its circulating supply.
Tether is also operated by the same management group that oversees Bitfinex, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. It is alleged that Tether and Bitinex manipulated the 2017 bull market, but due to the complexity of the decentralized cryptocurrency market, it is difficult to prove this claim.
Earlier this year, legal experts told Cointelegraph that it is difficult to determine the scope of market manipulation for this novel asset like Bitcoin.
At the same time, Tether is still the dominant stablecoin in the crypto industry, accounting for more than three-quarters of the total market value of stablecoins.
The data shows that institutions have hoarded a large amount of BTC between 1,2000-15,000 US dollars, and according to analysts at Whalemap, this is a positive trend because institutions and whales usually consider using long-term investment strategies to hoard BTC.
As Cointelegraph previously reported, large investors are hoarding BTC, not retail investors. This also explains the decline in mainstream interest in BTC. Although BTC has shown a parabolic rise in recent months, various indicators including Google Trends have shown that mainstream demand for BTC is sluggish.
The institution “FOMO” makes the current BTC rise stronger than the previous cycle
Whalemap analysts described the recent surge in whale demand for BTC as “institutional FOMO”.
FOMO is the abbreviation of “fear of missing out”, which refers to the tendency of investors to buy more and more assets out of fear that assets will continue to soar. Analysts saw the whale clusters and funds flowing into the whale wallet in the chart. They said:
“This is what the agency FOMO looks like.”
When whale addresses (addresses holding more than 10,000 BTC) buy Bitcoin and do not move for a long time, whale clusters will appear.
This indicates that Whale plans to put its most recent BTC purchases in its personal wallet. Whalemap analyst stated:
“The bubble indicates that the whale bought the price of the BTC currently held.”
The whale hoarding of BTC is likely to be based on two key trends that have emerged in the cryptocurrency market since October last year.
First, in the recent rise, the liquidation of short contracts has decreased significantly. When BTC exploded before, major exchanges liquidated contracts worth more than $100 million. This shows that the rise is not a short-term squeeze, but an actual accumulation phase.
Second, the spot market has been leading the derivatives market. When the price of BTC increases, the funding rate of BTC rarely exceeds 0.01% on average.
The low funding rate shows that the futures market is not short, which shows that demand comes from elsewhere.
This bull market will be more stable than 2017
With the participation of whales and institutions, the overall BTC transaction volume has increased significantly in the recent rise.
Data from the on-chain market analysis company Santiment also shows that the BTC transaction volume is approximately $31 billion, which is much higher than the level on January 6, 2018. At that time, the price of BTC also hovered around US$16,350.
Santiment analysts found that compared with 2017’s rise, the transaction volume behind the current rise is greater. The analyst wrote:
“Bitcoin reached $16,350 on CoinbasePro an hour ago, and we are now at the highest price level in 34 months (January 6, 2018). The average daily transaction volume this week was $31 billion, compared to $185 at the time. One hundred million U.S. dollars.”
As reported by Cointelegraph, the hurdle for BTC in the short term remains whether the whale will sell at the resistance level of $17,000. Some analysts said that there is obvious resistance in the range of $18,500 to $20,000, which means that the highest level in history may be much closer than most people expected.
This week, Bitcoin shocked the world with a push beyond $15,000 and nearly hitting $16,000. At the time, altcoins bled out, but few more so than XRP.
One crypto trader has shared a nasty looking long-term chart for Ripple, and believes that Bitcoin’s rally could finally force the “XRP army” to surrender and “admit defeat.” Here’s how such a scenario plays out and how a reversal in Ripple may unfold.
The leading cryptocurrency by market cap this week after taking out last year’s high at $13,800, rocketed another $2500 and nearly 20% higher to $15,900.
Bitcoin FOMO is back, and it has caused crypto investors to dump altcoins en masse to fund whatever BTC buying they can. Top altcoins dropped across the board and some even fell to new lows against BTC.
Related Reading | XRP Sweeps Bear Market Lows Against Bitcoin, Is It RIP For Ripple?
XRP, an altcoin that has suffered worse than most throughout the last three years since its previous peak, has just been absolutely decimated on the BTC trading pair.
The fourth-ranked cryptocurrency has set five significant high-timeframe lower lows since the bear market began. Bitcoin is now in a bull market, according to community consensus and the confirmed higher low and higher high.
XRP, however, is still in a downtrend on the BTC pair. And according to a well known crypto trader, it could be enough to finally get the army of Ripple supporters to capitulate.
Will the Ripple army finally wave the white flag and capitulate as Bitcoin blasts off? | Source: XRPBTC on TradingView.com
Luke Martin, trader, and host of the VentureCoinist podcast believes that the Bitcoin bull run that’s begun recently, to “finally force the XRP army to surrender and admit defeat.”
The comment shared along with the chart above, showing XRP falling to what is essentially the only remaining support level left. If the altcoin drops any further, it could cause waves of Ripple supporters to finally wave the white flag.
Related Reading | Silent XRP Accumulation Builds Pressure For Breakout Against Bitcoin
However, that capitulation could also be what finally causes Ripple to roar once again. In Martin’s chart, a strong piercing of the lower support resulted in an elastic band-like effect that sent XRP to its all-time high against BTC.
As Martin says, the XRP army could finally admit defeat during the early onset of Bitcoin’s bull run, however, that selloff could be the final drop before Ripple’s bull run starts, and like the last time, what began as a trickle, soon turned into a waterfall of record-shattering ROI.
Featured image from Deposit Photos, Charts from TradingView.com
Image Credit: Refer to Source
Author: Refer to Source Tony Spilotro
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