Almost 26 since I started at this blockchain. During all this time I have never powered down.
I have accumulated all my SP rewards coming from Author or Curation and I also have bought a few times STEEM and power up mostly.
Despite I have withdrawn some of my liquid rewards as well, I have been focused on building my SP stake, so, part of those liquid rewards have gone to feed also my Steem Power.
Today I am at the moment to cross the 6000 SP on my main account, 2600 SP out of the 6000 SP have come exclusively from Author and Curation rewards.
…and from those 2600 SP, at least 2200 SP have been obtained during the last 12 months.
This month, my Author Rewards have decayed a little compared with the two last months:
Perhaps the current correction on the market has had some effect on the trend…I guess..
However, my Curation rewards have marked another All Time High:
So, something I am doing well, at least…
Compounding both charts:
So, it has not been a bad year at all in terms of building my account.
If I manage to maintain the uptrend here, 8000 SP can be an achievable target by the end of the year…if not earlier since the Market is offering an excellent opportunity nowadays.
Bitfinex and Tether have spent half a million dollars just on finding documents for the New York Attorney General’s (NYAG) office, a new letter by its lawyers says.
In the letter filed with the New York Supreme Court Tuesday, attorneys Jason Weinstein and Charles Michael of Steptoe and Johnson LLP, and David Miller and Zoe Phillips of Morgan, Lewis and Bockius LLP, urged Judge Joel M. Cohen to rule against immediately compelling the crypto exchange and stablecoin issuer to produce all the documents the NYAG demanded.
Cohen previously ruled that Bitfinex and Tether would need to preserve and turn over a subset of those documents, staying the rest of the NYAG’s injunction.
During today’s United State Senate Banking Committee hearing on the regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies and blockchain, Cointelegraph will be updating live with the most important developments.
The July 30 hearing, titled “Examining Regulatory Frameworks for Digital Currencies and Blockchain,” follows the previous hearings in mid-July that examined the regulatory hurdles surrounding Facebook’s Libra.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire will be a witness today in front of the Senate Committee on Banking, House, and Urban Affairs on behalf of The Blockchain Association, along with Rebecca M. Nelson, a specialist in international trade and finance, and Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor of law at University of California, Irvine School of Law.
For more detailed information on the witnesses, Cointelegraph has a dedicated analysis here.
The Russian Federal Customs Service has opened a criminal investigation into an importer of bitcoin miners for potential underpayment of customs fees.
The Far-East Trading and Industrial Company, or DTPK, may have failed to pay about $1.2 million on 6,012 Bitmain-manufactured ASIC miners imported from August 2017 to February 2018, according to a search warrant obtained by CoinDesk.
DTPK, based in Moscow, showed customs officers falsified documents with the incorrect prices for the equipment, which included Bitmain’s Antminer S9-13.5, L3+ and D3 models, along with power elements for them, says the search warrant, dated July 17.
Coinbase executive Tim Wagner is leaving the crypto exchange after slightly over a year on the job. Other high-ranking engineering staffers are leaving too, CoinDesk has learned.
Wagner, Coinbase’s vice president of engineering, will be departing in the next two weeks, a Coinbase spokesperson confirmed. The departure will leave a vacancy on the company’s leadership team.
Previously, Wagner served more than six years at Amazon Web Services, making him one of most senior alums of big tech to join the cryptocurrency industry. Wagner joined shortly after Coinbase acquired Earn.com and made Balaji Srinivasan its chief technology officer.
Nasscom, a major Indain trade organization, has said that it is against a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies, which was recently proposed by a governmental panel in the country According to a report by local financial periodical The Economic Times on July 30, Nasscom commented:
“Nasscom believes that the recent proposal of the inter-ministerial committee of the government to ban all cryptocurrencies barring those that are backed by the government, is not the most constructive measure. […] Instead, the government should work towards developing a risk-based framework to regulate and monitor cryptocurrencies and tokens.”
As per the report, Nasscom claims that crypto projects can always be tested in regulatory sandboxes prior to launch. Nasscom also reportedly believes that banning crypto will only serve to push away legitimate businesses who are already pro-compliance.
SubstratumNode v1.0.0 RC1 release expected in July.
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
It is nice to see that we are sitting on that line since days now. I don’t mean that I like that value for the STEEM but at least it looks a good level to allow the STEEM to consolidate and prepare the next move which we hope will be a nice UP.
Let’s hope the BTC won’t make a massive correction which will destroy that support line, this is the only risk that we have now at short term.
I have seen many steemians that I follow creating alternative accounts in order to upvote with the different steem-engine tokens airdropped during the last weeks.
I confess I also created one in order to deviate the Good-Game tokens I received, on which I feel as not identified myself with the trybe created, in order to upvote with it to certain accounts, mostly in automatic fashion using the amazing tool created by @holger80 called Steemrewarding and following the idea of @abh12345 .
There are people that have created dozens of these alternative accounts and, despite I appreciate the upvotes coming from them, I don’t think the main aim of the Tribes was thought to reward people in “automatic”.
The main “aim” is to support those persons that fit your interest on a particular tribe by manually curating , and mostly, if you feel that the post deserves to be upvoted.
If these people you follow is rewarded with an alternative account but not with your main, sometimes happen that the “prize” you are giving or demonstrating towards your “colleague” is somehow very little indeed.
That’s why, after having tested my alternative account on Good-Game tokens (GG) I am not going to further create alternatives accounts, if I follow you and I find that you deserve my upvote I will reward you with all the tokens ascribed to the post, including STEEM, PAL, LEO, SPORTS, ZZAN, CCC, STEM or whatever the tribe!
What I am not going to do is to upvote you with @toofasteddie.porn and then with my main account because, besides to be a really waste of time, that’s not the aim for what Trybes have been created IMHO.
However, this is my personal opinion and maybe yours may differ.
Surely this is not the best approach for having an excellent ROI approach but, I don’t care. I have so much work lately that I don’t think the prize of doing it deserves my effort…
Don’t become crazy man!
@toofasteddie
p.s: I think I should use #creativecoin here… at least it has been original, hasn’t it?
I have to say that I am not in favor of doing such a thing
The chief of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Division of Enforcement’s Cyber Unit, Robert A. Cohen, has stepped down from his role at the commission.
According to an official announcement by the SEC, Cohen served as the first chief of the Cyber Unit since its inception in 2017.
The Cyber Unit is in charge of securities violations pertaining to cryptocurrency and digital assets, in addition to cyber-related trading violations and cybersecurity disclosures and procedures.
Regarding Cohen’s work as chief of the Cyber Unit, the Division of Enforcement’s co-director Steven Peikin said:
“The Cyber Unit has been a great success under Rob’s strategic leadership […] Soon after its creation, the Cyber Unit immediately began filing impactful cases that protect investors and demonstrate the SEC’s ability to respond nimbly to new and difficult challenges.”
Bitcoin’s three-day chart is reporting a golden cross, a long-term bull market indicator, for the first time since February 2016. A similar crossover seen six months ahead of the August 2016 mining reward halving paved way for a mega bull run. History may repeat itself with mining reward halving due in less than 12 months.
BTC may rise back to $10,000 in the next 24 hours or so with short duration charts signaling seller exhaustion.
A UTC close above $11,120 is needed to revive the bullish view. On the downside, key support is seen at $9,049 (July 17 low).
Bitcoin witnessed a golden cross in the three days to Feb. 3, 2016 – six months ahead of the mining reward halving – following which the cryptocurrency charted its way to a record high of $20,000 by December 2017.
With another reward halving (effectively, a supply cut) due in less than 12 months, history may just repeat itself.
As of writing , BTC is changing hands at $9,500 on Bitstamp, down 31.55 percent from June’s high of $13,880. The cryptocurrency could rise to $10,000 in the next 24 hours, according to the short-duration technical charts.
Square Crypto is focused on bitcoin, not the publicly traded company’s specific products.
That was the message Monday during a Twitter ask-me-anything (AMA) with the head of Square’s crypto team, Steve Lee.
The unit’s playful Twitter account fielded questions from its followers as well as crypto-community luminaries. With tweets signed simply “Steve,” it was Lee’s first set of public remarks on the team’s broad objectives since being hired in June.
The product we're focusing on is Bitcoin. It has been up and running for over 10 years… but there’s still a lot that needs to be done before we reach mass adoption. – Steve https://t.co/oU0yzhpWqX
Chinese importers in Russia are buying up to $30 million a day of tether (USDT) from Moscow’s over-the-counter trading desks.
They use the cryptocurrency to send large sums back to their home country, which has strict capital controls. Previously the merchants used bitcoin for this, but when the market crashed in 2018 they switched to tether, which is designed to maintain parity with the U.S. dollar.
Despite longstanding questions about USDT’s collateral, in this market “nobody actually cares if tether is backed or not,” says one Moscow trader.
Justice Joel M. Cohen of the New York Supreme Court (NYSC) has ruled to extend the preliminary injunction in the ongoing case of crypto exchange Bitfinex and Tether’s parent company, iFinex, against the New York Attorney General (NYAG), on July 29.
Cohen reportedly decided to give a 90 day extension to the case, which apparently means that OAG can continue investigating. Lawyers of Tether tried to appeal to dismiss the motion immediately, but Cohen rejected their appeal.
Speaking before the court, iFinex also argued that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction because Tether is not a security or commodity as there is no futures market. The companies’ defense also stressed that Tether and Bitfinex are two different companies with two different business models, and that it is not proper to treat them as a single entity as the OAG does.
“Sign up today for the first episode scheduled for July 30th at 2 pm EST/8 pm CEST!”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
We are still testing that support line at 0.24$ since several days now and till now, we didn’t have a real break of it, even sometimes with a correction on the BTC.
What do you think? Do you think the marketis thinking that 0.24$ is low enough for the STEEM? Do you think it is just a pause before the next correction? Your TA or opinions are welcome.
As Bitcoin dropped an additional 8% on Saturday, naysayers claim the rally to a new all-time high is over. So what is it that’s keeping market analysts bullish in the face of a 33 percent correction?
Bitcoin price bears draw a line at $10,000
Bitcoin’s most recent price action has been less than satisfactory, unless you’re a bear. To date, the top digital asset is down 32% from it’s 2019 high of $13,739 and short term price action remains overwhelmingly bearish.
Over the past two weeks Bitcoin formed an M-top at $13,739 and $13,177 before dropping to the neckline around $9,600. Most traders expect that Bitcoin will retrace to the 61.8% and 50% Fibonacci Retracement level which is also near the CME futures gap. It’s possible that the group think surrounding the CME gap is causing it to function as a magnet, drawing BTC price nearer to the $8,500 – $7,500 range.
Dormant Bitcoin wallet address hit new all-time high
Earlier this week Coin Metrics released a report showing Bitcoin’s untouched supply reaching a new all-time high of 21%.
Not everyone supports this conclusion, however. Adamant Capital founding partner Tuur Demeester countered saying that: “I’m not so sure […] 5 years without updating your cold storage method is a long time in Bitcoin. Imo most of these coins are likely lost.”
Start of new bull markets coincides with miner capitulation, data shows
On Saturday expert crypto-analyst PlanB tweeted a rather intriguing chart that he and ParabolicTrav worked on.
According to the analysts, after a BTC/USD rally reaches its peak, a massive amount of Bitcoin is available at lower prices. The start of new Bitcoin bull markets have coincided with miner capitulation and Bitcoin price tends to rise from these bottoms to grow 100 times.
According to PlanB:
“We saw difficulty bottoms (miner capitulation) in Dec 2011 ($4.6), May 2015 ($230) and Dec 2018 ($3,896). Price continues to rise from these bottoms until ATH around 100x […] Implying a continuing uptrend until $370,000 ATH.”
In last week’s column — my third on Libra — I referred to a core dilemma confronting the cryptocurrency project’s financial inclusion goals: the impossibility of being both pro-privacy and pro-KYC.
I promise a break this week from Libra and its controversial founder, Facebook. But I want to dive deeper into that dilemma because the problem is hardly unique to that project. As “know-your-customer” rules have steadily encroached into their world, all cryptocurrency startups trying to expand financial access for the poor are hamstrung by requirements to identify and track the people they seek to serve.
This contradiction stems from tough policies contained under Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism rules (AML-CFT), which were tightened worldwide after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and then again after the financial crisis. Since virtually every bank needs access to dollars, KYC rules everywhere tend to follow models laid down in the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and in guidelines of the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN.
Further internationalizing pressure comes from the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, which sets the regulatory standards by which countries pressure each other to comply.
“It’s not a surprise to me that inevitably corporations are going after creating their own tokens but for Facebook to be one of the first big ones is is pretty much a surprise,” said Lukka CEO Jake Benson told us when news of Libra began to spread. The world shared his surprise when Facebook unveiled its wild cryptocurrency dreams last month. But that surprise quickly turned into concern and condemnation as politicians started thinking about what it meant for a company to run its own mint.
Facebook’s reaction to the hearings was also surprising. The usually-reticent social media giant sent their best fighter – Libra co-creator David Marcus – into the ring to defend the currency and the battle raged for two days as the U.S. Congress and Senate took turns bringing up their concerns.
The result? A stalemate… for now. token transactions.
Initial coin offering (ICO) consultant CoinLaunch has agreed to pay $50,000 to the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC), according to documents published on the regulator’s website dated July 24.
According to commercial litigator and former programmer Evan Thomas, CoinLaunch was consulted on two ICOs, BCZERO (raising funds for a Czech off-road truck racing team) and ECOREAL (raising funds for a Portuguese resort), both of which were found to be securities. CoinLaunch reportedly created the tokens, white papers and websites, advised on the sale structure and made introductions, including to crypto exchanges for listings.
According to Thomas, the OSC found that the service was an act in furtherance of the trade of the security tokens since it was instrumental to the solicitation of investors. The consultant agreed to pay a $50,000 fine under a settlement.
The hedge fund of famous investor Bill Miller saw 46% growth in the first half of 2019, reportedly in some part from investing in Bitcoin (BTC).
Citing an investor document, Bloomberg reports on July 26 that Miller achieved such outstanding results by investing in Bitcoin among other high-performing stocks. Alongside Bitcoin, other investments in the Miller’s fund reportedly include Amazon, security system firm ADT, as well as Avon Products.
The 69 year-old investor reportedly found success by following a similar investment strategy as he used during his three-decade run at Legg Mason, which envisions investing in securities that trade at a large discount to their intrinsic value.
“Cast your vote at 0x.org/vote to add support for ERC-1155 and the StaticCallAssetProxy!”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
The STEEM is still sitting on the support line at 0.24$, waiting for the next move from the BTC. I’m really afraid that the BTC will continue it’s correction so yeah, I’m little bit pessimist about that support line at 0.24$. However, I really wish that I’m wrong and that this support line will keep us upper but be very carefull in the coming hours.
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company will work as long as it takes to appease regulators’ concerns over its Libra stablecoin. Zuckerberg delivered his statements during the firms Q2 results conference call on July 24.
During the call, Zuckerberg said that — some years ago — Facebook would have just released a new product without prior warning, but now the company has changed. More precisely, he stated:
“We’ve opened a period of – however long it takes to address regulators and different experts and constituents’ questions about this and then figure out what the best way to move forward is.”
He also noted that — when Facebook was working on the white paper with the 27 other members of the Libra Association — they expected that, since finance is heavily regulated, there were going to be a lot of questions asked about the project.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a no-action letter to Pocketful of Quarters (PoQ), a gaming startup looking to issue tokens on the ethereum blockchain.
PoQ may legally sell its Quarters tokens to consumers without registering them as securities, the SEC Division of Corporation Finance wrote in its second no-action letter to a company seeking to launch a token sale. (The first was granted in April to TurnKey Jet, a business-travel startup.)
Quarters are built according to the ERC-20 standard – the first such token to receive U.S. regulatory approval. In the July 25 letter, Jonathan Ingram, chief legal officer for the SEC’s FinHub wing, wrote:
cointele “Based on the facts presented, the Division will not recommend enforcement action to the Commission if, in reliance on your opinion as counsel that the Quarters are not securities, PoQ offers and sells the Quarters without registration under Section 5 of the Securities Act and does not register Quarters as a class of equity securities under Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act.”
The cryptocurrency industry is still grappling with the legal implications of the initial coin offering (ICO) trend of 2017. Two years after the token boom, the value of Bancor’s BNT token is in the dumps – sinking from $4.49 in July 2017 to an all-time low last week of $0.44, according to CoinMarketCap.
Yet, the project’s main investors are still holding.
For example, Yoni Assia, CEO of the crypto exchange eToro, described the $153 million Bancor ICO as a “pivotal” moment for the industry and told CoinDesk he is holding BNT because he believes in the team.
The Bancor platform, which provides quick liquidity for niche ERC-20 tokens by using BNT as a market-making reserve currency for all assets on the network, has routinely attracted 100-250 traders a week, according to Etherscan’s tally of BNT token transactions.
The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), a federal insurance overseer and safety net provider, has issued a public warning about relying on cryptocurrency transactions in a press release on July 25.
According to the press release, managing director and CEO of NDIC Umaru Ibrahim said that relying on cryptocurrencies is very risky, because they are unregulated and unbacked by central banks in most financial jurisdictions.
Much like the United States’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the NDIC provides a safety net for depositors and aims to protect the banking system from instability caused by bank runs or loss of confidence.
U.S. investors have been able to purchase Bitfinex’s LEO exchange tokens, if only indirectly.
Seattle-based Arrington XRP Capital and Los Angeles-based Arca both said they invested in LEO tokens, despite Bitfinex’s stated policy of refusing to sell them to U.S. residents or entities.
Both investment management firms told CoinDesk that, rather than purchasing the tokens from Bitfinex, they acquired them, legally, from third parties.
The distinction is important because, in an ongoing court battle with the New York Attorney General (NYAG), Bitfinex maintains that it banned U.S. individuals from its platform in August 2017 and U.S. corporates a year later.
In arguing that it has jurisdiction in the case, the NYAG claims the exchange did business with New York entities as recently as early 2019.
“Thrilled to announce that our first-ever Developer Community Call will take place Friday 26 July @ 9 AM.”
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
The false break of the support line yesterday triggered a bounce on the STEEM but we are already consolidating from it now. The positive point is that we are now back upper than this support line and that we are waiting for the next move. Till now it looks like that the support line at 0.24$ start to be considered as temporary low. A Up break out on the BTC could help us to validate that but let’s see what the market has planned.
… despite the amount of Liquid STEEM deposited at the exchanges keeps growing according to the last weekly post of @penguinpablo (you can read it here), STEEM is showing a strong resistance against sellers.
This is the weekly amount of STEEM withdrawn to the Exchanges:
This is the weekly averaged position of STEEM at The Total Market Cap:
…and this is the current 4h-Chart of STEEM:
The amount of STEEM deposited at the exchanges still is enormous but there is something that has changed since a few days ago.
Exactly 4 days ago the RSI showed us a well formed BULLISH DIVERGENCE when STEEM hit the Bottom of the year, forming as well a double bottom in the long correction.
Maybe Sellers have relaxed a little the tension but what is sure is that we have buyers here so there is a clear interest on STEEM.
And it is clearly sustaining the fall of STEEM at the Total Market Cap… of course, with the permission of BITCOIN. If BTC falls strongly STEEM will be affected as well
Hopefully we have reached an equilibrium at the market that will allow STEEM to recover not only the price but also the visibility.
This could be the first time the Lightning Network, a bitcoin scaling solution, officially impacts the U.S. presidential election.
Roughly a dozen bitcoiners who support Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang launched a crypto-friendly super PAC on Thursday, Humanity Forward Fund (Humanity FWD). Thanks to the PAC’s payment processor, OpenNode, the entity will be able to accept payments from lightning wallets.
“The super PAC obviously wants to receive donations as large as possible. But at the same time, individuals who want to donate just a bit to Yang’s platform now have that opportunity,” OpenNode CEO Afnan Rahman told CoinDesk. “It allows the donors to have all of the amount go toward the actual donation rather than miner fees.”
Ripple’s second-quarter report released Wednesday came with a few surprises: a gain, a loss, and a new partner. The distributed ledger technology firm’s total sales of XRP increased by nearly 48 percent to $251 million in the quarter, outpacing the first quarter’s $169 million in sales.
Direct institutional sales drove the uptick, increasing nearly 73 percent to $107.9 million from $61.9 million. Though programmatic sales still accounted for the majority of sales volumes with $144.6 million made in the second quarter up from $107 million in the first.
Despite this growth, the company states in a forward-looking projection:
“Ripple plans to take a more conservative approach to XRP sales in Q3.”
The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies and blockchain next week.
The committee said in a press release that it would hold an open session titled “Examining Regulatory Frameworks for Digital Currencies and Blockchain” on July 30, though it is unclear if this would be a fact-finding mission or if any specific pieces of legislation would be discussed.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, representing the Blockchain Association; Rebecca Nelson, a member of the Congressional Research Service specializing in international trade and finance; and Mehrsa Baradaran, a law professor at the University of California Irvine School of Law will testify as expert witnesses.
Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead discussed how Bitcoin (BTC) could hit $42,000 by the end of 2019, and even has the potential to reach $356,000 within a couple years. Morehead delivered his comments on an episode of the Unchained podcast on July 23.
Morehead specifically said that he predicts BTC will hit $42,000 by the end of the year, and climb to $356,000 by 2022. Morehead claimed that this would be consistent with the top cryptocurrency’s logarithmic growth rate:
“Graph the price of Bitcoin logarithmically […] its trend is going to grow at 235% compound annual growth rate and […] that put Bitcoin at $42,000 at the end of 2019. And I know this sounds crazy but we’re essentially halfway back there. […] I think it’s a good shot that by the end of the year we hit that. And if you just extrapolate that line out for another year it’s $122,000 per Bitcoin and then one more year, $356,000.”
United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin voiced new bearish views on Bitcoin today, saying that he probably will not be talking about the number one cryptocurrency in as soon as five years. In an interview with “Squawk Box” CNBC on July 24, Mnuchin said:
“I won’t be talking about Bitcoin in 10 years, I can assure you that […] I would bet even in 5 or 6 years I’m no longer talking about Bitcoin as Treasury Secretary. I’ll have other priorities […] I can assure you I will personally not be loaded up on Bitcoin.”
Mnuchin’s latest remarks follow a recent statement about how cryptocurrencies primarily exist as a vehicle for crime and speculative investment, saying, “I think to a large extent, these cryptocurrencies have been dominated by illicit activities and speculation.”
Meetup with NEO, LagomX, and Coin68 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 14:30 – 15:30 (Indochina Time Vietnam Time).
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
The support line at 0.24$ has been broken during some hours but it triggered an immediate bounce. It shows that this support line is quiet solid, at least from now. I don’t think we will be able to resist if the correction is continuing on the BTC but let’s at least enjoy that little good news. Steem is still alive….
This could be the first time the Lightning Network, a bitcoin scaling solution, officially impacts the U.S. presidential election.
Roughly a dozen bitcoiners who support Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang launched a crypto-friendly super PAC on Thursday, Humanity Forward Fund (Humanity FWD). Thanks to the PAC’s payment processor, OpenNode, the entity will be able to accept payments from lightning wallets.
“The super PAC obviously wants to receive donations as large as possible. But at the same time, individuals who want to donate just a bit to Yang’s platform now have that opportunity,” OpenNode CEO Afnan Rahman told CoinDesk. “It allows the donors to have all of the amount go toward the actual donation rather than miner fees.”
Ripple’s second-quarter report released Wednesday came with a few surprises: a gain, a loss, and a new partner. The distributed ledger technology firm’s total sales of XRP increased by nearly 48 percent to $251 million in the quarter, outpacing the first quarter’s $169 million in sales.
Direct institutional sales drove the uptick, increasing nearly 73 percent to $107.9 million from $61.9 million. Though programmatic sales still accounted for the majority of sales volumes with $144.6 million made in the second quarter up from $107 million in the first.
Despite this growth, the company states in a forward-looking projection:
“Ripple plans to take a more conservative approach to XRP sales in Q3.”
The Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrencies and blockchain next week.
The committee said in a press release that it would hold an open session titled “Examining Regulatory Frameworks for Digital Currencies and Blockchain” on July 30, though it is unclear if this would be a fact-finding mission or if any specific pieces of legislation would be discussed.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, representing the Blockchain Association; Rebecca Nelson, a member of the Congressional Research Service specializing in international trade and finance; and Mehrsa Baradaran, a law professor at the University of California Irvine School of Law will testify as expert witnesses.
Pantera Capital founder Dan Morehead discussed how Bitcoin (BTC) could hit $42,000 by the end of 2019, and even has the potential to reach $356,000 within a couple years. Morehead delivered his comments on an episode of the Unchained podcast on July 23.
Morehead specifically said that he predicts BTC will hit $42,000 by the end of the year, and climb to $356,000 by 2022. Morehead claimed that this would be consistent with the top cryptocurrency’s logarithmic growth rate:
“Graph the price of Bitcoin logarithmically […] its trend is going to grow at 235% compound annual growth rate and […] that put Bitcoin at $42,000 at the end of 2019. And I know this sounds crazy but we’re essentially halfway back there. […] I think it’s a good shot that by the end of the year we hit that. And if you just extrapolate that line out for another year it’s $122,000 per Bitcoin and then one more year, $356,000.”
United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin voiced new bearish views on Bitcoin today, saying that he probably will not be talking about the number one cryptocurrency in as soon as five years. In an interview with “Squawk Box” CNBC on July 24, Mnuchin said:
“I won’t be talking about Bitcoin in 10 years, I can assure you that […] I would bet even in 5 or 6 years I’m no longer talking about Bitcoin as Treasury Secretary. I’ll have other priorities […] I can assure you I will personally not be loaded up on Bitcoin.”
Mnuchin’s latest remarks follow a recent statement about how cryptocurrencies primarily exist as a vehicle for crime and speculative investment, saying, “I think to a large extent, these cryptocurrencies have been dominated by illicit activities and speculation.”
Meetup with NEO, LagomX, and Coin68 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam from 14:30 – 15:30 (Indochina Time Vietnam Time).
STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion
Here is the chart of yersterday :
Here is the current chart :
The support line at 0.24$ has been broken during some hours but it triggered an immediate bounce. It shows that this support line is quiet solid, at least from now. I don’t think we will be able to resist if the correction is continuing on the BTC but let’s at least enjoy that little good news. Steem is still alive….
In case you don’t know, you have an amazing tool called “STEEM SCOT Voting Power” created by @blockchainstudio on which you can perform staking, claiming, check Voting Power or change your weight multiplier there.
It also tells you how much in STEEM is your Staked Token worth.
For instance, I have 1210 PAL staked:
So, according to the tool and also to the current trading price of PAL vs STEEM, in my case it is worth 508 Steem, ie 128 $…
Not bad taking into account that my investment has been almost zero!
The same you can do with any Steem-engine token, just change my user name and the Token symbol in the link below:
