From Bitcoin’s short-term trajectory to Ripple’s push to bring blockchain to academia, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.
Bitcoin
A crypto analyst known in the industry as The Cryptomist says Bitcoin may be poised for a big breakout.
In a series of tweets to her 43,000 followers, the analyst says BTC appears to be in an ascending triangle and could breakout in a matter of days.
“A possible ascending triangle to look out for Like I have been saying for the past week and a bit. I am favoring longs right now, (however, possibility of one more move down for bears)…
Targets from last week remain the same:
– 7700
– 8450
– 9400
Not long now.”
Breakout within 3days pic.twitter.com/PbUIpPKCd0
— The Cryptomist (@TheCryptomist) December 8, 2019
Meanwhile, a fellow analyst who goes by the name Magic is far more bearish.
Although the analyst agrees that BTC may move to the upside in the short term, Magic tells his crew of 31,000 followers that the leading cryptocurrency will remain locked in a retracement for the foreseeable future.
“BTC and the others may try for an upside breakout in the coming days. However, if BTC puts in yet another lower high, it will likely breakdown below the recently contested critical support at 7250.
We may see a short term reversal, but BTC remains in a bear market downtrend.”
Ripple and XRP
The University of Texas at Austin says it’s looking to hand out grants to faculty members and graduate students who want to launch research projects centered on blockchain and cryptocurrency.
The program is backed by Ripple, which partnered with the university in November of last year to accelerate the understanding of blockchain in academia.
“The funding is made available through a generous gift made by Ripple Labs Inc.
Students and faculty members receiving funding from the initiative shall hold the title of ‘Ripple Graduate Fellow’ and ‘Ripple Fellow,’ respectively, during the funding period, and acknowledge the grant from the Blockchain Initiative at Texas McCombs in their research papers.”
Litecoin
Litecoin creator Charlie Lee says there are multiple reasons why LTC is a necessary and important crypto asset.
In a new interview on the Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast, Lee spotlights the coin’s biggest strengths and its overall liquidity.
“So with shorter blocktimes and cheaper fees [than Bitcoin], it’s quite good for payments and people use it quite a bit. And it’s also good for testing new stuff. Litecoin’s market cap is a lot smaller than Bitcoin’s. So we can take a little bit more risk and do stuff that potentially Bitcoin would be too conservative to do…
These network protocols, currencies – they have a network effect. So if everyone’s using it, you want to be using the one with the most liquidity, the one that’s on all the exchanges that you can easily switch back between fiat and cryptocurrency. So Litecoin benefits from that because, for example, the Chinese exchanges all added Litecoin as a second cryptocurrency.
And Litecoin now is on pretty much every single exchange. So it’s very easy for anyone, anywhere to move their money to Litecoin and obviously Bitcoin. So that helps a lot for onboarding new users. And that definitely has a network effect. Once you’re supported by all the exchanges – for example, two-thirds of the Bitcoin ATMs support Litecoin because it’s easy to implement and it’s supported everywhere.”
You can check out the full interview here.
