From a potential Bitcoin roadblock to a new milestone on the Ethereum network, here’s a look at some of the stories breaking in the world of crypto.
Bitcoin
A veteran technical trader who became a crypto legend for calling Bitcoin’s epic crash in January of 2018 says he remains convinced that BTC will smash through its all-time high and hit $50,000.
But before the next big surge, Peter Brandt says he’s looking for an extinction – “when no [Bitcoin] bulls can be found on Twitter.”
Once the bulls have lost their enthusiasm and all weak hands have sold their BTC, Brandt believes the leading cryptocurrency can begin a true turnaround.
Brandt says he’s already a buyer in the current crypto market. He thinks BTC will likely hit a bottom at around $5,500 with BTC’s long-term parabolic trajectory in peril if BTC touches $2,800.
“I will only be a buyer from this point forward. It would take a break of 2800 for me to capitulate.
My target of $5,500 is not far below today’s low. But I think the surprise might be in the duration and nature of market. I am thinking about a low in July 2020. That will wear out bulls quicker than a price correction.”
Ethereum
The decentralized finance (DeFi) movement just hit a new milestone.
DeFi is designed to replace traditional financial instruments with a decentralized alternative that’s not controlled by corporations or governments.
A new all-time high of over 2.63 million ETH worth $394.2 million is now locked in Ethereum-based DeFi contracts, according to the data tracker DeFi Pulse.
The majority is stored in the collateralized loan platform Maker, which has 2.0 million worth $301 million ETH locked up.
Ripple and XRP
Ripple is expanding its operation in Dubai.
The company is looking to hire a technical services engineer who will “analyze and resolve challenging technical issues, and investigate and identify root causes at the product, data, or network level, all the while keeping key stakeholders informed and up to date on the situation.”
Ripple currently has 52 open positions, including five engineers who will work on Ripple’s Xpring, which recently released an SDK designed to help developers build on the XRP Ledger.
Litecoin
Litecoin Foundation director Franklyn Richards says plans to add confidential transactions to LTC are more about fungibility than privacy.
In a new rebuttal to a takedown on privacy protocol Mimblewimble, Richards says the Foundation’s focus is on ensuring that the transaction history of a particular Litecoin does not affect its value.
“The main appeal of MW and the reason the Litecoin Core team are looking to implement support for it, has primarily been its ability to provide network fungibility, future scalability and ‘greater’ (not complete) privacy.
Fungibility is derived from the inclusion of confidential transactions (CT) whereby the value sent over the network is hidden yet verifiable. This means when interacting with other people on the network they won’t be able to look back and know how much Litecoin you own.”
You can check out the Litecoin post here.