Bitcoin and Ether Market Update: January 18, 2019

The major cryptocurrencies are in green for the last 24 hours as market capitalization still holds above $122 billion at the time of press.

BTC/USD

Bitcoin closed the January 16 trading session with a little more than a $20 price increase and did not allow further decline below $3,600. The mentioned level now represents a stable support threshold for bulls to hold. The BTC/USD pair increased gains on January 17 and moved north to $3,720.

Malta-based crypto exchange Binance will expand to European markets by launching a new crypto-to-fiat platform called Binance Jersey. The new EUR/GBP fiat exchange has been online since January 16 with trading in BTC/GBP, ETH/GBP, BTC/EUR, and ETH/EUR available for end users. The name of the platform comes from the island of Jersey, a popular tax haven near France, which is also a British crown dependency. It is worth noting that Binance demands all customers follow a strict KYC procedure before opening any accounts.

Binance made headlines again after freezing some of the funds stolen during the Cryptopia hack earlier this week. This was also confirmed by the exchange’s CEO Changpeng Zhao on Twitter. Earlier this week Twitter and Reddit users informed they managed to follow some of the funds to Binance wallets.

ABCC becomes the first crypto exchange to list tokens based on Tron’s protocol TRC10. This was announced on Twitter and confirmed by Justin Sun, the Tron CEO. The TRC10 protocol is fully compatible with ERC20 tokens and was described by Sun as a direct competitor to Ethereum and EOS smart contract platforms.

Belarus is following the steps of Estonia and informed about the launch of a new platform which will allow traders to buy shares, gold, foreign currencies, and other traditional assets with cryptocurrencies. The new exchange is backed by Larnabel Ventures and VP Capital investment companies and will be the first platform in the world where crypto investors will be able to diversify their investments into real assets, as per VP Capital’s owner Viktor Prokopenya.

According to Reuters there are already 150 types of tokens corresponding to traditional financial instruments with expectations for them to increase to 10,000. Earlier this month DX Exchange, offering a similar service, launched in Estonia.

At the time of press, BTC is trading at ~$3,600.

ETH/USD

Ethereum is still hovering around the $120 level, closing the January 16 session at $124. It is finding necessary support between $118 to $120 at the moment, which prevents further bear movements, but still lacks that kick start to induce a run upwards.

The ETH/USD pair raised to $125 on January 17 in its second day of gains. Naturally, the next target for buyers will be $130 after confirming short-term trend (or reject it) at the Fibonacci 50 percent level (placed at $123).

ETC Labs, the first incubator for Ethereum Classic (ETC) related projects, announced in a blog post that it would create a new core development team called ETC Labs Core. The team will focus on the most important Ethereum Classic projects including dApp creation and development, mining, and other related services. Additionally, the team will review ETH’s Constantinople fork prior to finalizing ECIP1045 which will propose a subset of Byzantine and Constantinople upgrades. This news arrived shortly after the recent 51% attack on the ETC blockchain.

At the time of press, ETH is trading at ~$123 and ETC at ~$4.37.