Bitcoin ( BTC/USD) and Ether (ETH/USD) Market Update: Jan 16

Global crypto market cap is up with $4 billion since Monday and now stands at $121 as Top 10 currencies managed to avoid further loses. 

BTC/USD

Bitcoin briefly dropped below $3,600 on January 13, but successfully rebounded on the next day, January 14 gaining 4.4% in value. The BTC/USD pair erased all losses from the previous three days and closed the session at $3,750.

Yet another hack in crypto world. The New Zealand-based exchange Cryptopia announced that on January 14 it “suffered a security breach which resulted in significant losses.”  The company initially posted an “unscheduled maintenance” message on its official webpage, but 24 hours later informed about the attack on Twitter putting all services in maintenance mode with trading suspended. The exact figure of the heist is not known yet, but given the fact the exchange lists over 800 crypto assets, the amount could be significant.

On January 14 the digital assets platform Bakkt completed its first acquisition. In an official message from Kelly Loeffler, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the company, which is a subsidiary of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) informed they are “expanding Bakkt’s risk management, compliance and treasury operations”. Bakkt will acquire certain assets of Rosenthal Collins Group (RCG), an independent futures commission merchant with nearly 100 years of history.

The most popular cryptocurrency could not move above the important $3,800 level on January 15 and dropped lower to $3,655 instead. This is the fifth consecutive session in the $3,800-$3,600 zone.

ETH/USD

The price of Ethereum raised 12% on January 14 as it jumped back up from the $118 zone for the second time in the last 20 days. Bears already tried once, on December 28, to push the price below that level and now it has been confirmed as solid support. The second biggest cryptocurrency in terms of market cap closed the day at $131 ending a 7-day losing streak.

On January 15 the community was already preparing for the scheduled Constantinople hard fork at block 7,080,000. As per plan the smart contract platform upgrade was about to take place today.

Unfortunately, in the late evening on January 15, it was once again postponed, this time due to a security vulnerability. The smart contract audit firm ChainSecurity informed in a blog post that the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1283 could be containing a bug, which would provide attackers a loophole in the code to steal user funds. Leading developers and Ethereum partners agreed to delay fork execution given the fact the required fix could not be implemented fast enough to keep up with current schedule. A new date will be proposed coming Friday. Constantinople upgrade was delayed once in 2018 when issues were found while launching the upgrades on the Ropsten testnet.

The ETH/USD pair reacted immediately on the news and dropped 7% to $122 on January 15. It is critical for bulls to regain $130 and push the price above that level in order to initiate short-term recovery and confirm recent defend of $118-$120.