Bitcoin, Ether, and XRP Weekly Market Update: January 24, 2019

The global market cap is down $2 billion since January 17, 2019, and now stands at $119 billion. Bitcoin lost 1.7 percent for the seven-day period while ether and XRP declined 5.7 percent and 4.2 percent respectively.

BTC/USD

Bitcoin closed its second day of gains on January 17 and moved north to $3,720. However, it could not keep the momentum and retreated on January 18 sliding back to $3,675. Generally, the BTC/USD pair has been moving indecisively within the $3,650 to $3,750 range for four days in a row.

On January 19, it once again registered a green day by climbing up to $3,760. It then broke above to reach $3,880 during the trading session, but the pressure from sellers was far too big to ignore. This was most obvious on January 20 when bitcoin lost 4.6 percent of its value and stopped at $3,585, where it was seven days earlier.

The biggest news of the week was without a doubt CBOE (Cboe Global Markets, Inc) withdrawing its application to list a Bitcoin ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) on its platform.

The first U.S. exchange operator to list bitcoin futures voluntary canceled its own application for the VanEck and SolidX Bitcoin Trust on CBOE BZX Exchange on January 22, 2019. The news was officially announced by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) on January 23, but later that day VanEck’s Gabor Gurbacts tweeted that the filing had been “temporarily withdrawn” in order “to build appropriate market structure frameworks for a Bitcoin ETF and digital assets in general.”

During the last seven days, BTCManager covered the most important news in the industry starting with Binance’s new European platform and Belarus’s new digital stocks and exchange platform. Following this, was Huobi’s return to Japan and Coinbase’s acquisition of Blockspring, before moving over to Thailand, where the official stock exchange shared plans to obtain a cryptocurrency license.

Staying in Asia, big news came from Japan where Crypto Garage, a subsidiary of the Japanese IT company Digital Garage, Inc, announced on January 21 that it would test issuance of JPY stablecoins on their very own SETTLENET platform. The news was initially reported by the Japanese Financial Services Agency (FSA) on January 18 when it granted the fintech firm entry into the regulatory sandbox.

Leaders of the South Korean crypto exchange Komid were sentenced to serve jail time for manipulating trading volume data on their platform. Hyunsuk Choi and Mr. Park faked transactions to artificially inflate volume, which earned them $45 million. Both of them were sentenced on January 17 to serve a combined five years in prison Korean media blockinpress reported.

Back in Europe where Sindri Þór Stefánsson, the mastermind behind the “Big Bitcoin Heist” in Iceland and his partners in crime, were also sentenced to serve jail time. Stefánsson received four and a half years in prison for stealing over 600 bitcoin mining rigs and other hardware while Matthias Jón Karlsson was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and Hafþór Logi Hlynsson was sentenced to 20 months.

January 21 saw BTC price hovering around $3,580 with no significant changes. On January 22, it once again moved above $3,600 in its first green day since January 19 and closed session at $3,640. The CBOE ETF withdrawal, however, had its impact on BTC price and the most popular cryptocurrency dropped to $3,590 on January 23.

Most of the market analysts expected a solid drop given the importance of the news, but the fact the proposed ETF was voluntarily withdrawn rather than rejected by U.S. regulators a resulted a the small price correction.

ETH/USD

Ethereum climbed up to $125 on January 17 in its second day of gains. Buyers were hoping to reach $130 in their next move and initiate a new short-term bull run, but on January 18 bears pushed price back down to $121 in an effort to break the recent low at $118. The mentioned level already resisted few times and did not crack under sell pressure.

ETH/USD raised to $126 on January 19 in its fifth day in a row in the $130 to $120 range. Not being able to confirm a trend, the pair dropped again on January 20, this time below the 50 percent Fibonacci line at $122.9 and $120 level. The cryptocurrency was almost flat for the seven-day period starting the week at $117.8 and closing it at $119.

At the end of last week BTCManager wrote about the creation of a new Ethereum classic (ETC) core development team called ETC Labs Core and continued with an update on the much-anticipated Ethereum Constantinople fork. Yesterday, Diar released news of ethereum’s on-chain transaction value hitting an all-time-high in December 2018 .

On January 21 ETH/USD price value declined below $118, to $117.4. On the next day, January 22, it managed to rebound from the mentioned support line and hit $120. The pair dropped to $118 on the ETF withdrawal news and suggested further losses as it became the worst performing cryptocurrency among top ten for the last seven days.

XRP/USD

Last week the Ripple company token XRP was hovering around the $0.335 level, which proved to be a strong support/resistance line in August 2018. It also coincided with the Fibonacci 50 percent retracement level on our weekly chart, which made it extremely important for further movements.

XRP/USD pair closed the trading day on January 18 at $0.3277 right above the 61.80 percent Fibonacci level. The move represented a two percent loss and was followed by a similar candle on January 19. This time, however it was in the opposite direction as the coin peaked at $0.35 during trading and closed at $0.335.  

The top ten currency could not establish a trend and made another move south on January 20. It closed at $0.321 without being able to break below this line, holding it for the second time in the last eight days. The XRP/USD pair ended the seven-day period with no significant price changes.

The Ripple coin experienced high volatility during trading session on January 21 peaking at $0.3276 at one point during the day and dropping to $0.3173 at another. It finally closed at $0.322, still above the $0.32/$0.321 support line. On January 22, it extended gains to $0.324 as pressure from sellers continued to weaken.

Major indicators and current support position suggested a consolidation phase and further movements upwards. Instead, XRP/USD dropped to $0.32 not being able to resist the brief market selloff after the CBOE ETF news.