Crypto Today: Bitcoin bulls rise to reclaim $9,000

Here is what you need to know

Markets:

BTC/USD fell victim to another massacre masterminded by the bears. In a similar article on Wednesday, I talked about Bitcoin’s price holding above $9,100. However, the selling pressure at $9,200 continued to discourage the buyers. The bulls on losing their gut pave the way for a sellers’ field day as BTC/USD plunged to levels slightly above $8,500. Bitcoin has since recovered to $8,757 but the trend remains bearish amid high volatility levels.

ETH/USD also reacted in tandem with Bitcoin’s fall, losing ground to the extent of touching $210. Recovery has not been easy with the price hitting an intraday high at $223.89. Just like Bitcoin, ETH/USD is unable to escape the trappings set by the bears.

XRP/USD, on the other hand, is trading 2.11% higher after embracing the support at $0.2245. As long as the bulls hold onto the progress they make in the coming sessions, recovery towards $0.30 is possible. Meanwhile, defending the support at $0.2245 is key to stopping losses that could easily dive towards $0.20.

Top 100 cryptocurrencies outlook

Among the best performing cryptocurrencies in a bearish market is Maximine Coin, up 14.73% to trade at $0.0746. MonaCoin is also slightly in the green, trading 3.62% higher at $1.64 while Tezos is up 6.2% and trading at $2.84. Chainlink is also in the green with gains of 6.22% and Bitcoin Cash is trading at $325 after a 2% growth on the day.

Chart of the day

BTC/USD 4-hour chart (Bitcoin settled above the 50% Fib level at $8,500 allowing the bulls to take control of the price, although not entirely).

Market

Bitcoin sales brought in half Square’s Q4 revenue

Square is the payments company founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. In a shareholder letter sent out on Wednesday, the firm reported $178 million of Bitcoin revenue in the period between November 1 and December 31. Profit had shot up by $3 million in addition to being up 50% in a period spanning two quarters.

Non-Bitcoin revenue reported by Square was $183 million. In total the form netted in $8 million in profit at year-end on $516 million of Bitcoin revenue.

Bitcoin Vs Gold

Bitcoin (BTC) is still up more than 20% in 2020 in spite of the correction from February highs around $10,530. However, the gold bug, Peter Schiff believes the gains in Bitcoin mean nothing when compared to gold. Schiff insinuates that it is wrong to consider Bitcoin as a safe-haven asset because it has not been around for a long time. The CEO of Euro Pacific Capital and Chairman of Schiff Gold said in regards to Anthony Pompliano’s comments on CNN:

“On CNN, [Pompliano] admitted that Bitcoin isn’t a safe haven asset, but a non-correlated asset, meaning regardless of what other assets do, Bitcoin is as likely to go down as up… So the value of Bitcoin is that no one has any idea what its price will do. What’s that worth?”

Industry

The Stellar Development Foundation in an announcement made on Wednesday via Twitter said that it has sunk $715,000 as an investment in DSTOQ, a Stellar-based Fin-Tech project that enables users to have access to traditional stocks market using both fiat and crypto. DSTOQ has been developing its platform on Stellar since 2018, however, the announcement did formalize the relationship. Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon said in a video:

“We’re glad that DSTOQ is now part of our ecosystem. They actually were before, but now they formally [are part of the ecosystem] with respect to the enterprise fund.”

Regulation

Ripple has been dealt a blow following the dismissal of its motion that was seeking to put an end to the lawsuit filed to prove that XRP is a security token by a federal judge in the state of California. The motion to stop the lawsuit was filed in December 2019 and was taken under submission on January 16 by Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton. During the dismissal, the judge stated that Ripple was not persuasive enough to have the case thrown out.

Based on the plaintiff’s complaint and the judicially noticeable facts proffered, the court cannot conclude that defendants’ first bona fide public offer to sell XRP occurred before August 5, 2016.

This means that Ripple is still lying in the balance unsure of how the lawsuit will end. Besides, the US regulators have not come out clearly on their stance on whether XRP is a security or not.

Quote of the day

My macro thesis has been that BTC is digesting the ’15-’17 bull run by ranging for a while now.

I can’t imagine that ranging to go on for much longer.

I’m expecting some wild price action going into the halving.

Once that’s out of the way we’ll finally get the next macro move.

DonAlt @CryptoDonAlt (Trader predicted the rally in 2020)