Crypto Today: Bitcoin is in a full lockdown under $7,000

Here’s what you need to know on Wednesday

Markets:

BTC/USD is hovering around $6,900. The coin has been mostly range-bound in the recent 24 hours as the psychological $7,000 stays intact. The first digital coin has is moving within a short-term bearish trend amid shrinking volatility. 

At the time of writing, ETH/USD is changing hands above $158.60. The second-largest coin hit the intraday high $161.44 but failed to hold the ground. Despite the retreat, it is still 1% higher from this time on Tuesday. ETH/USD is moving in a short-term bearish trend in sync with the market. The volatility is shrinking.

XRP/USD is locked in a tight range below $0.1900 during early Asian hours. At the time of writing, the coin is changing hands at $0.1888, mostly unchanged both since the beginning of the day and in the recent 24 hours.  From the short-term perspective, XRP/USD is trading within a bearish trend amid low volatility.

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, Quant (QNT) $5.16 (+11.9%), Terra (LUNA) $0.2047 (+11.0%) and Komodo (KMD) $0.4424 (+9.7%) are in the green zone. The day’s losers are Nervos Network (CKB) $0.0049 (-3.8%), Digitex Futures (DGTX) $0.0437 (-3.7%), Chainlink (LINK) $3.28 (-3.5%).

Chart of the day:
ETH/USD, 30-min chart

Industry

The founder of TRON, Justin Sun, announced JUST airdrop for TRON (TRX) holders. TRX users will receive the first batch of new tokens on May 20.The team plans to distribute 257,400,000 JST (2.6% of the total supply) over the next 12 months. Commenting on the news, Sun wrote:

And here is another wonderful news for #TRON #TRX holders!#JUST the foundation will airdrop $JST tokens every month during the next two and a half years and the ONLY users who are eligible for the #airdrop are TRON $TRX holders!

The European cryptocurrency trading services provider 2gether registered a 13-fold increase of transaction volume from November 2019 to March 2020. Around the half of all transactions (worth €10,067,627) are related to purchases and sales of digital coins, while the rest 50% are card payments, transfers and euro deposits in the 2gether euro accounts. Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal are the most active countries that account for 90% of all the transactions.

According to Ramón Ferraz, CEO at 2gether, this metric is very important, because “it shows us how the community not only grows but also becomes more active every day.” 

Venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz plans to launch another fund that will be focused on investing in the cryptocurrency industry, The Financial Times, reports. He aims to raise $450 million, as the global coronavirus outbreak wreck havoc on start-ups. In 2018, Andreessen’s venture fundraised $350 million for start-ups working on the blockchain technology. Since that time the venture capital investments in the blockchain sector grew three-fold to almost $4.3bn. However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought difficult times for the industry, as tech investors grow cautious about the impact of coronavirus on the companies.

Regulation

The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) is testing an interface for the central bank digital currency (CBDC) developed by the People’s Bank of China.

The screenshots of the mobile application developed by the bank leaked to WeChat on Tuesday. Later, the banking giant confirmed that the front-interface is already in place to allow users to interact with China’s CBDC, ConDesk reports. 

Obviously, the country has accelerated the development of its CBDC project. The existing application is available for iOS and Android mobile devices on ABC domain. However, it runs in the test mode only.

Quote of the day:

Wow, you can now 51% attack Bcash for the cost of 1 single #Bitcoin Make sure that you fundamentally understand what you’re holding, otherwise you might get rekt.

The Moon (@TheMoonCarl)