Crypto Today: BitMEX short liquidations did’t help much; BTC back below $7,000

Here’s what you need to know on 

Markets:

BTC/USD is changing hands at $6,770. The coin attempted a recovery above $7,200 during the US session on Thursday, but failed to hold the ground. Currently, BTC is moving within a short-term bearish trend amid low volatility. 

At the time of writing, ETH/USD is changing hands at $141.30, mostly unchanged since the beginning of Friday and with over 3% of gains on a day-to-day basis. The second-largest coin hit the Asian high at $142.85. Now ETH/USD is moving in a short-term bearish trend amid low volatility.

XRP/USD stays above $0.1780, but the upside is limited by the intraday high of $0.1804. The coin has been moving in a tight range with short-term bullish bias. 

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, Swipe (SXP) $0.8269 (+120.6%), Chiliz (CHZ) $0.0072 (+10.7%), Synthetix Network Token (SNX) $0.6786 (+9.6%) are in the green zone. The day’s losers are Energi (NRG) $2.2 (-5.0%), Seele (SEELE) $0.0504 (-4.5%),Golem (GNT) $0.0353 (-2.2%).

Chart of the day:

BTC/USD, 30-min chart

Market

Bitcoin decisively broke above $7,000 and hit $7,300 amid growing spot trading volume and demand. According to the recent research conducted by the US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, retail investors have been increasingly buying Bitcoins from the low of $3,600. This spot-driven recovery was supported by liquidations of short positions open close to the lows which provides a more solid base for further recovery. 

Our customers typically buy 60% more than they sell but during the crash this jumped to 67%, taking advantage of market troughs and representing strong demand for crypto assets even during extreme volatility, Coinbase wrote.

Max Keiser believes that investors will flock to Bitcoin amid a Coronavirus outbreak. In the recent edition of Keiser Report, he said that shortages of physical gold supplies would push billionaires into digital gold, that is Bitcoin. 

I predict — and this is not only the ultimate use case but the ultimate irony — that once people realize that they cannot get gold, they’ll start flocking en masse into Bitcoin.

Industry

A famous blockchain startup Factom initiated a liquidation procedure, Coindesk reports. The project that stood at the origins of token sales, failed to raise additional financing and had to file for bankruptcy. FastForward Director, Ed McDermott. commented in the filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission: 

We are extremely disappointed with this news from Factom. In light of this Dissolution Event under the SAFE we are taking swift action to protect our position as best we can in the circumstances albeit the ability to generate any meaningful return is uncertain. As we go through the Receivership process and understand more of the events that led to this position our position as investors in Factom is expressly reserved.

TronWallet, announced a release of version 3.2 with advanced functionality and improved interface. The new release supports multiple accounts, USD-pegged remittances, seamless Ethereum (ETH) cross-chain swap experience among other features. Due to the ETH support, TronWallet will get access to the most popular dApp hosting and DeFi platform. Also, the new version will support Ethereum (ETH) swap pairs: ETH/TRX and TRX/ETH; ETH/BTC and BTC/ETH; ETH/USDT and USDT/ETH.

Regulation

The Philippines Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a warning about a cryptocurrency-related  Ponzi scheme called Bitcoin Revolution. The project targets Filipino, Australian, and European investors and has clear features of a classic Ponzi. Thus, investors are offered unrealistically high daily returns on deposited funds. The organizers of the scheme lured investors by false claims that their unique software produces trades with a success rate of between 88% and 95%, which means that investors can become Bitcoin millionaires in just 61 days. Bitcoin Revolution offered 300% of daily return on an initial deposit of just $250.

The regulator warned that Bitcoin Revolution is operating without a license and offering unregistered securities in violation of Philippine securities laws. The SEC urged investors to stay away from the company and stop investing funds if they are already engaged in the project.