Crypto Today: Black Monday took BTC below $8,000; altcoins are bleeding

Here’s what you need to know on 

Markets:

BTC/USD broke below $8,000 during early Asian hours and tested $7,789. At the time of writing the first digital coin is changing hands at  $7,950. BTC has lost over 20% since Friday amid massive sell-off on the cryptocurrency markets. 

ETH/USD dropped below $200.00 and touched $196.57 during early Asian hours. However, by press time the coin has recovered to $207.50. ETH/USD is currently trading with 3% of gains since the beginning of the day and down 10% on a day-to-day basis.

XRP/USD stopped within a whisker of $0.2000 before recovering to $0.2096 by press time. The coin is down nearly 10% on a day-to-day basis.

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, the best of the day are UNUS SED LEO (LEO) $0.9893 (+2.4%),Multi-collateral DAI (DAI) $1.00 (+1.24%). The day’s losers are Siacoin (SC) $0.0017 (-19.6%),aelf (ELF) $0.0734 (-16.10%), Zcoin (XZC) $4.4 (-16.0%).

Chart of the day:

BTC/USD, 4-hour chart

Market

According to a cryptocurrency expert and a founding partner of PrimitiveCrypto, Dovey Wan, the massive sell-off on the cryptocurrency market might have been caused by PlusToken. The organizers of this cryptocurrency scam scheme have been offloading the stolen coins each time after a strong upside move on the market. She wrote on Twitter:

I hate to speculate here, but just a general heuristic feeling that whenever there is a big PlusToken movement we see BTC price tanks. It’s a sword of Damocles in terms of BTC sell pressure before it liquidates everything

The theory is confirmed by the findings of the crypto research company Chainanalysis published in December 2019. 

XRP has been losing ground against BTC. Since the beginning of the year, the third-largest coin lost about 2.5% against BTC even though it has gained 12% against USD. Notably, the negative trend has been developing on the back of positive fundamental developments, which may signal that the market sentiments have shifted. 

Industry

Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase believes that there are at least four issues to be solved before the cryptocurrency industry goes mainstream. He mentioned scalability, privacy, decentralized identity and developer tools as the main vectors of the industry development. Notably, the head of Coinbase does not single out Bitcoin as a leader of the cryptocurrency revolution. On the contrary, he thinks that the question is “up in the air”/

I think it’s still very much up in the air which blockchain will help get crypto from ~50M users to 5B. The chain that manages to ship some of these scalability, privacy, decentralized identity, and developer tool solutions will have a big leg up.

According to Nick Colas, DataTrek Research co-founder, the central bank digital currencies (CBDC) will become a reality earlier that Bitcoin ETF. He made his comments after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rejected the last Bitcoin ETF proposal submitted by Wilshire Phoenix.

Regulation

The French court acknowledged cryptocurrencies as money. The decision was made at the end of February but made public only at the end of the previous week.  According to the lawyer Hubert de Vauplane from Kramer & Levin, the decision made it possible to use Bitcoin legally in the territory of France. The news was reported by the local media outlet Les Echos. This development should improve Bitcoin status around the globe and support the cryptocurrency industry in the long run. 

Tanvi Ratna is the founder and CEO of Policy 4.0, believes that the joy and cheer around India’s Supreme court cryptocurrency ruling is premature. The decision to lift the ban implemented by the Reserve Bank of India was not final, while the text of the judgment contains numerous reg flags. Namely, she pointed out:

One of the reasons the Supreme Court supported the industry was because there was “no law banning virtual currencies yet,” which implies the verdict would not stand once there is such a law.

Basically, it means that the future of crypto in India will depend on the response of the legislative branch. Also, the central bank can file an appeal if it gathers credible evidence of a monetary risk from cryptocurrencies.