Cryptocurrency Market News: The Justice Department has seized over $2 million in crypto from terrorist groups

Here is what you need to know on Saturday 15, August

BTC/USD remains quite flat as it approaches $12,000, a crucial resistance level that if broken, would take Bitcoin close to $12,300 almost instantly.

ETH/USD had a massive breakout above $400 and has hit $445 for the first time since July 2018. 

XRP/USD finally woke up with a breakout above $0.30, currently trading at $0.306 and eying up $0.33. 

AirSwap is the biggest winner today with a 65% price surge and a 225% value increase over the last seven days. MXC and Gnosis are numbers 2 and 3 both with a 30% jump. 

Chart of the day: ETH/USD daily chart

Market

According to a report by CNN, the Justice Department has seized around $2 million worth of cryptocurrencies from terrorist groups in the Middle East. 

Two million dollars is a lot of equipment that they can buy, a lot of weapons a lot of training that they can fund, a lot of tickets to fly people around the world, said John Demers, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s national security division. This is going to make a big difference in their operation.

In fact, a paper published this week states that the number of manipulation cases in the crypto market has significantly surged over the past seven months. 

We show that cryptocurrency markets are plagued by pump-and-dump manipulation, with at least 355 cases in seven months. Unlike stock market manipulators, cryptocurrency manipulators openly declare their intentions to pump specific coins, rather than trying to deceive investors. Puzzlingly, people join in despite negative expected returns. In a simple framework, we demonstrate how overconfidence and gambling preferences can explain participation in these schemes, and find strong empirical support for both mechanisms.

Industry

A new cryptocurrency exchange named Geco.one is enabling users to enter the Forex, Indices, and Commodities markets through cryptocurrencies. According to the announcement, customers can leverage their Bitcoin by up to 100 times to trade not only Bitcoin itself but also the instruments mentioned above. 

SonoCoin, the first Swiss blockchain has announced a major upgrade to the software and functionalities of the platform. The update will include a better Blockchain throughput, smart contracts, escrow accounts, and a better wallet.

Quote of the day

The governments of the world have spent hundreds and hundreds of trillions of dollars bailing out a decaying, dickensian, outmoded system called banking when the solution to the future of finance is peer-to-peer. It’s going to be alternative currencies like Bitcoin and it’s not actually going to be a banking system as we had before 2008. 

– Patrick Young