The Crypto Corner March 14th 2018
The Crypto Corner
Hey CryptoCorner fans, let’s get right down to it. As we reported last week upon the 5 blockchain associated bills making their way thru the Wyoming Senate, we are happy to announce all 5 bills were passed and are now signed into law. Here is an update from Caitlin Long, who was absolutely instrumental in making sure that the Wyoming legislature had the appropriate knowledge to make the right decisions,
“FINAL UPDATE from #Wyoming legislature--GOT 'EM ALL PASSED! The 5th of our 5 #blockchain bills just passed unanimously, so crypto assets will be exempt from property taxes in Wyoming. Since Wyoming already has no personal, corporate or franchise taxes, I'd say it's a pretty #crypto friendly place!
We always make sure we commend Ms. Long on her dedication to the blockchain space, as well as all the others who work so tirelessly to fight for individual rights.
Also, out this week in legislature land was Reuters reporting that U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn reaffirmed that virtual currencies like bitcoin can be regulated as commodities by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
The state of Illinois is weighing the proposal of House Bill 5335 which states, “In addition to any other method of payment provided for by law, the Department shall accept payment for any tax imposed by the State and administered by the Department by cryptocurrency." It now sits in the IHR for deliberation.
Grayscale Investments, the creator of the Bitcoin Investment Trust, is launching four new trusts utilizing Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash. Michael Sonnenshein, the managing director of Grayscale Investments, said the new products are part of an expanding suite. Grayscale Investments, is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group.
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) published a letter last week indicating the U.S. agency will apply its regulations to those who conduct initial coin offerings. (ICOs) Under this interpretation of the law, a group that conducts an ICO that involves U.S. residents but hadn't registered with FinCEN as a money transmitter and adhere to KYC regulations may be charged with a felony under federal law. Now we aren’t going to opine on this at this juncture, but we are partial to the ruling as we are huge fans of legitimacy and investor protections. However, we do feel that greater cooperation and coordination between regulators, stakeholders and investors should be made a priority.
Word continues floating around the street of possible fraud with Tether. We all know the stories about the amount of outstanding Tether and whether or not the other side of the balance sheet exists to cover it. Tether comes with counterparty risk, something that decentralized blockchain is not accustomed to, so you can imagine the concern here from the crypto legion. It is also a bit unsettling the fact that the audit firm Friedman LLP who was in charge of auditing the fully US dollar backed Tether has ended its relationship with them. So, we will monitor ongoing developments and if manipulation in the space is indeed discovered through the use of Tether, this will have reverberations, that we are certain.
Peter Thiel’s Paypal has filed patents in regards to an "Expedited Virtual Currency Transaction System" published on March 1 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. This makes perfect sense considering Paypal’s business model and their background. We often wonder what influence Elon still has, if any, or maybe he is too busy now playing with rockets?
There wasn’t any shortage of news on the Mt.Gox whale last week as Bloomberg reported and confirmed wide spread rumors that the “Tokyo Whale,” was responsible for some large block selling in Bitcoin over the last few months. Nobuaki Kobayashi, bankruptcy trustee for Mt. Gox, has reported that the he has begun selling off thousands of Bitcoin since last September. @matt_Odell did a great job outlining possible wallet sales and put together this chart:
Here is the data from the report:
The details of the sale were published on March 7 by trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi, revealing that JPY 42,988,044,343 - an amount worth roughly $405 million at press-time prices - was generated. According to the creditor report, the trustee liquidated 35,841.00701 BTC and 34,008.00701 in bitcoin cash.
As Kobayashi explained: "As a result of the consultation with the court, I considered it necessary and reasonable to sell a certain amount of BTC and BCC at this point and secure a certain amount of money for distribution resources, and thus, I sold the amount of BTC and BCC above. I made efforts to sell BTC and BCC at as high a price as possible in light of the market price of BTC and BCC at the timing of sale."
Word is they have around $2 billion worth to monetize and we are quite sure lawsuit holders will be happy with the progress. What is crazy to think about is at the time Mt.Gox failed Bitcoin rose to $1k and got cut in half to around $500 when they collapsed. Now with BTC worth around $9k, that is a tremendous return and it will be interesting who actually collects the money, in fact, what should be done is that those involved should get BTC back and not the nominal value of their account at the time…yeah right!
Last week the European Commission has confirmed that it is monitoring electricity consumption from Cryptocurrency mining but states that as of now there is no legal basis to ban or limit Bitcoin mining in the EU.
The governor of Thailand’s central bank has confirmed an upcoming law to comprehensively regulate Cryptocurrency. SEC secretary-general Rapee Sucharitakul has revealed that a royal decree is commonly seen as the path to empower the SEC to regulate all aspects of the crypto sector including Cryptocurrency exchanges, ICO fundraising. At least the SEC in Thailand is openminded and stated that “realizes the potential of ICO” in bringing new forms of funding for businesses and startups.
Moving back to America, this week none other than deep state-controlled Google said it’s going to change its financial product policy in June this year to effectively ban any advertisements related to cryptocurrency. Reported from Google,
“the firm indicated that it will change its existing financial product restriction list in June this year, blacklisting ad content including but not limited to initial coin offerings (ICO), cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice. Such ads will no longer be allowed. The restriction will apply both to Google's proprietary and affiliated advertisement platforms.”
This isn’t a shock as the majority of US Social Media outlets are turning to censor anything that disagrees with their associated political bias. No, that is not our opinion it is a wide known fact and one that increasingly worries us free speech constitutionalist types. Then again if you look at it from the flipside, crypto and blockchain are and continue to be a very viable threat to the establishment and their reactions are becoming obvious.
Ok before we get to the current technical chart’s let’s take a look at last Friday’s settles for March 9th 2018 and the current CryptoCorner Index price:
As you can see it was a double-digit percentage decline across the board. New 2018 lows were hit by all we follow except for BTC, LTC and XMR, With Bitcoin extending its losses beneath $10k. We expect continued downward probes.
As far as our CCI, it settled this week at $3654.78 down (678.04) or a loss of 15.6%:
One thing to note is that as of March 13th the top 5 wallets were all unchanged except the top wallet which laid off 7k BTC for the week:
This seems pretty impressive to us considering the fall in Bitcoin over the last few months. We often read how it’s one big ponzi scheme, yet we have found ourselves educating people in stating that the large players seem to add on down moves not sell. In this case the largest wallets don’t seem to be doing much, but #HODL
We also think the complex overall has held up despite all the forces working against it, from the Tokyo Mt.Gox Whale to the entire globes regulatory complex shitting a brick when it comes to all this Crypto adoption. We hate to say it, but the future comes whether we or anyone else likes it or not and nothing ever stays the same, despite all their status quo keeping efforts!
Let’s move onto the technical charts shall we, since there has been some considerable damage done, first up Bitcoin:
Next up Litecoin:
Ethereum has been beaten up lately but supported nearby by $575:
Finally, Monero which saw a pretty hefty rejection from $375 but has support and reversal target level of $196 area:
In conclusion we hope you enjoyed this week’s CryptoCorner, we look forward to continuing the ever expanding blockchain and cryptocurrency world. We strive to not waste your time and rather point out things that we deem important in the continually evolving space and we hope that point stands out. We understand the plethora of updates that exist and we are glad you have chosen to stick with us. Please forward this to your family, your friends and have them sign up for the letter and please go read our other weekly global macro letter that is updated each week at our blog www.econemotions.com and don’t forget to hit the subscribe button! Cheers!
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