Ken Chigbo
Independent Analyst
Here's what you need to know on Thursday
Markets
BTC/USD is currently trading at $9480 (+1.30%), as the bulls try to break down $9500 barrier.
ETH/USD is currently trading at $180.40 (+2.10%), bulls kill off the double top around $175-178 range via the daily.
XRP/USD is currently trading at $0.2387 (+0.50%), the barrier of $0.2500 remains in the way of greater upside.
Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, the best of the day are VSYS $0.044671 (+30.95%), XZC $8.79 (27.49%) and KICK $0.000109 (+27.27%) and The day's losers are QNT $4.26 (-10.50%), DX $0.001089 (-6.95%) and SC $0.001628 (-6.30%).
Chart of the day: BTC/USD 4-hour chart
Market
Bitcoin is now being accepted in Zermatt, a municipality in Switzerland at the foot of the Matterhorn known for its ski resort, has started accepting bitcoin for government services. The Zermatt town hall now has a point-of-sale solution, installed by Zug-based Bitcoin Suisse, to accept the cryptocurrency.
The XRP liquidity index in Mexico and the Philippines has been growing recently. Bitso, the largest Mexican exchange, registered a new all-time high at $13 million, leaving the previous record of 12,230,900 far behind. According to a startup investor and XRP supporter Eric Dadoun, this trend illustrates Ripple's growing mass adoption and proves that XRP is used on a daily basis outside speculations. He wrote on Twitter: The single largest daily use case for a digital asset outside of speculation ... and growing both in terms of volume and geographic coverage.
Regulation
Heath Tarbert, U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman, wants the U.S to lead the world in crypto assets and blockchain innovation. The cryptocurrency advocate also expects his agency to oversee ETH futures within six months to a year.
Industry
Binance.US, the United States arm of Binance cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that it will roll out Algorand (ALGO) and Cosmos (ATOM) staking services from February 2020. The firm says crypto traders on its platform will be able to access the staking service right from the Binance.U.S app, as well as on its official site, according to a company blog post.
Elsewhere, Binance revealed today that it had made a new hire, taking on Josh Goodbody, former JPMorgan executive. He will be joining the leading cryptocurrency exchange as Director of European and Latin American Growth and Institutional Business.
Mercedes Benz and blockchain startup Circulor are jointly rolling out a pilot aimed at the tracing carbon emissions in the cobalt supply chain. The press release noted that the project by Mercedes and Circulor comes as part of the Startup Autobahn initiative, aimed at identifying next-generation automobiles. The companies will deploy blockchain to trace the emissions of climate-relevant gases and the amount of recycled materials along the complex supply chains of battery cell manufacturers.
The National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) is readying a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to be launched at some point during the current fiscal quarter.
Blockchain.com announced the launch of a full banking integration for Turkish Lira (TRY). It will be a part of a native payment gateway that allows users to deposit and withdraw Lira on its platform.
Quote of the day
The S&P 500 was up 29% in 2019, which marked one of the best years ever for the stock market.
Bitcoin is already up more than that just in the month of January.
Anthony Pompliano
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XRP struggles to recover as lingering Ripple lawsuit could reach Supreme Court, former SEC litigator says
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Bitcoin Layer 2 Merlin chain TVL climbs 20%, defying broad market correction
Merlin chain’s TVL added 20% this week, and crossed $800 million on Thursday. Bitcoin Layer 2 assets noted double-digit losses in the past week. Stacks, Elastos, SatoshiVM, BVM are hit by a correction as Bitcoin hovers around $61,000.
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Bitcoin: BTC’s rangebound movement leaves traders confused
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