Crypto Today: Bitcoin creeps towards $6,500 as cryptocurrency market switches to recovery mode

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Markets:

BTC/USD is changing hands at $6,420 after a short-lived spike above $6,500. The coin has gained over 5% since this time on Monday and stayed mostly unchanged since the beginning of the day. BTC is currently moving within a short-term bearish trend amid shrinking volatility. 

At the time of writing, ETH/USD is changing hands at $131.70, with gains of nearly 3% on a day-to-day basis. The second-largest coin hit the Asian high at $134.35. Now ETH/USD is moving in a short-term bullish trend amid high volatility.

XRP/USD settled above $0.1700, but the upside momentum faded away. The coin has been moving in a tight range during early Asian hours amid expanding volatility. The short-term trend is currently bearish. 

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies Orbs (ORBIS) $0.0142 (+60.3%), Energi (NRG) $2.02 (+18.3%), Quant (QNT) $3.96 (+16.6%) are in the green zone. The day's losers are Status (SNT) $0.0180 (-3.4%), Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) $0.0309 (-1.9%),Bytom (ELF) $0.0570 (-1.5%).

Chart of the day:

BTC/USD, 30-min chart

Market

A popular cryptocurrency trader Tone Vays believes that Bitcoin might have bottomed out at $3,700 and now the coin will start climbing ahead of the halving. Notably, earlier this year Vays expected that BTC would drop to $2,800 before the growth resumed. However, recovery from $3,700 made him change his expectations. He believes that technical issues on BitMEX virtually saved BTC from a deeper decline, otherwise the sell-off would have been stronger.

 Head of Product at Messari, Qiao Wang, says that crypto hedge funds are clueless about the current situation on the market and have no idea how to manage risks.  According to Wang, many cryptocurrency hedge funds went buying Bitcoin (BTC) as the price dropped; however, this strategy is flawed as it is not based on fundamental analysis of current macro trends.

Hearing that a lot of crypto hedge funds are *aggressively* long Bitcoin. I think they are completely out of touch with what’s happening in the macro environment and clueless about risk management.

Industry

The IT branch of Japanese corporation Hitachi partnered with the Ethereum-based startup ConsenSys. According to the press-release, Hitachi Solutions and ConsenSys will work together to provide comprehensive services and solutions for decentralized applications and enable trustless and secure transactions with PegaSys Plus.

As companies accelerate their digital transformations, blockchain is gaining attention as a means of transforming business models in various fields such as financial services, healthcare, supply chain and logistics and retail. 

PegaSys Plus is an Ethereum blockchain client that supports private chains and provides developers with a set of tools. It is based on an open code Ethereum client Hyperledger Besu. It offers functionality that allows launching blockchain in different industries like financial services, health care, supply chains, logistics and retail trade.

Cardano community is outraged by several staking pools creating a cartel on the Shelley Incentivized Testnet. Other members accuse the alliance of promoting centralization. According to the press release, the key aim of the alliance is to make staking more efficient.

The main intention of this agreement is to test for and try to achieve an even better networking infrastructure and propagation of blocks than with each pool operator running on his own during the ITN. It involves connecting the pools and relay nodes as preferred meaning that these nodes will form a huge cluster located all over the world that will be constantly inter-connected and exchanging data.

However, the community believes that it goes against decentralization principles. Reddit users mentioned that the 31 pools in ISPPA currently stake under 10% of the total amount of ADA currently staked in the Shelley Incentivized Testnet.

A cryptocurrency lending and borrowing platform, Celsius Network, announced a partnership with Chainlink. The partnership will allow to further decentralize Celsius’ offerings, strengthen its security and reliability. The platform will calculate interest payments based on  Chainlink’s Price Reference Data, which will make the process more decentralized, transparent and secure. Also, Chainlink will introduce crypto rewards to customers through Celsius’ services. Commenting on the partnership, Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius Network, commented: 

Integrating Chainlink’s industry-leading decentralized oracle technology is the key step in the continued decentralization of Celsius. Partnering with Chainlink helps solidify our mission to bring revolutionary financial services to millions around the world.
 

Quote of the day:

Unpopular opinion: the pre halving Bitcoin crash will make the post halving bull market even more ridiculous (more naysayers, more bears, more FOMO)

Alistair Milne, investor and enterpreneur