Crypto Today: Bitcoin smashes below $7000

Here's what you need to know on Thursday 

Markets: 

• BTC/USD is currently trading at $6,982 (-3.60%) in the afternoon in U.S. hours, price action is consolidating underneath the $7500 barrier. 
• ETH/USD is currently trading at $127.68 (-3.30%), upside remains capped by $140 resistance. 
• XRP/USD is currently trading at $0.1887 (-2.65%), price action is vulnerable underneath $0.2000. 
• Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, the best of the day are BST $1.59 (+297%), NEXO $0.400975 (+6.80%) and MANA $0.104585 (+4.50%) and The day's losers are EKT $0.039331 (-19.90%), RLC $0.386423 (-10.60%) and SLV $0.362140 (-10.00%).

Chart of the day:

• BTC/USD 60-minute chart (price action smashes out of bearish pennant structure)

Market:

• Bitcoin (BTC) has already hit a new record in 2020 as the cryptocurrency’s network hash rate once again topped previous all-time highs. 
• According to a recent report, Sichuan, China, authorities in China, are apparently pressuring the miners to scale down their operations in lieu of the dry season until April. Sichuan has a large amount of miners in the region due to the low cost electricity. Moreover, the higher altitude also provides ambient cooling which further reduces the cost.

Regulation:

• South Korea has confirmed that income tax cannot be levied on individual investors’ profits from crypto transactions under the current tax law. The government, however, is reviewing international trends and the approaches of major countries to crypto taxation in an effort to amend the existing Korean tax law to include cryptocurrency.

Industry:

• The US Coast Guard has issued a warning as one federal maritime facility was breached by a ransomware attack. The facility was attacked by Ryuk ransomware and its primary operations were shut down for over 30 hours.
• Major Ethereum browser extension and wallet service Metamask, announced that Google has now reversed its ban on the browser add-on. 
• The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has encouraged the Philippines’ central bank to explore the possibility of starting to collect data on cross-border flows of crypto assets. The report noted: “The Philippines may become an important market for crypto-assets, as the BSP recently authorized operations for three more virtual currency exchanges (VCE), bringing the total number of approved VCE to 10.” 

Quote of the day:

Bitcoin did $673 billion in adjusted on-chain transaction volume in 2019, according to @coinmetrics.

$673,000,000,000 in a single year.

That is 10x what Venmo did in 2018.

 It is nearly impossible to deny Bitcoin's popularity globally.

Anthony Pompliano