Cryptocurrency Market News: Bitcoin bulls lick wounds after the weekend sell-off

Here's what you need to know on Monday

Markets:

BTC/USD is changing hands at $8,700, having retreated from the intraday high of $8,812. The coin has stayed mostly unchanged both on a day-to-day basis and since the beginning of Monday after a sharp collapse on Sunday. Now Bitcoin is trading within the strong short-term bearish bias amid high volatility.

At the time of writing, ETH/USD is changing hands at $188.25. The price tested a high of $191.25 during early Asian hours but reversed to the downside. The second-largest coin has barely changed in the recent 24 hours. Now ETH is moving within a short-term bearish trend. The volatility is shrinking.

XRP/USD is hovering at $0.1960 after a failed attempt to return to the area above $0.2000 during early Asian hours. XRP’s recovery is still blocked by this psychological barrier. A sustainable move above this area is needed for the upside to gain traction. XRP/USD is trading within a bearish trend amid low volatility.

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, Status (SNT) $0.0333 (+27%), Crypterium (CRPT) $0.5465 (+22.5%), and Ripio Credit Network (RCN) $0.0910 (+16.3%)

 The day's losers are, Hyperion (HYN) $0.4252 (-13.9%), 0x (ZRX) $0.3871 (-9.3%), Synthetix Network Token (SNX) $0.8080 (-3.2%).

Chart of the day:
BTC/USD, 30-min chart

Market

While the halving is less than one day away, an average Bitcoin transaction fee reached $3.19 on May 8, which is over 300% higher from $0.62 registered on April 26, according to the statistical data, provided by Bitinfocharts. The last time BTC transaction surpassed $3.00 in July 2019. The transaction fee tends to grow before halving, as many traders turn bullish and start paying more to get their transactions processed faster. Also, the price increase also often leads to higher fees. Thus, in December 2019, when BTC hit the all-time high at approximately $20,000, people paid $55 per transaction.

Bitcoin’s Sunday flash-crash that saw a price collapse from $9,450 to $8,100 in a matter of minutes, allegedly was caused by crypto whales positioning and intensified by cascading longs liquidations on BitMEX. The data, provided by the market data aggregator, Cryptometer, that 98% of positions liquidated on BitMEX were longs. Their total amount reached $295 million. Experts noted that traders with margin bets on BTC growth above $10,000 were hit the hardest.  

Industry

Binance reported that over 13,000,000 USDT had been used from BinanceFutures Insurance Fund to protect users from auto-deleveraging. 

We will inject an additional 30,000,000 $USDT into the insurance fund, on top of the 7,500,000 USDT from April 30th, to both support, and continue to protect our users.

Notably, some traders accused Binance Futures of unfair shots liquidation amid massif Bitcoin sell-off.

Deleverage? Binance closes my short after I make 7 times my investment. What's going on? Where is my short? The BTC dropped to $8,000. Who pays the difference?

However, the closure of the shorts was caused by auto-deleveraging, where highly leveraged trades are likely to have their trades sized down first. 

Litecoin Foundation performed a migration to BitGo’s cryptocurrency wallet as it ensures  “greater convenience and nearly the same level of security,” according to the recent announcement published on Litecoin’s website. The old addresses will be available for a month to allow a smooth transition from the multi-sig Electrum-LTC wallet to BitGo’s multi-sig wallet. 

To avoid any potential donation misplacements, we request all donors to stop using our old Litecoin addresses. Instead, please use the information on our Support page to continue supporting us. We will keep the old addresses on our Finance page for one month for the public to track the funds but will remove them thereafter to avoid any misusage of these old addresses.

Regulation

The Ministry of Finance of Vietnam will set up a research group to study cryptocurrency regulation in the country, according to the local media outlets. The group headed by the Vice-Chairman of the State Securities Commission Pham Hong Son will be responsible for developing regulations for digital assets.