Cryptocurrency News Update: Bitcoin may dive under $9,000 as the bearish pressure is growing

Here's what you need to know on Friday

Markets:

BTC/USD failed to fold the ground above $9,200 and hit the low of $9,069 during early Asian hours on Friday. At the time of writing, the first digital coin is changing hands at $9,100, mostly unchanged since the beginning of Friday and down 1.4% on a day-to-day basis; The coin is moving within the short-term bullish trend amid low volatility.

At the time of writing, ETH/USD is changing hands at $226.70. The price touched $225.47 during early Asian hours, but managed to regain ground. ETH/USD has stayed mostly unchanged since the beginning of Friday and lost over 1.7% in the recent 24 hours. The coin is moving within a short-term bearish trend amid low volatility.

XRP/USD is hovering at $0.1750. The price has barely changed since the beginning of the week. Now it is moving within a short-term bearish trend amid low volatility.

Among the 100 most important cryptocurrencies, Kyber Network (KNC) $1.63 (+10.5%), ICON (ICX) $0.3308 (+9.5%), VeChain (VET) $0.0101 (+8.5%) are the most successful. The day's losers are The Midas Touch Gold(TMTG) $0.0453 (-12.55%), SwissBorg(CHSB) $0.1027 (-8.5%), Bitcoin Gold(BTG) $9.36 (-8.1%).

Chart of the day:

ETH/USD, 30-min chart

Markets

Bitcoin and other altcoins continue decoupling from the stock market as the major US stock indices gained ground on Thursday following positive job report, while Bitcoin stayed range-bound with bearish bias. While it is still too early to claim that BTC is fully uncorrelated with traditional markets, many experts see it as a positive signal for the industry. At the time of writing, the capitalization of all digital assets in circulation reached $269 billion, while an average daily trading volume is registered at $55 billion. Bitcoin's market dominance decreased to 64.5%.

Industry

The Ethereum wallet MetaMask has launched an update to its Web3 with the key focus on privacy features. MetaMask users can store ETH and other ERC-20 tokens and access them via browser extension. The team announced the release of the Version 8 that features new interface and enhanced privacy control.

In MetaMask V8, when you connect to a website, you have the option to select one or more accounts to associate with that website or create a new account just for that site. You decide what each site has access to.

The cryptocurrency processing service BitPay now supports Segregated Witness protocol (SegWit) for bitcoin transactions. Notably, three years ago the company opposed the update and supported the alternative solutions SegWit2x, which implied the hard fork of the network with the increase of the block size to 2Mb. Currently, the SegWit is an optional feature, though it will become default for all Bitcoin users later this year.

Support for SegWit is currently an optional feature for Bitcoin wallets in the BitPay App. Users must create a new bitcoin wallet to take advantage of Segwit. Later this year, as part of a phased rollout plan, support for SegWit will be a default for all Bitcoin wallets. In addition later this year, SegWit will be implemented for invoice payments.

Regulation

The Chinese authorities detained an over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency trader on money-laundering accusations. Zhao Dong is a prominent Chinese cryptocurrency trader and the co-founder of crypto lending platform RenrenBit. He is also a large investor on Bitfinex and Binance. The community believes that the actions of the Chinese law enforcement agencies go in line with the recent crackdown against the over-the-counter trading in China.