BTC/USD

BTC continued ranging on Tuesday, not leaving the $6200-$6500 canal.

On Wednesday early morning European time, however, it touched $6790 after a sudden pump of more than 5% in just 45 minutes.

The biggest margin trading crypto exchange BitMEX experienced a temporary downtime (combination of DDoS and price action, which caused heavy load on data mirrors). Investors could not log and alter their trade orders, so short contracts were liquidated, pushing the price of Bitcoin up. It is possible that big market players took advantage of this situation and manipulated the price of BTC in times when shorting possibilities were reduced to minimum.

BitMEX experienced a second interruption in their services in the evening with no immediate impact on the BTC/USD price.

It is worth mentioning that BitMEX has approximately 40% market share and a reported daily trading volume of close to 3.7b. In comparison, the largest sport market crypto exchange by daily volume Binance, has around $1.12 billion.

Bitcoin came back down to $6200-$6500 corridor in the early evening hours when price saw a sudden drop from $6670 to $6400.

Bitcoin / Dollar pair currently stands at 6472 (as of 18:30 CET) with a 24h trading volume of about $6,5b as per Coingecko.

The biggest cryptocurrency is up 2.7% for the last 7 days and now has a market cap of about $110b, which represents a market dominance of 53.3%.

In the early morning hours of August 23rd the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) denied 9 Bitcoin ETFs in three published decisions. Applications put forward by Direxion, Pro Shares, and Granite Shares were rejected along largely the same lines of argument, which is of course manipulation in unregulated market.

The SEC judgment further mentioned that they had not received any evidence that could prove the significant size of the Bitcoin futures market, as was quoted in the ETF applications:

“Surveillance-sharing with a regulated market of significant size related to bitcoin is necessary to satisfy the statutory requirement that the Exchange’s rules be designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices.”

The decision did not have any major impact on BTC spot price mainly because it was somehow expected and already reflected in the market price following the Winklevoss ETF rejection in July.

So, what is next? If $6500 is crossed and defended for a few days (escaping the corridor) then we can expect run to $6800, 7k and probably $7200. Otherwise, we are up for another week of ranging and risk of further downfall to 6k and even $5853.



ETC/USD

ETH/USD passed through $280 on Monday and almost four days later still sits at $278, 2.5% down for the week and 38.8% down for the month

The price of the biggest altcoin did not go up with BTC yesterday, somehow confirming the coordinated pump on Bitcoin during BitMex outage.

We are close to the danger zone in the blue rectangle between $270 and $250 – a breach in that zone on the daily chart will mean a high probability of new lows, chasing September low of $250. A movement up will require ETH bulls to first hold $300 then $318 levels.

Future Blockchain

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