Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to suspend XRP trading - South China Morning Post

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• Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to suspend XRP trading - South China Morning Post
• Chart points to bitcoin ‘peaking out’ in early 2021, trader says - CNBC
• Coinbase halts trading of XRP following SEC suit against Ripple - The Verge
• Petition Launched To Extend Comment Period On Cryptocurrency/Bitcoin Self-Custody Regulations - Forbes
• Bitcoin-mining stocks surge after the cryptocurrency passes $28000 for the first time - Business Insider

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to suspend XRP trading - South China Morning Post Posted: 28 Dec 2020 06:36 PM PST [unable to retrieve full-text content]Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase to suspend XRP trading  South China Morning Post

Chart points to bitcoin ‘peaking out’ in early 2021, trader says - CNBC Posted: 28 Dec 2020 03:40 PM PST Bitcoin could be headed for a breather in the new year. The red-hot cryptocurrency continued its longest monthly win streak in more than a year on Monday after grazing a new all-time above the $28,000 mark on Sunday. Based on the charts, that run might be put on pause come 2021, Mark Newton, founder and president of Newton Advisors, told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Monday. "It is still quite bullish on an intermediate-term basis given that it just broke out to new all-time highs," Newton said. "I think we have a ways to go. Near term, my cycle composite shows us peaking out in early January." Bitcoin's weekly chart and relative strength index reflect rising interest in the world's largest digital currency, mostly from institutional investors, Newton said. Google searches for bitcoin are up some 750% year over year, but still "nowhere near" their highs from 2017, the chart analyst said. "[With] SPACs right now, you can make money at 10, 15, 20% a day," he said. "I just don't think that investors have quite the appetite for crypto while the institutions are certainly very much heading in that direction." Newton's other chart — which uses three different bitcoin cycles, the main one being 273 days, to track changes in the cryptocurrency's path — hints at an upcoming turn in bitcoin's direction. "All those years where we had a stellar Q4 we reversed course in trend back in late December, early January, and actually went lower," he said. "So, I think there will be some opportunity [for] investors to be able to buy dips in crypto and bitcoin particularly." Newton, who is long bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and several other digital currencies, said he would look to sell out of his positions "in the next one or two weeks." "I think there will be some opportunity to buy dips into Q1 of next year," he said. Boris Schlossberg, managing director of FX strategy at BK Asset Management, said the institutional interest in bitcoin "bodes well for the asset." "Can it go to $50,000? Absolutely," he said in the same "Trading Nation" interview, cautioning that "if you are looking to trade or invest this asset, you have to have the mentality that it's going to have a huge amount of volatility." "As to the ultimate valuation, it's impossible to say, but one interesting measure: If you look at the tulip mania, at the peak of tulip mania, one tulip was worth basically about one house," Schlossberg said. "If you do use that kind of valuation, then it still has a long way to go because its ultimate terminal valuation could be $150,000, $200,000 before the whole move kind of exhausts itself. So, as many people have said, there's still quite a lot of potential, but there's certainly going to be massive volatility while we get there." Disclosure: Newton is long bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and several other cryptocurrencies along with closed-end trusts for bitcoin cash and ethereum. Disclaimer

Coinbase halts trading of XRP following SEC suit against Ripple - The Verge Posted: 28 Dec 2020 05:44 PM PST Coinbase announced today that it is halting all trades of XRP on its cryptocurrency exchange, according to an official blog post (via Coindesk). Certain kind of trades became restricted today, and the full suspension will go into place January 19th, 2021 at 10:00AM PT. Coinbase is the largest cryptocurrency exchange, and suspending a currency like XRP naturally casts doubt on the currency's future, even before the SEC lawsuit over it is settled. Coinbase says it made the decision to suspend XRP "in light" of the suit the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed against XRP's original creator, Ripple. With the suspension in place, people will no longer be able to trade XRP on Coinbase, though they will still be able to deposit and withdraw from their XRP wallets. In the suit that started it all, the SEC's main concern is what an XRP actually is. The SEC claims XRP is a security and should be treated as such. That means Ripple's former CEO and current CEO should have been responsible for disclosing a variety of additional information necessary to access the risks of XRP before anyone invested. Ripple, of course, believes the opposite. In Ripple's opinion, XRP is a currency, and so it doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC. For more on why it matters what XRP is called, check out my colleague Liz Lopatto's piece. Coinbase is the highest profile exchange to suspend XRP, but other exchanges like Bitstamp and OK Coin have made similar decisions following the SEC's legal action. With the simple announcement of a lawsuit, the SEC has already impacted the short-term future of XRP.

Petition Launched To Extend Comment Period On Cryptocurrency/Bitcoin Self-Custody Regulations - Forbes Posted: 28 Dec 2020 11:36 AM PST KRAKOW, POLAND - 2018/11/13: In this photo illustration, the Bitcoin wallet app is seen displayed ... [+] on an Android mobile phone. (Photo Illustration by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) LightRocket via Getty Images One essential trait of cryptocurrencies that make them fundamentally different from the conventional banking system is the ability for users to have custody over their own crypto-assets. There is no ability to "freeze" funds or censor transfer of them if you have control of your own private key. There is no third party that can come in and seize your funds or stop you from using them in any way you see fit. Put shortly: your keys, your funds. In effect, when you own bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, you control your own part in a distributed ledger rather than being a manipulable data point in the centralized ledger of a bank. You express the degree of privacy you want and the level of security you need to conduct transactions. You can choose to have a trusted third party custody your assets for you (and in so doing, be able to identify who you are in exchange for easy access to your funds) or you can choose to have your cryptocurrencies in your own wallet, run on open source code that seek neither to identify you or to sell you anything. Yet recent proposed regulations in the United States may lead to this critical trait, the ability to choose different transactions and ways of dealing with cryptocurrencies and their wallet holders, to be under threat. FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), a portion of the Treasury Department which is responsible for enforcing transparency requirements around financial flows and the Bank Secrecy Act, is looking to impose regulations that force regulated entities to keep records on identity when they're looking to transact in cryptocurrencies — specifically a $3,000 threshold for when there is a transaction with an "unhosted" wallet — a wallet of somebody who hasn't gone through formal KYC/AML and which isn't hosted on an exchange or bank, and which is oftentimes in self-custody. Cryptocurrency exchanges and banks that want to deal in cryptocurrency will have to create the technical capability to verify the identity of those behind certain wallets — a difficult task in a realm of financial privacy where preventing wallet reuse might among other things, stop the spread of public keys and strengthen the chain against theoretical future attacks such as large quantum computers being able to double-spend. There are also possible significant implications when it comes to certain decentralized exchanges. MORE FOR YOU Tying together people's identities when they express a higher desire for privacy (as is the case with end-to-end encryption) ends up amounting to a sort of warrentless surveillance that runs directly counter to the tenets of financial liberty and privacy of cryptocurrencies. In effect, if the proposed rule is implemented fully, this may have the effect of significantly burdening the self-custody of cryptocurrencies as well as banks that want to get into cryptocurrency or cryptocurrency exchanges. The petition to extend the comment period on this proposed rule, had an original goal of 2500 signatures, but is now above that and seeking 5,000 signatures as of the time of publishing. It is being started by the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a cryptoassets trade association with members including leading cryptocurrency exchanges and certain banks. Part of the urgency stems from the shortness of the comment period. Usually, comment periods can extend up to 90 days, with a norm of 30 days, and a period that can stretch up to 60 days when there is a significant issue at hand. FinCEN has proposed a 15-day comment period, and stacked many of those days during the holidays — making it very difficult to get any significant replies. An extension of the comment period would allow organization such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Coin Center to conduct deeper diligence beyond their initial thoughts, and provide well-thought out comments as to how this rule may create unintended effects that significantly damper cryptocurrencies and their ability to create consensual, financial flows. FinCEN claimed the shortness of the proposed comment rule was because of a number of reasons, from the foreign affairs implications of the rule, to its previous engagement with cryptocurrency industry executives — yet it's not so clear, beyond the transition to a new Administration, why there is such urgency in the first place. The proposed rule from FinCEN aims to be one of the Trump Administration's final actions on cryptocurrencies. The Trump Administration has not been very favorable to cryptocurrencies in many instances, from tax regulations/rulings, to President Trump tweeting about he was not a "fan of bitcoin". Extending the comment period to between thirty to ninety days would potentially place the rule-making process in the hands of the new Administration — which while inclined to more banking regulations and conventional financial constraints, may not have the exact same aggressive view towards cryptocurrencies as the current administration or may not have the same rules. While banks are given sometimes years to comment and consider similar issues, this particular issue is being rushed through in order to give the current administration its own space to create rules that may never be reversed in the short time before it no longer has any power — and which may have effect for years or perhaps even decades, constraining innovation that is yet to come and freedom that is already here. The proposed FinCEN rule is a potential bridge to the dystopian society previewed in Hong Kong and Nigeria: places where cash in the former or bitcoin in the latter are the only options for peoples who are subjected to a ruling political class in control with access to monitor and censor whichever financial flows they see fit. It deserves more consideration than a last-ditch attempt to make rules from an outgoing Administration.

Bitcoin-mining stocks surge after the cryptocurrency passes $28000 for the first time - Business Insider Posted: 28 Dec 2020 01:21 PM PST A small toy figure and representations of the virtual currency Bitcoin stand on a motherboard in this picture illustration Reuters The bitcoin-mining companies Riot Blockchain and Marathon Patent Group soared on Monday morning as investors anticipate bitcoin's rally will continue into 2021. Both mining companies recently announced purchases of more bitcoin-mining equipment. On Monday, Marathon said it would purchase 70,000 miners for $170 million from Bitmain. Bitcoin hit a record high on Sunday, jumping past $28,000 for the first time. View Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Shares of the bitcoin-mining companies Riot Blockchain and Marathon Patent Group soared on Monday morning following bitcoin's rally over the holiday weekend. Bitcoin briefly jumped past $28,000 on Sunday, one day after it passed $27,000 for the first time. The cryptocurrency traded at about $27,240 on Monday. As bitcoin's price increases, bitcoin-mining devices become more difficult and expensive to procure. In recent days, bitcoin-mining companies have announced major purchases of new equipment. Riot gained as much as 18% shortly after the opening bell on Monday: Shares jumped to as high as $15.49 after closing at $13.12 on Christmas Eve. Marathon jumped as much as 28%, to $14. Marathon on Monday announced it would purchase 70,000 mining rigs called Antminers from Bitmain for $170 million. Marathon said that once the transaction is complete, it will have a fleet of over 103,000 miners. Read more: Wall Street's biggest firms are warning that these 8 things could crash the stock market's party in 2021 Last week, Riot said it would purchase 15,000 miners, according to The Crypto Report. Riot said the addition would increase the cost efficiency of bitcoin mining and keep it competitive as mining hardware becomes scarcer. Shares of the microgrid software company CleanSpark gained as much as 16% on Monday as well. Last week, CleanSpark announced that it would add 1,000 bitcoin miners to its fleet.

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