Trading of the cryptocurrency will be available on the main platform on August 17.

On Thursday, August 16, the average market price of Ethereum Classic rose to $14. The cryptocurrency has risen by 16% within a day. Bitcoin exchange rate has not really changed during this time. The coin fell by 0.3%. It is now traded at $6363.

The price of Ethereum Classic rose after the major American exchange Coinbase had announced the token support on its main platform. Users will be able to trade the cryptocurrency from August 17, 5:00 AM Moscow time.

Due to the sharp increase in the rate, altcoin has risen to 11th place in the list of the largest in terms of capitalization digital money. In a short period of time, the trading volume of the ether fork increased by 54% to $ 400 million.

Previously, the opportunity to work with Ethereum Classic was given to clients of Coinbase Pro. This was the first step in the gradual addition of cryptocurrency to all services of this trading platform.

Facebook’s recent talks with a crypto-project Stellar about its blockchain activities hint that the social media giant might take on Wall Street.

It is reported that Facebook is negotiating with several crypto-projects in the framework of the study of ways to use blockchain technology.

In recent months, the Facebook’s blockchain-group, led by a former head of PayPal David Marcus, has met with the company that develops payment technologies with an open source (Stellar).

Although the talks took place at an early stage, and there is no indication that they will lead to a partnership, but they can throw light on Facebook’s financial ambitions.

For example, if Facebook wants to compete with the payment systems of large banks, it can use blockchain technology, said a person familiar with the social network’s negotiations with Stellar.
The speed of the blockchain network in comparison with traditional financial systems is one of the main advantages of the popular technology.

JPMorgan’s research note says that on Ripple network it takes four seconds to process a transaction against 3-5 days in traditional banking systems.

Facebook already seems to be taking other steps to enter the banking market, considering a possibility of showing users their bank account balances or fraud alerts.

Stellar said that it would make sense for Facebook to register payment transactions on a distributed ledger such as Stellar.

Then other merchants could connect to this ledger based on Stellar. Such platform can compete with the Swift payment network, which connects banks and allows money transfers.

The economic situation in Japan is not the most stable: the national Bank with great difficulty keeps inflation at 2%, but it is noted that the infusion of funds and the new monetary policy does not really help. Many considers the replacement of cash with national cryptocurrency to be a solution for this problem.

Now the new head of the Japanese Bank Haruhiko Kuroda is on the path of Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland, where the policy of negative interest rates has been successfully applied. However, the head of the Bank has great doubts about its effectiveness in Japan, since no noticeable advantages have been noticed so far.

Andy Mukherjee writes in Bloomberg that the national cryptocurrency can have a positive impact on the Japanese economy. According to him, the side effects of negative interest rates have led to an excessive mass of banknotes, which has made it unprofitable to keep money in banks. The Japanese has begun to actively switch to cash – the share of non-cash payments fell to 20%.

Mukherjee believes that to pull the monetary policy of the Bank of Japan out of a pit, it is necessary to introduce cryptocurrencies into the economy of the country.

On Wednesday, August 15, we saw fluctuating stock market and the grow during the first half of the day but later in the day sellers brought it back down.

It is noteworthy that the majority of the sales are short Bitcoin position. According to bitfinex, short positions are bidding to price falls and recently they have been growing.

Similar situation happened in April when closing of short positions cause the Bitcoin grow from $7000 to $8000 within a couple of hours.

Another news that should be noted is Bitcoin Tracker One trading on the American exchanges. ETN is an exchange-traded note. ETNs have a maturity date and are backed only by the credit of the issuer. ETNs are designed to provide investors access to the returns of various market benchmarks. For an investor it has no difference and works with Bitcoin flawlessly. Since 2015, this Bitcoin ETF alternative has been trading on Nasdaq Stockholm in euros and in crowns. Now you can purchase it on the American for dollars. Regulated institutional investors will be able to purchase it, the other investors can add Bitcoin indirectly to their stock portfolio.

The coin price went all the way down to $6000 and right after that one of the exchange wallets received $108 million.

Several days ago, on August 14, users noticed interesting Bitcoin network activity. Only hours before Bitcoin made a recovery from its dip below $6,000, an enormous number of coins flew from 17 wallets to one that is associated with BitMEX, Cryptovest reports.

At first a transaction involving 10 BTC went to a BitMEX-associated wallet. It didn’t seem like much, but less than half an hour later, another 16 wallets sent 17,990 BTC, bringing the suspected BitMEX wallet’s balance to a grand total of just a hair over 18,000 coins. The dollar value of these coins sits right now at around $114 million. Some users speculating that this was, in fact, a whale transferring a large amount of money to the exchange or that this is an attempt at market manipulation on BitMEX’s part.

Other users noted that it is kind of typical for exchanges to put large amounts of coins into cold storage wallets, locking them down for a worst-case-scenario situation. Bithumb platform has done it before. Aside from the possibility that the exchange is consolidating coins to a cold storage wallet, it could also be providing liquidity for its trading platform.

Former PayPal CEO Bill Harris believes that Bitcoin will continue to fall until it reaches zero.

The information that bitcoin is instant, free, scalable, efficient, secure, globally accepted and useful is not true, says Bill Harris, former PayPal CEO. Harris said in his interview to CNBC on Tuesday that bitcoin’s value will continue to dwindle until it gets ?eventually a whole lot closer to zero.?

He notes that the world already has digital currencies that are more stable, more widely accepted and have intrinsic value. it’s called the dollar or the yen. Harris’ primary concerns about bitcoin include its slow transaction time, scaling challenges and volatility, which ?alone makes it useless as a payment mechanism and ridiculous as a store of value?.

In April, PayPal founder called Bitcoin ?colossal pump-and-dump scheme, the likes of which the world has never seen.? The last point Harris made in this section is that bitcoin only has value if people think other people will buy it at a higher price.

The company plans to promote solutions for international payment system.

Ripple targets the Chinese market with its new blockchain-based technology for cross-border payments, said Jeremy Light, the vice president of the European Union strategic accounts at Ripple, in his interview to CNBC. Light also notes that China is definitely a country in which Ripple is interested.

It was announced earlier that Ripple has already struck a deal with LianLian International, a Hong Kong-based financial firm. However, tit is still not clear whether the technology is being used right now or not yet. All ICO and cryptocurrencies are banned in the country that’s why the American company will try to work its way through the international payment system.

Money Tap, San-Francisco based startup, was launched by Ripple in Japan in a partnership with 61 domestic lenders. Unfortunately, the company has only one partner in China.

The CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini Tyler Winklevoss is convinced that institutional investors from Wall Street will need some time to enter the cryptocurrency market.

The main reason for the delay in the entry of institutional investors to the cryptocurrency market, analysts call a fuzzy attitude of regulators towards the industry. According to a widely held opinion, once bitcoin-ETF will be approved by the US securities and exchange Commission (SEC), the cryptocurrency market will be open to institutional investors.

Tyler Winklevoss said that at that moment, Gemini was focused on expanding the retail business. Over the past six months, the staff of the exchange doubled and will be further increased by the end of the year. Gemini also plans to add new cryptocurrencies to its trading platform.

American investors, tired of waiting for the launch of the regulated bitcoin-ETF at home, now have access to another no less significant instrument – exchange-traded notes (ETN) on bitcoin on Nasdaq Stockholm (NASDAQ OMX Nordic), the value of which is displayed in the U.S. dollar.

The new product is provided by XBT Provider and is traded under the CXBTF ticker as a part of Bitcoin Tracker One, which was launched back in May 2015, but has only been displayed in euros and Swedish krona so far.
Thus, the US residents with an investment account can now access bitcoin, which they are still vainly waiting for via ETF in their own country. Exchange notes are essentially depositary receipts and operate on roughly the same principle as ETF.

As explained on the website of XBT Provider, bitcoins are purchased for the money received through the sale of certificates. This ensures that certificates are hedged, and that they are structured to track bitcoin exchange rate. The certificates are guaranteed by Global Advisors (Jersey) Limited, which includes CoinShares and XBT Provider.

Thus, XBT Provider buys and stores bitcoins for its customers through a network of broker-dealers, and the acquisition of ETN as a result becomes an indirect way of buying them.

Recall, in June 2017, XBT Provider has announced a partnership with Swiss company Xapo, which now provides a “cold storage” of exchange notes on bitcoin, traded on Nasdaq Stockholm.

In October of the same year, ETN appeared on Nasdaq Stockholm, tracking the price of the second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes that despite the steady growth in the use of bitcoin, it will take a long time before it is involved in everyday payments.

According to him, only 10% of cryptocurrencies are now used in real life. However, the head of Coinbase sees positive signs for digital assets.

He also noted that cryptocurrencies traditionally go through bubble and correction periods.

He also noted that in the future there will be obstacles to the spread of bitcoin in some countries.

Earlier in August, representatives of Starbucks denied the information that the company had planned to introduce the possibility of paying in bitcoins.

Cryptocurrency exchange traded funds (ETF) can provoke a wave of market manipulation and negatively affect exchange rates of digital currencies. This opinion was expressed by a well-known bitcoin-evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos.

According to him, he understands the desire of many community members to see the launch of bitcoin-ETF, as in the past, many other exchange products that had received such a tool, grew rapidly in price.

He also believes that the actions of institutional investors in the ETF market will affect the exchange rates of cryptocurrencies, since this is a market with global liquidity.

He drew attention to the fact that investors in the ETF did not have the same rights and obligations as the holders of the cryptocurrency.

Recall, earlier a famous cryptographer and pioneer in the field of smart contracts Nick Szabo criticized cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds.

Not the first and not the last collapse in the value of major cryptocurrencies, observed recently, has not changed the mood among developers and suppliers of custom ASICs and devices for cryptocurrency mining. As reported by the Internet resource DigiTimes, TSMC and its partners in the development of solutions see an increase in the volume of applications for the production of ASICs. Both the main Chinese developers (Bitmain, Canaan Creative and Ebang Communication) and the Japanese expert in this matter (GMO) are quite active.

Bitmain, Canaan Creative and Ebang Communication together hold about 90% of the market specialized platforms for bitcoin mining. All of them have prepared new generations of even more productive ASICs, the release of which TSMC will soon be engaged in. Due to new products, each of these companies expects to strengthen its own market position. At the same time, they all applied for IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The money from shares will be used to develop even more productive solutions.

It is interesting to note that until recently, Chinese ASIC developers were served at the Chinese TSMC plant, which mastered the production of 16-nm chips. At the moment, they all received an invitation to the club of privileged customers. Simply put, Chinese developers got the opportunity to produce custom ASICs for bitcoin mining on lines with a 7-nm technological process. Obviously, this will increase the energy efficiency of solutions and reduce the cost of cryptocurrency mining.

Canaan Creative gets customized ASIC Avalon A9 on 7-nm technological process. The Japanese GMO is arming 7-nm ASIC B2 miners, which will enter the international market in October. The source does not specify which ASICs using the 7-nm technological process are produced by Bitmain. But it shares the news that Canaan Creative has prepared the first TV in the industry which can produce cryptocurrency. The performance of “Bitcoin Mining Television” with AvalonMiner machine inside is 2.8 TH/s with 100 W/t efficiency.

Binance Bitcoin exchange Liechtenstein LCX has announced the launch of new trading platform — Binance LCX within the jurisdiction of Liechtenstein.

Platform participants can trade cryptocurrencies with the Euros (EUR) and Swiss franc (CHF), stated in the press release.

Reportedly, Binance is responsible for technical support while Binance LCX handles communication with the users and KYC/AML procedures.

It’s noteworthy, this spring Bank Frick became the first Liechtenstein financial institution offering its clients direct investments in five leading cryptocurrencies. The bank also provides Bitcoin ?cold? storing services.

Blockchain startup Ripple has announced its partnership with three crypto exchanges: the American Bittrex, the Mexican Coins.Ph, both intend to use Ripple for cross-border payments xRapid.

XRapid allows various companies to convert fiat currencies into the XRP tokens, transfer them internationally and then convert it back to fiat.

According to Cory Johnson, Ripple chief market strategist, these exchanges were chosen mainly because of the amount of the XRP tokens in its accounts which means the users won’t have a problem with liquidity.

It’s worth noting that pilot projects results clearly state that financial organizations saved 40%-70% more compared to the expenses they had using traditional service providers. In addition, transaction time is only 2 minutes while international money bank transfer takes 2-3 days.

Developers of a cryptocurrency, oriented towards increased privacy, ZCash presented the first version of node software compatible with an upcoming update Sapling.

The ZCash team urged node holders to install the update as soon as possible, as the Sapling upgrade will be activated on block 419200 in the near future.

Presumably, this block should be got on October 28.

Earlier, hard fork Overwinter was conducted in the main network of ZCash.