Market Analysis Report

MVIS-CryptoCompare Index

The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index closed at 1,938.21 yesterday at 5 pm (GMT) and has since dropped 0.95%.

See the live index here

Market Update

At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is sitting at $3,561 representing a loss of 4.7% in the last 24 hours. More than $180M worth of BTC were exchanged in the BTC/USD market representing an 18.3% share of the global daily volume. The BTC/JPY pair represents a 9% share.

The Ethereum price has dropped 6.36% over the past 24 hours and is currently sitting at $116, with over $80M worth of Ether exchanged in the past 24 hours on the ETH/USD pair which has a 10.4% market share of the daily trading volume.

See live charts here and here

Executives of Korean Exchange Sentenced to Jail for Faking Volumes

Two executives of the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Komid, were sentenced to jail on Thursday “for their roles in orchestrating fraudulent trading volume reports on their platform,” The News Asia reported. One of the executives is the CEO of the exchange, Choi Hyunsuk, who received a three-year prison sentence while the other executive received a two-year jail sentence.

According to the court, Choi created more than five fake accounts in January last year and inflated trading volumes in both cryptocurrencies and Korean won on his exchange. The two were sentenced to prison “for fraud, embezzlement, and misconduct,” The News Asia noted, elaborating:

"The charges from prosecutors outlined a scheme wherein the two defendants fabricated 5 million transactions on their platform to deceive investors into thinking that the volume was natural. This led to the two earning about $45mil. There is also a suspicion that they utilized a ‘bot’ to automatically create large orders, which attracted new users."

Read more here

How US Government Shutdown Affects Bitcoin ETF Approval

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is due to make a decision on the Vaneck Solidx Bitcoin ETF next month, and the deadline cannot be extended further. However, since the U.S. government is currently shut down, a securities lawyer named Jake Chervinsky explained what is likely to happen to the ETF, including the likelihood of an automatic approval. Chervinsky explained in a series of tweets on Friday how the current U.S. government shutdown could affect the upcoming decision on the Vaneck Solidx bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).

The commission has designated a date by which it shall either approve or disapprove the proposed rule change filed by Cboe BZX Exchange to list and trade shares of Vaneck Solidx Bitcoin Trust. The “final deadline to approve or deny the ETF is February 27. That’s 240 days after the ETF proposal was first published in the Federal Register,” Chervinsky tweeted, emphasizing:

"The SEC doesn’t have the power to extend the 240-day deadline. The statute absolutely prohibits any further delays … By law, that means if the SEC fails to make a decision by the February 27 deadline, the ETF will be automatically approved."

Read more here

Ethereum Devs Propose Activating Constantinople in Late February

Ethereum's Constantinople activation has been set for block number 7,280,000, scheduled to hit on February 27th, according to a tweet by Péter Szilágyi.

"Seems we're going with block 7.28M for the #Ethereum Constantinople refork scheduled for the 27th of February! Will be a single fork on mainnet and a post-Constantinople-fixup fork on the testnets to get them back in line feature wise with the main network."

Read more here

Buy Bitcoin With Luno

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Read more here