Review of the crypto-space latest news 29.12.2020

Most striking events, records and statements of the past week filled the crypto industry with new milestones. Each day brought something new, in some cases changing the usual course of things.

Past week news digest

An eventful week has passed for Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry.

So, let’s take a look at the brightest news of the past week.

• BTC sets New Record of $28,000

Bitcoin (BTC) reached a new historical high, exceeding $ 28,000, on Sunday, December 27. The total capitalization exceeds half a trillion dollars.

11th world capitalization

Bitcoin hit a new high again, briefly surpassing the $ 28,000 mark. From a trading point of view, a new high was recorded at $ 28,415, which is almost 14% higher in the last 24 hours.

The latest move represents an increase in the bitcoin price of almost $ 5,000 in two days and a 25% increase over the past week.

At its peak, the total capitalization of Bitcoin reached $ 528 billion, which is 68 billion more than Visa. The most famous cryptocurrency also exceeds the capitalization of MasterCard, JP Morgan, LVMH, Coca-Cola or Samsung.

So, if we compare the capitalization of BTC with the largest market capitalization in the world, Bitcoin will be in the eleventh position immediately after Berkshire Hathaway, the company of Warren Buffett.

If BTC were to take the 10th place in the ranking from Berkshire Hathaway, it would certainly anger a well-known financier who called Bitcoin “rat poison”. In 2018, he also told his shareholders that trading cryptocurrency is “crazy.”

The new record was followed by a sharp drop in prices. The price dropped from $ 28,415 to $ 26,592, down more than 6% in less than 1 hour.

At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $ 26,785.

• SEC sues Ripple – XRP Price collapses and Delisting Begins

The SEC is pressing charges against Ripple for selling $ 1.38 billion worth of XRP tokens as unregistered securities. As a direct consequence, the price of XRP falls, and on some platforms, the exclusion of cryptocurrency begins.

SEC declares war on Ripple

The SEC has filed a suit against Ripple and its XRP token. The regulator considers the release of cryptocurrency in 2013 as an unannounced offer of digital assets. The two founders are also tied to a personal token sale.

Ironically, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced the lawsuit even before it was made public. Ahead of the regulator’s statement, the leader nevertheless gave himself the opportunity to express his only arguments.

However, his word is now hindered by official accusations of the regulator. Thus, unlike Ethereum and Bitcoin, XRP represents financial security. So his program had to be pre-declared.

$ 600 Million income from XRP Sales that the founders haven`t reported

Moreover, the rules applied to Ripple today are not the same. Thus, for the company, such an authoritative position is a serious threat. Its leaders face a large fine.

According to the Commission, Ripple and its two founders are guilty of raising more than $ 1.3 billion from investors in 2013. How? Through “unregistered and continuous supply of digital asset securities”.

But this is not the only fault of the Issuer of the 3rd cryptocurrency. The SEC also points to the distribution of XRP from Ripple for “services to work and create a market”. The two leaders are also personally implicated.

Brad Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen are indeed accused of personally selling $ 600 million worth of tokens. These token transfers are not prohibited, but the SEC recommends reporting them.

XRP-securities

Authorities believe that potential buyers of XRP did not receive the necessary information from Ripple. They would also not take advantage of the “important” but “fundamental” protection.

For the company and the owners of the asset, the consequences of this complaint are obvious. And this is even before the sentencing. The value of the cryptocurrency has already fallen by more than 20%.

And for Ripple and its founders, the sword of Damocles now hovers over their heads. Garlinghouse retaliated and, in particular, tried to unite around the company. However, the results are very mixed.

According to the CEO, the entire crypto industry is becoming a target for the SEC’s actions. “It’s not just XRP that is being attacked here,” he insists. As for the SEC, it is a threat to innovation in the United States.

The reaction of the crypto-asset developers

The impact on XRP is already significant. The price of the cryptocurrency is in free fall and is approaching the levels of November last year, which is accompanied by a bullish market movement. At the time of writing, XRP is losing -40% in the last 24 hours, from $ 0.50 to $ 0.30:

As a direct result of the SEC’s attack on Ripple, the Hong Kong-based OSL exchange has suspended all trading markets, including XRP, until further notice. At the moment, it is impossible to know whether other exchanges will also make this decision.

However, many believe that all exchanges with branches in the US will probably abandon XRP, so as not to anger regulators.

The battle between the SEC and Ripple is likely to be fierce and full of surprises. It is obvious that Ripple plans to fight with all the means at its disposal. Despite this, and even if the outcome of this case is favorable for Ripple, the reputation of the company and XRP will be tarnished.

XRP will be difficult to recover, and if there are further delistings on larger platforms such as Coinbase or Binance in the coming days, the result will be disastrous for the cryptocurrency.

• Ethereum 2.0 Crosses 2 Million ETH in Staking

Despite a tough start, the Ethereum upgrade is fueling the Ether. The Ethereum 2.0 placement contract does contain over 2 million ETH.

Ethereum 2.0 should eventually allow blockchain applications to forget about congestion forever, which means excessive trading fees. However, there is no new network yet.

Since the beginning of December, Ethereum 2.0 has entered the first phase, or rather, phase 0. However, not everything was won then, despite the predominant place of this blockchain in the ecosystem.

More than $ 1 billion in ETH 2.0 Staking

ETH 2.0 seems to be on the right track now. Thus, in its new version, Ethereum is based on the consensus confirmation of the share-pos. Thus, in this model, users have the opportunity to transfer the Broadcast to the receiving control.

This is a process called staking. In return, they receive a reward. However, the Ethereum 2.0 placement contract now stands at over 2 million tokens. That’s more than $ 1 billion at the current price ($588).

It should be remembered that the second-generation blockchain almost failed to reach the threshold of 524,288 Ethers under the deposit contract. Otherwise, the Genesis block could not be generated and the first delay would occur.

These doubts are now in the past. With more than 2 million ETH, the starting point has grown by literally 380%, recalls Dune Analytics. However, it will take 45,000 transactions to reach this figure.

Promise to End Ethereum Congestion

Why so much interest? On the one hand, to allow the Ethereum 2.0 project to develop. Blockchain today is an important link in the field of decentralized finance. This is even 96% of the transaction volume.

With version 2.0, ethereum applications expect greater scalability, i.e. the ability to process more transactions. Version 1 does not have this advantage, hence, during the peak of activity, an Ethereum transaction in September cost an average of $ 14.

Thus, investing in ETH 2.0 by funding a stacking contract means participating in the improvement of the network. But it also obliges the cryptocurrency to make a profit.

By blocking their Ethers through staking, participants will receive a reward in the form of ETH. Indeed, in Proof of Stake, participants (validators) check blocks, just like miners in Proof of Work.

But the full launch of Ethereum 2.0 with all its features, however, will not take place tomorrow or even in 2021. This process will take several years. Blockchain congestion will remain relevant for at least two years.

• Elon Musk discusses on Twitter whether he will buy BTC with Tesla funds?

As the price of Bitcoin broke a new record, Tesla CEO Elon Musk started talking about Bitcoin again on Twitter.

As usual, he sometimes mentions the Dogecoin cryptocurrency or BTC in Twitter messages, which are sometimes quite transparent and understandable, which can not be said about Elon Musk himself.

So, his Twitter account indicates that he is the former CEO of Dogecoin.

But seriously, he said that Bitcoin will not replace money, but that it has applications.

If in the past he pointed out that he only has 0.25 BTC, and posted a message that may seem strange: “Bitcoin is not my safe word”, then on the same topic, Elon Musk posted a new message calling the opposite, saying: “Bitcoin is my safe word”.

Elon Musk did not lose sight of the MTC, the price of which continues to break new records, but especially because of the fact that more and more important companies are beginning to invest part of their capital in Bitcoin, as MicroStrategy recently did!

Curiosity or PR?

The Tesla CEO didn’t stop there and posted other messages about Bitcoin, including one that clearly surprised the public with its very quirky and provocative side: “I’m trying to live a normal productive life.”

Elon Musk’s activities did not go unnoticed, and many prominent figures in the crypto industry came to comment on his messages on Twitter.

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, of course, responded to Elon Musk, advising him to buy Bitcoin

In the conversation, the Tesla CEO showed a little more interest in Bitcoin, questioning the possibility of making transactions for such an amount with BTC.

“Are such big deals even possible?” asks Elon Musk, CEO of MicroStrategy.

“Yes. I have bought more than $ 1.3 billion worth of BTC in the last few months, and I would be happy to share my action plans with you,” Michael Saylor replied.

Other personalities such as CZ Binance, Tyler Winklevoss (CEO of Gemini crypto exchange) or FTX Exchange CEO (Sam Bankman-Fried) have also invited Elon Musk to buy Bitcoins, and even said they would help him do so.

• The Livecoin crypto exchange was hacked and lost control of its servers

A bitter Christmas for the Russian crypto exchange Livecoin, which claims to have been hacked and completely lost control of its servers.

The cryptocurrency exchange seems to be no longer available, on the site Livecoin.net. There is a warning message indicating that the trading platform has lost control of its servers and is doing everything it can to resolve the issue.

The daily volume of the Livecoin cryptocurrency exchange is usually $ 50 million, but suddenly this volume has grown to more than $ 800 million, which indicates that something abnormal was happening on the trading platform.

Hacking that resembles Cryptopia or other cryptocurrency thefts suffered by small crypto exchanges that do not always have adequate security measures to protect their servers, and especially users ‘ cryptocurrency funds.

This hack of Livecoin will certainly be costly for some users who will leave their BTC and cryptocurrency on this exchange forever.

Due to its small size, the trading platform definitely does not have the capacity to recover funds that may have been stolen by hackers.

The attack was certainly planned for several months, the team said in a statement posted on the site, and the hackers chose the Christmas holidays to attack this cryptocurrency exchange.