Market Update
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is sitting at $10,851, representing a loss of 10.7% in the last 24 hours. More than $3.6B worth of BTC were exchanged in the BTC/USD market representing a 41% share of daily volume, followed by the BTC/JPY pair that represents a 30% share.
The Ethereum price has dropped by 11.6% over the past 24 hours and is currently sitting at $980.39, with over $1.9B worth of Ether exchanged in the past 24 hours on the ETH/USD pair which has a 42% market share of the daily trading volume.
See live charts https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/btc/overview/USD and https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/eth/overview/USD
Bitconnect Shuts Down Its Exchangeand Lending Platform:
Bitconnect has announced that it is closing its lending and exchange platform. The company has widely been accused of operating a Ponzi scheme and was recently rocked by cease and desist notices in two US states. Immediately after the firm declared its intention to wind things up, its BCC coin plummeted from $290 to under $10 before recovering slightly. With the exchange offline, many holders have been left locked out and powerless to sell their heavily deprecated assets.
Vitalik Buterin Leaves China-Based VC to Focus on Ethereum Development:
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has left China-based venture capital firm Fenbushi Capital according to TechCrunch, to focus on the development of Ethereum. Buterin announced that he has stepped down from his role as a general partner of Fenbushi Capital, which has been one of the most active investors in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector. He noted that he will no longer serve as a full-time partner of the firm, but will remain as an advisor.
To address the growing demand for Ethereum and the high expectations from the global Ethereum community, Buterin explained that he will solely focus on the development of the Ethereum blockchain network and solving scalability issues to provide a better ecosystem for decentralized applications. He stated:
“I expect 2018, at least within the Ethereum space that I’m best able to speak about, will be the year of action. It will be the year where all of the ideas around scalability, Plasma, proof-of-stake, and privacy that we have painstakingly worked on and refined over the last four years are finally going to turn into real, live working code that you can play around in a highly mature form in some cases on testnets, and in some key cases even on the public mainnet.”
UNICEF Wants to Fund Early Stage Blockchain Startups:
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is seeking to invest in early-stage blockchain startups with the potential to help children across the globe. In an announcement yesterday, the program said it is offering equity-free investments of $50,000–90,000 to seed-stage startups developing solutions on open blockchains in areas including smart contracts, tokens, mining and data analysis. The release reads:
"We are interested in companies that use distributed ledger tech in new, groundbreaking, ways that are scalable, and globally applicable."
State of the Crypto:
Bitcoin is down 10.7% at $10,851.630 with a volume of Ƀ323.3k - $3658.3M on the USD pairs.
Ether is down 1.7% against Bitcoin at Ƀ0.09015 per Ether and down 11.6% against the dollar to $986.8 with average volume Ƀ106.8k on the ETH/BTC pair.
Bitcoin Cash is up 0.37% to Ƀ0.1648 with volumes of Ƀ42.0k and down 10.78% against the dollar at $1791.1.
Ripple is down 8.4% to Ƀ0.0001058 with volumes of Ƀ70.9k and down 17.86% against the dollar at $1.15.
Zcash is down 3.15% for the day to Ƀ0.04391 per ZEC and down 13.1% against the dollar to $474.38 with an average volume of Ƀ6.5k for the 24 hour period.
Litecoin is down 12.98% against the dollar for the day at $179.19 and down 2.55% to Ƀ0.01641 on volumes of Ƀ25.4k.
Dash is up 4.81% at Ƀ0.07097 with Ƀ9.5k volume and down 6.35% against the dollar at $764.26.
Iota is down 4.4% to Ƀ0.0002367 on Ƀ5.1k volume.
Ether Classic is down 7.28% to Ƀ0.002572 with volumes of Ƀ14.1k and down 16.31% against the dollar at $27.66.
Monero is down 12.03% against the dollar at $310.58 and down 0.99% against Bitcoin at Ƀ0.02895 on volumes of Ƀ9.7k.
Neo is down 10.97% for the day to Ƀ0.0116 per NEO and down 20.97% against the dollar to $124.2 with an average volume of Ƀ30.0k for the 24 hour period.
Waves is down 3.43% to Ƀ0.0007113 on Ƀ2.7k volume.
Stratis is down 8.36% to Ƀ0.001261 on Ƀ3.4k volume.
