Bitcoin and Ether Market Update: March 13, 2019
The top ten cryptocurrencies are all in green for the 24-hour period with Binance Coin (BNB) and Stellar (XLM) leading the pack with seven percent gains each. The total market cap decreased by $500 million since March 11, 2019, and now stands at $134.3 billion. At the time of writing bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $3,960, while ether (ETH) trades around $135 and XRP remains at $0.316.
BTC/USD
Bitcoin broke above $4,000 during the weekend of March 9 to 10 and managed to hold the line successfully closing the seven-day period with a 2.4 percent increase.
BTC/USD opened the week with a red candle to $3,950, which represented with a one percent loss. The pair once again entered the range-trading corridor between $3,890 to $3,980 in what many believe is an accumulation phase before an attack of the 2019 high at $4,211.
The most popular cryptocurrency moved to $3,955 in a highly volatile trading session on March 12.
The leaders of the cryptocurrency project OneCoin have been arrested at the Los Angeles airport by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on March 6, 2019.
Mark Scott and Konstantin Ignatov were taken into custody and charged with “wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering offenses” by the U.S. Attorney Office of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), while former CEO Ruja Ignatova remains at large. According to the district attorney, OneCoin is “a multibillion-dollar pyramid scheme involving the sale of a fraudulent cryptocurrency.”
The project was founded in Sofia, Bulgaria in 2014 and since then has been operating a multilevel cryptocurrency-based Ponzi scheme in which members receive commissions for getting investors to buy different OneCoin cryptocurrency packages.
In other news, the state of Colorado took a big step towards becoming a blockchain tech hub after passing a crypto-friendly digital act.
Jared Polis, the Governor of Colorado, signed the “Digital Token Act” on March 8, 2019, which defines risk and benefits from the use of cryptocurrencies and most importantly includes exemptions for token offers or sales, issuance and business-related licensing if the product meets all requirements in the document. This exemption also includes the byline that the “primary purpose of the digital token is a consumptive purpose” and not speculation or investment.
In November 2018, the Colorado Securities Regulators filed cessation orders against 18 ICOs involved in “fraudulent and illicit” practices.
ETH/USD
The Ethereum token dropped from $140 to $138 on March 10, 2019, and managed to close the seven-day period 3.3 percent higher. Ether continued to trade mainly in the $133 to $139 zone but lost another two percent of its value on March 11, 2019, to stop at $135.
On March 12, the ETH/USD pair formed a green candle on the daily chart and climbed to $136.5
The popular ERC20 standard wallet provider MyEtherWallet (MEW) will be launching an open source Ethereum blockchain explorer to rival current leader Etherscan. According to the official announcement, the project, which is currently in its test phase, will offer users the possibility to browse through the blockchain history, smart card records, transactions and will be community driven thanks to the open source code.
The Alpha version of EthVM is running on the Ethereum testnet known as Ropsten and once fully configured will be migrated to the mainnet.
