Crypto Stuffs Blog: Bitcoin

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Tuesday, 14 November 2017

Bitcoin Price Surges to $6,830, as Mainstream Adoption Continues

Earlier today, the bitcoin price soared to over $6,830, achieving $6,905 at its peak, triggered by the increasing adoption of high profile investment firms and payment services providers.

Institutional Investors and Wall Street Are Ready to Invest in Bitcoin

This week, $95 billion hedge fund Man Group, announced that the company will invest in bitcoin and add the cryptocurrency to its diversified portfolio upon the launch of a bitcoin futures exchange by CME Group, the largest options exchange in the world.

At the 2017 Reuters Summit, Man Group CEO Luke Ellis stated that Man Group “will add bitcoin to its investment universe if CME launches futures contract as planned.”

CME Group and its chairman Leo Melamed revealed that the company will list bitcoin futures by the second week of December. As such, given that the minimum value of investments by multi-billion hedge funds is at around $300 to $500 million, by the end of 2017, billions of dollars will likely flow into the bitcoin market.

Over the past weekend, when billions of dollars in funds were reallocated from bitcoin to Bitcoin Cash by a few key figures within the cryptocurrency sector, the price of bitcoin plunged, creating a domino-like effect. A similar trend will likely emerge in an upward movement by the end of December, in which hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin investment by firms like Man Group would trigger individual investors to invest in bitcoin and the market.

More to that, as billions of dollars flow in the bitcoin space, the liquidity of the cryptocurrency will further increase, attracting more investors from the traditional finance sector and Wall Street. Given that some of the largest hedge funds in the US such as Fidelity have already invested in bitcoin, in the mid-term, latest by mid-2018, many of the large-scale hedge funds and investment firms would likely invest in bitcoin as a robust store of value and safe haven asset.

Where Does Price Go From Here?

Throughout this week, investors and analysts including Mike Novogratz have reaffirmed their short-term bitcoin price target at $10,000. If the entrance of several institutional investors and retail traders trigger other high profile investors and investment companies in the finance industry by the end of 2017, it is possible that the price of bitcoin can breach the $10,000 target within the next few months.

In the short-term however, an interim target of $7,000 seems more likely, given that many short-term momentum indicators including MACD demonstrate an increase in momentum in the price trend of bitcoin.

Within the past two days, the entire cryptocurrency market has stabilized, as the daily trading volumes of bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash declined from over $10 billion to $3.3 billion. The daily trading volume of Bitcoin Cash remains below $1.6 billion, merely 10 percent of the trading volume it had demonstrated on Sunday.

With the bitcoin exchange market finding stability and rapidly recovering, it is likely that the price of bitcoin will breach $7,000 in the next few days, and potentially move towards its current all-time high of $7,900.

After Declines, Bitcoin Comes Back Stronger

They say a bad penny always turns up. While the saying may refer to an unwelcome guest, the same could be said for Bitcoin, according to recent analysis by CNBC. Based on chart evaluations, Bitcoin price has always increased substantially after dips greater than 20 percent.

The rise in Bitcoin prices for the four previous dips over 20 percent were substantial. On average, the cryptocurrency posted 61.5 percent gains in each cycle after substantial sell-offs. This astounding number has lead to an increased desire among insiders to ‘buy the dips’ - to purchase Bitcoin during the lows and realize the substantial gains as the price continues to rise.

Bulls and bears and Bitcoin, oh my!

The most recent drop over the weekend spurred on by the death of the SegWit2x hard fork proposal from the New York Agreement, appears to be no different. After more than 20 percent declines, the price has already recovered peaking in recent trading over $6,500. This response seems to indicate that the fundamentals underlying the recent increases in price are real.

While most industry insiders are pleased with the recovery, even calling it a ‘speed bump,’ many see the power of the biggest Bitcoin players as a potentially negative risk point for the cryptocurrency. Moshe Hogeg of Sirin Labs said:

"While we are still miles away from resolving the high volatility of Bitcoin, I find it encouraging that it's quickly overcoming volatility that in past years registered as 'earthquakes,' and is today registering as no more than 'speed-bumps.' That said, I do find it quite worrisome that very few insiders have such leverage in a market that ought to be the bellwether for decentralized currencies."

Beyond the negative risk association, though, the market has continued to show that Bitcoin is a genuine store of value something akin to gold. Large swaths of the Bitcoin supply are still held in private wallets completely outside of the market, and many of those may never see the light of day. Insiders remain confident that the market will continue its bull run, though not forever. As Oleg Seydak CEO of Blackmoon Crypto said:

“Bitcoin is still the crypto gold. It’s the gateway coin and the main store of value within the cryptoeconomy. It’s also considered as a defensive asset in periods of volatility of the market.The main question is when the growth will finish - and the right answer is, we don’t know. But players should be careful with expectations and trading and not be misled by the continuous boom in price. Nothing can grow with such speed forever.”

China May Cut Off Cheap Power To Bitcoin Miners?

Apparently, the general anti-Bitcoin stance of the Chinese government continues, with reports that the cheap hydroelectric power being used by the largest Chinese Bitcoin mining facilities may soon be a thing of the past, according to local media.

The statement regarding the cessation of cheap mining electricity indicates that the Sichuan Electric Power Company has issued a circular indicating that it will no longer provide the necessary power from its grid-connected hydropower stations. The circular suggests that Bitcoin mining is ‘illegal operation.’ The circular has yet to be confirmed.

Bitcoin using surplus, government still squeezing

The statement from the power companies does not reflect the general feeling of miners, according to the article. Miners feel that the Bitcoin operations are using ‘discarded water’ - water that is let go without producing electricity, which is why the price has been remarkably low.

Nevertheless, the supply cut off is coming from both sides, as the province has declared both a ‘no new power plants’ policy, as well as acquiring all existing power plants. Per the article:

“Sichuan, on the one hand, issued a circular at the policy level, requiring no new small hydropower stations; [at the same time] the power company is stepping up its acquisition of small hydropower stations to promote the latter's power grid, [leaving] Bitcoin low-cost electrical space increasingly cramped.”

Such a change would reflect the pervasive feeling from the government of China, as cryptocurrencies have increasingly met with increasingly constricting regulation.

While the story is not yet confirmed, interested readers should stay tuned to Cointelegraph for continuing updates.

A Tale of Two Bitcoins: Where Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash are Headed

This is a tale of two Bitcoins. After a fork in August that created Bitcoin (BTC) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), we have reached yet another crossroad. While another hardfork was planned around middle of November to boost Bitcoin’s block size, this fork is now dead in the water. The lack of consensus among the Bitcoin community was cited as the reason for abandoning the so-called SegWit2x plan.

Abandoning the fork lifted the Bitcoin price from $7,200 to $7,800 as traders realized their worst fears (an ugly chain split) would be avoided. However, excitement hasn’t lasted. Bitcoin is now trading at around $6,000 at press time, as traders and investors fear that SegWit by itself will not create enough capacity to scale. Indeed, at the time of this writing, there are over 140,000 unconfirmed Bitcoin transactions.

Bitcoin Cash was the surprise winner in all of this, at least temporarily. The currency which had been drifting steadily downward was lifted as high as $2,600 in a dramatic pump following the news of SegWit2x’s cancellation. While the price has since experienced a 50% retrace, spectators were stunned at the sudden rise.

An existential crisis for Bitcoin

The lack of a clear path for Bitcoin’s scaling issues are having a serious impact on Bitcoin’s price. As more users discover Bitcoin and its popularity increases, there is a growing danger that it will be a victim of its own success. We talked with Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Input Output Hong Kong, who elaborated the challenge facing Bitcoin:

“Bitcoin is at an existential crisis where it has grown large enough and attracted enough quality people to provide very clear yet different roadmaps for the future backed by passion, money and brilliance. From one perspective this creates friction and has resulted in splits. From another we get to see in parallel both philosophies play out in real time and compete for market share.In the end it's impossible to say who will win, but this is predictable sign of maturity rather than a symptom of chaos. No ecosystem can keep everyone happy nor can it satisfy divergent visions. So they have to find a way to split like so many open source projects before then without destroying the value already accumulated and the underlying communities.”

More users but also more confusion

Bitcoin’s high prices may have drawn users like bees to honey but many are likely not savvy. There is a high degree of confusion among these users that is making matters worse. A lot of them can’t probably tell the two Bitcoins apart from each other. We talked with Fran Strajnar, CEO of Bravenewcoin, who thinks we are going through yet another round of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). He tells us:

“I think the current FUD is very confusing to the millions of new people pouring into the crypto space for the first time. 'Bitcoin,' 'Bitcoin-Cash' is enough to confuse people as it is.”

BCH a classic pump and dump?

Altcoins are no stranger to the phenomenon of pump and dump. There are people out there who have the ability to increase the price of a particular coin and when there is enough buzz around a coin, it is simply the matter of dumping it and making a neat profit. Kumar Gaurav, Chairman of Cashaa has this to say on the recent increase in BCH (BCC) prices:

“The quick rise [of BCH] from around 600 to 2400 USD in a few days makes it look like a typical artificial pump which was already being followed by a dump back to $1300 USD within 30 min. As compared to the FX market, the crypto market is still small, it is easy to do that and can not be used to estimate the future of BTC vs BCC.”

Gaurav is of the view that Bitcoin has gained relative maturity with the passage of time:

“Compared to that, Bitcoin has already overcome many challenges, keeps following its pattern of steady rise and its current downwards push is one of the many only temporary ones such as in July and September this year, so we can expect it to be back on the way to 8000 USD soon, whereas [BCH] is too new to estimate whether it will grow in the long term or whether the current move was one of the typical altcoins’ pump and dumps.”

Fran also adds his voice:

“However I expect Bitcoin to be 'just fine' if it stays above $4500 as the smart money realizes that BCH has no advantage, support or adoption like BTC has.”

Both the Bitcoins can exist peacefully

The good news is that as more people discover cryptocurrencies, there is space for both flavours of Bitcoin to exist and prosper. As for the bickering within the Bitcoin community, you can’t really rule out more forks or more Bitcoin variants in the future either. This is just the way cryptocurrencies are. As Hoskinson puts it:

“Bitcoin Cash seems to be a productive split with its existence neither threatening Bitcoin's nor requiring support from Bitcoin's remaining adherents. Now Bitcoin is free to provide it's small block vision and cash the large block. My hope is that this will reduce fighting in the long run as both sides realize that the other isn't going away. Just like we did with Ethereum and Ethereum classic.”

Perhaps democracy is the biggest winner and a byproduct of cryptocurrencies, and that is the silver lining.

BitTorrent Inventor Announces His “Green” Bitcoin Competitor - Chia Network

While cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin might be all the rage today, they’re criticised for their heavy consumption of energy. The more energy you use with the help of a powerful hardware, the more cryptocurrency you can mine. Recently, a new hard fork named Bitcoin Gold was facilitated to address similar issues.

Earlier this year in April, we reported that BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen might launch his own cryptocurrency and Bitcoin-alternative. Just recently, acting well on his promise, Cohen has started a new company called Chia Network.

Chia — Cohen’s green cryptocurrency

So, how is Chia Network cryptocurrency going to be environment-friendly? How is it going to compete with Bitcoin, whose single block of transaction requires as much energy as it takes to power an American home for seven days?

Chia aims to counter this issues by basing its cryptocurrency on proofs of time and storage, not on proof of work. This means that Chia Network will use the unused and cheap storage space on your computer’s hard drives to verify its blockchain.

“We’re building a blockchain based on proofs of space and time to make a cryptocurrency which is less wasteful, more decentralized, and more secure,” Chia Network’s website reads.

How does Chia work?

Just like Bitcoin, while creating Chia, there’s a permanent immutable history that gets added to the blockchain. The “Farmers” have to prove that they’ve used resources with proofs of space and time (storage space) to mint new blocks. In exchange, the “Farmer” get rewards and transaction fees for all transactions they include.

With each minted block, the new blocks would become expensive to produce. Once a new block is minted, the farmers would collectivity switch to “farming” on top of the new block.

With the proof of storage in Chia, people with additional space can participate in farming with no additional costs. This green digital currency also addresses the increasingly centralized nature of Bitcoin, whose mining is preferable in areas with cheaper electricity and cooler environment.

According to TechCrunch, Chia Network aims to do some early sales of Chia in Q2 2018 and go ahead with the full launch by the end of 2018.

The concept of proof of storage isn’t new, but Chia’s approach looks promising. What are your thoughts on the same?

Goldman Sachs Predicts Bitcoin Price Consolidation Around $8,000 Before Continuing Up

The break-neck speed rally of Bitcoin has left investors wondering where Bitcoin would finally stabilize. Goldman Sachs believes that $8,000 would be the consolidation level for the current rally.

Where does rally stop?

Bitcoin’s price may have smashed through the $5000, $6000 and $7000 levels over the past few weeks, but technical analysts expect it to go higher. The level at which consolidation is expected to occur is $8000, according to Goldman Sachs.

In a note to investors, Goldman Vice President Sheba Jafari wrote:

“The market has shown evidence of an impulsive rally since breaking above 6,044. Next in focus $7,941. Might consolidate there before continuing higher.”

Long term trend is up

While Goldman Sachs has cautioned against traders expecting a rapid surge past $8000, they expect it to go higher after some consolidation.

Referencing Elliott Wave Theory, Jafari writes:

“Given that this is just a third of five waves up, the implications are that bitcoin has potential to run further over time.”

Double the previous target

The current target price of $8000 is double the price of $4000 predicted by Sheba Jafari just four months ago. Given multiple factors including government regulation, hard forks, and new links to mainstream finance all tend to influence the price, looking at price charts in isolation is not sufficient to make a reliable forecast. Multiple analysts, including Ronnie Moas, have revised their price predictions upward for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin's Performance Off the Charts, Literally - Cointelegraph

Bitcoin’s growth year on end has been routinely flouted as being over 600 percent, and while that is, of course, an impressive number, it is hard to picture what that means in a market economy.

However, when that figure is placed against other big and popular assets, a graph shows the true effect on the growth year-to-date. As it stands, looking at the performance range, Bitcoin ists at 663 percent growth.

Up next is Apple stock which has grown an impressive 49 percent. That figure, of course, pales in comparison, but in any other year without Bitcoin, that would be healthy and impressive.

However, one needs to remember that there have been some big growers across time, and one of those was Amazon, which saw 6,000 percent growth between 1997 and 1999.

In fact, Bitcoin has had better years, 2016-2017 saw the digital currency grow 2,800 percent. But this year, there is no competition.

Off the charts

The graph above shows just how exponential the growth of the digital currency has been to date. The growth has been explosive, but there are also volatile swings that have seen it dip too.

For instance, Bitcoin at the start of the year was a terrible investment as within 10 days the cryptocurrency had lost 20 percent of its value. A better decision, at that point, would have been an index fund tracking the S&P 500, Apple stock or even gold.

There have been some instances where normal assets, such as the entire US Stock market, have suffered big lows. In 2008, during the financial crisis, their stock market fell by 40 percent and it was considered a massive disaster.

However, Bitcoin has dropped 40 percent on more than one occasion already this year, and despite that, the graph still shows its enormous growth.

Bitcoin is like nothing else on this chart, and thus, when figures like 663 percent are thrown around it is hard to quantify or even imagine.

The What and Why Bitcoin Price Reached $7,000 - Cointelegraph

This week, Bitcoin price, on its usual upward trajectory, barely blinked as it smashed through the $7,000 mark. The Bitcoin community obviously celebrated as the king of digital currencies shows no sign of slowing, but what is behind this latest rally?

The biggest factor behind the rally was the announcement of Chicago Mercantile Exchange’sdecision to offer Bitcoin futures.

Firstly, what is a Bitcoin future and why is it causing such a buzz on main street, Wall Street, as well as on the Bitcoin price.

Banking on what lies ahead

Futures are an essential part of mainstreet trading and investing; however they are also reserved for more steady and less volatile assets. Now, with this decision, Bitcoin is being legitimized somewhat, and that has again piqued Wall Street’s interest.

Wall Street, despite their divide and their clashing of ideologies, still has an important role to play in Bitcoin price as the financial bastion has shown their influence before.

In an earlier rise, coming after the Aug. 1st fork, Bitcoin hit a massive rally that was attributed to Wall Street flooding into Bitcoin once the heat was off from the so-called ‘civil war.’

Now, this move by the CME has again given Wall Street more reason to put faith in Bitcoin and thus the demand has skyrocketed, along with the price.

Still in its infancy

Bitcoin’s step into mainstream trading, however, is also a poignant reminder that the digital currency is still in diapers when it comes to institutionalized trading and investing.

Large-scale mass adoption in trading has a long way to go as there is still room for ETFs, which would really open things up, but that is a long way off still.

The SEC has maintained their position on a Bitcoin ETF, stating that it is not on the cards while they continue to watch its volatility and nature.

Spike and drop

Bitcoin’s rally reached as high as $7,300, but quickly fell over $500 in a mini-correction. However, it has leveled off again over $7,000.

While in the world of Bitcoin that does not seem like a massive swing, it is those moves that the SEC does not like the look of.

The SEC noted that Bitcoin had “fundamental flaws” that made it a “dangerous asset class to force into an exchange traded structure.”

Vietnam Bans Bitcoin Payments, Global Markets Unfazed

Four days have passed since the State Bank of Vietnam had announced that cryptocurrencies are illegal means of payment in the country. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, the official who shut down Bitcoin payments, has achieved his goal of building the new legal framework for cryptocurrencies in Vietnam. His solution? Ban all cryptocurrencies.

Following Indonesia, Vietnam is the second country that officially banned digital currencies and their use as payment methods. However, since both Vietnam and Indonesia didn’t contribute too much to the overall trading volumes, their bans are expected to cause little effect in Bitcoin’s price. The fact that Bitcoin has reached a historic high of $7,300 has proved the expectation.

Local institutions affected

Though the ban won’t influence Bitcoin, it does have an impact on local institutions. A few days ago, the president of FPT, a private Vietnamese university, announced that the university was planning to accept Bitcoin as a method of payment for students’ tuition.

According to Dr. Le Truong Tung, the university expected to attract more international students by offering Bitcoin payment options. Now it’s highly likely that the university will have to withdraw the decision.

First of the Month Sees Bitcoin Skyrocket to $6900 plus

According to the spot value across some of the world’s popular exchanges, bitcoin has reached an average of 6,915 on the first of the present month. Currently, the price is hovering just above 6,800 after some sell-off. The digital asset has been relentless all year long, seeing $500-1,000 increases with ease and sometimes in a day. At the moment bitcoin commands a $116B market capitalization with over $3B in trade volume over the past 24-hours. Besides bitcoin cash markets, which are up over 19 percent, nearly every other digital asset is dropping. The top five exchanges swapping the most bitcoin this evening include Bitfinex, Bithumb, Bitflyer, GDAX, and Hitbtc.

Right now Japan is leading the pack, with the yen commanding 60 percent of the BTC volume by currency. The rest of the currencies following the Japanese yen include the USD, KRW, EUR, and the GBP. Moreover, gone are the days when China captured the lion’s share of bitcoin trade volume. Chinese trade volume has seen the CNY plummet from the fifth position just a few weeks ago, to an all-time low of nineteen out of all the world’s bitcoin trades. However Chinese trade volume, using over-the-counter (OTC) networks like Localbitcoins, has increased substantially.

Markets Update: First of the Month Sees Bitcoin Skyrocket to $6900

Bitcoin prices are up well over 500 percent during the course of 2017 and are outpacing nearly every currency and commodity in the world, performance-wise. Currently, charts show incredibly bullish buy pressure and targets set at $7K are definitely attainable. The short-term Simple Moving Average (SMA) is coasting well above the long-term trendline, which means the path to the upside has very little resistance. Fibonacci retracement at 61.8 over the past 24-hours indicates an upwards trajectory of $7,200. The RSI is holding steady northbound, while order books show a mountain of sellers at the $7K range. If buyers can breach this zone, it might be really smooth sailing all the way to $7,600. If things are to go south, there is a vast amount of buyers around the 6,600 zone acting as the first solid foundation. After the sell-off, it’s likely we will see consolidation between the $6,700-6,800 range.

At the time of writing, the only two digital assets in the green are bitcoin (BTC) and bitcoin cash (BCH). Almost every other cryptocurrency market is suffering from 3-10 percent losses or more. Ethereum (ETH) is down 5 percent at $289 per ether, while bitcoin cash (BCH) has reached a high of $550 across global exchanges. Bitcoin cash has taken the third highest market valuation, pushing Ripple (XRP) to the fourth position. Ripple markets are down 3.5 percent, averaging around $0.19 per XRP. Lastly, the fifth highest market cap held by Litecoin (LTC) is also down 4.6 percent with a global average of $52 per LTC.

Overall cryptocurrency proponents seem thrilled with bitcoin’s price rise as the currency continues to smash milestone after milestone in valuation. Bitcoin’s price will likely be volatile throughout the course of the next two weeks before the hard fork approaches. It’s anyone’s guess what markets will do during and after this event, as people are uncertain about how the pending fork will play out.

Bear Scenario: Prices are high and could correct at any moment. As stated above this month will likely see volatile price swings which could go either way. If things get bearish, then we could see drops to the $6,600 region and possibly a fall to $6,200 from there. Between those two points, there is a substantial amount of buy pressure as far as the order books are concerned. Anything lower than $6,150 shows we could enter the sub-$6K zone from that type of downward pressure.

Bull Scenario: Speculators definitely assume a majority of buy pressure is stemming from the Segwit2x fork. The assumption is people are dumping altcoins to get in on the 1:1 split distribution if that happens. This means a continued amount of buyers could bring the price well above the $7K range into uncharted territory. Currently, the Fibonacci and other tools indicate prices could reach $7,200 in the short term and possibly $8K the week before the fork.

Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High as CME Group Announces Futures Trading

Bitcoin has hit new all-time price highs on its ninth birthday today as CME Group announces futures trading.

Investors still celebrating the weekend’s record-breaking $6,300 have little to fear this Halloween as renewed momentum coming from CME takes Bitcoin within reach of new heights.

The move appeared broadly expected Tuesday even without the news, analyst Tone Vays and investor Max Keiser both predicting imminent peaks.

According to data from Bitcointicker, Bitcoin advanced 2.1 percent in the 24 hours to press time to hit $6,300.

The latest surge, which began late last week, initially pulled major altcoins along with Bitcoin, but the trend has since faltered.

Bitcoin Cash, in particular, has reversed the top of its gains which saw the fork hit multi-week highs approaching $500.

What will happen If Satoshi Nakamoto Sold All His Bitcoin Today?

Essentially, the mysterious nature of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's creator, means that the entire ecosystem is sitting on a potential volcano. It lays dormant at the moment, but if the creator had the inkling, he could flood the market with one mln coins and destroy its value.

One of the biggest mysteries in the technology world is the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. No one knows who he is, where he is or what he is doing with his millions.

That is millions, as in millions of Bitcoins as it has been reasonably estimated that Nakamoto could own over one mln coins.

The power of one man

Matt Green, a cryptocurrency professor at Johns Hopkins University, says Nakamoto has the power to tank the currency if he wants to.

Bitcoin has a finite supply of 21 mln which is expected to be reached by the year 2140.

Nakamoto's one mln Bitcoins amount to five percent of the entire cryptocurrency.

"The thing about Bitcoin is if you control a million of them, you have the ability to flood the market at any point. Think of them as rare baseball cards. They're valuable because they're rare. If somebody could dump hundreds or thousands of Mickey Mantle trading cards, rare ones, onto the market, they wouldn't be worth so much anymore," said Green.

Nakamoto has really gone undercover since he decided to pull away from his creation, and for a man with such high value, his influence has not even been noted among the pseudo-anonymous Bitcoin network.

However, if Nakamoto were to put his coins up for sale, the entire market would be flooded, and the Bitcoin price would tank.

The value of one man

While Nakamoto remains a sleeping giant and a potential dormant volcano, he is no threat or promise to the Bitcoin Network. However, he is still an extremely significant figure in the digital currency's future.

Ben Yu, a Bitcoin investor living in San Francisco, says Nakamoto's stake in Bitcoin is extremely significant.

"If Bitcoin fulfills its role of becoming a global currency, then Satoshi Nakamoto would likely be the richest person in the world and also hold a proportionately higher share of the ultimate supply of Bitcoin than something like the US government holds in gold today," said Yu.

Yu's math works out. The US government holds the most gold reserves of any other entity in the world, at about 8,000 tonnes.

That's a little over four percent of the world's total supply, less than Nakamoto's five percent stake in Bitcoin.

Chinese Bitcoin Traders Could Benefit From OKEx, Huobi-Pro P2P Trade Launch - Cointelegraph

China’s Bitcoin traders could return to their favorite exchanges if rumors regarding OKEx and Huobi-Pro come true.

According to local news feed cnLedger, the two umbrella exchanges are “soon to launch” p2p Bitcoin trading with support for fiat currencies including the yuan.

“We believe they'll support CNY and some others,” the resource tweeted Monday.

The timeliness of the information is poignant, coming just before the last Chinese-only exchanges shut their doors due to a government ban on crypto-to-fiat trading.

While both OKEx and Huobi-Pro are international non-China based operations not subject to the domestic ban, cnLedger hints that through undisclosed mechanisms both could ultimately give access to Chinese traders.

“They are registered outside China, and are operating independent of OKCoin (at least they claim so... you get the idea),” it wrote in a follow-up response.

Wink-wink, nudge-nudge

OKEx itself set the ‘wink-wink, nudge-nudge’ tone when announcing its future plans after the Oct. 31 shutdown deadline.

At the weekend following the Communist Party Conference a new exchange, ZB.com announcedit would offer full functionality from Nov. 1, with details nonetheless remaining sketchy.

Last week, Cointelegraph reported on the surge of interest from extradited Chinese exchange operators in setting up new bases elsewhere in Asia and notably Japan, where local platform Quoine said it had been unable to service the level of interest.

Bitcoin meanwhile continues to hold above $6000 Monday as Chinese optimism swells, and the threat of the SegWit2x hard fork continues to create tension and opportunities for short-term traders.