Bitcoin price is currently correcting higher above $8,800 against the US Dollar. However, BTC is still facing a couple of key hurdles near $9,100 and $9,150.

After a major decline, bitcoin found support near the $8,670 level against the US Dollar. A new monthly low was formed near $8,674 before the price started an upside correction.

The price recovered above the $8,800 and $8,900 levels. Moreover, there was a break above the $9,000 resistance area and the 100 hourly simple moving average. The bulls were able to gain strength, but they faced a strong selling interest near the $9,150 and $9,160 levels.

A high was formed near $9,146 and the price is currently retreating from the high. It broke the $9,000 support area and the 100 hourly SMA. Additionally, there was a break below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent wave from the $8,674 low to $9,146 high.

An immediate support on the downside is near the $8,900 level. It represents the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent wave from the $8,674 low to $9,146 high. The main support is near the $8,860 and $8,840 levels.

More importantly, there is a connecting bullish trend line forming with support near $8,840 on the hourly chart of the BTC/USD pair. Finally, the 61.8% Fib retracement level of the recent wave from the $8,674 low to $9,146 high is near $8,854.

Therefore, a downside break below the $8,840 level might restart the decline in bitcoin. The next key support is near the $8,700 area, below which the price could revisit the $8,500 level.

On the upside, the price is facing hurdles near the $9,100 and $9,150 levels. Besides, there is a key bearish trend line forming with resistance near $9,100 on the same chart.

Bitcoin Price

Looking at the chart, bitcoin seems to be struggling to continue above $9,100. If it continues to struggle, there is a risk of another bearish wave below the $8,800 level in the near term.

Technical indicators:

Hourly MACD The MACD is currently moving back into the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI (Relative Strength Index) The RSI for BTC/USD is currently declining and approaching the 50 level.

Major Support Levels $8,900 followed by $8,840.

Major Resistance Levels $9,100, $9,150 and $9,300.

Read the original here:

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Rebound Facing Key Resistance Near $9,100 - newsBTC

In the 1800s we had a bubble in railroads, and almost every one of them went bankrupt, said Downtown Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management. But what was left behind in the wake of that financial wreckage were the tracks, and the trains, and the stations, and the expertise to build more.

Thats the analogy Brown sees with the bitcoin bubble of 2017, as explained in a recent episode of Bitcoin Macro, a pop-up podcast series featuring speakers from CoinDesks upcomingInvest: NYC conference on Tuesday, Nov. 12.

Eventually the technology [railroads] found a way to be profitable, useful, and became woven into the fabric of our society, Brown said. So its possible that the crypto investments people made in 2017 were stupid, but that they had the right idea.

The last six months have seen a growing dialogue between the bitcoin industry and leaders in global finance. No longer written off as some ignorable niche, increasingly people are asking: Is bitcoin a macro asset? Is it a safe-haven asset? How will it perform in the next recession?

Brown is a regular contributor to CNBC. In this episode of Bitcoin Macro, CoinDesks head of strategy, Nolan Bauerle, talks with Brown about:

Listen to the podcast here or read the whole transcript below.

Nolan Bauerle: (00:09)

Welcome to Bitcoin macro, a Pop-up podcast produced as part of the CoinDesk Invest New York conference in November. Im your host, Nolan Bauerly. Both the podcast and the event explore the intersection of bitcoin and the global macroeconomy with perspectives from some of the leading thinkers in finance, crypto and beyond.

Nolan Bauerle: (00:34)

Welcome to the latest edition of our pop-up podcast around bitcoin. This podcast, in particular, is designed to shed light on some of the content that youre going to hear about at Consensus: Invest on November 12th, here in New York City. Today we have a veteran speaker of our series and a crossover star, Josh Brown, who certainly is known for his role in mainstream financial news, a regular on CNBC, various other networks. Josh Brown has been with us at Invest since it launched in 2017. He gave terrific advice to the original attendees of that conference and was our final keynote fireside chat with Howard Lindzon, his good friend.

Nolan Bauerle: (01:23)

Last year he came back to let the audience know what asset managers are really concerned about when it comes to cryptocurrencies in general. And this year hes going to involve himself as our master of ceremonies, and well introduce all of our great panelists, and were happy to have him. So crossover star, I think, is a good way to describe you. A lot of people know you over crypto, but youre certainly well known for your mainstream financial news.

Josh Brown: (01:48)

Hi Nolan, its great to be with you.

Nolan Bauerle: (01:50)

Great to have you aboard. So were going to jump right in. This podcast is really all about bitcoin. And the first question is about bitcoin behaving as a macro asset. So youve seen a lot of whats going on in the world today. Youre pretty plugged in. How do you see bitcoin fitting in here? Is it an actual asset that you can see as a way to hedge macroeconomic changes? Or is it sort of still in the wings waiting to be built up and mature a little more before its really in the major leagues of macro assets?

Josh Brown: (02:24)

As I said to you just prior to recording, I see myself as more of a student than a teacher in this realm, but Im an apt pupil, and I try to pay attention to various opinions and, of course, look at charts and price action. And I try my best to understand whats happening. To answer that question directly, I would say I do not believe that bitcoin behaves in any way like a macro asset. And the only reason Im saying that is because we have no evidence that its correlated with any other macro development. In other words, I wish I could say when Think about gold. When people are worried about inflation, and Im not saying gold is a great inflation hedge, but when people are worried about it, there are trades where you can see flows go into that asset class. Its demonstrative.

Josh Brown: (03:21)

So you could say whether or not you think gold is an inflation hedge, you know that other people do, and it acts that way. Think about utility stocks. All year long, the story has been the federal reserve about to lower rates, now theyre lowering rates. Maybe theyre going to lower rates more. And as that process has happened, youve seen money flow into utility stocks, which are prized for their high yields. So if youre not getting yields in bonds, whats the next best thing or the next, next best thing? Its high yielding equities, and utilities are considered to be among the safest high yielding stocks. So you could say that, thats a macro asset. What can we say about bitcoin thats even close to being comparable? In the month of October, I think its a world record of people around the world involved in various protests, whether were talking about Santiago, or were talking about whats going on in Hong Kong. All over the world, there are millions and millions of people taking to the streets.

Josh Brown: (04:20)

Why isnt bitcoin up 50% if in fact its a protest asset? Well, it isnt, so I dont know. If were worried about disinflation and we say that maybe people, if theyre scared of their own currency, therell be this huge rush into bitcoin. Well, where is that happening? It isnt. So I would love to be able to answer in the affirmative and say, Yes, bitcoin has now taken its place among the Pantheon of asset classes that people can use to express a macro view. But it just isnt, theres no evidence for that. So my answer to you is no it isnt, but maybe thatll change at some point.

Nolan Bauerle: (04:57)

Yeah. And that youre focusing on the behavior I think is the important part here. A lot of people get caught up with what they want it to be and they sort of will fall into kind of a bubble, where they see it behaving in ways that maybe it isnt actually, given the facts, and that you underlined here that the behavior of it, given all these conditions is pretty clear. It looks like a speculative asset that people are interested in making some money on, and certainly there needs to be a high risk tolerance to get exposure even to this day.

Josh Brown: (05:29)

If were saying that bitcoins most obvious use case is the ability to get out of a fiat currency and move money out of a country, or its got huge competition. US dollars are what people want all over the world. In Asia, maybe they want the yen when they fear for the safety of the currency, or the capital markets, or the economy in which they live. This is a fact, and then if were saying, Well, people are going to use bitcoin when they want to get out of the denomination of whatever their country is, or the jurisdiction. They want to, I dont want to use the word hide money, but they want to literally move money where it cant be touched. Well, real estate has been a much, much more prominent way to do that. Look at Vancouver, half the buildings are Chinese money.

Josh Brown: (06:21)

Look at the towers theyre putting up in New York. They just put the capstone, I think its called, or whatever. They just put the cap on something called Central Park tower. I think its 1400 feet high. Its the tallest residential building in the Western hemisphere. Its only going to have 70 something apartments. So whos buying those apartments? Well, its not like a guy whos a lawyer in New York City. These are $7, $10, $20, $50 million apartments. You could think about these as safe deposit boxes for Russians, Indians, Chinese, people that are trying to have assets outside of the country. Nobodys even going to live in half these apartments. And thats just one tower of five that I could reference off the top of my head.

Nolan Bauerle: (07:10)

The one they built on Lexington, the skinnier one that went up earlier, I cant remember the name right now, but you can see the windows are empty. The lights are off every single night.

Josh Brown: (07:19)

Of course. You want to laugh? When they built 437 Park, which I think was the largest until this new one, the tallest, they did something for New York City called a traffic study. So if you want to build something of size, you have to spend millions of dollars and a couple of years studying what the impact will be on local traffic. And the joke is there aint going to be no fucking traffic, because no ones going to live there. So that is the way youre seeing foreign nationals move money out of their currency, or out of their governments jurisdiction and into what they consider to be a safer place. And youre just not seeing those dollar flows into bitcoin to the same extent. So its hard to make the case that functionally thats whats really happening there.

Nolan Bauerle: (08:05)

And you mentioned something that I hadnt really heard before. We call it a safe-haven asset, but you called it a protest asset as well. And I think thats a really interesting label, and that its behavior really hasnt mimicked what youd expect from a protest asset. Now I saw it traded at a premium when the Hong Kong protests began, it traded about a $100 premium. And that was really because people were worried about using their Oyster cards, their Metro cards to get home back to China if theyre going to the mainland, because they were going to get tracked, and basically just really worried about local dollars being tracked. But we havent really seen that premium stick, and we havent really seen that sort of flow towards using this so that youre not surveyed and youre not spied on so they know where your simple consumption dollars had gone.

Josh Brown: (08:52)

Somebody was telling me about Venezuela, and Im aware of whats going on in the economy there, and its been going on for years. And hyperinflation, the collapse of institutions, people starving. Its a horrible, horrible situation. Now, if you were to tell me 30% of all Venezuelans have moved their money from the local currency into bitcoin, then I would shut my mouth and I would say, Okay, theres something substantial here. But I dont think thats the case, do you?

Nolan Bauerle: (09:24)

No, I mean, and weve seen Turkey, for example, has seen a lot of users, lets say buyer [inaudible 00:09:32].

Josh Brown: (09:32)

Yeah. Great example. Another inflationary situation where people for political reasons want assets out of that country, and the local currency and economy is collapsing.

Nolan Bauerle: (09:44)

Yeah. But, like youre saying, we just havent seen that kind of use.

Josh Brown: (09:48)

Yeah. Where is it, where is it? When does it start? So Im not saying it cant, Im just saying Im not seeing it.

Nolan Bauerle: (09:54)

Now moving onto a recession. A lot of rumors of recessions, were still doing pretty well here in the United States, but its certainly crept in, in other jurisdictions. So weve seen this sort of cheap money around the world for a long time, and it looks like even from high risk tolerance from the VC side of things, because money, its just available and it looks like every idea out there is funded and the risk tolerance has grown to a certain extent here. Now, if that changes, if a recession does cause some kind of liquidity crunch, or some inability to get access to this cheap money again, how do you think bitcoin behaves?

Josh Brown: (10:34)

I guess we have no in the United States, we have no prior history of it, so well say weve been in expansion for 11 years, so its the longest expansion ever. So I dont know the answer.

Nolan Bauerle: (10:49)

Yeah, well theyre-

Josh Brown: (10:50)

Well find out.

Nolan Bauerle: (10:53)

And my final question for you, and really this is sort of tapping on your exposure to mainstream media, mainstream financial world. Bitcoin really popped in everyones consciousness in 2017 when I met you at that great dinner that we had down near Chinatown. And you wrote a beautiful blog post. I thought it was I really realized what a fantastic writer you were.

Josh Brown: (11:16)

Ah, thank you.

Nolan Bauerle: (11:17)

I think it was something into [inaudible 00:11:18], and it was great.

Josh Brown: (11:19)

Yeah. Yeah.

Nolan Bauerle: (11:21)

So here it is. It popped into world consciousness in 2017. Everyone started talking about it, and its already mutated a few times in peoples minds since then. In the last six months though, what have you seen thats changed, or if anything, is it just the same old story?

Josh Brown: (11:35)

So when I was a keynote speaker in the closing panel of Consensus: Invest 2017 the first year, the audience was filled with young people, primarily, mostly dudes, and they had made a lot of money. I think the price of bitcoin at that time was $15,000 or $16,000, and my message to that audience at that time was, calm down. Its okay to feel like youre missing out. You dont have to do something just because everyone else is doing it and they seem to be getting rich. And of course, it would only take a couple of weeks for that to look like really good advice. But that is always good advice. Maybe now were in the polar opposite situation, where instead of fear of missing out, theres this just incredible amount of pessimism that everything that people thought would be true about digital currencies, and cryptography, and blockchain is now like a joke in the mainstream financial media, or at least its being derided on a daily basis.

Josh Brown: (12:47)

And so maybe now things have gotten too pessimistic. And the only other example of this kind of thing that I could think of for my own career and experience, I remember my formative years in the industry we were doing the dot com bubble, and everything came apart relatively quickly. It only took from March of 2000 to, lets say, the end of 2001 for people to just be completely wiped out, not just in financial terms, although they were, but emotionally, and mentally. And just nobody wanted to hear anything about technology ever again. And in the ashes of that experience, Google was born. In the ashes of that experience very quietly with very little fanfare Steve jobs rejoined Apple as the CEO. The seeds for the technology boom that weve now been living through over the last, lets call it 12 years or 15 years, were born in the ashes of that prior mania.

Josh Brown: (13:52)

So I think statistically, spiritually, any way you want to look at it, there was absolutely a bubble in anything related to crypto going into the end of the year of 2017. I dont think anyone would deny that it was insane just as the internet mania, but the thing is all of the predictions that were made about the transformative power of the internet actually ended up coming true. It just took longer than what people expected, and the companies involved were very different. If you think about the original dot com bubble, we were worshiping at the altar of fiber optic plays like JDS Uniphase and Nortel. And we were buying up stocks like AOL, and Excite, and Lycos and Yahoo. None of which are particularly relevant anymore. But all the predictions, were going to buy groceries on the internet. It happens. Were going to buy pet food on the internet, it happened.

Josh Brown: (14:51)

Toys, books. Were going to communicate all day long. All of those predictions came true. Its just the investments werent right. So if there is a crypto future and there is a blockchain future, its highly possible that the early entrants, who came along in 2015, 16, 17, 18, arent going to be a part of it. And a lot of the investments that have been made will turn out to be zeros. But it doesnt mean that the future is written. So if I could maybe flip the script and this year offer that, I know its not that hopeful, but its somewhat hopeful to the audience. Then Ill feel as though Ive said something thats somewhat meaningful.

Nolan Bauerle: (15:33)

What youre basically saying is the world today is recognizable to the entrepreneurs and visionaries of 25 years ago. They would recognize what were doing today as the thing they predicted, but as you said, maybe coming at it from a different angle, with different names, on a different platform. The specifics are perhaps different, but the overall outline of it is pretty much in line with what those folks had envisioned.

Josh Brown: (16:00)

You know, this predates what I just talked about. In the 1800s we had a bubble in railroads, and almost every one of them went bankrupt. But what was left behind in the wake of that financial wreckage were the tracks, and the trains, and the stations, and the expertise to build more. And I mean we have trains to this day, and we had bullet trains. And what theyre building to connect I was just down in Orlando, and I saw all the facilities that theyve built for the bullet train thats going to take people from Miami to Orlando in 15 minutes.

Nolan Bauerle: (16:37)

Jeez.

Josh Brown: (16:37)

But that system that theyre building is a descendant of money that was lost to overambitious investment all the way back in the 1840s. So I know people dont have that much patience to wait 160 years to see their dreams come true, but Im just pointing out, after the railroad bubble, there were probably a lot of people running around saying, You see, its all stupid. No, it wasnt all stupid. And we had functional railroads from the civil war on. So eventually the technology found a way to be profitable, useful, and became woven into the fabric of our society. So its possible that the crypto investments people made in 2017 were stupid, but that they had the right idea. And that in the wreckage of the bubble having burst, new companies, new ideas, new entrepreneurs, new uses come about, and the whole thing rebuilds itself.

Josh Brown: (17:34)

And all of a sudden there are people with profitable investments. And just as a Coda to that, I took the long Island railroad into Manhattan today from long Island. And in every car, there are advertisement posters. And in a car I happened to have been riding in today were posters for the Genesis crypto exchange. And I know thats Tyler and Cameron [Winklevoss] and I would imagine they spent a ton of money on this, but everyone riding that train car was surrounded by posters for this new monetary exchange or brokerage or whatever you want to call it. And most of the people looking at this poster were like, What the hell does that mean? But some people know. And I just find it interesting that there were still people willing to invest, and advertise, and market new products. And as long as that continues, maybe there is a future thats more in the near term than what I think now for these types of technologies.

Nolan Bauerle: (18:32)

So like youre saying, the tracks were laid to bring you from Miami to the happiest place in the world in such a short amount of time. And perhaps the tracks are still there to bring bitcoin to the moon and realize everyones-

Josh Brown: (18:48)

When moon.

Nolan Bauerle: (18:48)

When moon, when moon.

Josh Brown: (18:49)

Well, look, I think we could separate what we think the price of the thing does versus what we think the utility will be. Thats where Ive been since December of 2018. We wrote a blog post basically saying, Im done speculating on the price of bitcoin. I think its a mania. However, Im open-minded to the possibility that blockchain will become a transformative technology. The caveat is that it might be very unsexy. It might show up in the income statement of a company that managed to save a few million dollars, by going from database to a blockchain. I dont know that that implies that the price of a digital coin will go up, but Im trying to stay open-minded.

Nolan Bauerle: (19:34)

Its not the romance of pamphleteering around the French Revolution or the American Revolution that everyone was sort of-

Josh Brown: (19:42)

No, right, it could just be corporate cost savings. And again, that is a sort of revolution. It just wont involve people waving flags and storming the barriers.

Nolan Bauerle: (19:54)

Well, Josh, thanks for your time today.

Josh Brown: (19:56)

Did I bring everybody down? I dont want to do that.

Nolan Bauerle: (19:59)

No, no. It was fantastic and were looking forward to hearing more in just over a week now. So thanks for your time and see you soon.

Josh Brown: (20:07)

All right, Nolan. Thank you.

Here is the original post:

PODCAST: Josh Brown on Why Bitcoin Is Like the 1800s Railroad Boom - Coindesk

According to a cryptocurrency trader, the Bitcoin price may be set for an extended rally to $50,000 by mid-2020, based on its macro trend.

Throughout the past two weeks, despite the brief breakout of the Bitcoin price to $10,600, many technical analysts have generally geared towards a bearish short term outlook.

Still, with the block reward halving of Bitcoin set to occur in May 2020, most analysts remain bullish on the medium to long term trend of the dominant cryptocurrency.

Traders and technical analysts who have consistently favored a bearish short term trend for bitcoin, like Dave the Wave, have said that the bitcoin price is getting closer to its lower support level or a buy zone.

The trader said that if a pullback occurs in the cryptocurrency market after the decline of bitcoin from around $9,200 to $8,800 in the upcoming days, it is likely to be the last leg down for BTC.

As the short term trend of Bitcoin begins to demonstrate signs of a bottom, the macro trend of the asset is expected to become more optimistic, especially considering strong fundamentals including growing hash rate and strengthening infrastructure supporting the asset class.

In 2012 and 2016, when the block reward halving of Bitcoin occurred, a mechanism that drops the BTC reward of miners by half, the Bitcoin price went on to reach new highs a year and a half after.

The Bitcoin price increased by more than 10-fold after the 2016 halving, but it occurred over a long period of time, with BTC achieving its peak in December 2017.

Hence, the block reward halving may not have an immediate effect on the Bitcoin price as soon as it occurs in May, and it could see a 2016-esqe scenario in which it takes the asset a year or longer to see the real impact of halving.

However, as said by Blocktower Capital co-founder James Todaro, the majority of investors are not aware of the halving and that the theory that the halving is already priced in may be premature.

Grayscale Investments, a cryptocurrency investment firm with over $2 billion in assets under management, also reported that the firm was surprised to see that many investors are not anticipating the event.

The report read:

In fact, based on anecdotal conversations with market participants, we were surprised to learn that many of them were not even aware of this event. Moreover, according to Unchained Capital, less than 32% of the bitcoins in circulation have remained in the same wallet addresses since July 2016.

If the block reward halving is not priced into the market, as the market gets closer to May 2020, it may begin to see upside momentum affecting major cryptocurrencies.

Continued here:

Why one trader thinks Bitcoin may begin a mega bull run and reach $50k by July 2020 - CryptoSlate

The crypto bears are in full swing in action after a weekend of consolidative movements. The slow weekend trading calmed the atmosphere within the crypto space after a devastating Friday price fall. The cryptos leading in declines on Monday include Bitcoin Gold (BTG) at 3.15%, Litecoin (LTC) at 3.15% and Bitcoin (BTC) at 3.10%.

In spite of the correction, the global crypto market is holding the market a bit higher at $240 billion compared to $239 billion on Sunday. The trading volume has also thinned to $74 billion from $80 billion in the same period.

As mentioned, Bitcoin is trading more than 3% lower on the day. From an intraday high of $9,068 the price is teetering at $8,720. The downtrend market with high volatility means that the movementsouth has just started. Note that Bitcoin dived to levels under $8,700 on Friday before covering to $9,200. The slide under $9,000 could refresh $8,400 or even $8,000, in turn, creating fresh demand which could eventually send Bitcoin above $10,000.

Read more:Bitcoin price prediction: BTC/USD shifts focus to $8,400 Confluence Levels

The picture for Ethereum and Ripple's price performance is not different from that of Bitcoin. Ethereum is down 1.69% on the day while XRP is trading 2% lower. Particularly, Ripple is strongly bearish while its volatility is quite high. Last week XRP test $0.27 but recovered to $0.28. The prevailing bearish pressure is also focusing on $0.27 short term support.

On the other hand, Ethereum is trading $186 after touching $190.28 on the upside. After failing to sustain gains above $190, the bulls left the gate wide open for the bears. For now, the bulls have a task to defend $180 support which will help to launch the next attack on $200.

Read more:Ripple price update: Reignited bearish momentum targets $0.27

View original post here:

Cryptocurrency market update: Bitcoin pendulum action targets both $8,000 and $10,000 - FXStreet

A peer-to-peer, instant messaging protocol has been created for Bitcoins Lightning Network, enabling encrypted messages to be sent without the use of a third party, like Facebook or WhatsApp.

The project, called Whatsat,an amalgamation of WhatsApp and satoshi, the smallest unit of value for Bitcoinpiggybacks on the Lightning Network to pass messages around. These are end-to-end encrypted, onion-routed, peer-to-peer and censorship-resistant messages. And, for now, theyre free.

The project was created as a small pet project according to Whatsat creator, and current Lighting Labs engineer, Joost Jager. He told Decrypt that he put together the code as a way to use Bitcoins micropayment network to talk to an old high school friend who didnt trust WhatsApp.

The project initially received high acclaim at the r/Bitcoin subreddit last weekreceiving over 1,100 upvotes. It is based on the Lightning Network, which is is one way that Bitcoin may be able to scale to millions of users. It is known as a second-layer solution that allows participants to make Bitcoin transactions at a much lower cost.

Be the first to get Decrypt Members. A new type of account built on blockchain.

The Netherlands-based engineer said, The idea of instant messaging over Lightning does seem to resonate and many people acknowledge the potential of it.

However, he did mention that there are still plenty of challenges and that Lightning, as a payment network, has a whole bunch of them. Its, still very early, just last year it became available on mainnet.

While he doesnt see any reasons why a messaging protocol wouldnt be able to work on a global scale using the Lightning Network, Whatsat might have to adapt to continuing using it.

The current implementation leverages a protocol called free failures to send messages between two Lightning nodes. However, in the future, nodes might start charging for this service, or put limits on the number of messages they pass around.

Yesterday, Jager showed off a new demo that supports such an idea, with messages costing tiny fees to be sent around. In his example, messages cost 0.3 satoshis per messages, just $0.00003 a pop. If this were to end up as the standard fee, it would cost an average user around $0.66 to send around 20,000 messagesor one years worth of use.

But even this might be problematic. Many nodes dont support messages being passed around at such low cost. Jager encouraged node operators to set their limits much lower, to allow for more Lightning apps to arrive.

See the rest here:

Forget WhatsApp, this developer built encrypted messages on Bitcoin - Decrypt

Bitcoin (BTC/USD), the most widely traded cryptocurrency, witnessed a sharp U-turn from the early Sunday sluggish momentum and broke the range to upside late-Sunday after stops got triggered on a break above the key resistance zone around 8,880/90 levels. The spike saw the price rise by almost 4% in less than 10 minutes, completely negating the bearish technical picture painted on the hourly sticks in early trades.

The no.1 coin reached fresh four-day tops of 9,137 but quickly faded the spike to revert to the 9,050 range before settling the day around 9,030 region. The price opened the new week, this Monday, on a positive note, having reached session highs at 9,048. The bulls now take a breather, allowing a phase of consolidation after the recent upsurge. Also, as the coin gathers momentum in order to regain the 9,200 level, a break above which will expose Fridays high at 9,247.

At the press time, the most favorite coin is testing session lows near 9,030 region, almost unchanged on the day while its market capitalization increased from $ 159.13 billion to $ 163.35 billion.

Joe DiPasquale, CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund managerBitBull Capital, cited: The current move is a technical recovery.

We mentioned previously that we expect the 50-day moving average to continue acting as support, and that has allowed the price to recover temporarily, Joe added.

See the article here:

Bitcoin price analysis: Bulls take a breather after the 4% surge, whats next? - FXStreet

On November 15, shortly after 12 p.m., Bitcoin Cash (BCH) will execute an upgrade of the networks consensus rules. After the upgrade is locked in, the next block will enforce minimal pushdata in script and the opcodes OP_Checkmultisig and OP_Checkmultisigverify will be upgraded to accept Schnorr signatures.

Also Read: QE Infinity: 37 Central Banks Participate in Stimulus and Easing Practices

Next Friday, Bitcoin Cash proponents will be watching the BCH chain upgrade the current consensus ruleset in order to add two new features. Developers have been discussing the upgrade for months now and have explained in great detail at developer meetings how the changes apply to the BCH roadmap. Since August 1, 2017, BCH developers have produced a significant number of protocol developments that are unique to BCH. For instance, BCH engineers have increased the block size to 32MB, allowing for a lot more throughput than a 1MB block.

In September 2018, BCH surpassed BTCs daily transaction count by processing millions of transactions in a single day. Bitcoin Cash programmers have re-enabled the old Satoshi opcodes, which can allow for a variety of decision-based transactions, compilers, and other functions. The added opcodes allow for the implementation of OP_Checkdatasig which can be used to calculate the hash within a transaction in order to validate signatures in an automated way. Bitcoin Cash developers also increased the networks default Data-Carrier-Size to 220 Bytes.

BCH engineers did not stop there and at block 582680, the blockchain upgraded by adding the basic foundations of the Schnorr signature protocol. The upgrade prior to the Schnorr feature saw the implementation of Canonical Transaction Ordering otherwise known as CTOR. With CTOR the BCH chain can essentially work with blocks as a set, as opposed to list ordering as the process is done in a canonical manner. According to Coin Dance statistics, BCH developers have added 20 different components to the protocol, theres another 20 under development, 15 features being discussed and two new properties pending activation. The two added components being implemented to the BCH blockchain consist of a finalized malleability vector (enforcing minimal pushdata in script) and Schnorr signature support for both OP_Checkmultisig and OP_Checkmultisigverify.

The first change will curb malleability vectors on the network by applying the Minimaldata rule. This removes the final BIP 62 malleability vector, and means that most of the transactions on the Bitcoin Cash network (including all P2PKH transactions) will now be non-malleable, the November 15 upgrade documentation explains. While bitcoin transactions are signed, signatures dont encompass all the data hashed and its possible for nodes to pervert the transaction by invalidating the hash.

There are various forms of malleability vectors in scriptSig and signatures, and in 2014 BIP62 was introduced in order to deal with the problems. Over the last few years, many types of solutions have been attempted in order to confront third-party malleability vectors. After the network upgrade next Friday, a majority of bitcoin cash transactions will not be third-party malleable and the enforced Minimaldata rule should also strengthen Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) clients.

The second added feature coming to the BCH chain is support for OP_Checkmultisig (Verify) in order to complement the first iteration of Schnorr signatures. This upgrade extends that support to OP_Checkmultisig and after this upgrade, all signature checking operations will support Schnorr signatures, the upgrade documentation reads.

The new feature will allow for more complex mechanics to multi-signature transactions that will benefit from the Schnorr mechanism. Schnorr aggregated signatures (with OP_Checksig) are one way to do multi-signatures, but they have different technical properties than the familiar Bitcoin multisig, and thus are far from being a drop-in replacement for it, the November 15 specification notes. The summary adds:

Besides that, it is also desirable that any existing coin can be spent using Schnorr signatures, and there are numerous OP_Checkmultisig-based wallets and coins in existence that we want to be able to take advantage of Schnorr signatures.

Bitcoin Cash fans are excited about the next upgrade and network participants have been steadily preparing for the changes. Ordinary users wont have to do anything before the network changes take effect. Miners and node operators, however, are encouraged to download and run the latest version of a BCH client that supports the November 15 ruleset changes.

Currently Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin Unlimited, BCHD, Flowee, and Bitcoin Verde are all ready to accept the new rules, and at press time 68% of all publicly accessible BCH nodes show upgrade support. Every day enthusiasts and proponents who dont mine or run a node can simply watch the upgrade online using a data site like Coin Dance or Fork Monitor. On November 15, both websites will let people know exactly when the consensus changes are executed.

For more information regarding the November 15 Bitcoin Cash upgrade, you can read the specifications on Github.

What do you think about the upcoming Bitcoin Cash upgrade scheduled for November 15? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Twitter, Github, Coin Dance, Wiki Commons, and Pixabay.

Did you know you can buy and sell BCH privately using our noncustodial, peer-to-peer Local Bitcoin Cash trading platform? The Local.Bitcoin.com marketplace has thousands of participants from all around the world trading BCH right now. And if you need a bitcoin wallet to securely store your coins, you can download one from us here.

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

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What to Expect From the Next Bitcoin Cash Protocol Upgrade - Bitcoin News

Get Forbes' top crypto and blockchain storiesdelivered to your inboxevery week for the latest news on bitcoin, other major cryptocurrencies and enterprise blockchain adoption.

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Researchers have cast fresh doubt over whetherbitcoin's epic bull runhappened organically, suggesting it may have been caused by a single, large playermanipulating the bitcoin market.

According to a new report,an unidentified Bitfinex accountusedtetherto manipulate the bitcoin price between March 2017 and March 2018 by creating unprecedented demand for the digital token. Over that period, the total market value of bitcoin soared from$16 billionto$326 billion.

Microsoftis taking its secret platform for creating crypto tokens out for a test drive. The tech giants new crypto-assets mint lets enterprisesdesign, issue and manage a wide range of digital assets. Several companies, including a video game outfit and a virtual reality platform, have already used the platform to create experimental tokens, while others likeGeneral Electricare waiting in the wings to create their own.

Big picture: Major companies like JPMorgan have already minted similar tokens, and Facebook is working with a group of companies like Uber, Spotify and Vodaphone on the Libra Project. Microsofts work, using the same standard as the other participating blockchain developers, could pave the way for an explosion of similar enterprise-grade tokens.

Stellar, the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, saw its price soar this week after the Stellar Development Foundation "burned" more than half the digital token's supplyworth a staggering $4.7 billion.

Bitcoinremained largely flat following the news, while other smaller tokens, including Ripple'sXRP, rose slightly.

Plus:one reasonwhy bitcoin is better than gold.

Source: Messari. Prices as of 4:00 p.m. on November 8, 2019.

Recent data gathered by popular employment site Indeed shows that over the past year, the share of blockchain andcryptocurrency job postings is up more than 25%, while the share of searches for those jobs hasfallen by more than half. For the same period two years ago, Indeed saw a 14% bump these types of job searches.

The companies with the most job blockchain and crypto job postings on Indeed over the past year were mainstream powerhouses likeDeloitte,IBM,AccentureandCisco.

Cryptocurrency Bank Vanished, Leaving Customers in a $16M Hole [Daily Beast]

Biglaw Powerhouse To Accept Bitcoin As Payment [Above The Law]

The Bitcoin Rich List Has Grown 30% in the Last Year, But Why? [CoinDesk]

From Pigs to Party Fealty, China Harnesses Blockchain Power [Bloomberg]

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Did A Manipulator Drive Bitcoins $20,000 Peak? Plus, Why Bitcoin Trumps Gold. - Forbes

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency traders and investors have long been eying a return to bitcoin's all-time high set in late 2017.

The bitcoin price, which began 2017 at under $1,000, surged to almost $20,000 in under 12 monthscatapulting bitcoin and crypto into the mainstream and making many early adopters overnight millionaires.

Now, researchers have cast fresh doubt over whether bitcoin's epic bull run happened organically, suggesting it may have been caused by single, large player manipulating the bitcoin market.

The bitcoin price surged throughout 2017 only to fall back sharply the following year; though ... [+] bitcoin has staged something of a recovery in 2019.

Researchers John Griffin and Amin Shams, finance professors at the University of Texas and Ohio State University, respectively, found that around half of bitcoin's value between March 2017 and March 2018 was created by trades between bitcoin and tether, a so-called stablecoin with links to the British Virgin Islands-based Bitfinex bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange.

Bitfinex and Tether Ltd, which controls the stablecoin tether, are owned by the same people and the two companies share senior staff.

Earlier this year, tether surpassed bitcoin in daily and monthly trading volume to become the most traded cryptocurrency on the market.

According to the researchers, an unidentified Bitfinex account used tether to manipulate the bitcoin price by creating unprecedented demand for the digital token.

Over the period, the total market value of bitcoin soared to $326 billion, from $16 billion at the beginning of the year. Bitcoin's market capitalization is now around $165 billion, making it the most valuable cryptocurrency by a considerable margin.

"Even a fairly small amount of capital can manipulate the price of bitcoin," Griffin told the Wall Street Journal newspaper, which first reported the study.

"If its not Bitfinex, its somebody they do business with very frequently."

"We find that the identified patterns are not present on other flows, and almost the entire price impact can be attributed to this one large player," Griffin and Shams wrote.

"We map this data across both blockchains and find that the one player or entity (labeled as 1LSg throughout the paper) is behind the majority of the patterns we document."

The pair of researchers examined the entire transaction history of bitcoin and tether for the studya data set of 200 gigabytes.

The findings of the study will add fuel to speculation tether has been used to manipulate the bitcoin price. Last year, U.S. federal prosecutors began investigating whether tether trading had been used to move the bitcoin price.

The bitcoin price has remained highly volatile since its 2017 bull run, though has failed to return ... [+] to its all-time high of almost $20,000 per bitcoin.

The study could potentially worry bitcoin traders, many of whom believe bitcoin's incredible 2017 surge was due to banks and other institutional investors eying the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market.

Bitcoin's subsequent fall to around $3,500 in 2018 has been explained through regulatory fears and some institutions thought to be interested in bitcoin parking their crypto plans.

This year, bitcoin has rallied somewhat, climbing back above $10,000 per bitcoin, following reports social media giant Facebook, among other big technology companies, are interested in bitcoin and blockchain technology.

Facebook has announced plans to release its own bitcoin competitor, dubbed libra, some time next year but has run into fierce governmental push back, with some companies who had signed up to Facebook's independent Libra Association dropping out.

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The Real Reason Behind Bitcoins Epic Rally Revealed? - Forbes

Bitcoin (BTC) will surpass the market cap of gold and could ultimately be worth $1 million, well-known industry figure Bobby Lee has said.

In a series of tweets on Nov. 10, Lee, who co-founded Chinese cryptocurrency exchange BTCC and now runs a Bitcoin wallet startup, became the latest voice in the expanding debate on Bitcoin versus gold.

Golds market cap is $8 trillion, while Bitcoins is just $160 billion. While around fifty times lower at present, Lee thinks a reversal could come as soon as 2028.

I predict the #flippening will happen within 9 years and $BTC will shoot up past USD $500,000, he wrote.

Like many, Lee based his argument for Bitcoins success on its decreasing supply via block reward halvings. He noted that in the next decade, the amount of Bitcoin released to miners each block will halve three times. Lee added:

By 20th year, daily new output will just be ~255 BTC yearly inflation of less than 0.5%. More scarce than #gold!

His arguments chime with predictions by a well-established model charting the Bitcoin price Stock-to-Flow. The product of social media analyst PlanB, the instrument likewise uses Bitcoins new supply versus its existing stock to forecast its future value.

As Cointelegraph reported, calculations call for a BTC/USD price of just $8,300 until the next halving in May 2020. After that, however, the situation should change rapidly, with $100,000 coming around two years later.

Lee also joined PlanB in predicting far higher Bitcoin prices in the latter part of the next decade or beyond. While the former thinks a $1 million price tag is possible in the event of global money printing continuing, PlanB noted that money printing could ultimately stop the Stock-to-Flow model from working.

I would be happy if the model holds for 1 or 2 or maybe 3 more halvings. Especially since BTC is measured in $ who knows what happens with $ if the FED keeps doing more QE (money printing), he said in a Twitter exchange late last month.

The idea of Bitcoin usurping gold as an alternative store of value still has its major detractors. Among the most vocal is Peter Schiff, the gold bug who has become infamous for his social media slighting of both Bitcoin and its proponents.

Last week, Schiff argued that China potentially backing its state-issued digital currency with gold was a bearish sign for Bitcoin.

Prior to that, he forecast BTC/USD never reaching $50,000, while gold would pass $5,000.

Equally vocal about Bitcoin meanwhile is Max Keiser, the RT host who continues to argue for the cryptocurrencys supremacy on mainstream media.

In an episode of his Keiser Report last week, he said that Bitcoins self-settling ability automatically made it more suitable for transactions than either gold or fiat currency.

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Bobby Lee: $500K Bitcoin Price Flippening of Gold Will Come by 2028 - Cointelegraph