This Week In Crypto - Friday, April 13

Bulls on Parade (Don’t Get Trampled)

For the first time in weeks, we’ve seen some clear, positive upwards momentum for the coin-wide market. Cryptocurrency’s comprehensive market cap is up 23% at $326bln, up from $248bln last Friday morning. But there’s one caveat: most of this growth has come in the last 36hrs.

Leading price movements as usual, Bitcoin rose roughly $1,000 dollars in a single hour, leaping from $6,800 to just over $7,700 between 7:00 and 8:00am on April 12th. Coinciding with this dramatic price movement, Bitcoin shorts were squeezed to their lowest volume in half a month, as roundabout 15,000 trades closed their position over the course of Thursday morning. As shorts were cut short and prices blew through the roof, Bitcoin’s one hour trading volume during its spike was $1.2bln, potentially the largest one hour volume in the currency’s history.

(Click on image to enlarge)

The upwards price movement is no doubt good–we’re all happy about seeing some green in the portfolio–but this short squeeze was so spontaneous and the price movement so like “recoveries” we’ve seen earlier in 2018’s bear market that we’re not drinking the bullish Kool-Aid yet. Still, shorts were at an all-time high before price action shifted and some ~37% were liquidated, and the massive trading volume on Bitcoin’s one hour rise is encouraging.

Positive developments, but stay savvy as we may not be cleared for takeoff yet.

Bitcoin: As we went over above, Bitcoin underwent a drastic price increase yesterday morning. As of press time, it’s weekly price up 18% at $8,050.

Ethereum: After performing poorly for a handful of weeks, Ethereum is looking even better than Bitcoin, up by 27% over the week with a price just over $510.

Ripple: Ripple is on pace with Ethereum, sitting at $0.65 after rising 27% this week.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Domestic News

Nano Team Pegged with Class Action Lawsuit Over Bitgrail Loses: The Bitgrail saga continues, but this time, an action is being taken against Nano’s core team. Colin LeMahieu, Mica Busch, Zack Shapiro, and Troy Retzer are all defendants in a lawsuit filed in New York State court by plaintiff Alex Brola, who claims to represent the Nano investment community at large. The class action charges the plaintiffs for misleading investors into using Bitgrail exchange to purchase and store Nano, requesting that the team hard fork Nano to recover lost funds.Hours before the lawsuit surfaced, Nano announced that it had established a legal fund for victims who lost NANO to Bitgrail, with a pledge to match contributions up to $1mln.

In a Week ofSuits, JP Morgan Wears its Own with Legal Troubles Over Covert Crypto-Purchasing Fees: Financial titan JPMorgan Chase & Co. are staring down the barrel of their own lawsuit. Coming out of a federal court in Manhattan, a nationwide class of defendants accuses the institution of imposing surprise fees for cryptocurrency purchases and treating these as cash advances.Among other charges, the defendants say “ Chase (JPM.N) charged both extra fees and substantially higher interest rates on the cash advances than on the credit cards.” In early February, the bank began declining cryptocurrency purchases with credit cards, presumably due to the asset class’ volatility.

Winklevoss Twins Win Patent Filing for Cryptographic, Cloud Computing Payment System: They couldn’t get a foothold in the emerging social media sector, but the Winklevoss twins are becoming industry movers in the crypto-sphere. The Gemini exchange owners were just awarded a patent for a “system, method, and program product for processing secure transactions within a cloud computing system.” This adds to an ever-expanding suite of five patents held by Winklevoss IP, LLC, the twin’s legal entity.It’s speculated that the duo may look to implement the technology into their Gemini exchange.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Cryptocurrency Tax Anxieties (and FUD) Loom as US Tax Day Nears: Plenty of ink has been spilled over the IRS’s tax policy for cryptocurrency investing and trading. Some articles are read as helpful guides to advise readers on safe filing practices, while others read as pure FUD and scare tactics–kind like the CNBC article linked above. Now, we’re not telling you to skimp your responsibilities as a US citizen, but we will say that, unless you made mad gains (six figures or more) on your investments over the past year, the $250,000 in fines and imprisonment the article references are probably not for you.

The Billion Dollar Trifecta: Rockefellers join Soros, Rothschild Funds with Crypto Investments: The Rockefeller family is betting on cryptocurrency, and they’re betting for the long-haul.Venrock, the family’s venture capital fund, has partnered with the cryptocurrency investment firm CoinFund to vet blockchain-based businesses and startups. This makes the Rockefellers the latest out of the world’s richest families and funds to invest in the industry, following the likes of George Soros and the Rothschilds.

Bittrex Reopens User Registration, Greets Newcomers with New Look, and Closes Registration Again: As part of a general site rebranding, Bittrex opened its arms to new users this week.The move comes after Bittrex halted new account creation in December, an action taken by many top exchanges to expand infrastructure. Bittrex claims to have expanded to over 50 employees in the interim, giving its layout a complete UI/UX overhaul (met with mixed reviews within the community). After a deluge of newcomers drowned the exchange in fresh accounts, the exchange had to reclose registration to manage demand.

Executive Leaves Goldman Sachs to Work on Mike Novogratz’s Crypto Merchant Bank: A harrowing for legacy financial institutions?Let’s slow down there, as it’s only one executive, but even so, it’s a symbolic gesture.Richard Kim, who reportedly had been working on Goldman Sach’s cryptocurrency strategy desk, has left the firm to join Mike Novogratz as COO of Galaxy Digital. Novogratz, who also held a position at Goldman Sachs for 11 years, left wall street in 2015 to focus on cryptocurrency.