Today on Altcoins This Week, Reasons for the Sudden Decrease in Cryptocurrency Prices, the Russian Government Starts Working on Blockchain Legislation and More. Come Check It Out.
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Websters Adds Ico and Cryptocurrency to the Dictionary
This week, Merriam-Webster Dictionary announced that they would be adding 850 new words and definitions. Among those words, Merriam-Webster added the terms ‘cryptocurrency’, ‘blockchain’ and ‘ICO’. This marks another recognition for the blockchain industry on a global scale.
Russia Moves on Legislation on Cryptocurrency
Vladimir Putin shows his support and willingness to promote the blockchain industry. In recent developments, Putin ordered that a cryptocurrency regulation must be in place by July 1st, 2018. These regulations seek to protect the parties involved; businesses, investors and regular people who on a daily basis use blockchain and exchanges. As with every regulation a country attempts to implement, the different markets involved tend to fight changes, worried about how this decision could impact their market, especially when it comes to the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance, but Putin still is trying to bring some order.
British Company Laundered Mt Gox Stolen Coins
BBC Radio 4 investigation just published the results of an investigation they held for one of the largest ever hacks of a digital currency exchange, Mt.Gox, which occurred back in 2014, it has been revealed that a British company by the name of Always Efficient LLP has been involved in the laundering of the 650,000 Bitcoins stolen, which are worth over £4.5bn. The investigation revealed that Mt Gox rival’s exchange website BTC-e was involved in the laundering operation. The FBI says the man behind BTC-e is a Russian national by the name of Alexander Vinnik, who was arrested while on holiday in Greece in July 2017.
Flash panic in the markets send prices tumbling
On March 7th 2018, the markets took a sudden loss of about $40 billion within a few hours, which represented 10% of Bitcoin price for the week. The sudden fall in prices occurred due to various reasons. First of all, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made an announcement that many online ICO platforms would need to register with them. This comes as an inevitable measure from the SEC to avoid unlawful trading platforms.
Second, Japan’s FSA suspended two exchanges and penalized another four. The decision comes as part of an effort from Japan’s government to tighten up consumer protection rights after approximately US$530 million were stolen from Coincheck.This theft and the one MT. Gox experienced back in 2014 set off alarms for the FSA to start developing measures to penalize the exchanges that were not working in accordance with best practices for consumer protection laws.
Last but not least, rumors started running across Redditt that Binance was being hacked, as users reported that their altcoins were being sold into Bitcoin and Siacoin without previous authorisation. This was followed by the suspension of withdrawals, which lead to panic selling from many users. Binance has since issued a statement reassuring everyone that their funds are not at risk.
All these situations caused the cryptocurrency prices to go down by 5-15% on average.
Altcoin Price Round up for the Week
Apart from the Mad March sale of coins taking place in the last 24 hours, it was looking like quite a healthy week for altcoins. Ethereum was being traded at $870 before slipping to $750. Ripple began the week by going up 20 cents but then went down 25 cents, trading at 84 cents now. Monero gained $60 at its best point this week, given the upcoming fork for March 14th. Neo, having a hard week after a Tweet went viral pointing out a weakness in the system, took a loss and is now trading at $96.
