Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin Nears $10k, Goldman Sachs Talks Cryptocurrency, Chinese Yuan Slumps

Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. It’s been a positive past week for the Bitcoin market. After falling as low as $8,600, the flagship crypto mounted a strong comeback over the past few days that say BTC hit $9,650. This is the highest price the asset has traded in just over eight days. Interestingly, altcoins began to deviate from Bitcoin’s price action over the past week. As can be seen in the image below, Ethereum largely outperformed BTC and other asset classes, as did Cardano and Maker. On the other hand, Chainlink, XRP, Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision, and other top crypto assets slumped. Image of crypto market price action from Coin360 The crypto market remains below the late-April highs and the year-to-date highs, but analysts are still bullish. Blockchain analytics upstart Santiment, for instance, shared late last week that BTC’s Network Value to Transactions Ratio (NVT) remains “healthy.” “In spite of BTC’s mild -4.4% downswing today, its NVT looks healthy, and our model is showing a semi-bullish signal. The amount of unique tokens being transacted on Bitcoin network is slightly above average for in May, according to where price levels currently sit,” blockchain analytics firm Santiment wrote. Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Satoshi Isn’t Dumping His Bitcoin, China ‘Bans’ Cryptocurrency Mining Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits Goldman Sachs Talks Crypto Assets: On May 27, multinational investment bank and Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs held a call related to Bitcoin. Entitled “Implications of Current Policies for Inflation, Gold, and Bitcoin,” two executives at Goldman Sachs and a Harvard professor deliberated over BTC. They said that Bitcoin does not generate cash flow, does not hedge against inflationary risks, and does not “provide consistent diversification benefits given their unstable correlations.” The analysts added that the crypto can be used for crime, citing the PlusToken Ponzi scheme of yesteryear. Many are divided over the contents of the call, but there seems to be a silver lining: as one analyst explained, the fact that Goldman Sachs mentioned Bitcoin is a sign they’re hearing of it from their clients. Chinese Yuan Slips, Boosting Bitcoin and Crypto Bull Case: U.S.-China relations were on the mend at the end of 2019, but this is changing with news of a new Hong Kong law. The law, many in the international community say, erodes the region’s autonomy that the mainland Chinese government promised to uphold until 2047. The U.S. has responded by threatening sanctions. The Chinese yuan, as a result, has sunk. This could benefit Bitcoin. Chris Burniske, a partner at Placeholder Capital, explained: “If China’s CNY continues to weaken against USD, then we could have a 2015 and 2016 repeat, where BTC strength coincided with yuan weakness.” Early Bitcoin Miners Bashes Craig Wright: An early Bitcoin miner from 2019/2010 with access to tens of millions (and potentially over one hundred million) worth of BTC recently revealed that he’s still around. The owner of the coins signed the following message with his private key, indicating his latest views on developments in the Bitcoin space without revealing who he is: “Craig Steven Wright is a liar and a fraud. He doesn’t have the keys used to sign this message. The Lightning Network is a significant achievement. However, we need to continue work on improving on-chain capacity. Unfortunately, the solution is not to just change a constant in the code or to allow powerful participants to force out others. We are all Satoshi.” Bitcoin Cash Looks Fundamentally Unhealthy, Top Crypto Analyst Says: According to prominent crypto analyst Yassine Elmandjra of ARK Invest, Bitcoin Cash is so fundamentally weak that he is surprised “we haven’t seen a large scale attack yet.” He cited three fundamental factors to back this assertion: Bitcoin Cash’s network hash rate is down 30% since its April halving, economic throughput has dropped to all-time lows, and it doesn’t cost that much from a macro perspective to attack the network. Bitcoin Cash is not looking healthy: -Hashrate down 30% since halving (& only accounts for ~2% of SHA256 hash)-Economic throughput at all time lows-Fees are .05% of miner rev (<$100/day)-Theoretical 51% attack costs <$10k/hr Surprised we haven't seen a large scale attack yet — Yassine Elmandjra (@yassineARK) May 23, 2020 Featured Image from Shutterstock

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