A few years back, Bitcoin’s (BTC) price was controlled by whales as the crypto market lacked depth and was relatively illiquid. If whales were selling in unison, no one wanted to venture out and buy. Similarly, the whale’s concerted buying easily boosted prices higher. However, that is not the case anymore. With the arrival of institutional investors, it appears that the whales are gradually losing their ability to influence BT price. According to on-chain data, Grayscale Investments purchased about twice the number of Bitcoin mined in November. The steady inflow of institutional funds has boosted Grayscale’s Bitcoin Assets Under Management …

Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz has admitted the company could be forced by validators to burn its 48 billion XRP tokens, regardless of if it agrees with the decision or not. The company currently holds half the total XRP supply and has come under fire from the community for selling off tokens in the past, although it resolutely refuted claims of price manipulation and has stopped the practice in recent times. In a Twitter thread, Schwartz confirmed that the community could vote for Ripple to burn their entire supply of XRP tokens, stating that the blockchain is “very democratic.” …

Researchers from the University of Bern have released a report claiming Ripple’s consensus protocol “ensures neither safety nor liveness.” In a blog posted yesterday from the university’s Cryptology and Data Security Research Group, researchers Christian Cachin, Amores-Sesar, and Jovana Mićić released an analysis alleging the payment firm’s consensus protocol could allow users to potentially “double-spend a token” and halt the processing of transactions. The trio set up examples of the Ripple protocol using different numbers and types of nodes to illustrate possible violations of safety and liveness (a term for the network continuing to process transactions and makes progress). According …

As Ripple reportedly prepares to relocate its headquarters outside of the United States, it turns out that only 5% of the company’s clients are based in the country, according to the firm’s CEO. On Dec. 2, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse sat for an interview with CNN anchor Julia Chatterley to discuss Ripple’s regulatory hurdles in operating in the U.S. According to Garlinghouse, as much as 95% of the San Francisco-based company’s customers are located abroad. He claimed that Ripple’s services are not as popular in the U.S. due to the ongoing regulatory uncertainty around its associate token XRP, Garlinghouse said: …

Bitcoin price hit a new all-time high above $19,892 on Dec. 1. This is a significant event because it proves that the rally in 2017 was ahead of fundamentals but not a bubble. Generally, when a bubble bursts, it takes several years for the price to cross the high made during the bubble. For example, the Japanese stock market bubble came after a high was made way back in 1989, and that level has not been conquered yet. Similarly, silver’s high close to $50 per ounce was made in 1980, and the price came close to that level only in …

XRP saw a month-on-month 1,151% surge in trading activity in November on the eToro investment trading platform, according to the company’s latest report. This comes as the XRP price rallied to $0.92 on Coinbase at its monthly peak and closing the month with a 283% gain at around $0.61. Spike in retail interest, trading activity Bitcoin (BTC) was nearing $19,000 for the first time since December 2017 when large market cap altcoins like XRP started to surge in November. The optimistic market sentiment around Bitcoin likely led traders to explore higher-risk, short-term trades. The result was a large surge in …

Blockstream’s Samson Mow wants to move the conversation away from Bitcoin’s (BTC) performance in transactions per second and toward its role in ushering in “a new financial paradigm,” that is, serving as a permissionless medium for the store and transfer of value. #Bitcoin moves nearly half a million dollars in value around the globe permissionlessly every second. It was never about transactions per second and coffee. It's all about value transacted per second and a new financial paradigm. #VTPS not #TPS. Nothing comes close to @BTC. pic.twitter.com/aXfDauPx9b — Samson Mow (@Excellion) December 2, 2020 Mow’s argument is that “VPTS [value …

Bitcoin (BTC) price came within striking distance of hitting a new all-time high today. This shows that institutional and retail investors continue to buy on every dip and BTC is in a strong uptrend. Hence, traders should not urgently looking to call a top. While Bitcoin has been creating new records, gold has corrected about 15% from its all-time high. This shows that traders are dumping their positions and this led to the largest weekly outflow in gold. Analysts believe that some of the money flowing out of gold could enter Bitcoin as institutional interest continues to soar. A new …

While Bitcoin (BTC) is facing a potential new all-time high, other coins are showing strength as well. One of those coins is XRP, which has been going vertical in the previous weeks. XRP’s price surged from $0.22 to a high of $0.78 during the month of November, which immediately ended up in a massive correction toward $0.45. Let's take a look at the XRP price charts to determine whether this was an entry opportunity before the next leg up. The crucial zone around $0.45 holds as support The daily chart of XRP is showing clear support and resistance zones. Within …

The ongoing Bitcoin (BTC) rally has primarily been driven by institutions, analysts say, with metrics such as CME’s open interest and Grayscale’s assets under management (AUM), supporting this narrative. At the same time, the gold market has seen large outflows in recent weeks. On Nov. 24, independent financial researcher Jan Nieuwenhuijs reported that gold saw its largest weekly outflow in history. Largest outflow from gold ever. pic.twitter.com/Re4o3PHrel — Jan Nieuwenhuijs (@JanGold_) November 23, 2020 The timing of the heightened level of outflows from the gold market is noteworthy because it comes after the entrance of major institutional investors into the …

In a podcast for Lend Academy recorded Nov. 5, RippleNet general manager Asheesh Birla called Bitcoin (BTC) a “pretty innovative alternative to gold,” but added that 2020 had shown there was room for a lot of tokens in the crypto space. Birla said that he believed Bitcoin had not “gone after” payments, and because different projects had different use cases, the coin’s overwhelming dominance was no longer a certainty: “I think that the days when folks believed that there’s only going to be Bitcoin, I think, are over. I think it’s clear that there’s gonna be a lot of digital …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) rise above $20,000 will have to wait, as the price saw a strong correction and turned away from reaching a new all-time high. Data suggests that whales decided to book profits when Bitcoin was close to $19,000, and this pulled the price lower. This fall could have resulted in the liquidation of overleveraged positions in the futures market and further aggravated the decline. The current correction is a healthy sign, as the crypto market was becoming overheated as several altcoins rallied vertically in the past week. While some altcoins have given back a large portion of their recent …