Crypto

South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) has warned the country’s public against dealing with crypto exchange platform Binance. In a statement issued on Friday, the FSCA stated that Binance Group, an “international company” domiciled in Seychelles, was not authorized to render financial services in the country. Binance is headquartered in the Cayman Islands and Seychelles. As part of the warning, the FSCA indicated that South Africans were using a Telegram group to gain access to Binance’s crypto exchange services in the country. In addition to the warning against using Binance, the financial regulator also reminded South Africans that crypto investments are not regulated in the country. “As a result, if something goes wrong, you’re unlikely to get your money back and will ...

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating the startup behind the world’s largest decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, Uniswap. The U.S. securities regulator has initiated a probe into Uniswap’s main developer, Uniswap Labs, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The report says that enforcement attorneys are now looking for information about Uniswap’s marketing and investor services, citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter. A spokesperson for Uniswap Labs reportedly said the firm is “committed to complying with the laws and regulations governing our industry and to providing information to regulators that will assist them with any inquiry.” Uniswap is a decentralized exchange that enables users to swap between Ethereum-based coin...

Solana (SOL) started Friday at a new record high as investors continued to bet positively on its success in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFT) sector. The SOL/USD exchange rate reached $146.28 for the first time in history, following a 35% month-to-date rally. The huge upside move lifted the pair’s returns for the year above 7,500%, taking Solana’s market capitalization over $41 billion to make it the seventh-most valuable project in the cryptocurrency space. Solana’s run-up to record highs also brought overvaluation risks in focus, with a classic momentum indicator, the relative strength index (RSI), returning an overbought reading for the cryptocurrency. Above 70, the RSI suggested that SOL/USD could undergo a sell-off in the coming sessions and that opening a ...

Buying an asset in a downtrend can be a risky maneuver because most investors struggle to spot reversals and as the trend deepens traders take on deep losses. In instances like these, being able to spot descending channel patterns can help traders avoid buying in a bearish trend. A “descending channel,” also known as a “bearish price channel” is formed by drawing two downward trendlines, parallel to each other, which confine the price action of the asset. Descending channel basics In a downtrend, the price action forms a series of lower highs and lower lows. A descending channel is drawn by joining the lower highs and the lower lows using parallel trendlines. The main trendline is drawn first where two or more lower highs are connected. Then a parallel line, also called the channel line, i...

Bobby Lee “blames” his brother Charlie — the founder of Litecoin — for causing the 2017/2018 Bitcoin price crash. He’s joking of course. Sort of. Charlie famously sold the last tranche of his Litecoin holdings in December 2017 for $350 each. Bobby remembers seeing the news hit Twitter. “I was like, gosh, that probably marks the peak,” he says. “I said to him jokingly, like ‘you just caused the end of the bull market’.” Of course, Charlie wasn’t the real reason the bull market ended, but it was a stunning piece of market timing, given he sold the last of three tranches of LTC at almost the exact top. It was no fluke either, as Charlie had predicted in early December that a “multi-year bear market” with 90% drawdowns was imminent. The question is whether ordinary crypto traders and hodlers c...

Bloomberg’s senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone has doubled down on call for six-figure Bitcoin (BTC), arguing that the first-born cryptocurrency is well on its way to becoming a global reserve asset that complements the United States dollar.  The September edition of Bloomberg’s Crypto Outlook called $100,000 BTC and $5,000 Ether (ETH) the “path of least resistance” after the two assets survived a more than 50% correction through the summer. “Crypto-assets appear in a revived and refreshed bull market with the 2H benefit of a steep discount from previous highs at the start,” wrote McGlone, referring to the second half of 2021. He said portfolios lacking BTC or ETH exposure are “naked,” as evidenced by the relative underperformance of gold and government bonds: “Portfolios of som...

What is protecting an investment portfolio from potential stock market volatility? As per Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mike McGlone, a merged exposure of Bitcoin (BTC), gold, and government bonds. The senior commodity strategist, who sees BTC heading to $100,000, pitted derivatives in a new report representing the three safe-haven assets against the performance of the S&P 500 index, finding that the trio has been outperforming the benchmark Wall Street index at least since the start of 2020. Bitcoin-Gold-Bonds performance against the S&P 500 index. Source: Bloomberg Intelligence The Bitcoin-Gold-Bonds index took data from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) and iShares 20+ T- Bond ETF (TLT). The three funds enable investors to gain exposure in the...

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Nigeria’s central bank partners with fintech firm Bitt Inc. for CBDC rollout Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs,  which some have described as the spawn of Satan, made headlines this week after multiple countries ramped up efforts in developing their own digital money. On Aug. 30, it was reported that the Central Bank of Nigeria, or CBN, issued preliminary guidelines for its proposed e-naira digital currency. On the following day, news broke that Barbados-based fintech firm Bitt Inc. signed on to w...

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has detected more than 1,500 fraudulent entities targeting potential crypto investors and miners just in the first half of 2021. Kaspersky’s research shows that 0.60% of users from South African countries have already been targeted by malicious crypto miners. The report also suggests that the most common methods of duping unwary users involved false advertisements claiming to sell mining equipment and fake websites posing as crypto exchanges. Kaspersky’s data based on anonymized statistics revealed that 0.85% of crypto investors from Kenya and 0.71% Nigerians were targets of crypto-miner malware, while investors from Ethiopia (3.68%) and Rwanda (3.22%) faced the most number of threats in this regard. Bethwel Opil, Africa’s enterprise sales manager at Ka...

Ether (ETH) returned to $4,000 on Sept. 3 for the first time since May as a solid week of gains culminated in a major price milestone. Against month-to-date gains of $600, the pair reclaimed the historic level it had lost in the dramatic trend reversal that rocked the cryptocurrency market roughly three months ago. In so doing, Ether broke out of its three-month trading zone, with $4,025 just $350 away from all-time highs. ETH/USD 1-day candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView In terms of weekly performance, Ether took third place out of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, behind Solana’s SOL and Polkadot’s DOT tokens. Bitcoin (BTC) also capitalized on fresh strength of its own, rallying to a critical resistance at $51,000. How long can the good ...