Bitcoin Bear Market Forces Ethereum Cofounder To Make Changes

The fall in the price of bitcoin, ethereum, and Ripple's XRP (as well as the wider cryptocurrency market) over the last month is beginning to cause companies to rethink their strategies—battening down the hatches in preparation for what could be a long crypto winter.

Ethereum cofounder and ConsenSys chief executive Joseph Lubin (who last month predicted blockchain technology would cause a radical overhaul of society) has said he's planning to restructure ConsenSys to protect it against the recent downturn that saw bitcoin record falls of more than 40% in a matter of weeks. 

Ethereum's tradable token ether is down by more than 50% since early November, topping off a year that has wiped some $700 billion from the cryptocurrency market as investors get cold feet waiting for long-expected institutional investment into the sector.

Lubin's ConsenSys, and ethereum-based development studio, is now reorganizing, entering a new phase Lubin calls ConsenSys 2.0, focusing on efficiency, accountability, and attention to revenue.

According to a letter from Lubin to ConsenSys employees, seen by Breaker magazine, underperforming ConsenSys projects will be axed and the arm of ConsenSys that oversees venture investment will become more like a traditional startup accelerator.

“We must retain, and in some cases regain, the lean and gritty startup mindset that made us who we are," Lubin said. "We now find ourselves occupying a very competitive universe. We must recognize that what got us here will probably not get us there, wherever ‘there’ is."

"In ConsenSys 1.0, we built a laboratory instrumented to prove the moon existed, using complex engineering and math and creative philosophical arguments,” Lubin added. "Now we need a streamlined rocket ship to get us there, since the actual proof, ultimately, is in the landing.

"We're going to get a lot more rigorous in terms of milestones and timetables."

The ethereum price has been on a downward trend all year, dropping over 90% from its all-time highs.COINDESK

Elsewhere, the bitcoin price collapse has seen other companies look to restructure and streamline their operations.

Steemit, a blockchain-powered social media platform, laid off 70% of its staff last month, while adult entertainment industry orientated SpankChain downsized to eight employees last month. In October, the UK's oldest bitcoin exchange Coinfloor axed around 40 employees.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency miners have also been forced to desperate measures to keep the computers running, cutting costs to the bone.

Others have remained upbeat, however. Bitcoin miner Argo Blockchain, a UK-listed company, yesterday sought to soothe shareholder unrest, telling the market demand for its products and services has remained robust despite the downturn. 

The bitcoin price has gotten off to a bad start in December after many had hoped the worst was behind it, with the cryptocurrency market recording its steepest monthly declines in years last month.

Bitcoin moved sharply downward at the beginning of this week as it gave up the psychological $4,000 level that had appeared to support the price over the last week.

The bitcoin price has come under renewed pressure this week.COINDESK

Bitcoin dropped as low as $3,790, according to CoinDesk's bitcoin price tracker, back to near its yearly lows at the end of last month—and renewing fears the rout that began in November will bleed through to December.

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New Ideas Energize Ethereum Though True Signaling Solution Still Elusive

Put enough heads together and you might just solve governance.

At least, that was the idea behind a private, two-day meeting of top researchers, who met in Toronto this week to discuss how decisions should be made on ethereum, the world's second most valuable blockchain network.

Named "EIP:0," a nod to the platform's process for accepting codes changes - the meeting consisted of members from a variety of startups and non-profits working to advance the technology, with notable members including Parity Technologies, the Web3 Foundation, the Ethereum Foundation, Giveth, Aragon, Consensys, MetaMask and others.

Designed to give participants a protected space to discuss one of the platform's hardest problems, much of the focus was around a handful of issues that have caused controversy over the past few months. Whether it was the debate over how to return frozen funds, whether to limit ether issuance or to reject mining hardware advances, developers have struggled with how best to measure and enact the will of the diverse and polarized community. 

But for such a theoretical unknown, the meeting proved highly productive, participants said.

"One thing that immediately became apparent through the workshop was the question of community," core developer Lane Rettig told CoinDesk. "I think it is the single biggest takeaway from this event."

According to Rettig, much of the discussion surrounded how to better identify what constitutes a community member, or someone who should have a say in just how ethereum develops, and how to accurately measure their sentiment.

Toward this, Rettig said several companies at the event expressed an interest in funding the development of open-source, sentiment gathering tools, that could better measure the will of identified parties when it came to contentious change.

"There's general consensus that we need better signals," Rettig told CoinDesk.

And while the choice to keep the working group small and invite-only has already ruffled some feathers on Reddit, with some warning that such a formula contradicts the openness of the platform, it was clear from the event documentation that aligning to the community was the central concern.

Rettig told CoinDesk:

Better signals

Of course, it's well-known by now that social media can be a noisy and hostile place.

"Everyone on the internet needs to chill out and not be so mean to everybody," community manager Hudson Jameson said at the public panel following the event.

Several others echoed this point, stating that while channels such as Twitter and Reddit can be filled with abusive uproar, it's not clear whether the loudest voices fairly represent the opinions of all.

And when it comes to the platform's hardest decisions, such as whether to hard fork to return money lost in the Parity fund freeze of November last year, clean signals are crucial.

"There's a very strong voice for immutability on channels like Reddit," Dan Finlay, from ethereum wallet MetaMask, said at a later public discussion. "I'm seriously suspicious of those. Maybe they're sock puppets. I didn't see them very well represented here."

As such, event participants put their heads together to better isolate the various groups that have different stake within the platform, including protocol developers, application developers, application users, miners, investors, full nodes, governments and regulators.

The diversity of signals can be collected with purpose-built tooling directed towards each group, and possibly aggregated onto a website, that would visibly depict the different leanings and inclinations.

"What we really want are signal aggregators or bundles of signals," Retting told CoinDesk in an interview.

And there was a lot of creation discussion on how to achieve this, too.

Speaking in the public panel following the event, Griff Green from decentralized charity Giveth suggested mirroring the efforts deployed by bitcoin in the midst of the scaling debate, using tools like the website Coin.Dance, where the signals sent out by biggest mining pools were neatly depicted.

Rettig also expressed other ideas, that could extend beyond the biggest players to the smaller ecosystem members as well, by including an option in wallet software to signal a position with a simple transaction.

Rettig explained:

Crypto's magic power

And when contention remains, there's always the option to split.

Speaking at the event, several attendees expressed that far from being feared, the ability to create a new version of the ethereum blockchain in the case of divisive decisions is the ultimate, non-coercive tool for dissident groups to enact their opinions.

"Forks are absolutely essential," Rettig said.

Indeed, in allowing communities the possibility of exit, Rettig and others expressed that the option to split off in case of contention is one of the key advantages that blockchains have over traditional governments.

As such, a dedicated working group on Tuesday discussed how to make forks "less dire," ways to cheapen, increase security and destigmatizing community divides when they do inevitably occur.

"A fork is going to happen. I mean eventually there will be a fork," Rettig said, though he stressed this sentiment is more theoretical than a commentary on current events.

However, while a split is a clean way to settle disputes, there's messy, technical complications when it comes to enacting such a divide on ethereum.

Because ethereum is not just a blockchain, but a computation platform as well, every decentralized application would simultaneously co-exist on both versions of the platform.

As well as proving complicated for the many, many businesses that rely on ethereum software, this could spark unanticipated strangeness in other types of decentralized applications as well.

"What happens to a stablecoin?" Rettig asked. "Does it stay at one dollar on both blockchains, and now you have two dollars? Or is it 0.25 cent on one blockchain and 0.75 cent on the other?"

Rettig said that like many of the sessions that occurred over the two days, the result was non-conclusive, but attendees will be running a monthly online meetup dedicated to such conversations.

And it is clear that in spite of risks, splits are a still a value fallback method.

"The fact that in a bloodless way we can neatly fork, and each group can go off and do their own thing, and we can bisect along the lines of values, that is a magic power," Rettig said.

He concluded:

Griff Green courtesy of Lane Rettig

Ethereum falls on report that the second-biggest cryptocurrency is under regulatory scrutiny

• Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, falls 6 percent after The Wall Street Journal reports that it has come under scrutiny by regulators.
• Securities and commodities watchdogs are looking into whether cryptocurrencies, which have largely escaped government oversight, should be regulated in the same way as stocks. 
• The cryptocurrency's creation in 2014 was "probably an illegal securities sale" in the eyes of some regulators, the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the matter.

Ethereum prices took a hit Tuesday after a report that regulators are exploring whether it and other cryptocurrencies should be treated like securities. 

Both U.S. commodities and securities watchdogs are questioning whether the same rules for stocks should apply to these digital currencies, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Until now, cryptocurrencies have not been drawn into wider crackdowns by the Securities and Exchange Commission this year. 

The cryptocurrency's creation in 2014 was "probably an illegal securities sale" in the eyes of some regulators, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. 

Here's what sets ethereum apart from its rival bitcoin  8:10 AM ET Tue, 27 June 2017 | 02:21

Ether, which has a roughly $65 billion market cap, fell about 6 percent Tuesday, and was trading near $652, according to data from CoinMarketCap.com.

The analysis is based on whether founders of virtual currencies other than bitcoin have any control over their value, similar to how a company's managers might influence a company's stock value based on strategy and investments, the Journal said. 

Two federal regulatory agencies have applied different definitions to what exactly a cryptocurrency is. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has labeled them as commodities, meaning they're exempt from SEC regulation. The SEC on the other hand, has indicated that it sees cryptocurrencies as securities. In March, the agency said it is looking to apply securities laws to everything from cryptocurrency exchanges to digital asset storage companies known as wallets. 

Senior SEC and CFTC officials are among those scheduled to discuss the matter on Monday, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Ethereum foundation raised more than 31,000 bitcoin in July 2014, worth about $18.3 million at the time, when it first sold the first 60 million ether. Because investors were speculating that the launch would result in a rise in asset value, the deal resembled a security, the Journal said.

Ethereum is the name of the company that created the digital token ether. The company created a platform for applications built on blockchain, the same technology that underpins bitcoin. Ether was first launched as a fundraising effort to develop the platform.

A consortium called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, which includes companies like Microsoft and J.P. Morgan, is developing uses for the Ethereum blockchain. 

WATCH: There's a house full of cryptocurrency gurus in San Francisco, and it's like a modern-day commune

There's a house full of cryptocurrency gurus in San Francisco, and it's like a modern-day commune  9:01 AM ET Sat, 5 Aug 2017 | 01:57

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/ethereum-falls-on-report-second-biggest-cryptocurrency-is-under-regulatory-scrutiny.html

Ethereum price analysis – Temporary downwards price correction

Ethereum price soared up to a day high of $712 on Tuesday before a downwards price correction attempt became evident pulling the price downwards to a day low of $596 on Wednesday. The market bulls failed to break through the resistance around $713.24, which corresponds to the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement. The upwards trend which has been evident since April 7th, bounced off this crucial resistance level. The price correction attempt is subsiding as ethereum price rose again above $600 during most of Wednesday’s trading sessions.

Will ethereum price continue on dropping on Thursday? or shall we expect the market bulls to take the upper hand again?

BOUNCING OFF THE 61.8% FIB. RETRACEMENT ON THE 4 HOUR ETHUSD CHART:

We will examine the 4 hour ETHUSD chart from Bitfinex, while plotting the 100 period SMA, the 200 period SMA, and the Ichimoku Cloud as shown on the below chart.  We will keep the Fibonacci retracements  we extended last week  between the low recorded on October 23rd, 2017 ($273.50), and the high recorded on January 13th, 2018 ($1,424.06). We can observe the following:

• Ethereum price soared steadily on Tuesday to a day high of $712, before the bullish wave was reversed. The price of ether was almost a dollar short of $713.24, the 61.8% Fib. retracement (horizontal orange line on the above chart). Note that six successive bullish (green) candlesticks were formed just before the uptrend was reversed. As such, even though the bullish momentum was seemingly strong, it failed to breach this resistance level.

• Ethereum price is now above the level of the 100 period SMA, and the 200 period SMA. Note that the 200 period SMA (green curve) is now acting as a support level preventing further price drop, as evidenced by the long downwards shadows of candlesticks near its level. Therefore, the price of ether will most probably start rising again as the $600 price level will prevent further price drop. However, we have to see the 100 period SMA (green curve) cross above the 200 period SMA, before a strong bullish wave becomes evident again.

• Right now, ethereum price is being supported by the confluence of three important support levels:

1.  the 200 period SMA as we stated above.
2. the upwards trend line that has been marking price movement since April 7th.
3. the Leading Span A Line (green line) of Ichimoku’s Cloud

Consequently, we can expect ethereum price to rise again towards $713.24 during the next 24-48 hours. On the downside, $600 represents the support level as we explained.

• Ethereum price has dropped below the Base Line (red line) of Ichimoku’s Cloud, yet the cloud is still green (bullish) in color. Most likely, candlesticks will rise again above the Base Line within less than 48 hours as the bullish momentum rises.

BULLISH ALIGNMENT OF THE SMOOTHED MOVING AVERAGES ON THE 1 HOUR ETHUSD:

Now, let’s examine the 1 hour ETHUSD chart from Bitfinex, while plotting the 50 period SMA (blue curve), the 100 period SMA (green curve), and the 200 period SMA (red curve), as shown on the below chart. We can note the following:

• After failing to breach the resistance around the 61.8% Fib. retracement ($713.24), the price of ether dipped below the level of 50 period SMA, yet the 100 period SMA is acting as a relatively strong support level preventing further price drop. This is evidenced by the relatively long downwards shadows of candlesticks near the level of this moving average.

• The alignment of the SMAs is bullish, as the 50 period SMA is on top, the 100 period SMA is in the middle, and the 200 period SMA is below both.

CONCLUSION:

After rising to a high of $712 on Tuesday, the bullish wave was temporarily reversed and ethereum price started dropping reaching a low of $596. However, the downwards price correction attempt is being resisted by support near $600. We expect ethereum price to start rising again towards $713.24 during the next 24-48 hours.

As China Censors MeToo Activists, Ethereum's Blockchain Proves to Be an Unlikely Ally

As the Great Firewall of China scrubs away mentions of a widely circulated #MeToo student activist letter from the internet, some Ethereum users have found a way to skirt the ban.

By storing it somewhere the government can’t touch: The blockchain of Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. Blockchain, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies, is effectively a record of information, with several users holding onto said ledger — making it impossible to change the record without the agreement of the network.

The letter, authored by a Peking University student Yue Xin, details her attempts to gather information about a 1998 rape case at the institution. A then-student, Gao Yan, told friends and family that she had been raped by then-professor Shen Yang. Gao then killed herself.

Yue’s information requests to the university were eventually denied — though that wasn’t the end of it. According to Yue’s letter, an instructor barged into her dormitory at 1 a.m. one night, forcing her awake, and demanded any data on her phone and computer regarding the rape case be destroyed.

That letter was stored on a memo accompanying an Ethereum transaction. Earlier this week, an unknown user sent themselves zero dollars worth of Ether for a transaction price of about 47 cents.

That immutability and information-storing feature of certain blockchains however is both a pro and a con. While cryptocurrency proponents have pointed to the immutability of the public ledger as a way to deter censorship and false documentation, its skeptics say that it is also a potential hurdle to adoption.

German researchers in March for instance noted that governments may consider some information contained in the blockchains of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum threatening — and decide to dub the possession of such blockchains illegal.

Notably, since the blockchain of Bitcoin also allows users to attach memos, it also allows users to include information such as links to child porn. The same blockchain also included online news articles detailing pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong — news that Beijing has tried in the past to suppress.

It’s a move that could potentially give the Chinese government back the control it does not have over such open blockchains: a state-sponsored cryptocurrency. The People’s Bank of China has reportedly been researching such an idea.

That comes after China cracked down on Bitcoin exchanges and initial coin offerings in 2017, saying the asset class is too risky. But notably, while the country has taken a knife to cryptocurrencies as a financial instrument, it has stressed the importance of blockchain technology. In 2016, the country’s central bank outlined several technologies it would prioritize over the next five years. Among buzzwords, including AI and autonomous driving, was the term blockchain.

By LUCINDA SHEN 

April 25, 2018

Ethereum Price Technical Analysis – ETH/USD Buyers in Control

Key Highlights

• ETH price is trading in a bullish zone above the $630 support zone against the US Dollar.
• There are two important bullish trend lines forming with support at $640 and $635 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD (data feed via Kraken).
• The pair is eyeing more gains in the short term above the $675 resistance level.

Ethereum price surged higher against the US Dollar and Bitcoin. ETH/USD is now well above $640 and it looks set to extend gains above the $675 and $680 levels.

Ethereum Price Trend

There was a solid upside move from the $585 swing low in ETH price against the US Dollar. The price broke the $600 level and settled above the same. It also cleared the $640 and $650 resistance levels, and traded as high as $674.73. At the moment, the price is positioned nicely above the $630 pivot level and is eyeing more gains above the recent high.

On the downside, an initial support is near the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $617.66 low to $674.73 high. More importantly, there are two important bullish trend lines forming with support at $640 and $635 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. The first trend line is close to the 50% Fib retracement level of the last wave from the $617.66 low to $674.73 high. Thus, if the price corrects lower, it will most likely find buyers near the $640 and $635 levels. Additionally, the $630 pivot level is also a strong support.

Looking at the chart, it seems like the price may continue to grind higher above $675. The next resistance above $675 is near the $690 level. A push above the stated $690 level could clear the path for more gains above $700 in the near term.

Hourly MACD – The MACD is placed nicely with positive signs in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI – The RSI is currently near the overbought levels.

Major Support Level – $640

Major Resistance Level – $690

Full article...

Ethereum Devs Publish Upgrade Proposal To Move Network Away From Mining-Related Issues

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NEWS

Developers of Ethereum (ETH), the largest altcoin by market capitalization, have published Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) #1011 on Friday, April 20, to create a hybrid system of consensus that seeks to push the network away from issues associated with crypto mining.

The proposal consists of specifications for implementing the Hybrid Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG) network update, which will combine Proof-of-Work (PoW) with Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus, with the goal of eventually transitioning to PoS.

As the EIP documentation states, one of the parameters of the upgrade reduces the block reward for miners to 0.6 ETH from the current 3 ETH:

“The PoW block reward is reduced to 0.6 ETH/block because the security of the chain is greatly shifted from PoW difficulty to PoS finality and because rewards are now issued to both validators and miners.”

According to Ethereum News, the Casper update is “possibly the most significant” change to the network to date.

In the “Motivation” section of the proposal, Ethereum devs made it clear that the ultimate goal of the upgrade is to move the network from a PoW to a PoS system, stating:

“Transitioning the Ethereum network from PoW to PoS has been on the roadmap and in the Yellow Paper since the launch of the protocol. Although effective in coming to a decentralized consensus, PoW consumes an incredible amount of energy, has no economic finality, and has no effective strategy in resisting cartels. Excessive energy consumption, issues with equal access to mining hardware, mining pool centralization, and an emerging market of ASICs each provide a distinct motivation to make the transition as soon as possible.”

PoW is the original consensus algorithm in a Blockchain network, with its most famous application in Bitcoin (BTC) cryptocurrency. With PoW consensus, miners compete against each other to verify transactions on the Blockchain network, and get rewarded in the crypto they are mining.

Proof of Stake (PoS) was first introduced by Sunny King and Scott Nadal in 2012, intending to solve the problem of Bitcoin mining’s high energy consumption and other issues, suggesting another mechanism for transactions verification that would choose the nodes according to the amount of coins held by a person on a digital wallet.

Earlier in April, Cointelegraph reported that Ethereum developers were considering a hard fork as a solution to invalidate ETH-mining ASICs. Eventually, the devs decided to abandon the idea in favor of Casper FFG rolling out. “This is not bitcoin, miners are not in control, if they get evil, we’ll just speed up Casper’s development,” Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin was quoted as saying at an Ethereum Core Devs Meeting in early April.