🌐 JPMorgan: "loss of confidence in USDT will affect BTC rate"
If investors lose faith in the stablecoin, Tether could face new risks, including a sharp drop in price, according to a report by JPMorgan Bank.
According to JPMorgan analysts, the BTC market could face a major liquidity shock if traders lose faith in USDT, Tether's stablecoin widely used to fund cryptocurrency trading.
“If issues arise that could affect the willingness or ability of both US and foreign investors to use USDT, the most likely result would be a severe liquidity shock to the broader cryptocurrency market, which could be exacerbated by its disproportionate impact on strategy makers. high-frequency trading that dominate cash flow, ”JPMorgan analysts write in an 86-page report .
The market capitalization of USDT has grown from $ 4 billion to over $ 34 billion over the past year, indicating its growing use. According to data compiled by NYDIG and quoted by JPMorgan analysts, around 50% -60% of BTC has been traded for USDT since 2019.
Consequently, a sudden loss of confidence in USDT could contribute to the destabilization of exchanges and a panic drop in the price of BTC. According to analysts, Tether has not yet conducted an independent audit and concerns over its reserves and finances persist, posing additional risk to the BTC market.
Tether, the issuer of USDT, has long been criticized for its lack of transparency in reserves and ensuring that new coins are issued. However, the cryptocurrency market hasn't paid much attention to this until now. This may in part be due to the fact that during the price increase over the past year, USD-based deals were on average larger than USDT deals, according to Kaiko Research . Thus, the risk of a major price collapse due to a potential loss of confidence in Tether seemed low.
According to JPMorgan analysts, bitcoin will compete with gold as an "alternative currency":
"The competition between bitcoin and gold as an alternative currency is likely to continue as millennials become a more important component of the investment market and favor digital gold over traditional gold."
In conclusion, analysts added that achieving BTC's long-term target of $ 146,000 will depend on the high volatility of its price and will take many years. Recall that recently JPMorgan Chase co-chairman Daniel Pinto said that sooner or later the bank will have to work with bitcoin due to the growing interest in this asset.
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🌐 Brave browser leaks Tor addresses to DNS providers
Brave's confidential browser has leaked confidential information from the Tor network to DNS providers. This is not a new or Brave specific bug, the developers are working hard to fix it.
The Chromium-based Brave browser integrated with Tor Anonymous has leaked sensitive .onion addresses to domain name system providers. Tor hides user browsing activity by redirecting traffic through a global relay network. This makes it nearly impossible to track the user's web search history.
But due to a bug discovered in the beta, and which the developers plan to fix soon with a patch release, this sensitive information has been leaked to DNS providers. This meant that Internet companies could track their users' Tor activity.
The error stems from the fact that Brave, which integrated Tor in 2018, is based on Chromium. It uses the same architecture as Firefox and Google Chrome. This issue has been present in Chromium-based browsers for over a decade and was discovered in Brave back in 2019.
The bug in Brave became known on January 21 after the release of the Hacker One report. The bug was fixed and then the Nightly version was added two weeks ago. Nightly is the developer version of Brave that gets updated every day. However, since the bug this week resonated on Reddit and Twitter , Brave has accelerated development of a patch for the main version of the browser.
Brave previously stated that the browser's privacy level is not the same as Tor.
“Brave with Tor does not offer the same level of privacy as the Tor browser. If it is vital for you to remain anonymous, use the Tor browser, "- wrote Brave VP of IT Ryan Watson two years ago on Reddit. "The Tor community is also the first to know about security issues, so they patch Tor first and then move on to other applications."
Recall that last month the Brave developers added support for IPFS addresses to the browser.
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🌐 $45,000 XSN Coins Stolen from Cryptopia Closed Exchange Wallets
Hackers continue to steal crypto assets from users of the Cryptopia exchange, which is in the process of being liquidated. XSN coins worth $ 45,000 were stolen from an alleged cold wallet.
In January 2019, hackers attacked the Cryptopia exchange, as a result of which they managed to steal $ 16 million worth of crypto assets.Late last year, the company Grant Thornton, which is engaged in the liquidation of the closed Cryptopia exchange, began accepting claims from affected users for damages.
Despite the fact that the trading floor is no longer working, unknown people still manage to move assets from it. According to local media reports, US firm Stakenet, which was Cryptopia's lender, received a notice that $ 45,000 XSN coins were transferred from its cold wallet on February 1.
Stakenet suffered no losses during the 2019 hack, so the firm's management hoped to recover all of its assets. The wallet contained $ 1.97 million worth of crypto assets. This wallet was never used after the Cryptopia hack. Liquidator Grant Thornton said the transaction was not authorized and has already launched an investigation into the incident. Stakenet demanded an explanation from Grant Thornton why the company failed to protect users' funds by allowing an unauthorized transaction. This means that someone was able to access the funds again.
According to Crypto Wisser, 75 crypto exchanges have been forced to close since the beginning of 2020 . The reasons are completely different: internal problems, hacker attacks and even fraud of the founders.
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🌐 What are candles in trading and how to use them?
The price dynamics of an asset is displayed on the chart in different formats, including bars, lines or candles. The latter format is the most popular among traders and is often used in technical market analysis. What are candles and how to work with them?
Candlesticks (Japanese candlesticks) are a graphical way of displaying price dynamics using vertical rectangles and lines. This method was invented at the rice exchanges of Japan in the 17th century, from where it got its name.
A price candle has two main elements:
bodies - a vertical rectangle that shows the opening and closing levels of trades;
wicks (shadows, tails) - vertical lines above and below the body of the candle, reflecting fluctuations in value between the open and close.
The main advantage of a candlestick over bars and a line chart is that it allows you to get 4 important indicators for technical analysis at once:
High - the highest price for the period;
Low - the lowest price for the period;
Open - the opening price of the period;
Close - the closing price of the period.
When using a line chart, to get the same information, you would have to display 4 indicators at once, which is inconvenient and complicates the perception of information. In this case, candles reflect the process of value formation in a specific time period, therefore, the position and type of candles on the hourly and daily periods will differ significantly.
Types of candles
There are two main types of candlesticks that correspond to market trends:
Bullish candlestick - formed when the closing price of the period is higher than the opening price. On the chart, such a candlestick is displayed in green (on b / w - in white) and indicates the victory of buyers in this time period.
Bearish candlestick - it is formed if the period closes at a price lower than it was opened. On the chart, bearish candles are red (b / w - black) and they show that sellers dominate at the moment.
Various combinations of bearish and bullish candles create candlestick patterns (formations), which can indicate a reversal or preservation of the trend, as well as the psychological state of market participants. There are about 50 such figures, but the key ones are:
Doji - candles with a small body and long wicks. Indicate low volatility and the formation of a sideways trend in the market. Here is an example of a doji candle:
Long candles - should have a relatively large total length, most of which is occupied by the body. Such a candlestick may indicate a reversal or preservation of the trend, depending on the location. Here is an example of a long candlestick on a chart:
Marubozu are candles without a wick, in which the body occupies the entire length. Marubozu, depending on the color, may indicate the complete dominance of bulls or bears in the market at a given time interval. Here are examples of almost perfect marubozu candlesticks (ideal ones are almost never found in real trading):
A hammer is a candle with a relatively short body and a long lower wick (1.5-2 times longer than the body). The upper wick is either missing or very short. The hammer indicates a trend reversal. Here are examples of the hammer:
A trader does not need to know everything by heart, but really important figures that can become a signal for specific actions are still worth remembering or keeping always at hand.
How to read candles correctly?
Given the informative value of Japanese candlesticks, reading them correctly for making predictions is not an easy task, especially for beginners. When analyzing a candlestick chart, several key factors must be taken into account at once:
relative candlestick position - a candlestick can form after a bullish or bearish candlestick of a certain length. If, for example, a long bearish candlestick appears after a short bullish candlestick, this indicates a dominance of bears (this is called a bearish engulfing pattern).
body size - the body of a candlestick reflects the difference between open and close, so the larger the body size, the greater the difference in the actual rate. Candles with a large body of a certain color indicate the formation of a corresponding trend.
wick size - wicks show how far the price has moved away from the opening and closing levels and, in practice, they reflect the mood of traders when a candle is formed. Candles with long wicks are called pin bars.
the ratio of body and shadows - on the example of a doji candle, you can see that long wicks and a short body indicate the impossibility of breaking through a certain barrier and forming a trend. The hammer demonstrates that a long one-sided wick leads to a trend reversal.
Lance Begs developed a candlestick reading technique that is based not on figures, but on the concept of “candle mood”. Depending on the position to the previous candle, the candle can be:
bearish - if the trades closed below the minimum price of the previous candle;
bullish - if the trades closed above the high price of the previous candle;
neutral - if the trades closed in the range of the previous candle.
Next, the intensity of mood is determined based on the ratio of wicks and body:
high closure - if the body is formed at the top (as in a hammer);
middle closure - if in the middle of the total length (some doji);
bottom close - if at the bottom of the candle (inverted hammer).
When reading candles, it is also important to take into account that the reliability of the figure signals decreases in proportion to the time interval. That is, the most reliable candles are formed on a weekly or monthly range. The daily range is considered the minimum acceptable, but the figures of the hourly range are already considered unreliable.
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🌐 Armed criminals stole $ 93,000 worth of BTC from tourists in Pakistan
Three Pakistani residents took five foreigners hostage and forced them to transfer BTC worth $ 93,000 to the addresses of the criminals. This is the first Bitcoin-related robbery in Pakistan.
The criminals threatened the victims with weapons and forced them to transfer cryptocurrency to their addresses. Two suspects have already been detained in the Pakistani city of Gujranwala. The third suspect, who is still at large, has been identified as the leader of the gang, as it was he who invited foreign citizens to Lahore to "make an investment."
Under the pretext of organizing a trip "to show the city," the suspects kidnapped five foreigners, including citizens of Germany and Switzerland. As a result, the robbers forced the hostages to transfer BTC worth $ 93,000 to them. According to police, the suspects were tracked down by their car numbers.
As a reminder, in Hong Kong last month, four robbers lured a trader into the office and stole HK $ 3.5 million from her USDT token sale. In addition, in December, one of the Moscow businessmen lost 15 million rubles - unknown persons stole a backpack with cash from him, with which he was going to pay for the purchase of bitcoins.
