We’re right at the end of the week with the price of Bitcoin at the $1,180 range thanks to increased interest from traders. The past couple of days have been a period of positive news and the Bitcoin price directly reflected this mood, especially since the fear of hard forks is no longer a 100% viable threat. Yet, with the NFP report coming, there might be some turmoil on the Bitcoin/USD market during the weekend.
In other news, Bitcoin is once again the topic of controversy as the Israeli-American teenager who was arrested by Israeli police for making hundreds of bomb threats to US Jewish Community Centers was found to own a Bitcoin wallet account with millions in Shekels (Israeli currency). The 18-year old teenager, whose name remains a secret, is being still held in custody after he was arrested two weeks ago.
According to official comments from Israel’s cyber police department, the teenager made a living by operating on the dark web, where he sold counterfeit documents like driver ID’s and passports. However, suspicions have been raised whether he was paid to make the bomb threats, to which the police hasn’t an answer as they currently still haven’t tracked the source of the money.
Trading Volume Goes Up
In the past 48 hours since our last update, the price of Bitcoin moved up by over $40 after an overall buying mood and higher trading volumes took over the market yesterday. The lowest point of $1118.82 was reached on Wednesday, while the highest was hit right after midnight today, when the price reached $1192.16.
After reaching 0.5 billion yesterday, the trading volume has been slowly declining to the current $451,012,000, while the market cap grew to $19 billion. Yet, even with the current amount, there’s still plenty of volume to see the price change.
Our technical analysis shows that the overall market signal is neutral as our indicators show that the trading trends are split, with buyers having a small advantage over sellers. Out of 12 technical oscillators, 5 are sending a buying signal and 5 a selling one, while 9 out of 12 moving averages are in the buying zone. The SMA 100 is still over the SMA 200, so the upward path is where the least resistance is.
From the current stance, the price seems headed for a further growth, although a slow one. But if sellers take over fully, the price will normally follow suit back to the $1,150 support line.
Bitcoin Use Expands in Japan
Only several days after a Bitcoin legislative that recognized the cryptocurrency as a form of legal payment method in Japan went into effect on April 1st, two large Japanese retailers announced they will be adopting Bitcoin into their payment systems. The country has been working hard to re-store faith in Bitcoin after the Mt.Gox collapse, and this latest move is seen as very good step towards that goal.
Namely, electronic retailers Bic Camera, will be partnering up with Tokyo’s bitFlyer exchange to run a trial test of a Bitcoin payment system in their stores, while another company, Recruit Lifestyle, will be partnering with Coincheck, to adopt bitcoin into the AirRegi POS (point of sale) app they produce and distribute.
The adoption of Bitcoin is expected to massively increase the number of stores that accept Bitcoin in Japan from the current 4,500 stores to an approximate number of 260,000. This, combined with the government’s decision to stop incurring an 8% tax on Bitcoin purchases through online exchanges, is expected to see the cryptocurrency expand significantly throughout the country.