Bitcoin went through yet another stormy week-start as a hack of the Tether cryptocurrency caused panic on the trading market and sent the BTC price plunging by over $400 dollars in a matter of a few hours. Luckily, the price drop was only temporary and Bitcoin began climbing back to over $8,100 where it currently sits with its market signals hinting that the upward trend is here to stay.
In other interesting news, a CNBC survey conducted on the news network’s Global CFO Council revealed that 27.9% of 43 CFOs (Chief Financial Officers) taking part in the survey believe that Bitcoin is a “real” asset but also one “in a bubble”. Out of the 43 respondents, a further 14% answered that Bitcoin was “real” and will continue to grow higher, while 27.9% called the cryptocurrency a “fraud”, confirming the skepticism that the traditional finance world has always had about Bitcoin.
But what’s more interesting to note is that the most skeptical respondents were from the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), 41.7% of which believe there is a “bubble” and 1/3 of which think Bitcoin is a “fraud” – a rate that’s considerably higher than their colleagues from other global regions.
Market Still Bullish
During the past week, Bitcoin’s price grew steadily over the $7,300 range as the buying trends continued even during the weekend. The highest price point was reached late Monday evening when the price climbed to $8,336.96, while the biggest stumble was brought early Tuesday morning when news of the Tether hack brought the price down to $7,762.71.
The market volume has remained above $3.5 billion for most of last week, except for Friday when the biggest price push was noted and the trading volume hit $5.5 billion. Currently, the volume is slowly climbing out of the $3.3 billion range while the market cap sits at $138 billion.
Our technical analysis shows that the market is still bullish, with 9 out of 12 oscillators and all 12 moving averages sending a buying signal. The SMA 100 is well above the SMA 200 on this time-frame, showing that there is less resistance to be found on the upward course. The bullish momentum is also evident on our short-term signals, hinting that the price is likely to keep growing. Still, it never hurts to stay vigilant for any sudden trend changes, particularly towards the end of the week.
Tether Hack Causes Market Panic
Triggering the Bitcoin price plunge on early morning in Tuesday were news about a hack that stole $30 million worth of Tether – a digital token with a current market cap of $672,000,000 and one that’s pegged in price to the US dollar, nearly sharing its value. Reportedly, the hack caused market panic due to a possible withdrawal of the cryptocurrency from several exchanges, causing the liquidity to suffer and consequently Bitcoin’s price.
According to Gizmodo, a total of 30,950,010 Tether tokens were stolen in the hack from a “treasury wallet” the Tether Company used to store their reserves. The theft was done with a malicious attack that stole the tokens and sent them to an “unauthorized” Bitcoin address which was later made public. Tether’s emergency team responded swiftly to “freeze” the stolen loot by instructing exchanges to run new software they’ve written to Blacklist the address. Not long after, the company issued a statement informing users not to accept any tokens from the said address because they will be non-redeemable, but the aftershock is still evident in the crypto-community, which remains wary of any similar future attempts.