During the past week since our last update, the price of Bitcoin has remained around the $1,200 level that we’ve been seeing often in the past month-two, with some expected fluctuations during the weekend. However, in the past 24 hours there has been news about worrying measures in one of the biggest USD/BTC exchanges that might lead to more price changes in the upcoming days.
Namely, the Bitfinex exchange yesterday announced that it will be unable to accept wire transfers in the future, only a week after they announced to be suffering delays with $US withdrawals. The reason, according to the official statement posted on their website, was that the Taiwan banks that process transfers to the exchange are blocking and refusing wire transfers in any fiat currency.
For now, the exchange hasn’t clarified why the blockade was imposed and has thus stirred up concerns that another Mt.Gox scenario is in play. Some experts suggest that, should the blockade continue, it will lead to increased market pressure as the situation is likely to be abused for arbitrage to push the premium of the Bitfinex exchange up, just like was the case with Mt.Gox before it collapsed. However, how true those words will turn out to be remains to be seen.
Sellers Test Price
The price of Bitcoin has remained fairly stable during the course of last week, thanks to a relatively quiet period in the community, with Monday afternoon bringing an upside trend that lasted until today. The biggest price change was noted on Friday, when the price dropped down to $1,175.60 in the afternoon hours, while the highest point of $1233.93 was hit yesterday afternoon.
The price change coincided with a change in trading volume which reached 300 million during the peak, but has since subsided to the current $255,633,000. The market cap, on the other hand, is at $19.6 billion.
Our technical analysis shows that the price is at a stalemate, with 6 out of 12 oscillators and 6 out of 12 moving averages being pro-sell, making the overall signal neutral. However, the RSI is already hitting “oversold” and the SMA 100 is safely above the SMA 200, which shows that the upside path is where the least resistance is. Thus, the price seems headed for a slower growth as long as sellers don’t add more pressure to the market. If they do, we will see a rollback.
Large Bitcoin Collider to Crack Open BTC Wallets?
In other interesting news, a group that names itself the “Large Bitcoin Collider” has emerged and they boast to be able to smash any BTC wallet open by using a “brute-force attack”, i.e. a wave of attacks and exhaustive computer power aimed at cracking encryption keys.
According to reports, the project has been running for several months and uses a distributed network to amass enough computer power, while the group is calling anyone willing to participate to join their ranks and, understandably, share their profits. The group has even made a home page where a “trophy list” was posted to show they’ve managed to crack around a dozen wallets, three of which had some Bitcoin in them.
The motivation behind the project seems to be a combination of challenge and financial gain, as the group’s website suggests they are not keen on robbing non-profits, but they consider other wallets a fair prize. The overall opinion, however, is that they’re planning to find an early Bitcoin wallet that’s either been lost by the user, or had the key to it forgotten, and hit a big bounty.