16
Jan

Bitcoin Price Drops; Anonymous Miners Taking Over?

Despite Bitcoin showing bullish signs at the middle of last week, the cryptocurrency actually headed in a different direction during the past couple of days, failing to break the resistance level at $4,200 and dropping down to $3,660. Looking at the stats from this period, it seems that the price decline was brought on by an increased movement in the market and an overall bearish mood.

In other news from the crypto-community, the Russian Federation is reportedly making plans to replace its U.S. Dollar reserve with Bitcoin in order to lower the impact of US-imposed sanctions on the nation, Fortune reports. This interesting update was based on a report from crypto site Micky, which quoted a local economist from the federation with ties to the government.

The economist, Vladislav Ginko, reportedly said that the sanctions might force Russia to “dump” its USD assets and invest big time in Bitcoins and he believes that the investment will likely begin this February. Ginko is also of the opinion that other countries will likely make similar moves in the future. However, no one can be certain whether this is all a personal speculation or a hint of the government’s plans.

Selling Mode On; Where Will the Price End?

Bitcoin’s price has shifted its course since our previous price update last Wednesday as the market turned really bearish. The highest USD value the coin reached during this period was on Thursday when Bitcoin reached $4,061.66, while the lowest was $3,551.85 and it was hit on Sunday evening. As the market statistics show, the drop was brought on by a surge in trading volume, which hit a peak of $7 billion as Bitcoin began to slide. At present, the trading volume is at $5.5 billion and climbing again, hinting at another price correction, while the market cap has fallen to $63.5 billion.

Our technical analysis shows that the market mood is quite bearish, with 9 out of 12 oscillators and all 12 moving averages showing a “sell’ signal. The SMA 100 has also dropped below the SMA 200, telling us that there’s less resistance on the downward course. With short-term signals showing a similar bearish trend and the increased 24-hour volume, Bitcoin will likely head for a test of the $3,500 resistance zone. If broken, expect a further drop to follow. As always, keep watching the market for any sudden price shifts, particularly after Friday.

Unknown Miners Dominate Bitcoin Network

Throughout Bitcoin’s meteoric rise there were numerous complaints that the cryptocurrency is becoming less decentralized as it was meant to be, due to the dominance of a few major mining pools over the BTC network. But that seems to be changing now thanks to the rise of anonymous miners.

Like The Next Web reports, Bitmain – one of the biggest Bitcoin miner manufacturers – is losing its grasp on the BTC network as the group of mining pools associated with it validate fewer of the cryptocurrency’s blocks. Namely, according to new data from Blockchain research firm Diar, Bitmain-associated pools like Antpool, BTC.com, and viaBTC have validated 11.5%, 16.3%, and 9.4% of Bitcoin’s blocks last year, respectively, while anonymous miners were responsible for validating a very high 23.1%.

The latest numbers show a 6% increase over last year for the share of anonymous miners, which is certainly positive considering there will be a smaller chance for the network to experience an attack now as the dominance of the Bitmain group of pools has been lost. However, one can’t be certain whether any of the anonymous miners works for some of those pools.

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