guide

On April 25, 2019, US Eastern Time, a lawsuit brought Bitfinex and Tether into the public eye again, and the intricate relationship between the two is well known in the industry. Founded in 2012, the Bitfinex trading platform once won the first place in the entire network for BTC trading volume. In 2015, Bitfinex Chief Strategy Officer Philip Potter and Chief Financial Officer Giancarlo Devasini founded Tether, which issued a stable token USDT, promising a 1:1 exchange rate with the US dollar. With the development of the token market, new players have emerged in the field of stable tokens, and the recent USDT scandals have been frequent, and this former "king" seems to be falling into the "bronze" sequence step by step.

Summary

Summary

Topic: At present, the main model of stable tokens is the fiat currency anchor, and the market structure is changing from a monopoly to "one super and many strong". In recent years, Tether has been "ridden by lawsuits", including: financial fraud, unsupervised, random additional issuance, etc. On April 25, 2019, US Eastern Time, the New York Attorney General launched a lawsuit against Bitfinex and Tether in the name of "fraud". The first-mover advantage of USDT is obvious. If it can maintain a stable payment, it will not cause a fatal blow to USDT. However, this incident also shows that the stable pass is no longer stable, the market is facing a reshuffle, and regulatory intervention is a top priority.

Market: The rebound continues, and the market is gradually picking up. The total market value of digital tokens this week was US$171 billion, a decrease of US$9.52 billion or 5.3% compared to last week; the average daily trading volume was US$48.80 billion, an increase of 4.2% from last week, and the average daily turnover rate was 23.2%. An increase of 17.8% from last week. The current price of BTC is $5,279, with a weekly decrease of 0.5% and a monthly increase of 29.2%. The current price of ETH is 156.3 US dollars, with a weekly decrease of 10.0% and a monthly increase of 10.9%. The BTC balance on exchanges this week was 774,700, a decrease of 19,100 from last week. The ETH balance on the exchange was 8,633,400, a decrease of 716,700 from last week. There is a strong willingness to allocate mainstream tokens on the floor, and market confidence is recovering rapidly.

Risk warning: regulatory policy risk, market trend risk

Risk warning: regulatory policy risk, market trend risk

text

text

On April 25, 2019, US Eastern Time, a lawsuit brought Bitfinex and Tether into the public eye again, and the intricate relationship between the two is well known in the industry. Founded in 2012, the Bitfinex trading platform once won the first place in the entire network for BTC trading volume. In 2015, Bitfinex Chief Strategy Officer Philip Potter and Chief Financial Officer Giancarlo Devasini founded Tether, which issued a stable token USDT, promising a 1:1 exchange rate with the US dollar. With the development of the token market, new players have emerged in the field of stable tokens, and the recent USDT scandals have been frequent, and this former "king" seems to be falling into the "bronze" sequence step by step.

1 Topic: The Rivers and Lakes of Stable Pass

1.1 Stable token structure "one super and many strong"

At present, the main model of stable tokens is the fiat currency anchor, and the market structure is changing from a monopoly to "one super and many strong". As of February 2018, USDT is still the only option in the field of stable tokens. From March until now, with the gradual expansion of market demand, USDT's competitors have begun to appear. In October 2018, news about the shortage of USDT reserves continued to ferment, and a crisis of trust began to emerge. Other regulated stable tokens took advantage of the opportunity, and major trading platforms also listed other stable tokens based on risk avoidance. USDT market share plunge. The past of USDT dominating the world is no longer, and the market structure of stable tokens has become "one super and many strong".

1.2 Being "involved in lawsuits" is not a bad thing

On April 25, 2019, US Eastern Time, the New York Attorney General launched a lawsuit against Bitfinex and Tether in the name of "fraud". At the core of the 23-page complaint is that New York believes that Bitfinex misappropriated Tether’s total reserves of about $850 million. The reason is that the Bitfinex trading platform withdraws a large amount of cash, but the person in charge of the partner Crypto Capital who deposited the funds said that the funds were seized or frozen by multiple jurisdictions including Portugal, Poland and the United States, so the misappropriation occurred. The latest news shows that Bitfinex admitted that the funds were frozen, but did not respond to whether Tether's reserves were embezzled.

In recent years, Tether has been "ridden by lawsuits", including: financial fraud, unsupervised, random additional issuance, etc. February 8, 2017 "Recording Gate": The author with the user name "Bitfinex'ed" published an article on Medium titled "Recordings Bitfinex Don't Want to Hear". The recordings in the article show that Tether and the Bitfinex team discussed bank fraud and money laundering, and admitted to financial fraud. In April 2017, three bank accounts of Tether in Taiwan were banned due to financial fraud. On January 24, 2018, an anonymous report stated that as of January 4, 2018, a total of 91 additional USDTs had been issued, and they were skeptical about whether Tether had sufficient reserves. On October 15, 2018, Bloomberg (Bloomberg) issued an article stating that if the government authorities find any evidence of Tether’s wrongdoing, or users lose confidence in Tether’s ability to redeem their tokens with the equivalent amount of U.S. dollars, USDT will soon be released. It will lose value, and USDT plummeted that day.

USDT has an obvious first-mover advantage, a large market value, a high degree of support from trading platforms, and strong externalities, so it is difficult to decline rapidly in the short term. If stable payment can be maintained, it will not be a fatal blow to USDT. It has been more than four years since USDT was created, and the current market value of USDT is 2.82 billion US dollars, still accounting for 78% of the market share of stable tokens. If the misappropriation of Bitfinex is true, 70% of the redemption amount can be met under the premise of storing US dollars in full 1:1. Moreover, Bitfinex's funds are frozen, not lost. Therefore, if Bitfinex and Tether can maintain sufficient liquidity to cope with possible "runs", USDT still has a promising future.

The stable pass is no longer stable, the market is facing a reshuffle, and regulatory intervention is a top priority. With the continuous outbreak of USDT trust crisis and the gradual emergence of regulated stable token models, its market share has gradually declined. The incident of USDT being sued may trigger a major reshuffle in the stable token market. USDC, PAX, etc. have announced on the 27th of this month that they will issue additional tokens worth over US$50 million. At the current stage, issuers of fiat currency-anchored tokens generally have relatively large credit flaws, and regulatory intervention is the only way. Regardless of Tether, PAX and GUSD, there is a problem of insufficient strength. Compared with the three major note-issuing banks of the Hong Kong currency bureau model, there are relatively large deficiencies in capital scale, operating history and professional level. In the future development process, the fiat currency-anchored stable pass can only increase its own credit level by gradually improving auditing, supervision and issuer qualifications.

2 Quotes: The rebound continues, and the market is gradually warming up

2.1 The overall market: the rebound continues, and the market is gradually recovering

The total market value of digital tokens this week was US$171 billion, a decrease of US$9.52 billion or 5.3% compared to last week. This week, mainstream tokens have gradually entered a correction period, and they are correcting the overall market that has risen rapidly in the previous period.

The average daily turnover of the digital token market was US$48.80 billion, an increase of 4.2% from last week, and the average daily turnover rate was 23.2%, an increase of 17.8% from last week. This week, mainstream tokens fluctuated greatly within a day, trading was active, and the market sentiment was relatively optimistic.

The BTC balance on exchanges this week was 774,700, a decrease of 19,100 from last week. The ETH balance on the exchange was 8,633,400, a decrease of 716,700 from last week. There is a strong willingness to allocate mainstream tokens on the floor, and market confidence is recovering rapidly.

The USDT market cap is $2.82 billion, an increase of $239 million from last week. This week, the token market is relatively optimistic, and mainstream tokens continue to rebound slightly. There was a slight premium on USDT in the first half of the week, but in the second half of the week, it was suspected to be a "thunderstorm", and the USDT premium disappeared.

2.2 Core Token: The increase in the early stage is obvious, and the callback is the inevitable result

The current price of BTC is $5,279, with a weekly decrease of 0.5% and a monthly increase of 29.2%. This week, the average daily trading volume of BTC was 15.20 billion US dollars, and the average daily turnover rate was 16.1%. BTC continued to rebound in the first half of this week, leading mainstream tokens to steadily enter the upward channel, and then made a technical correction in the second half of the week.

The current price of ETH is 156.3 US dollars, with a weekly decrease of 10.0% and a monthly increase of 10.9%. The average daily trading volume of ETH this week was 6.72 billion US dollars, and the average daily turnover rate was 38.4%, which was a significant increase from last week. In the later period, there is a high probability that ETH will be linked to the BTC market.

The current price of EOS is US$4.74, with a weekly decrease of 13.6% and a monthly increase of 9.8%. This week, the average daily trading volume of EOS was 2.24 billion US dollars, and the average daily turnover rate was 48.1%. There is a high probability that the EOS market will be linked with BTC in the market outlook.

The current price of XRP is $0.30, with a weekly decline of 10.1% and a monthly decline of 4.5%. The average daily trading volume of XRP this week was $1.16 billion, with an average daily turnover rate of 8.9%. XRP’s recent performance has been relatively sluggish, and it has been slow to respond to the general rise of mainstream tokens. Although the market has signs of linkage with BTC, the strength is obviously insufficient, and the market outlook will likely continue this situation.

This week, the monthly volatility of major tokens generally rose. The monthly volatility of BTC was 19.0%, an increase of 0.9% from last week; the monthly volatility of ETH was 21.5%, an increase of 1.3% from last week; the monthly volatility of EOS was 25.6%, Decreased by 1.1% from last week; XRP monthly volatility is 19.9%, up 1.5% from last week. This week, the volatility of mainstream tokens in the market has risen slightly, so pay attention to the short-term price risk.

2.3 Market view: technical correction, the long-term upward trend has not changed

This week, mainstream tokens rose significantly in the first half of the week, but the market rebounded in the second half of the week, and the overall upward trend remained unchanged. This week, the mainstream tokens generally rose in the first half of the week. Due to the influence of factors such as upper selling pressure and excessive rise, a technical correction is required. The overall upward trend has not changed, and the position and strength of the callback are still being tested.

The investment value is gradually emerging, and you can consider light storage allocation of mainstream tokens. At present, the continuous warming of the market has become a consensus, good news is gradually released, and the halving of BTC is gradually approaching. According to our research and market performance, market warming is the general trend, and the investment value of mainstream tokens has gradually emerged. In view of the fact that the bull market cannot be accurately judged, at the current price, you can consider light storage allocation of mainstream tokens.

3 Output and popularity: the computing power rises and falls, and the public attention is stable

The computing power of BTC increased slightly, but the difficulty of mining remained unchanged, while the computing power of ETH decreased, and the difficulty of mining increased. The mining difficulty of BTC this week is 6.353T, which is consistent with last week. The average computing power is 149.6TH/S, which is 1.6TH/S lower than last week.

This week, according to GoogleTrends, the search popularity of the term Bitcoin was 10, and the search popularity of Ethereum was 7, which remained stable compared with last week.

4Industry news: Japan will hold a T20 meeting on the eve of the G20 summit, the agenda includes matters related to encryption and tokens; the State Administration of Foreign Exchange's cross-border trade blockchain project will be launched in a low-key manner

4.1 Japan will hold a T20 meeting on the eve of the G20 summit, and the agenda includes matters related to encrypted tokens

According to Cryptonews, Japan will list encryption-related issues as one of the 10 agenda items for the upcoming two T20 (Think20) meetings. The T20 is said to be meeting in Tokyo in late May, ahead of the G20 summit later that same month.

4.2 The State Administration of Foreign Exchange's cross-border trade blockchain project was launched in a low-key manner

According to news from China Securities Network on April 24, following the launch of the Greater Bay Area trade finance blockchain platform launched by the central bank, the cross-border trade blockchain service platform project of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange has also recently launched a pilot project in a low-key manner. These are the two blockchain projects with the greatest influence in the domestic financial sector so far. The three-party privacy protection cryptography scheme of the platform makes the business participant information and business content information only visible to the counterparty and the supervisor, and the penetrating and real-time supervision method realized by the blockchain sharing mechanism also has real-time information synchronization , the feature that the transaction party does not need to actively report. In addition, the blockchain can also accommodate multiple supervisory units for collaborative management. In addition to the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the supervisors here may also include customs, taxation, industry and commerce and other units in the future. A number of bankers said that during the pilot period, the customs declaration verification function provided by the blockchain platform has greatly improved the efficiency of customs declaration authenticity review. It takes no more than 10 minutes to process through the platform, effectively improving the efficiency of bank financing review.

4.3 The person in charge of the Ukrainian presidential online campaign said that he will apply blockchain technology in the election

According to Bitcoinist news, Ukrainian comedian Zelensky was recently elected as the new president of the country with a support rate of 73%. Chain technology is deployed in the voting process. This follows news that the State Administration (KCSA) of the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev is re-examining the merits of bitcoin (BTC) payments in the city’s public transport system.

4.4 The US SEC and CFTC jointly issued a warning against fraudulent encrypted asset trading websites

According to Cointelegraph, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) jointly issued a warning today, warning investors to beware of fraudulent websites that claim to operate consulting and trading businesses. Staff at both agencies have recently uncovered cryptocurrency-related investment scams, the warning said, in which criminals advertise "digital asset or cryptographic token advisory and trading businesses" and, in some cases, claim to transfer client funds Invest in special crypto trading systems or so-called mining farms and claim that their schemes guarantee good returns, such as 20-50%, with little risk to the client. In addition, the two agencies urge investors to inquire about the licensing and registration status of plan operators on the Investor.gov website, warning against participating in unregistered or unlicensed investment plans.

4.5 Malta’s Financial Regulator Publishes Guidance on Crypto Assets and Scams