Litecoin Is Far More Popular Among CNY Traders Than Ethereum

Litecoin Is Far More Popular Among CNY Traders Than Ethereum

Bitcoin is the top cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrency trading is booming in China, and the rest of the world is following suit. Bitcoin is the top cryptocurrency in just about every country. But the competition between Litecoin and Ethereum is still in full effect for CNY traders,  whereas things look very different in the USD market.

CNY Traders Prefer Litecoin

                                                     

TheMerkle_Litecoin CNY Ether

It comes as quite a surprise to find out exchanges dealing with CNY are seeing more trading volume in Litecoin than Ethereum as of late. Given the global appeal Ethereum seems to have, and the growing interest from all over the world, the trading volume in CNY markets does not seem to reflect that by any means.

Looking at the previous 24-hour volume, for example, shows that nearly three billion CNY has been changing hands to buy and sell Litecoin. Ethereum, on the other hand, has only seen 1.8 million CNY change hands, which is only a blip on the radar in comparison. In fact, only 20,804 Ether has been traded across exchanges supporting the yuan, which is quite a surprise.

Comparing this to the USD markets, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the clear leaders, with Litecoin still in the third spot. But Ethereum seems to be losing a lot of momentum in this market as well, with slightly over US$1m traded in volume over the past 24 hours. This is a lot less than most people would expect, albeit the majority of Ethereum volume is coming from the BTC market.

It is quite interesting to see Litecoin holding on to the second spot as far as CNY trading is concerned, though. Given the fact LTC was the second “major” cryptocurrency for a long time, that only seems normal. But at the same time, the cryptocurrency has seen no real innovation or adoption spike over the past few years.

The big question is what CNY traders are doing with Litecoin, other than speculating about the price. So far, it does not appear as if investors are using LTC to buy goods or services, but only as a way to speculate on the value of the cryptocurrency. Either way, it is rather interesting to note, and a sign that Litecoin is far from dead.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

Investors Who Missed Bitcoin Rally Go for Ether, Monero, Litecoin

Investors Who Missed Bitcoin Rally Go for Ether, Monero, Litecoin

  

Investors Who Missed Bitcoin Rally Go for Ether, Monero, Litecoin

There seems to be a trend in cryptocurrency investment. Traders of Bitcoin often leap from one digital currency to another, spreading their investments across popular currencies such as Ethereum’s Ether (ETH), anonymous currency Monero (XRP) and Litecoin (LTC). With the exception of some timeframes, Bitcoin price is usually stable and significantly less volatile in comparison to other digital currencies. At a market cap close to $20 bln, the volatility rate of Bitcoin has substantially decreased over the past few years.

However, Bitcoin price fluctuates upon the emergence of major market and industry-affecting events. For instance, when the discussion of hard fork contingency intensified and the market began to panic, Bitcoin price plunged, stabilizing in the late $900s. Traders usually attempt to pinpoint certain timeframes that Bitcoin price could either go up or down. Most recently, the acceptance of Bitcoin by major Japanese electronics retailer company Bic Camera and the legalization of the digital currency in Japan led to a surge in Bitcoin price, moving it from around $980 to $1180.

Investors who miss these short and mid-term rallies of Bitcoin tend to bet on the performance of alternative cryptocurrencies such as Ether, Monero and Litecoin that have demonstrated a significantly higher level of stability in comparison to the rest of the digital currencies on the market over longer periods of time. More importantly, crypto assets like Ether have drastically increased in price because of the rising interests of corporate investors and financial institutions. Specifically, the formation of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance increased the market cap of Ethereum by around 4x, as it jumped from $1 bln to over $4 bln within a span of two months.

The back and forth movement of Bitcoin investors and their diverse portfolio of cryptocurrencies explain the ratio of trading pairs in major assets like Ethereum. More than 50 percent of trading in the Ethereum exchange market is processed with the ETH/BTC pair. Therefore, there exist more domestic traders within the cryptocurrency community purchasing alternative crypto assets such as ETH than conventional investors trading altcoins.

Rising interest in altcoins

Bitcoin dominance index is currently at one of its lowest points. But, the 69.2 percent dominance index of Bitcoin does not represent a declining interest in the digital currency. Rather, users are simply gaining more interest in altcoins that supplement or make up for the missing links of Bitcoin. Specifically, Ethereum represents a Blockchain platform designed for developers and decentralized applications. Many developers have expressed their concerns over Bitcoin’s limited development framework. What Bitcoin lacks in flexibility is supplemented by its high-security measures and robust infrastructure.

Monero, Dash and Zcash provide anonymity to cryptocurrency users, which Bitcoin does not. Litecoin is a unique currency in the sense that it represents nearly identical philosophies, structure and monetary policy of Bitcoin. Traders or investors who feel like they missed out on Bitcoin or the recent rally of Bitcoin price still have accessible altcoins like Monero, Litecoin, Zcash, Dash and Ether to profit from.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

How Deloitte’s Bitcoin Bistro Was Built

How Deloitte's Bitcoin Bistro Was Built

 

Deloitte's Bitcoin Bistro

While Deloitte has long been an advisor on blockchain and cryptocurrencies, it took a step toward to practicing what it preaches earlier this month. After installing a bitcoin ATM in its Toronto office last fall, the consulting giant is now accepting bitcoin payments at a restaurant in its office complex – providing a hands-on opportunity for patrons to experience bitcoin.

Iliana Oris Valiente, strategy leader at Rubix by Deloitte, explained that such first-hand experiences are instrumental toward educating people about the greater potential underlying blockchain technology. Despite her firm's focus on distributed ledger applications, she said that understanding the technology in any of its many variations often starts with a walk through its historical origins.

She told CoinDesk:

"What we've consistently realized is that when we’re starting to educate our clients, that journey typically starts with understanding bitcoin."

"It's very difficult to skip over that part of the historic line and say, 'Oh by the way, now we’re going to talk to you about this really complicated distributed ledger technology'," she continued. With the bitcoin ATM becoming more popular with clients and employees, Oris Valiente said it was logical for her firm to look for other ways to expand on its support for the digital currency. "But the question we often received was, 'So, where do I use the bitcoins that I've acquired?'" she said, adding:

"The answer is usually online merchants, but there aren't as many brick-and-mortar venues. That's when the idea came up: 'What about our bistro downstairs?'"

Expanding appeal

With this lightbulb lit, Deloitte teamed up with Benchmark Hospitality (which operates Bistro 1858 inside Deloitte’s Toronto complex) and bitcoin processor BitPay to kick off the concept. The idea was that users could download a wallet, purchase bitcoin from the ATM and then buy a meal from the bistro – with the end result being that they could see the changes to their balance reflected immediately.

Benchmark initially viewed the opportunity as a chance to cut costs and test out a new technology, but the appeal has expanded much more widely. "We've had a positive reaction from the bistro staff," said Oris Valiente. "They've just said: 'This is flat out cool.'" For Deloitte, the initiative has served as a means to inform even more people about bitcoin and blockchain, while generating more organic interest in the subject internally.

"We have a lot of our internal employees who are excited to get their first bitcoin wallet, buy their first fraction of a bitcoin and perhaps invite their clients in and have a conversation about what this technology means," she said.

Organic interest

But Deloitte is quick to concede that rolling out such an endeavor – as straightforward as it may seem – is far from an easy task. There were a plethora of financial and technological hurdles to overcome. These included determining how Bistro 1858 would handle end-of-shift reconciliations, calculating the implementation costs and deciding which payment provider would be the best fit.

At the end of the day, Oris Valiente explained that introducing the new payments system was ultimately a change management exercise. While simple in aim, it involved retraining management and front-line staff, along with communicating to all stakeholders why the exercise was being undertaken in the first place. "I think those conversations, and trying to understand what motivates all of the parties and how we address all of their needs, that was probably the most time-consuming aspect," she said.

Future visions

However, she argued that the exercise has been useful in helping to explain that blockchain solutions are similar to other types of enterprise applications: While the nuts and bolts get fundamentally reworked, the experience for the end-user oftentimes remains unchanged. "The user experience is pretty straightforward; what's changed is the complex back-end. That story is actually in parallel to what we often see when we develop enterprise applications," she said.

Oris Valiente also emphasized that the exercise has been instrumental in helping to facilitate the flow of creative juices internally. "A lot of the use cases that we’re working on today could not have been possible if it were a small group of people sitting in a board room talking to one another," she said, adding:

"For me, the more people we can expose to this technology, the more smart people you have looking at it, the more creative ideas you’ll come up with."

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member

No, you can’t avoid taxes by investing in Bitcoin

No, you can’t avoid taxes by investing in Bitcoin

“Crypto-Currency” may be a good method for hiding Income?

If you think investing in bitcoin or a similar “crypto-currency” may be a good method for hiding income from the tax man, you’d better think again.While many bitcoin aficionados tout the new virtual currency as a promising alternative to so-called “fiat” currencies like the US dollar, the IRS considers investments in bitcoin as property deals — requiring that capital gains or losses in this usually volatile medium of exchange be considered like stocks or bond sales and reportable on Form 8949.

But compliance with this requirement is virtually nonexistent, at least if you go by numbers reported by the IRS. The agency began going after Coinbase, the largest bitcoin exchange operating in the States, in November 2016, requesting that the San Francisco-based company turn over data and complete transactions on every one of its more than 14 million accounts from 2013 to 2015.

But in court papers filed by the IRS this month — after Coinbase refused to honor the request, complaining that it was “overly broad” — the tax-collecting agency reported that only “802 individuals reported a transaction on Form 8949 using a description likely related to bitcoin” for 2015, the most recently concluded tax year. And this is apparently no fluke, with only 807 of the Form 8949s filed for 2013 and 893 for 2014.

This low level of reporting occurred during the same period (2013-2015) that the value of the currency (in dollars) went on a bumpy ride, skyrocketing from less than $20 to more than $1,100, presumably generating significant capital gains for many investors. “In my view, 800 reports per year of profits and losses in virtual currency transactions is ridiculously low,” says Martin Mushkin, an attorney specializing in bitcoin law.

“The given publicity to this proceeding now and the forthcoming enforcement actions would result in a substantial amount of tax collections,” he adds. “The anonymity of bitcoin should not be allowed to foster tax evasion.” Coinbase, for its part, blames the IRS itself for this underreporting, and its chief executive has called for a creation of a Form 1099-B to be issued to each of its clients participating in a potentially taxable transaction — a proposal that the IRS has called low priority because of cuts to its budget.

“We’re very serious about complying with the laws and we actually support the idea that people who ought to pay their taxes do so,” says Michael Lempres, Coinbase chief legal and risk officer. “But the demand for three years’ worth of transactions conflicts with privacy interests.” Mushkin and others familiar with the case say they expect Coinbase to cut a deal with the IRS. “I suspect that, as we speak, Coinbase is preparing an answer to the anticipated Order to Show Cause and negotiating the terms of the summons,” he says. “The papers show the parties have been talking, and Coinbase will try to cut this down.”

Coinbase is already registered with FinCEN, the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Center, obliging the exchange to report transactions in excess of $10,000 per day and suspected transactions to be structured to avoid the $10,000 reporting threshold (such as multiple $9,750 transactions). The Coinbase response, Mushkin predicts, “will be to initially limit the subpoena to FinCEN reporting accounts and smaller accounts with large turnover volumes.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

Alan Zibluk – Markethive Founding Member