Our experts told us about possible price movements for cryptocurrencies in coming weeks. And gave forecast for their prices in accordance with different variants of events development

On October 13, after the publication of inflation data in the U.S., leading cryptocurrencies updated their price lows. Bitcoin rate fell to $18.3 thousand, less than the last time it was worth on June 20, when it was trading about $18.2 thousand. Also Ethereum showed decline – it fell to $1.2 thousand, updating its minimum since mid-July.

But by October 14 Bitcoin had recovered to the level of $19.8 thousand, the daily growth was 5.4%. Аnd Ethereum also rose in price by 7.2%. And the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies is $980 billion, which is 5.5% more than a day ago.

Current situation on crypto market

Macroeconomics is the leading factor for cryptocurrency markets right now. Our experts notice that after the new release of inflation data in the U.S., there was a rare volatility in leading indices. But at the same time, the sharp drop was just as sharply bought back by investors. Cryptocurrencies reacted in a similar way.

Crypto market heavyweights such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are hardly reacting to events in the cryptosphere right now. However, there are not many negative factors. The main factor “confusing crypto-enthusiasts” is the trend toward tighter regulation in many countries. Because this brings cryptocurrencies closer to traditional asset classes.

Also, cryptocommunity is concerned about the decline of decentralization. Or the lack of growth of this indicator in many blockchains. In addition, the outflow of capital from GameFi, NFT and Metaverses markets looks logical against the background of energy crisis and risks of recession in economics.

Negative forecast scenarios

In case of a prolonged fall in Bitcoin, it is possible that those miners who have been working at a loss for a long time will capitulate. This is likely to lead to a decrease in the level of support. And it will bring Bitcoin’s price down to around $14,000 or $10,000.

Large capital is now panicking and seeking to withdraw funds in stablecoins and US dollar. The most likely scenario is that bitcoin will drop to $17,800 in coming weeks.

In addition, the fall in Bitcoin is accompanied by the biggest sell-offs of miners in the last 2 years – about 8,000 BTC per month (according to Glassnode). This has also influenced the rate of BTC decline and overall current market sentiment, our Crypto-Upvotes experts say.

Positive forecast scenarios

Crypto-Upvotes experts called a scenario in which cryptocurrency rates will start growing in the near future unlikely. However, if Bitcoin breaks through resistance level of $20.4 thousand, it will be possible to see movement to $22.5 thousand, our expert believes.

Positive factors that could support cryptocurrency rates are hard to find right now. At the same time, the option to increase prices of cryptocurrencies should not be discarded either. Because investors are eager to redeem assets at lower prices right now.

According to our expert, it could lead to overcoming the level of $1.4 ths for Ethereum. Bitcoin may initially reach a psychologically important level of $20,000. And its overcoming will lead to increase of BTC price up to $22 ths.

Binance will issue loans to develop this industry. Also the company intends to launch products for cloud mining

The cryptocurrency exchange announced that it has launched a $500 million project on Binance Pool platform to support cryptocurrency mining industry. This project involves lending to companies. Which are engaged in mining Bitcoin and infrastructure of digital assets around the world.

Funding will be available for 18 to 24 months at 5-10%. This will be subject to security of physical or cryptocurrency assets satisfactory to Binance.

Also, company intends to launch products for cloud mining. So, cryptocurrency mining will be carried out with the help of rented equipment located in data centers of service providers. Binance Pool is currently looking for such providers to cooperate with.

On October 10, Bitcoin’s mining complexity increased by 13.5%. This was the strongest increase since May 2021. Meanwhile, at $20,000 per Bitcoin, the profitability of mining companies is already close to the cost of production. And in some cases it goes into negative values.

BNY Mellon licensed from New York state regulator to handle two cryptocurrencies. Review by Crypto-Upvotes experts

The oldest U.S. bank BNY Mellon began to provide services for cryptocurrency storage, writes The Wall Street Journal. For this purpose, the company received a license from the financial regulator of New York.

Bank will store the keys needed to access and transfer the cryptocurrency. It will also provide accounting services for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

BNY Mellon claims to be the first of eight systemically important U.S. banks to provide custody services for digital currencies. And it allows customers to use one custody platform for both traditional and cryptocurrency assets.

The platform will go live with select investment-fund firms this week. The bank said it expects to expand its crypto custody offerings to additional clients in the future, pending regulatory approvals.

In the summer of 2021, BNY  joined a group of six banks that plan to launch Pure Digital, a digital asset trading platform. At the time, the bank said it would roll out cryptocurrency infrastructure as the legal and regulatory framework emerged.

Thanks to the integration of services of one of largest cryptocurrency exchanges. Some Google customers will be able to pay with cryptocurrency for cloud services, Crypto-Upvotes expert review

Some Google customers will be able to pay for cloud services in cryptocurrency at early 2023. This was announced by representatives of corporation at conference Google Cloud Next, reports CNBC. This will be possible due to cooperation of corporation with one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase.

First, corporation will accept payments in cryptocurrency from a limited number of customers through its integrated service Coinbase Commerce. Amit Zaveri, vice president and general manager and head of the Google Cloud platform, told CNBC. Currently, Coinbase Commerce supports 10 currencies, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Ethereum and Litecoin.

As time goes on, corporation will allow many more customers to use cryptocurrency. Also, corporation is considering using Coinbase Prime service to store cryptocurrency and conduct transactions in it.

At the same time, Coinbase said it will use Google cloud infrastructure for storage. Additionally, Coinbase will migrate its applications from Amazon Web Services cloud service. Also, when making cryptocurrency payments Coinbase will receive a percent of transactions.

This is largest increase in Bitcoin mining complexity since May 2021. Cryptocurrency mining complexity rises as computing power grows

On Oct. 10, the Bitcoin mining difficulty increased 13.55%. This was the biggest increase since May 2021, when complexity jumped 21.5%. Usually the figure increases or decreases within 10% every two weeks. The previous record was set on September 14, when the complexity reached 32.05T (difficulty target).

Explanation
Network complexity determines amount of computing power required to find a new block in the bitcoin blockchain. This parameter changes every 2016 blocks, or about once every two weeks. This is necessary to maintain block time of about 10 minutes.

According to BTC.com, complexity is now 35.61 T at 259.52 EH/s, which has also become a high figure. This increase in numbers suggests that the number of miners is increasing and the competition among them is growing.

At the same time, given the current price of Bitcoin, the profitability of mining is close to zero. According to our experts, at a price of $20,000 per Bitcoin, profitability of mining companies is already close to the cost of production (about $15,000-17,000). And in some cases it goes into negative values.

New White House directives are aimed at developing financial services industry. As well as to simplify unlimited transactions and fight against scammers in cryptocurrency world

The White House presented first ever concept of regulation of cryptocurrency market in USA, writes CNBC. The new proposals had been under development for six months. This came after President Joe Biden called on authorities in March to study risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies and submit official reports.

One of points of concept is aimed at combating illegal activities in cryptocurrencies. In particular, it is proposed to consider amendments to Bank Secrecy Law. These are laws prohibiting disclosure of information and against money transfers without a license. It is necessary that they are directly related to providers of cryptocurrency services.

The White House proposals also specifically mention potential for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). The concept states that digital dollars can make the U.S. payment system more efficient. And creating a basis for further technological innovations that will allow for faster trans-border transactions.

Our experts also noted that the U.S. government believes that digital currencies, especially stablecoins, need to be strictly regulated. Otherwise, they can lead to “devastating effects. This concept points to a collapse of cryptocurrency TerraUSD, which resulted in a series of bankruptcies. And cumulative damage of which amounted to almost $600 billion.

Our experts told how anonymous cryptocurrencies are affected by stricter regulation. And their delisting from CEX exchanges, as well as prospects for such projects.

Main goal of anonymous cryptocurrencies is to ensure confidentiality of financial transactions. However, with such coins, scams and financial manipulation of cryptocurrencies have increased significantly. Cybercriminals often use these tokens to conceal movements of stolen funds.

In this regard, governments of different countries have a negative attitude to anonymous cryptocurrencies. And they take various measures to limit their use. Some cryptoplatforms are also refusing to work with confidential tokens. Thus, one of the recent negative events was the delisting of Monero (XMR) and another six tokens from this category on major cryptocurrency exchange Huobi.

Trend on delisting of anonymous cryptocurrencies increases

Currently, we are seeing a steady trend towards increased regulation of cryptocurrency. And also drive for large CEX exchanges to get as many licenses as possible in different jurisdictions.

And understanding of anonymous coins by financial regulatory authorities of leading economies is very negative. Anonymous coins are seen as a threat, a tool for scammers. And as a consequence, we see a “world war” against anonymous cryptocurrencies, our experts note.

Demand for anonymous cryptocurrencies is growing

After starting sanctions war between Russia and the West, interest in confidential cryptocurrency increased rapidly. This was due to their ability to circumvent restrictive regulations.

Our expert pointed out that in Q2, anonymous coins showed outperformance compared to the market as a whole.
Whether delisting from exchanges will affect prices of these coins, now it is difficult to say. Such actions by regulators could have collapsed prices in 2017. But now the market has become less susceptible to such news for many reasons.

Given the fact that these cryptocurrencies remain in high demand. Including due to sanctions that have reached cryptocurrency market as well. And wait for a fall in prices for XMR and other anonymous coins from these events should not be our experts’ opinion.

Anonymous cryptocurrencies may lose their capitalization, but not their real value.

Bitcoin halving could happen a few months earlier than anticipated review by our Crypto-Upvotes experts

Due to the increase in Bitcoin mining volumes, next halving (planned reduction of miners’ rewards) may occur several months earlier than predicted. According to analyst portal The TIE – it may happen as early as Q4 2023.

BTC Halving is reducing twice rewards for a mined block. This was originally built into rules of BTC network. At first, miners received 50 BTC per mined block. Then on November 28, 2012, rewards were reduced to 25 BTC. And on July 9, 2016, to 12.5 BTC, and on May 11, 2020, to 6.25 BTC. Next halving is to take place on block 840,000. Presumably, production of which was announced as May 3, 2024.

Usually, for calculating halving dates, average Bitcoin block mining time of 10 minutes is used. But analytics platforms use constantly updated blockchain statistics to calculate. And to estimate current average Bitcoin block mining time, and then use that number for calculations. According to analysts, this makes the countdown more accurate. A similar method is used by CoinMarketCap platform. Which predicts halving also earlier than planned – in February 2024.

Analysts say that the reason why hashrate is approaching is that there is an increase in BTC mining. Now hashrate network has reached historical highs of more than 284 EH/s.

Tens of thousands of viewers watched fake Apple streams with interviews of Tim Cook and Elon Musk promoting cryptocurrencies

Crypto Scammers took advantage of the fact that Apple was holding a presentation of a new phone on September 7. And launched parallel streams on YouTube promoting cryptocurrencies, allegedly on behalf of their company. Tens of thousands of viewers watched live spoofed old interviews with Tim Cook and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Currently, these videos have been deleted.

Scammers on YouTube was live streaming an old interview with Tim Cook. That was seemingly being used to attract attention to a crypto scam. And when it was live, tens of thousands of viewers were tuning.

If you’ve seen crypto scams on YouTube before. You would have recognized a lot of hallmarks of what was going on. The fake live stream was getting attention by filling its description with an array of Apple keywords in both the title and description. But when you actually opened it up, it was filled with odd messages linking to a shady-looking crypto site.

One video titled “Apple Event Live. Ceo of Appl Tim Cook: Apple & Metaverse in 2022” aired an old interview from 2018. Bitcoin and Ethereum logos were added to this video. The number of viewers was up to 70,000.

Our experts have noticed that at the same time, more than 10 thousand people watched another stream on a channel called “Apple Inc”. Allegedly, it was supposed to contain an interview with Tim Cook and Elon Musk about Apple and the metaverse. But in fact it was a faked interview about bitcoins with CEO of Tesla and ex-Chief Twitter Jack Dorsey.

In 2013, an Cryptoinvestor bought 5,000 BTC at about $660 per coin. Now he withdrew Bitcoin, which is currently trading at $19000+

On September 5, an Cryptoinvestor withdrew 5,000 BTC ($96 million at exchange rate at time of transaction) from address, which had been inactive for last 9 years. In 2013, a crypto investor bought Bitcoin at a price of about $660 per coin. During this period, investments increased in value 29 times.

Recently, more and more old holders have begun to withdraw Bitcoin from their wallets. On night of March 10, сryptoinvestor withdrew 489 BTC ($20 million at the time of transaction). His wallet had been inactive for at least 11 years. Unknown bought 489 BTC for $50 at end of 2010. On March 10, he withdrew the cryptocurrency, which went up 400,000 times in price.

Our experts point out that it is useful to be a long-term holder. You just need to buy a promising cryptocurrency and not touch that wallet for a few years. Not a single bank in the world can bring such % of profit. So buy coins from famous projects and forget about this wallet for 3-5 years at least and then maybe you will become a millionaire.