This article provides an overview of how Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC), EOS, Cardano (ADA), and Chainlink (LINK) have been doing over the past 24-hour period, and covers recent news that might have affected their prices (or might do so in the future).
To give you a rough idea of how well the crypto markets are doing today, 18 out of the top 20 cryptoassets (by market cap) are currently in the red (against the dollar).
All market data used in this article was taken around 08:55 UTC on 26 February 2020 from CryptoCompare, which also provided the price charts shown in this article.
Bitcoin
BTC-USD is trading at $9,208. This means that the Bitcoin price has been under the $10K level since February 20.
Although the past seven-day period has not been kind to Bitcoin with a loss of 9.21% against USD, Bitcoin has still managed to gain +28.08% against USD in the year-to-date (YTD) period.
Yesterday, famous gold bug and Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff took advantage of the drop in the price of Bitcoin to point out that "Bitcoin has not acted as a safe haven during recent market turmoil":
Over the past 5 trading days the Dow Jones is down 7.3%, the NASDQ is down 7.9%, and The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust is down 22%. In contrast GLD, which tracks #gold rose by 1.6%. It should be clear to #Bitcoin bugs and @CNBC anchors that Bitcoin is digital risk, not digital gold.
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) February 25, 2020
Of course, what Schiff is omitting to mention is that if instead of looking at the past few days we compare the performance of gold and Bitcoin against USD in the YTD period, we find that Bitcoin has vastly outperformed gold (roughly 28% to 9%).
In the short term, though, popular crypto analyst Josh Rager is bearish on the outlook for Bitcoin, and yesterday he said that his technical analysis shows that if Bitcoin drops below the $9,300 level (which it now has), it could be headed to $8,600:
There's the break and bounce off the high volume node for $BTC
I don't expect a trend reversal back up, instead can suspect for this to continue down with more retests of $9300
If that area breaks, IMO we head to $8600 to $8700 pic.twitter.com/T37xGrHdOP
— Josh Rager ?? (@Josh_Rager) February 25, 2020
The fact that worries over the potential ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic seem to have caused the price of Bitcoin drop just like risk-on assets, such as stocks, has confused some people who wanted to think of Bitcoin as a "safe haven" asset.
Although Bitcoin is very young asset and we don't have a huge amount of historical data, as Anthony Pompliano (aka "Pomp"), Co-founder & Partner at Morgan Creek Digital, pointed out yesterday during an interview with CNN, Bitcoin seems to act, for the most part, as a non-correlated asset.
I spoke to @jchatterleyCNN this AM.
Explained why Warren Buffett isn't a great person to listen to on technology and why Bitcoin's monetary policy is superior to fiat monetary policy.
If this video gets 500,000 views, Julia will bring on more Bitcoiners.
You know what to do ???? pic.twitter.com/lEcyQkbG6w
— Pomp ?? (@APompliano) February 25, 2020
Macro-economist and crypto trader/analyst Alex Kruger had this to say on this subject on Monday:
Chart shows prices of US tech stocks, US treasuries, gold and bitcoin during the current round of panic.
Three of these are strongly correlated during times of stress. The fourth does its own thing.
The chart illustrates how unreliable bitcoin correlations with risk assets are. pic.twitter.com/NDhvvBsnex
— Alex Kruger (@krugermacro) February 24, 2020
And on January 28, he took a detailed look at how Bitcoin reacted to the first few waves of panic after the start of the COVID-19 outbreak:
1/ Bitcoin vs the Coronavirus
A look at reaction times and correlations to explore if bitcoin may be trading like a risk-on asset (such as stocks) or a risk-off asset (such as gold or bonds). pic.twitter.com/hVnQ4qM1ml
— Alex Kruger (@krugermacro) January 28, 2020
Litecoin (LTC)
LTC-USD is trading at $67.32. Since the Litecoin price set a six-month high ($83.22) on February 14, it has dropped 19.10%.
However, the YTD performance is a whole different story, with a gain of 61.82% against USD.
Earlier this month, Litecoin Foundation announced that it had formally partnered with global lending/borrowing platform Cred, thereby allowing LTC holders to "earn up to ten percent interest on their digital assets."
Charlie Lee, Creator of Litecoin and Managing Director of Litecoin Foundation, had this to say:
“We’re thrilled to be working with Cred as our financial services partner, offering among the most competitive interest rates on Litecoin."
EOS
EOS-USD is trading at $3.921. Since the EOS price set a seven-month high ($5.366) on February 14, it has dropped 26.92%. However, in the YTD period, it is up 50.51% vs USD.
On Monday (February 24), China's Center for Information and Industry Development (CCID) released its latets blockchain rankings, which showed that EOS is still occupying the #1 spot:
China's Center for Information and Industry Development (CCID) revealed a new list of its #crypto ranking index:
EOS is the first as usual ??
TRX ranks second ??
Bitcoin is 11th... ???+? pic.twitter.com/ZRkNbn8t9P
— Mia Tam (@blockandchain) February 24, 2020
Earlier today, Mati Greenspan, Founder of FinTech and crypto consultancy Quantum Economics, commented on the recent reduction in the inflation rate of the EOS network inflation rate from 5% to 1% (which had been announced by Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer the day before):
Inflation on EOS tokens has been reduced from 5% to 1%. 34 million tokens were burned in the process. That's quite enticing.
Most fascinating is the BP's voting to reduce their own rewards.
If #ALTseason ever decides to return $EOS should outperform.https://t.co/6vOvxECzKQ
— Mati Greenspan (Not trading advice) (@MatiGreenspan) February 26, 2020
Cardano (ADA)
ADA-USD is trading at $0.05214. In the past seven-day period, ADA-USD has dropped 16.29%, but for the YTD period, it has gone up 54.21%.
Earlier today, Cardano Creator and IOHK CEO Charles Hoskinson, expressed his frustration with Cardano's critics:
It blows my mind that our critics cannot see or understand the enormous progress we have made. They are now just publicly proving they either lack basic due diligence capabilities, are shills or shouldn't be in crypto at all. Cardano is converging to be the best CC in the world
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) February 26, 2020
Chainlink (LINK)
LINK-USD is trading at $3.476. In the past seven-day period, LINK-USD has dropped 27%, but for the 30-day period and YTD period, it is up 32.41% and 92.89% respectively.
Yesterday, Chainlink announced a huge partnership: "Chainlink has completed an initial integration with a Substrate-based blockchain, marking a major milestone in the mission to bring Chainlink's market-leading network of decentralized oracles to the Substrate chain ecosystem and Polkadot."
We've completed the initial integration of a Substrate-based blockchain w/ major technical contributions from @ParityTech! This is a major milestone towards Chainlink being the standard oracle on @polkadotnetwork & the start of becoming blockchain agnostic https://t.co/PnmWZ4FmAT
— Chainlink - Official Channel (@chainlink) February 25, 2020
Here is why this announcement is especially significant:
"This is the first blockchain ecosystem outside of Ethereum that Chainlink will support. By being the first Substrate-based oracle solution, Chainlink is set to become the first and primary oracle provider for all Substrate-based chains and eventually the entire Polkadot network."
Featured Image by "AhmadArdity" via Pixabay.com
