This Week in Crypto: Apr 2-9 2018

All of the top ten cryptocurrencies recorded some gains in the last seven days on live prices except Stellar which went down by 0.71 percent. The highest gainer this week in crypto was NEO which went up by 11.98 percent to a price of around $54 per token. NEO is doing pretty well also, gaining +13.73 percent in the last 24 hours. Ethereum, although struggling to get over $500 -- which is a very low mark given it registered a price of above $1000 two weeks ago -- was second, gaining a total of 7.26 percent in the last 24 hours.

Cardano was third attaining a high of 6.27 percent in the last 24 hours while EOS was fourth with a gain of 4.02 percent. Ripple gained 2.92 percent in the last seven days, Litecoin 2.10 percent, IOTA 2.05 percent, 1.66 percent and Bitcoin with a gain of 0.86 percent in the last position. All cryptocurrencies gained in the last 24 hours.

In terms of trading volume, there is not much change for the top cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin still commands the market with a whopping 40.02 percent ($4.18 billion) and Ethereum at 10.92 percent in trading volumes with a total volume of $1.14 billion. Bitcoin Cash is third with a market command of 2.12 percent in volume ($221 million in total volume) and Litecoin is fourth at 2.05 percent followed by Ripple at 1.90 percent.

Bitcoin hit a low of about $6,500 this week on Friday and Saturday although it is back to the $7,000 level, the same price it was last week Wednesday before falling continually till Sunday. And this week, it gained 20% it lost last week. Ethereum is not yet back to full recovery trading at $400 level, although it is generally.

The cryptocurrency was trading at a low of $389 on Saturday before rising to the current price. Ripple was very shaky last week, dropping from $0.56 on Wednesday to around $0.46 on Friday before rising to the current level of around $0.5.

BTCUSD futures were up by 2.86 percent in the last five days with a high of $7,521 in the last five days. Bitcoin CME Futures were up by 2.72 percent in the last 5 days with a five-day high of $7,520 while Cboe Futures were up by 2.65 percent with a five day high of $7,520 for the same period.

In a nutshell, the entire market reached a high of $280 billion this week Tuesday and Wednesday in volume, although it is still low compared to a record high of $350 billion sometime back and the highest of 795 billion this January. The volume also recorded a low of below $250 billion in the same week Friday and Saturday.

Market volume continued to suffer this last week signifying low interest in crypto for many people. The 24-hour volume is around 10 billion compared to $9.54 billion on April 1 but very low compared to $40 billion in daily trading volume late last year.

In fact, over 80% of cryptocurrencies in the market saw a lower trading volume over the past week with only 18 currencies showing a major increase in the last several days. It is expected that the improvement of this volume is key to improvement in prices.

More from the markets

Further in the markets, Coinbase, in addition to forming the Coinbase Ventures to invest in companies behind crypto assets and line up tokens they would list on their platforms, is adding withdrawals for Bitcoin forks including Bitcoin itself, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin Diamond. South Korea's second-largest bank Shinhan has announced the partnership with Ethereum based banking and payments platform OmiseGo.

The partnership will see the bank integrate Ethereum's blockchain technology in various areas of the bank’s operations. On the same note, the bank's credit card department Shinhancard could become the first major credit card company in Asia to apply blockchain technology by developing its tech with Ethereum integration.

The partnership will also see Shinhan merchants using the OmiseGo blockchain and finally Ethereum blockchain.

Robinhood launched free crypto trading in four states this week, for both Bitcoin and Ethereum although it will add more states and more tokens. It could compete with Coinbase and GDAX.

Monero Classic fork was finally realized these Friday and Bitcoin Cash fans are expecting a hard fork sometimes next month. Expected changes include quadrupling of the block size to 32mb and Op code to allow for “Ethereum-like characteristics” and achieve “Paypal-like” scalability.

Plagiarism scandals against TRON crypto resurfaced this week with Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin commenting that TRON had "better white paper writing capability (Ctrl+C + Ctrl+V much higher efficiency than keyboard typing new content)." He was responding to Justin Sun's comment comparing TRON with Ethereum and saying TRON was better.

At the same time, a group of Zurich-based researchers developed a bubble/crash report saying that Bitcoin will see “many months of volatile sideways bitcoin prices ahead” using projections based on Metcalfe’s law. Introduced by Bob Metcalfe from the 1980s, the law states that “the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes,” also known as the “network effect.”

For them, the number of Bitcoin users do not support a rise in Bitcoin value.

“Our Metcalfe-based analysis indicates current support levels for the bitcoin market in the range of 22–44 billion USD, at least four times less than the current level,” they said.

Regulations

In terms of regulations, SEC initiated formal proceedings to determine whether or not Bitcoin ETF will be allowed. Gemini owners hoped to introduce an ETF. CBOE president Chris Concannon wrote a letter to the SEC asking for a review. India's central bank banned cryptocurrency purchases. Elsewhere, head of the Bank of Japan’s Financial Services Information Division Masashi Kuramoto said that cryptocurrencies could transform people's lives dramatically if they reach maturation. He said they have not yet achieved their intended goal of cheaper remittance and supporting socially significant activities.

"To that end, it is important to actually try it in the world," he said. "There is reason to believe that [its maturity] will allow us to use existing cryptocurrencies, accumulate use cases and promote further technical development."

He however said that trust was a concern for crypto users due to absence of a central authority like banks.

Meanwhile, Iran, which is considering creating its own cryptocurrency to get around sanctions, said it could block Telegram.