Priced In? Ether Sees Cautious Boost as Blockchain Upgrade Underway

Ether prices rose to a six-week high of $350 today as ethereum, the second largest blockchain by total value, appears to have successfully executed a widely anticipated software upgrade.

The first part of a larger technology update called "Metropolis," the "Byzantium" code was enacted this morning Eastern Standard Time with minimal contention as anticipated by developers. For now, this means ether's price has put a serious headwind behind it – the next so-called hard fork, a risky software upgrade that opens up the possibility new blockchains will be created, isn't expected until 2018.

In response, the ether-US dollar (ETH/USD) exchange rate surged in value in the run-up to the event.

Prices rose from $298 to $345 on Oct. 13 reportedly due to a high degree of confidence among investors, though the record rally in bitcoin could have pulled ether prices higher as well.

At press time, however, indications are the upgrade is unlikely to be winning new market interest. Despite the smooth implementation, ether prices are struggling to break above $350 levels. The loss of bullish momentum indicates the market may have priced-in the implementation.

Furthermore, ETH bulls might be staying on the sidelines in search of more evidence the software has achieved stability.

Still, the price action analysis favors upside in ether. At press time, ether is trading at $342; up 5.5% in the last 24 hours. Week-on-week, the cryptocurrency is up 13.15%, while month-on-month, it is up 30%.

Dayli Chart

The chart shows:

Dip demand: Sunday's candle had a long lower body (also known as lower shadow or wick). Prices usually move in the opposite direction after a long wick makes an appearance. No wonder, ether rose to $350 levels today.

Bullish break of the sideways channel.

Bullish 14-day relative strength index.

View

The outlook remains constructive – it may be only a matter of time before ether breaks above $350 and extends the rally to $370-380 levels.

On the downside, only an end of the day close below $320 (previous day's low) would abort the bullish view on the daily chart. 

Source: Coindesk

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Ethereum's Byzantium Hard Fork Is Running Smoothly, Developers Say

While it's still perhaps too early to deem ethereum's Byzantium upgrade a success, developers indicate the software update, is running smoothly so far.

An official release manager for Byzantium, Hudson Johnston, noted that the new software is now stable, and steadily rolling out across the distributed network, a fact he said can be attributed to "the hard work (of) developers, users and miners across the ethereum ecosystem."

But while the impact on ethereum's infrastructure will be substantial, it looks like the network is undergoing an adjustment period. Currently, some blocks are being mined in as little as 1 second, though others are dragging out to nearly a minute – substantially longer than the long-time average of 25 seconds per block.

Further, blocks are filling with relatively high numbers of transactions. That's good news for scalability, as ethereum can, in theory, continue to grow without slowing down the network.

According to the ethereum forktracker, mining on the old blockchain with the older ruleset has ceased. This is also positive news for ethereum, as it means a relatively low chance that a competing currency will be introduced, as happened last summer when a split produced the rival asset, ethereum classic.

That said, according to ethereum developer Afri Schoedon, there's still a chance that someone is mining the old blockchain, but probably at very high cost.

In the days prior to the fork, developers and node operators (such as mining pools) were given some last-minute toil, as faults found in Byzantium software led to continuous re-releases. The issues saw ethereum developers working around the clock to get the corrected software out on time, and node operators working over the weekend to install the updated software.

At press time, a high proportion of nodes are yet to install the Byzantium update, though the figures are slowly changing and an ongoing trickle of nodes is arriving to the hard fork fashionably late.

Although the price per dollar of ether dropped somewhat in the run-up to the fork, prices peaked close to the monthly high of $350 immediately after, according CoinMarketCap. At press time, ether prices have dropped back to $337 – the same level seen immediately prior to the fork.

Source: Coindesk

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Hours to Go: How to Watch Ethereum's Fork as It Happens

With $30 billion on the line, all eyes are likely to be on ethereum tomorrow as it seeks to navigate one of its biggest-ever updates.

Will all software users upgrade to the updated blockchain? Or will a new, competing token be created? That's exactly what the market is watching and waiting to see when etheruem hits block 4,370,000, scheduled to occur tomorrow at around 6:00 UTC at press time.

The first part of a larger, multi-part upgrade, the so-called "Byzantium" code will make the blockchain lighter and faster, paving the way for better decentralized applications (dapps), while also enhancing network privacy.

New features aside, however, ethereum developers are mostly optimistic about the upgrade. Although developers on the most popular clients have had to iron out a pair of bugs in the days leading up to change, there's confidence that the upgrade will be smooth.

New and seasoned investors won't likely want to take others' word for it, however. So, if you're eager to see for yourself, here's how to monitor the update in real time:

Fork countdown

Adding uncertainty to hard forks is their reliance on block numbers as a way to signal upgrades. Simply put, rather than have everyone change their software at a specific time, users rely on the numbered blocks in the blockchain itself as a means of coordinating.

Because of this, no one knows exactly when the hard fork will take place. Yet, that doesn't mean there's no way to keep an eye out.

To track when this block number will be hit, Singapore-based smart contract company CodeTract has released a fork countdown, showing how many blocks remain and roughly, how much time is left until the fork occurs.

By current projections, the hard fork looks like it will execute on early Monday.

Mining hashrate

Once the fork happens, users will want to track how much of the ethereum ecosystem moves over, and how quickly they do so.

This is a key metric to track. As long as miners are mining on the old version of ethereum, it will remain operational (and valuable). If that persists for long enough, it could lead to a split (although ethereum developers think this is unlikely due to specifics in the code).

Developers aren't going in blind either – already, the Byzantium code has undergone testing to give an idea of how the fork would play out. For example, earlier this week, all minerson a test version of the network made the migration, a small (but encouraging) sign of what to expect.

The best way to watch this is on the Ethereum Foundation's website, which will show what percentage of ethereum miners that have moved over to the new blockchain when the fork happens.

Nodes

But, miners are not the only stakeholders in ethereum who need to upgrade; developers, users and companies running nodes, which store a full copy of the ledger, also need to download new software or risk falling behind.

Ether Nodes tracks how many node operators are running clients compatible with Byzantium.

Geth, the most popular ethereum client, released fork-ready software in version 1.7.2. And Parity, the second most popular client, released 1.7.6, which is compatible and fixes some consensus bugs.

Right now, 60 percent of Geth nodes and 27 percent of Parity nodes have upgraded to a hard fork-compatible version. With under a day left before the fork, most node operators still need to upgrade.

Price

Of course, there may be more immediate reasons you're worried about a split.

If money's on the mind, you can always be sure to monitor the price of ether. For that, you can turn to our ethereum price page, which will update in real time as the fork happens.

Source: Coindesk

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Dimon Breaks Vow : "Bitcoin Buyers Will Pay the Price"

Jamie Dimon is back on the bitcoin commentary bandwagon.

Just a day after declaring on a third-quarter earnings call that he would refrain commenting on the cryptocurrency, the JPMorgan Chase CEO offered a critical take on those investing in bitcoin.

"If you're stupid enough to buy it, you'll pay the price for it one day," he said today at an event hosted by the Institute of International Finance, according to a report from CNBC. During the event, he reportedly voiced support for the cryptocurrency's underlying technology – an area in which the WallStreet bank has undertaken a number of notable efforts, including the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.

Per CNBC, Dimon also reportedly said that he "could care less about what [price] bitcoin trades at."

A report from Bloomberg includes additional details about Dimon's latest comments. He reportedly said that bitcoin is "great" for criminals, and that – in a refrain from yesterday – that it would be the last time he would comment on the subject.

"Who cares about bitcoin?" he was quoted as saying.

The remarks are the latest from Dimon, whose now-infamous comment in September that bitcoin is a "fraud" sparked a wave of commentary about bitcoin itself as well as the wider cryptocurrency market. Other Wall Street figures, including Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and ex-Fortress billionaire Mike Novogratz, have also weighed in on the topic.

His comments also come on the day that bitcoin's price rose above $5,800 to hit anew all-time high. At press time, the price of bitcoin is trading at about $5,689, according to the Bitcoin Price Index (BPI).

Source : CoinDesk

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Bitcoin's Price Keeps Rising, But Can he reach $6,000 ?

Bitcoin hit a new record high of $5,856 on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index this morning, but the question everyone will be asking is, can the rally continue?

At press time, bitcoin is trading at $5,610 levels, as per CoinMarketCap data. Bitcoin's week-on-week performance of over 28 percent (up more than $1,200,) is double S&P's year-to-date gains of 14 percent.

Further, the cryptocurrency is up 96 percent from its Sept. 15 low of $2,980, and, on a year-to-date basis, is up almost 500 percent.

Following a rally of such astonishing proportions, it would be quite logical to assume bitcoin prices will trade sideways, or witness a healthy pull-back in the short run

The price action analysis indicates that bitcoin could find a short-term top in the range of $5,800-$6,000.

A short-term consolidation around $5,800 or brief spike to $6,000 followed by a short-term pull back to $5,000-$5,300 looks more likely.

Source : CoinDesk

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Increase in the price of the bitcoin

• Increase in the price of the bitcoin

+ 7.9% within 24 hours
+ 8.7% in one week
- 0.5% in one month
+ 569.5% in one year

Currently displaying around 4100 $ , the bitcoin seems to gradually regain the value lost at the beginning of the month following rumors and then announcements of closure of the main Chinese exchanges of crypto-currency.

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The value of Bitcoin exceeds $ 4,000, and the Crypto market reaches $ 140 billion

The bitcoin price broke past $4,000 on Wednesday, headlining another generally-positive day for the crypto markets. Few cryptocurrencies made eye-catching movements, but most made moderate progress to extend the early-week market recovery. Altogether, the markets added another $4 billion, bringing their combined capitalization above the $140 billion threshold.

The total cryptocurrency market cap began the day at $136.1 billion. It spent most of the day on an incline, eventually reaching $141.8 billion at the time of writing. The crypto market cap has grown by about $10 billion since the start of the week, potentially indicating that traders are adjusting to the post-China bitcoinexchange ban environment.

Bitcoin Price Punches Through $4,000 :

Bitcoin headlined the market advance with a march past $4,000. The bitcoin price had been trading at this level a week ago but had succumbed to downward pressure leading into the weekend, eventually reaching a weekly low of $3,555 on September 22. However, it reversed course after reaching that mark and began to scale the charts once again. Wednesday morning, bitcoin broke through $4,000 and has continued to climb, bringing its present value to $4,074. This translates into a $67 billion market cap.

One factor influencing bitcoin’s continued climb is the continued development of Asian cryptocurrency infrastructure following China’s hostile stance toward order-book exchanges. Both South Korea and Japan are expected to fill the void left by Chinese bitcoin exchange giants such as OKCoin, Huobi, and BTCC. To that end, a popular Korean messaging platform has announced plans to create a major cryptocurrency exchange, while NXC–a Korean holding company for the $10 billion Japanese gaming firm Nexon–has just purchased a majority stake in Korbit, Korea’s second-largest bitcoin exchange.


Source: Cryptocoinsnews

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