American Town Looks to Ban Bitcoin Mining
A New York state town named Plattsburgh is debating a motion to ban Bitcoin mining. The debate comes after the town became well known for the energy power supply it has to offer, thanks to a major dam and hydroelectric facility, which has attracted a lot of crypto miners to the area. Colin L. Read, the Mayor of Plattsburgh, told The New York Times that the power usage related to the crypto mining industry is now consuming up to 10% of the total power supply and has forced the local grid to sometimes buy electrical power at a higher rate than the one they produce from the hydroelectric plant. The motion is looking to make the surplus power supply available only for non-crypto-related businesses.
Analysts Track the Misery of Bitcoin
Wall Street strategist Thomas Lee has come up with the Bitcoin Misery Index, a system that measures Bitcoin on a scale of 1-100. Through this system, it’ll be possible to see how levers are affecting the coin, the volatility, attempted trades and much more. All of this leads to the conclusion that when the Index is below 27, it is a good time to buy. Those measures are mostly used in Wall Street, to determine when is a good time to invest. The Index showed that Bitcoin is currently at 18.
In the same week, Thomas Reuters, a Canadian media group, announced they were launching a new service tracking market sentiment and chatter to enable a better perspective for investors on how currencies were being viewed. The decision comes as analysts attempt to improve the tools used to provide their clients with relevant data to help them manage and analyze information more accurately in this market.
Bitcoin Gets the Support of the Alt Right
On March 6th in Zurich, Switzerland, Alt Right political maverick and former Donald Trump advisor, Steve Bannon, said in a conference that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies could hold the key to taking control back from governments, banks and major companies in Silicon Valley. With no direct connection except pure coincidence, the price of Bitcoin started its latest descent directly after the news of its latest brand ambassador.
Binance Posts $250,000 Reward for Hacker
After rumors surfaced last week that Binance, the super-large Chinese cryptocurrency trading exchange, had suffered a hack to one of its trading bots, the company is going on the offensive and offering a $250,000 reward for information that would lead to the arrest of the responsible hacker.
Rumors started after clients last week discovered that their currencies were being sold into a minor currency without authorization, causing the currency to peak in price in a matter of hours before the exchange stopped all withdrawals and solved the problem.
Bitcoin Bounces Back After Big Losses
In a week where a lot of news influenced in the Bitcoin price, where Mt Gox trustees sold large amounts of Bitcoin deposits to compensate victims of the 2014 hack, the SEC implemented new and more strict regulations against ICOs, Japanese regulators banned major exchange sites and Binance suffered a hack, prices were going to be nothing else but volatile.
As soon as the news became known by the community, sudden panic sales caused the price to drop nearly $1,000 in just a few hours. It was through the week when the price had finally settled out with a bottom quoted at $8,600 and has been cautiously climbing back up and regaining bigger market dominance as days go by.
Many analysts think that until Bitcoin prices break through the invisible ceiling of $12,000, it could experience a lot more of the recent short-term volatility, but if it breaks through, we could start to see a more sustainable growth. At this moment the price is $9,100.
