It's one of the worthest months we're currently seeing in the crypto world these days, so what the hell is going on within the market?
All started on the 17th December 2017 when we saw some single big sell orders hitting the big crypto exchanges which stopped the ongoing all time high rallye. At this time the market was completely overbought and a lot of people took their money into the christmas holidays.
But starting with 2018, the market has still not recovered to a green level. We only saw barely green in the 24h overview.
So what's happening? The drop today was caused again by Reuters, a big new site, announcing that South Corea will ban all crypto currencies. After this announcement, the South Corean Finance Minister said clearly, that there will be no ban:
South Korea Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon has reaffirmed that the government will not ban or otherwise “suppress” cryptocurrency in the country, according to a statement reported by Reuters today, Jan. 31.
But that's only the top of the hill and just explains the today's drop. So we need to look further back and see more of those "Fake News" all over. For example at the beginning of this week another big news site announced a Korean Crypto ban, based on an interview of held at the beginning of december, but written as this interview has taken place end of Jan 2018!
Another big problem for now is also the biggest Coin Exchange CoinBase which refuses to use SegWit (which makes transactions bigger than needed in blocksize) and refuses to combine outgoing transactions, so users will get for eg. a pyout of 0.1 BTC a 100 transactions and more. This fills up the mempool and raises transaction fees, which then again results into a falling trust level for Crypto Newbies...
We've also seen these days a big CryptoExchange hack
On Friday, a Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange revealed hackers had stolen more than $500 million-worth of customers’ funds in what is thought to be the largest-ever cryptocurrency hack.
Last but not least, the first round of the BTC Futures markets are settled these days, which also leads to Whales manipulating the market to reach their target. On the Futures market, you can bet on a raising or falling market, and most of the "investors" betted on a falling market!
Beside those visible manipulation methods, there are also teams fighting against Bitcoin (eg "Operation Dragonslayer") or other crypto enthusiasts investing more into Bitcoin Cash for eg, trying to manipulate the trustworth of Bitcoin.
As you can see, we're facing currently a time of manipulation and false information from nearly all sides. But I think this is normal and will drastically change with the raise of the Lightning Network. (See https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network)
Cool down and HODL for the next "green phase"! But be aware of chinese New Year on the 16th of Feb