Bitcoin and Ether Market Update: March 1, 2019
Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are in red for the twenty-four-hour period, now trading at $3,825 and $136 at the time of writing. Binance Coin (BNB) is leading the pack with ten percent gains as the total crypto market cap hovers around $130 billion.
BTC/USD
Bitcoin was trading in the $3,763 to $3,943 range on February 27 to close at $3,900 with a $4 gain. On February 28, the BTC/USD trading pair moved down to $3,893 after trading in the zone between $3,875 to $3,988 during the session.
The most popular cryptocurrency is still struggling to finds its way following the nine percent drop on February 24. It is, however,12 percent up for the 30-day period, closing the second month of the year in green.
Julius Baer, one of the most prominent private banking groups in Switzerland announced it would begin offering digital assets to its customers thanks to a new partnership with SEBA Crypto. The Zurich-based financial giant joins forces with the crypto startup to build a “bridge between the traditional and the digital asset worlds” according to the official press release. The collaboration comes into effect once SEBA receives its banking and securities dealing license from the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA. As per Peter Gerlach, Head Markets at Julius Baer, digital assets will become a legitimate asset class in the future, and its bank is looking to be the first to offer this investment opportunity to its clients.
As BTCManager reported on February 21, Bahrain authorities allowed cryptocurrency-related entities to work in the country on a trial basis until a regulatory framework is in place.
On February 25, The Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) announced the much-anticipated set of rules concerning crypto-assets activities including rules for exchange licensing, governance and risk management, Anti-money laundering (AML), trading activity and funds security. According to Khalid Hamad, Executive Director – Banking Supervision, the primary goal of the institution is to “develop a comprehensive rule for the FinTech eco-system supporting Bahrain’s position as a leading financial hub in the MENA region.”
On the same day, the local cryptocurrency exchange Rain became the very first to complete the Regulatory Sandbox.
ETH/USD
Ether fell to $137 on February 27 in an extremely volatile session. During the trading day, the ETH/USD pair peaked at $144 on the Bitfinex daily chart then dropping down to $128.
On February 28, it moved a little higher, to $138 closing the month of February with a solid price increase of more than 30 percent.
The Constantinople and St. Petersburg forks were executed last night at block 7,280,000 on the Ethereum blockchain and the price of one of the most popular altcoins reacted positively as it traded at $139 in the early hours of March 01.
Stanford University and Visa Research have developed a new project called Zether, described as a privacy mechanism for Ethereum smart contracts. According to the researchers Zether “is a new smart contract that keeps the account balances encrypted and exposes methods to deposit, transfer and withdraw funds to/from accounts through cryptographic proofs.” The anonymity and confidentiality offered by Zether is similar to that of Monero and Zcash and its an improvement on the existing zero-knowledge proof system.
