Crypto descending
Once again, the cryptocurrency markets were on a downtrend on Thursday as most coins appeared bearish on low turnover. Legacy Bitcoin was stable at just over the $10,000 mark and was trading at the $10,077 level at press time. Ethereum continued sliding and was trading at just over the $177 level. Other coins that also saw declines included Litecoin and Ripple which were down by just over 2% whilst Binance Coin experienced a considerably sharper drop of well over 6% to sink below the $20 level for the first time in months.
Does moving Bitcoin affect the price?
Late on Thursday night, US Eastern time last week, someone made one of the biggest transactions in bitcoin history: 94,504 bitcoins. At the then-current bitcoin price of around $10,600, this transaction was worth almost exactly $1 billion. It’s now worth around $967 million at current prices of just over $10,000. Analysis revealed that almost a third of the transaction value came from Huobi Global, an exchange based in Singapore. The Bitcoin price started a descent from there so does this mean that large transactions affect the price short term?
Hong Kong moves to acquire LSE
Although there’s considerable unrest in the country, Hong Kong still wants to do business. On Wednesday, it made a surprise $37 billion move to take over the London Stock Exchange. It’s still early days but if this happens, it would create the third biggest stock exchange group after the NYSE and NASDAQ.
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Trump postpones China tariffs
In what he termed as a gesture of goodwill, US president Donald Trump has postponed the introduction of higher tariffs on Chinese goods until October 15. This postponement could be seen as leverage by the US with the two economic powers gearing up for another round of high-stakes trade negotiations.
On Wednesday evening, Trump tweeted that a decision to increase tariffs on $250bn worth of Chinese goods will be delayed by a fortnight. This was previously planned to be executed for October 1. His reasoning behind this was that the previously scheduled date would coincide with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.