Bitcoin: diamond in the world’s dumpster fire?
Data by Bloomberg show Bitcoin’s price correlation to gold doubling over the last three months.
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Bitcoin could reach record highs if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union without a deal, according to some cryptocurrency analysts.
Not replacing the EU’s trade deals and treaties with the U.K.’s own causes “turmoil and volatility,” one analyst said. That compounds on the rising trade tensions between the United States and China, bludgeoning financial markets.
That uncertainty has traditionally caused investors to take money out of conventional instruments and put them into so-called safe-haven assets such as gold. Unlike, say, a company’s stock or a country’s currency, gold’s price is largely immune to geopolitical factors.
Because of Bitcoin’s decentralized nature, it has that same appeal as gold, perhaps more. Data by Bloomberg show Bitcoin’s price correlation to gold doubling over the last three months.
In Hong Kong, social unrest has already caused Bitcoin to trade at a 2 per cent premium.
Bitcoin is emerging as a possible diamond in the world’s dumpster fire.
Bitcoin is at $10,364 (C$13,759) as of 12:30 p.m. Eastern Time, down almost 10 per cent for the week, but it can rise to touch $11,000-levels, technical analysis shows. The world’s largest cryptocurrency began the last seven days tumbling, recovering ground only in the middle of the week.
World: Barclays drops Coinbase; Huobi’s alleged leak
The big British bank Barclays is no longer providing services to the major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, compounding the U.S. platform’s problems that include a high-profile domestic lawsuit and the repeated leaving of notable staff.
It appears the major Hong Kong exchange Huobi has also experienced a leak of user information, following a similar incident with the Malta-registered Binance, the world’s largest such platform. Like Binance, Houbi casts doubt on the information’s legitimacy, but stops short of a denial.
Craig Wright, the Australian who says he created Bitcoin, is accused of faking documents — using a software that did not exist at the time — in his civil trial for allegedly stealing the bitcoins of a former business partner. Wright also fails to get the case dismissed.
Canada: cryptocurrency incidents tripled over past year
Canada’s anti-money laundering watchdog referred 61 cryptocurrency-related incidents to law enforcement in the past fiscal year, more than triple the number the previous year. Experts predict that figure will skyrocket next year, when virtual currency exchanges officially come under the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FinTRAC).