● Dogecoin Momentarily Disrupts Robinhood’s Cryptocurrency Trading Network
● Bitcoin Plummets after Turkey Prohibits Cryptocurrency, Citing Security Concerns.
Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of Overbit Insights.
For our first story of the day, it would be remiss to not talk about one of the hottest storylines in cryptocurrency markets – Dogecoin. Here at Overbit, we’ve covered Dogecoin numerous throughout the last several months, often focusing on insane volatility as well as its insane attraction for retail traders.
Well, it seems the Dogecoin mania has reached all-time highs in recent days, as the “meme” cryptocurrency pulled off more than a 5x in just a couple of days. This skyrocketed Dogecoin into the top 10 on CoinMarketCap and elsewhere, and for a moment even reaching the number #2 spot for a brief time, as Dogecoin soared into foreign territory just shy of $.50 cents, marking a local top at $.453.
Though Dogecoin has seen many parabolic moves in its past, this most recent one to $.45 cents seem to surpass the rest; so much so, in fact, that the retail frenzy for Doge actually took down Robinhood with it.
The onslaught of orders caused “extreme pressure” on Robinhood’s crypto trading systems, the company said in a blog post on Friday. As the platform was processing orders, “one of our systems failed, which brought down our crypto order system,” Robinhood explained in their post-mortem. The problem was resolved with Dogecoin around $.25 cents or so.
However, Dogecoin went on to pull off almost another 100% gain from there. According to their blog post, that caused Robinhood to experience further “sporadic crypto order failures and delayed notification for some customers,” it said.
Many speculators have compared this recent retail frenzy to the price action at the height of the 2018 market. However, very few people ever come away from a market nailing the top or the bottom; the bulk of the move is made in the middle.
That being said, it certainly seems like the big takeaway is that the cryptocurrency markets are smack dab in the middle of an onslaught from retail interest.
Wrapping up this week’s edition of Overbit Insights, we take a look at some international news in the cryptocurrency scene, more specifically in Turkey.
According to a recent report out of Reuters, Turkey’s central bank has banned the use of cryptocurrency and any form of crypto asset for most types of purchases, with their reasoning due to fear of transaction risk and other “irreparable damage”. This legislation was officially published and public for all to see, in which the central bank said matter of factly that any “cryptocurrencies and other such digital assets based on distributed ledger technology could not be used, directly or indirectly, to pay for goods and services”.
Since this news release on Friday heading into the weekend, the cryptocurrency scene has slumped downwards marketwide, with Bitcoin leading the charge and dipping more than 4% and back below the $60,000 mark. The altcoin market, which tends to move in tandem with higher volatility, dumped, even more, ranging from 6% to 15% dumps in the case of Ethereum and Ripple, and even more so in other cases.
As we saw in previous weeks, the US has taken a more ambivalent approach to regulate crypto. In contrast, some countries like Switzerland have embraced it. Turkey stands in stark contrast to these, as their central bank outright seeks to outlaw crypto. Turkey’s central bank stated that crypto-assets were “neither subject to any regulation and supervision mechanisms nor a central regulatory authority”. In a statement, they went on to say that “Payment service providers will not be able to develop business models in a way that crypto assets are used directly or indirectly in the provision of payment services and electronic money issuance”.
As we see in Turkey, the US, and other countries, regulatory bodies will continue to enact new laws and regulations for cryptocurrencies, and savvy investors will do their best to stay informed. Leading crypto companies will continue to seek out the best geographically friendly location for their services. That’s it for reading this week’s edition of Overbit.com Insights, and we look forward to seeing you next week.