Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: People, Culture and Tech
Bitcoin saw a dramatic rebound on January 12 as a bearish dive to $30,000 came to an abrupt end. Data from CoinMarketCap and TradingView showed BTC/USD attacking levels it had lost in the previous day’s trading on Tuesday, reaching local highs of $36,600. At press time, $33,000 was in play as a potential support level as ranging behavior returned to the market.
Noting that Coinbase is not licensed to sell securities, the suit called Coinbase’s sale of XRP “unlawful” and “fraudulent,” claiming that “Coinbase falsely represented that XRP was a commodity when… Defendant knew it was a security.” It also said that selling XRP was “unfair” as it gave Coinbase “an unwarranted competitive advantage over digital asset exchanges that only sold commodities.”
The cryptocurrency exchange's CEO, Brian Armstrong, took another hammer-blow from the New York Times’ Nathaniel Popper on Dec. 29, with an article alleging the firm not only paid black and female employees less than their male counterparts, it did so at levels far worse than is typical in Silicon Valley.
A day after leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced it will suspend trading in XRP following a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against Ripple, the international payments firm downplayed the importance of the leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange’s action.
