Сurrent Market state Bitcoin (BTC) continues to bounce around the $8,400 price mark, while most of the top-20 coins by market capitalization report slight gains. The market capitalization of all digital assets in circulation played back $10B and reached the level of $225 billion.

Since its very brief pump to $8,700 on Friday, BTC fell back to support at just above $8,300 and remained there for the duration of the weekend

Ether (ETH) has turned down from just below $200. This shows that higher levels are attracting selling. It is currently at a strong support. If Ether price slips below the moving averages, it can plummet to the next support at $163.755

XRP is facing resistance at $0.29227. It has dipped back to the moving averages, which are likely to provide support. If the cryptocurrency rebounds off the moving averages, the bulls will again try to breakout of the overhead resistance

U.S. CFTC chairman says Ether is a commodity, ETH futures coming next The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has a new chairman — and during the past week some of the insights reveled his views on cryptocurrencies. Heath Tarbert told a summit that he believes Ether (ETH) is a commodity — and ETH futures trading is becoming a reality. This is the first time that the authority has provided a vision for Ether, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap

U.S. SEC deems $1.7 billion Telegram offering illegal, orders halt In what may be the highest-level action it has ever taken, the SEC has halted the $1.7 billion digital token offering for Gram (GRM) tokens. In a massive setback for the upcoming Telegram Open Network (TON), the regulator has filed an emergency action and restraining order against the two offshore entities behind it. The SEC alleges that the tokens were unlawfully sold — and claims U.S. markets would have been flooded with the digital currency if nothing was done. As a result of the proceedings, investors will be unable to acquire their Grams. Telegram is accused of failing to provide buyers with information about its business operations, financial condition and risk factors — disclosures that are required under the Securities Act of 1933. It is believed that about a quarter of the Grams sold — worth about $425 million — belonged to 31 purchasers based in the U.S

Zuckerberg to testify before Congress regarding Libra stablecoin Wednesday brought the news that Mark Zuckerberg is going to testify in front of the House of Representatives Financial Committee on Oct. 23. The topic is Facebook’s Libra stablecoin. It’s been another busy week as the tech giant struggles to get the project off the ground. Katie Haun, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, warned of national security implications if the U.S. blocks the digital currency. A crypto derivatives exchange unveiled plans to launch physically delivered futures contracts that will be settled based on whether Libra launches in 2020

Class action accuses Tether and Bitfinex of market manipulation A legal firm has filed a lawsuit against Tether and Bitfinex, accusing them of market manipulation. The founding partner of Roche Freedman, Kyle Roche, says the class-action lawsuit accuses the stablecoin firm and crypto exchange of defrauding investors, manipulating markets and concealing illicit proceeds. On Twitter, Roche accused the companies of creating the “largest bubble in history” — with a “sophisticated scheme” that was “part-fraud, part-pump-and-dump and part-money laundering.” The issue of whether Tether tokens (USDT) are fully backed by U.S. dollars is also part of the lawsuit, with Roche claiming the firm “issued extraordinary amounts of unbanked USDT to manipulate cryptocurrency prices.”

Laws & Compliance custody

Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures trading volume soars 796% in one day The Bakkt platform may have gotten off to a rather sluggish start, but new data suggests there may have been a turnaround after its tepid launch. Tracking data by the Bakkt Volume Bot on Twitter revealed that the trading volume of Bitcoin (BTC) futures soared to 224 contracts on Oct. 9 — a whopping 796% increase on the day before. Gert-Jan Lasterie, the Dutch journalist and crypto author who compiled the data, said the 224 contracts represent an all-time high for the platform

Blockchain firm Ripple fuses xRapid, xVia and xCurrent into RippleNet Ripple, the blockchain firm behind crypto asset XRP, fused three of its services into features of its RippleNet offering.Ripple moves towards building a network instead of a software suite, the spokesperson said. The company believes that combining all the different products into a unified network is a natural evolution of the company and its offerings, given the growth of their customer base, as well as the development of their standard and technology

Student may have tried to hack West Virginia’s blockchain voting app The FBI is investigating whether a student at the University of Michigan attempted to hack West Virginia’s voting app. The blockchain-based service, known as Voatz, was used to collect ballots from overseas and military voters in the 2018 election. Investigators say the attempt was unsuccessful

U.S. charges Singaporean miner who stole $5 million worth of cloud computing power A Singaporean man has been charged by U.S. prosecutors for using stolen identities to illegally utilize Amazon Web Services cloud computing power for crypto mining. Ho Jun Jia, who used several aliases, allegedly became the company’s largest data consumer. One of the accounts he used belonged to an unnamed Los Angeles-based game developer, and their financial staff were paying some of his bills before the fraud was detected. A man in Texas and an Indian business owner also fell victim

Official: Alipay to ban all Bitcoin-related transactions Alipay has declared that it’s going to ban any transactions related to BTC and other cryptocurrencies. The digital payment arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba warned consumers that it is closely monitoring over-the-counter transactions to identify irregular behavior and ensure it is compliant with relevant regulations. This comes after multiple reports that Alipay is being used for BTC transactions. Also this week, Binance announced it has started accepting fiat currencies through Alipay, as well as the mobile messaging and payment app WeChat

Crypto community’s interest The section below presents the most searched terms in google about recent crypto industry news for the last week. The graphs below show the percentage ratio between requests and their historical maximum. Crypto Topics & Events Google Trends Telegram After american regulators announced that its $1.7 billion token sale was illegal, the firm has been trying to solicit feedback from SEC for the past 18 months regarding the TON blockchain and does not agree with the recent action

Bakkt The Bakkt Bitcoin futures exchange has been beset by low trading volumes since its launch three weeks ago, but some see signs of life and urge patience Bitcoin Bitcoin price is too fluctuating recently moving back and forth. In a scathing rejection of the last Bitcoin ETF proposal in 2019, the SEC said Bitwise failed to prove that the Bitcoin market is not manipulated

Alipay The Alibaba group-founded online payment platform also added that they will stop their payment services for transactions that they will identify as related to bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency

Block.one The SEC has slapped Block.One, the parent company of EOS, with a $24 million fine. Although the settlement seems large, it represents pennies compared with the total amount it raised via its initial coin offering

Volatility extremums This section presents three of each of the best performed tokens and the worst performed tokens during the last week. Their volatility is presented in the table below.

Token Greatest volatility

Centrality +15.00%

0x +8.42%

Stratis +6.29%

Siacoin -5.46%

Bytecoin -5.03% Pundi X -2.46%

Citation of the week

“I would bet that Libra… let's say, by the end of 2022, I think Libra will not have launched.”

—Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple CEO @bgarlinghouse

“We've been very clear on bitcoin: bitcoin is a commodity. We haven't said anything about ether — until now. [...] It is my view as chairman of the CFTC that ether is a commodity.”

—Heath Tarbert, CFTC chairman @ChairmanHeath

“Our emergency action today is intended to prevent Telegram from flooding the U.S. markets with digital tokens that we allege were unlawfully sold.”

—Stephanie Avakian, the co-director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement