Hex founder Richard Heart wanted by Interpol, Europol on charges of tax evasion and assault

The Bitcoin price is approaching the $100,000 level again after experiencing significant declines these past weeks. A crypto analyst has pointed out that the critical resistance level at $99,800 is crucial for Bitcoin’s next move. If the pioneer cryptocurrency can break through this level, it could trigger a significant breakout, potentially propelling Bitcoin past the $100,000 mark.

Bitcoin Price Faces Resistance At $99,800

Prominent crypto analyst Ali Martinez has shared a chart showing an In/Out of the Money Around Price (IOMAP) analysis of the distribution of Bitcoin wallets based on their purchase price. According to the analyst, the Bitcoin price is facing extreme resistance between the $97,500 and $99,800 price levels as it tries to breach $100,000 again.

Martinez noted that around this price range, approximately 923,890 wallet addresses had purchased over 1.19 million BTC. This price zone acts as an important resistance level because many Bitcoin holders may look to sell and break even, potentially exerting selling pressure.

In the IOMAP chart shared by Martinez, the green dots that signal ‘In the Money’ represent price levels below the current Bitcoin price, where wallet holders are in profit because they bought BTC at a lower value. On the other hand, the red dots that represent ‘Out of the Money’ show price levels of Bitcoin’s present value, where wallet holders are at a loss because they bought BTC at a higher price.

Lastly, the white dot indicates ‘At the Money’ and represents the current price of Bitcoin at an average of $98,676, where some crypto wallets see neither profit nor loss.

Below Bitcoin’s current price, the chart shows strong buying zones, which could provide strong support if the pioneer cryptocurrency experiences a potential pullback. Martinez has forecasted that breaking through the critical resistance range between $97,500 and $99,800 would signal the start of a bullish rally for Bitcoin, potentially leading it to a new all-time high.

Currently, the Bitcoin price is trading at $98,652, steadily rising to return to previous highs above $100,000. To a new all-time high, Bitcoin will have to surge by over 7%, surpassing its present ATH above $104,000.

Bitcoin’s Biggest Gains To Come After Christmas

A popular crypto analyst identified as the ‘Crypto Rover’ has expressed optimism about Bitcoin’s near-term price potential this Q4. According to the analyst, Bitcoin has historically experienced its most significant gains right after Christmas during the halving years.

Microstrategy, shortly before its addition to the Nasdaq 100 stock index on Monday, has added 3 members to its board of directors, bringing the total count to 9 members, a recent filing shows.

The new board members are Brian Brooks, Jane Dietze, and Gregg Winiarski, who all have experience with large corporations that deal with digital assets, according to the filing. Each board member will receive an equity package with a value of $2 million, with half in options and half in RSUs which will vest over four years.

Brian Brooks is likely the most well-known among crypto investors, having formerly served as CEO of Binance.US, the US-based arm of the global Binance exchange, from May 2021 to August 2021. Brooks was also the chief legal officer at Coinbase from September 2018 to March 2020. Brooks' experience also includes a stint as the Acting Comptroller of the Currency from April 2020 to January 2021, a role in which he headed the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a regulatory body which helps oversee banks' digital asset-related activities. Brooks also served as CEO of Bitfury, a Bitcoin mining company, from October 2021 to December 2022.

Jane Dietze has served as the chief investment officer of Brown University since July 2018, overseeing the Ivy League university's $7.2 billion endowment. Dietze has also served on the board of directors of Galaxy Digital, the digital asset company founded by Mike Novogratz, since February 2022.

"I find her smart, curious, she understands our space, I think she is a thought leader in the endowment space," Novogratz said in an interview with Bloomberg at the time. "I think she helps credentialize us with the endowment space."

Finally, Microstrategy's board added Gregg Winiarski, who has served as the chief legal officer of sports apparel and collectibles company Fanatics since February 2023. Winiarski was a senior adviser to Fanatics from August 2021 until taking the top legal job in February 2023, and boasts—like the other new board members—an Ivy League degree.

The new board members have joined just as Microstrategy will be added to the Nasdaq 100 index on Monday, Dec. 23. The company recently acquired another $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin, taking its total holdings to 439,000 BTC. MicroStrategy’s total holdings were bought at an average price of $61,725 per bitcoin, a total cost of around $27.1 billion, including fees and expenses, according to the company's co-founder and executive chairman, Michael Saylor.

Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.

© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Shanghai-based car dealership Cango Inc. has pivoted to Bitcoin (BTC) mining, announcing a $256 million acquisition of 32 exahashes per second (EH/s) in hashrate from Bitmain Technologies.

In November, the company extracted 363 BTC, worth about $36 million, without liquidating any assets, positioning it as one of the top players in the global Bitcoin mining industry.Cango Joins BTC Mining Bigwigs

According to The MinerMag, the move makes Cango the fifth-largest public Bitcoin miner by realized hashrate and the third-biggest by deployed hashrate. Its production accounts for 4% of the BTC mined daily around the world, a major achievement given the firm only recently entered the sector.

Cango’s expansion into BTC mining is backed by strategic acquisitions. The initial purchase from Bitmain, including on-rack miners, is reportedly hosted in the U.S., possibly in Georgia, under an 18-month colocation agreement.

Such a contract allows the company to house its hardware with a service provider in a secure and managed environment without the need to maintain its own data centers. This is especially important given that crypto mining was officiallyprohibitedin China in May 2021 due to concerns about financial risk, energy consumption, and environmental impact.

Interestingly, even with the ban, Chinese mining pools still control a huge chunk of the global BTC hashrate, estimated by some experts to be around 55%.

Cango also plans to secure another 18 EH/s from Golden TechGen, a company owned by ex-Bitmain CFO Max Hua. The deal, expected to be finalized by the end of March 2025, is said to involve the issuing of $144 million in common stock, potentially bringing the NYSE-listed motor dealership’s total hashrate to 50 EH/s. This would allow Cango to potentially match industry leaders such asMarathon Digital Holdings.

Speculation is rife that the hardware in question will include Bitmain’s Antminer S19XP rigs, bought at a relatively competitive $8 per terahash per second (TH/s).Bitcoin Bet Pays Off

With BTC prices hovering around the$100,000level and the network hashprice rebounding to $63 per petahash per second (PH/s), Cango’s venture into crypto appears well-timed. While it also marks a dramatic shift from the company’s origins as an automotive transaction service provider, it is in keeping with the firm’s constant reinvention of itself.

Founded in 2010, it initially focused on motor vehicle financing before moving into car trading due to regulatory pressures in China. Earlier in the year, it diversified its operations further, launching AutoCango.com, a platform offering used Chinese cars to buyers worldwide.

However, Cango has acknowledged that its new BTC mining operation may dominate its revenue streams in the near term, especially given that its initial income from the venture surpassed its Q3 revenue of $3.84 million many times over. The performance pushed the company’s stock price from $3.41 to $6.91, boosting its market cap to $500 million.

Amid a crypto market mayhem over the past week, Solana (SOL) has suffered significant losses to the tune of 17.13%,. according to data from CoinMarketCap.

This decline adds to the token’s steep price movement after it reached a new all-time high of $263.83 following the US Presidential elections in November. However, with the crypto bull cycle still in its early stages, analysts at Glassnode remain positive on the token’s ability to regain its bullish form despite not establishing any higher highs in the past three weeks.

More Room For SOL Price Growth, Analysts Say

In a recent blog post on December 20, Glassnode in collaboration with crypto analysts UkuriaOC and CryptoVizArt shared vital insights on the current state of the Solana market.

By analyzing the Net Realized Profit/Loss metric, these market experts discovered that Solana has experienced a positive net capital inflow since early September 2023, with a recorded peak inflow of $776 million of new capital per day.

During this period, the SOL market witnessed minor inflows with the majority of the profit-taking volume coming from coins aged 1 day-1 week, 1 week-1 month, and 6 months-12 months, demonstrating the endearment of Solana to both long and short-term holders.

To ascertain the status of Solana amidst these recent market activity, Glassnode employs the MVRV ratio to determine if the market is overheated. For context, the Market Value To Realized Value (MVRV) ratio is used to assess if an asset is potentially overvalued (>1) or undervalued (<1).

This MVRV ratio can be used to establish pricing bands that classify investors’ profitability into ranges. Using this setup, Glassnode observes that Solana is currently observing a sideways movement between the mean MVRV and +0.5 standard deviation range.

This development indicates the Solana market is quite heated but still far from a bull cycle top. This is because MVRV breakouts of +1 standard deviation have historically signaled when the altcoin forms a longer-term macro topping formation.

Therefore, Solana still has the potential to record much profit before entering an overheated zone that will likely precede a market downtrend.

Solana A Stellar Investment So Far – Glassnode

In addition to more insights on the Solana market, Glassnode notes that altcoin has proven to be a highly profitable asset in the crypto market.

Following its price crash to $9.64 in November 2022, Solana has experienced a remarkable price gain of over 2,143% over the past two years. During this period, the altcoin has outperformed both Bitcoin and Ethereum on 344 out of 727 market days since the FTX exchange collapsed indicating significant market demand and interest.

At the time of writing, Solana trades at $194.58 reflecting a price loss of 0.50% in the past day. However, the asset’s trading volume is up by 18.94% and is valued at $9.94 billion.

Jump Crypto’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Tai Mo Shan, has agreed to a $123 million settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its role in misleading investors about the stability of the TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin.

Jump Crypto, a subsidiary of the Chicago-based proprietary trading firm Jump Trading, was integral to Terra’s ecosystem. The firm is currently under investigation by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Tai Mo Shan Settles With SEC for Misleading TerraUSD Claims

On December 20, the SEC highlighted Tai Mo Shan’s deceptive practices during the UST depegging crisis. The firm attempted to stabilize UST by purchasing over $20 million of the stablecoin.

SEC claimed that this falsely signaled to the market that Terra algorithmic mechanisms were effectively maintaining its value. However, this action failed to prevent the widespread disruption and significant investor losses triggered by the depegging event.

Furthermore, the SEC charged Tai Mo Shan with acting as a statutory underwriter for Terra Luna token. The agency asserted that the firm managed these assets as securities through unregistered transactions. Their strategy involved planning the distribution of these tokens on US-based trading platforms from January 2021 to May 2022.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler emphasized the broader impact of the incident, stating:

Tai Mo Shan will pay $73,452,756 in disgorgement, $12,916,153 in prejudgment interest, and a $36,726,378 civil penalty as part of the settlement. The firm did not admit to or deny the SEC’s findings but agreed to a cease-and-desist order to prevent future violations of registration and fraud provisions.

This settlement comes shortly after Terraform and its founder Do Kwon were found liable for fraud and unregistered securities offerings. They agreed to a substantial $4.5 billion payment to compensate affected investors.

In January 2024, Terraform Labs declared bankruptcy. Following this, the company transferred control of the Terra blockchain to the community and discontinued a number of its products and services.

Prominent altcoin Toncoin (TON) was not left out of the widespread crypto decline in the last week. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the price of Toncoin dipped by 14.71% over the past seven days falling from a consolidation range between $6.2-$6.5. However, this market downturn does not deter market experts’ bullishness on TON especially with the altseason yet to go into full effect.

Toncoin To Gain At Least 280% In Altseason, Analyst Says

In a recent X post, popular crypto analyst Burak Kesmeci revealed multiple price targets for Toncoin in the current altcoin bull run/altseason, a period where altcoins generally outperform Bitcoin in price appreciation indicated by a decline in Bitcoin’s market dominance.

Firstly, the analyst notes that Toncoin’s 365-day moving average currently at $5.14 has historically represented a region where price activity significantly slows down. Notably, Toncoin has only experienced a prolonged price dip below this level in a bear market. However, with the crypto market in a bull cycle, Kesmeci postulates that a one-year SMA could represent the potential local bottom for TON.

Therefore, using this price point with multiple levels of standard deviation (σ), the analyst predicts possible price targets of Toncoin that are statistically compared to historical data.

From the chart below, Toncoin is expected to hit an initial price of $8.74 as the altseason takes off based on the price level revealed by the one-year SMA + 2σ. This indicates a potential 60.6% gain on the altcoin’s current market price. Thereafter, a higher price band of one-year SMA + 6σ indicates a price target of $15.93. The final price goal for Toncoin by Burak Kesmeci is based on the one-year SMA + 8σ and set at $19.53.

Going by this prediction, the crypto analyst states that Toncoin could have gained by 280% in the first phase of the altseason. However, investors should note that price targets are likely to change with moving prices as the projection is based on the simple moving average.

What Now For Toncoin?

Following the crypto market decline this week, Toncoin found a local price bottom at $4.71 and is currently undergoing a modest price recovery as it hovers around the $5.40 price zone. In attaining any of Kesmeci’s price predictions, the altcoin will need to break past a minor resistance at the $6.5 price region and also overcome a major price opposition at $7.0.

In other developments, Toncoin’s daily trading volume has grown by 3.61% attaining a value of $619.19 million. With a market cap of $13.91 billion, the digital asset remains the ninth-largest cryptocurrency in the market.