Summary:

• New Federal Reserve chair sees a possibility of a blockchain introduction into the US financial system, some doubts when it comes to Bitcoin though
• South Korean card companies work on blocking payments to overseas cryptocurrency exchanges
• Japanese yen emerges as the most traded national currency for Bitcoin

Bitcoin has been remarkably calm recently despite quite adverse reports coming from South Korea, one of the key places for the cryptocurrency industry. From a technical point of view sellers seem to still keep control as the price is hovering below a key short-term resistance. Nonetheless, before we move to a technical analysis let’s mention the newest remarks with regard to the blockchain technology as well as Bitcoin delivered by the next chairman of the Federal Reserve – Jerome Powell. According to him the introduction of distributed ledger technology (DTL) into the US existing financial systems could be possible one day, albeit the technology is still too new to be replied upon right now. On the other hand, while he seems to be fond of the blockchain he shared some doubts as far as Bitcoin is concerned. It was the first time he criticized Bitcoin as similar remarks occurred in November.

Technically Bitcoin could be still prone to a deeper pullback given the current technical landscape. Source: xStation5

Taking a look at a daily time frame of the most famous digital currency one may notice that the price is constantly moving below an upper limit of a channel which seems to be the closest resistance at this stage. Looking beyond that, a bearish engulfing drawn slightly above a resistance line at $12,550 (underpinned by a 50% retracement) could be viewed as another hurdle for bulls. However, until the price is unable to break above the mentioned channel bears are expected to play a major role. Therefore, a move toward a lower boundary of the channel is still on the cards. Finally let us notice that despite a substantial decline seen from the peak above a $19k handle the RSI oscillator has yet to enter a oversold zone. Even so, do notice the price tended to bounce back when the RSI was above 30 or even 40 points, hence caution is still needed.

Korean card companies work on blocking transactions to overseas exchanges

According to the Korean Credit Finance Association domestic card companies are reportedly working on blocking payments to overseas virtual currency exchanges. As a result, investors are unable to purchase digital tokens from 20 overseas digital currency exchanges using either debit or credit cards. Furthermore, the association added that an increasing number of exchanges will be continuously blocked in the future. Despite those measures one cannot forget about other payment methods allowing investors to purchase digital currencies including Paypal, therefore ultimate effectiveness remains fairly vague.

Japan becomes the top player in the cryptocurrency industry

There is no doubt that Asian countries account for a massive part of the whole cryptocurrency industry and the newest findings of research conducted by Japan Times (based on the data from Coinhills.com) have only confirmed it.

The Japanese yen is by far the most traded national currency accounting for more than 50% of Bitcoin turnover. Source: coinhills.com

The report showed that the Japanese yen accounted for 56.2% of Bitcoin turnover as of 15 January while the US dollar was far behind with 28.4%. Since then those numbers have changed obviously, however the Japanese currency remains still at the first place. Behind the two most traded currencies we have the Korean won, the euro, the Russian rouble and the Polish zloty.