Summary:

• Another Swiss bank will offer services for cryptocurrency companies

• Oleksandr Stelmakh, a member of the Ukraine Central Election Commission, considers using blockchain technology in elections

• Bitcoin (BITCOIN on xStation5) has broken below the $6500 handle

Wednesday draws quite a pessimistic picture of the cryptocurrency market with Bitcoin’s decline below the $6500 handle in the spotlight. Over the past 24 hours major virtual currencies pushed lower sending the capitalization of the whole market to around $230 billion. At the same time, the Bitcoin market capitalization sits a notch above $110 billion. Today’s major topics concern the plans of one of the Swiss banks and news from Ukraine.

BITCOIN has experienced a heavy sell-off yesterday. The cryptocurrency is trading around the $6450 handle at press time. However, long lower wicks of the latest candlesticks suggest that the bears may have already got exhausted. Will Bitcoin bulls use this opportunity? Source: xStation5

Let’s move to Switzerland that is currently one of the countries with most crypto-friendly approach. Maerki Baumann, a Swiss bank, is said to be the second bank in the country to provide services for cryptocurrency companies. According to International Investment report, the Zurich-based bank has agreed to form partnership with crypto-related companies. As many governments around the world decided to take bold approach towards cryptocurrencies many banking institution stayed reluctant towards servicing firms connected to the digital assets. Therefore one can see that today’s news may allow executives of the Swiss crypto-related companies to relax. Maerki Baumann is the second bank in Switzerland offering such services after Falcon Private Bank decided to do so in the previous year.

RIPPLE is trading at fresh YTD lows around $0.345 handle.. The digital currency smashed through the support zone localized around $0.425 handle on Monday. With this technical hurdle out of the way bears pushed coin’s price even lower.. While most of the major cryptocurrencies have been underperforming as of late RIPPLE along with LITECOIN are clearly the weakest ones of them as they are the only ones to trade at lowest levels of the year. Source: xStation5

Oleksandr Stelmakh, a member of the Ukraine Central Election Commission, is exploring the potential application of the blockchain technology in elections. Stelmakh is testing the blockchain voting system created in cooperation with NEM Foundation group. The tests are still on the way therefore we might have to wait some time for the results. Let us recall that in the early days of cryptomania and blockchain hype the use of technology in the elections has been hailed as one of the optimal applications of this technology.

LITECOIN, just like RIPPLE, is trading at year’s low. The latest decline seems to be eased around the $65 handle. As we can see, the coin is clearly trading below 8- and 33-period moving averages on the H4 interval (purple and yellow lines on the chart) therefore the potential bounce may be limited by these technical obstacles. Source: xStation5