Cryptocurrency This Week: CBoE Bitcoin Futures On Hold, PATRICIA To Introduce Stable Coin And More

Bitcoin is trading at $4,033. A good news for traders. A sign of crypto winter getting over. ‘The dark knight’ has consistently maintained its price above $4K since March 16, 2019.

However, despite the price rise, Bitcoin’s share in the crypto market has been consistently dropping and has now hit a new low of 50.6% amid stiff competition from other altcoins.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin craze seems to be unstoppable, says the Google search trends. Search for ‘Buy Bitcoin’ is only getting more popular every passing day and in the last 30 days, despite few lags, the swing is only upward. This implies that people are still interested in buying and selling, no matter how prolonged the winter is!

Trends have its limits, as it can’t alone determine the future of Bitcoin, which once was said to be in the form of Bitcoin Futures. However, now, the Chicago Board Options Exchange, which had launched Bitcoin Futures last year, has now said it will not be listing Futures in March this year.

Crypto products remain a classy and messy affair.

Let’s take a look at the crypto affairs of this week.

CboE Bitcoin Futures Put On Hold

While the Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) plans to launch Bitcoin futures has been wrecked by the US regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the CboE or the Chicago Board Options Exchange which launched Bitcoin Futures has now put Bitcoin Futures on hold.

The exchange purportedly stated that it is not going to list Bitcoin Futures in March this year, however, the previous Bitcoin Futures contracts listed on the exchange will remain listed till their expiry in June. The exchange will now rethink the space and priority being given to cryptocurrency.

Ecommerce Company PATRICIA To Introduce Stable Coin for Africa

The Google trends have been showing African regions such as Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya showing the most interest in Bitcoin in the last 12 months, however, this has not translated into the volume of cryptocurrency trading there.

PATRICIA Technologies, an ecommerce company, wants to bring in a balance to meet people’s expectations in cryptocurrencies.

The company recently announced plans to introduce a stable for its African users.

PATRICIA Technologies founder Hanu Agbodje stated that the media has covered cryptocurrencies for a few years now. Despite these efforts, the true nature of cryptocurrencies remains somewhat murky and undefined. At the moment, cryptocurrencies represent different things to regulators, bankers, and to the general public.

“We intend to offer Africans something reliable, beneficial and that will boost the IGR of many African countries. Stable coins are important for exchange users, exchange operators, and for the cryptocurrency market as a whole”, he added.

Trojan Campaign Targeting Fintech and Cryptocurrency Companies

A global threat intelligence team named Unit 42 of US-based Palo Alto Networks’ has analyzed a low volume trojan malware called Cardinal RAT. According to their research, the malware is being used attack Israel-based fintech and cryptocurrencies.

It said, “Since April 2017, we have observed Cardinal RAT in attacks against two customers, both customers were fintech companies who write software relating to forex and cryptocurrency trading, and both companies were based in Israel.”

“Looking at submissions to VirusTotal, there are 13 Carp Downloader documents. Note that we are only looking at submissions for “entry” type files, not subsequently dropped files. When looking at the first submitters for these documents in Figure 1, we see they are predominantly uploaded from Israel,” it added.

In other news, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced plans to hire cryptocurrency engineers to contribute to an open-source Bitcoin/crypto ecosystem called SquareCrypto.

Jack did not stop there. He promised, “Work from anywhere, report directly to me, and we can even pay you in Bitcoin! Introducing @SqCrypto. Why?”