Alex Sunnarborg, the founding partner at Tetras Capital, a New York-based digital asset hedge fund with reportedly $30 million of assets under management (AUM), has argued that the prices of most major cryptocurrencies are still strongly correlated.
Sunnarborg, a finance graduate from the University of Florida, revealed that his firm, Tetras Capital, had shorted ETH in May 2018 - when the token was trading at around $500. He explained that there is no (reliable) way for him to tell if ETH is "fundamentally going to bottom at $50" as Ethereum's native token was trading for only worth about $10 two years back. Sunnarborg believes Ether's "short-term bottom would be in line with" Bitcoin's bottom and that if the flagship cryptocurrency "turned tomorrow and rallied", then "Ether would, too."

1. The Quant Conference 2019 will be held in Venice, Italy.
2. Blockchain Dev Conference 2019 will be held from Feb 21 to Feb 22 in Oakland, California.
3. MindChain, the biggest Blockchain-focused event ever in Romania, will be held from Feb 21 to Feb 22.

As of 23:00 (UTC) on Feb 20, Bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $3,983.85, up by 0.67% in the past 24 hours and showing a continuous increase since Feb 17. CoinNess.com compiles the Bitcoin technical analysis of popular analysts as follows:
1) Outlook: Bullish
Crypto analyst 'Rakesh Upadhyay': Bitcoin (BTC) closed above the downtrend line on Feb. 18. If the recovery continues, a rally to $4,255 will be likely. Above this level, the BTC/USD pair will complete a double bottom pattern which has a target objective of $5,273.91.
Crypto analyst 'Flip Flip': In good news for the bulls, the MAC-D on the daily chart has crossed zero for the first time since August 2018, and there are no signs of bearish divergences in this move yet. The CMF is starting to show some sign that there the bullish pressure is starting to ease off, which is what would be expected as we reach towards $4,000.
2) Outlook: Bearish
Crypto analyst 'Flood': I'd imagine we see a sweep of 3800 in order for larger players who missed the move to fill up on some longs and reduce some short hedges. This should be followed by a sharp bounce. BTC seems fairly bullish here, but if $3,700 breaks I wouldn't stay in any longs.
Crypto analyst 'Josh Rager': Notice the long wick, a nice sign of a slight retrace likely. Would like BTC [to] push up slightly higher to at least $4,100 to mid $4ks, [which] would be a nice target. For traders – this is good volatility. For Holders – you could see new lows in the coming weeks.
A strong rally pushed the price up 20% over the last 10 days. So far, we have yet to establish a new high.
Crypto analyst 'Bitcoin Schmitcoin': Just above the current price level is a strong band of resistance that the market has failed to break. This resistance includes the weekly 200 EMA - a notoriously strong level to break. If we fail to pop a new high, we can expect to see a retest of the low $3,000s.

Amazon and Komodo are working together to enable the creation of blockchains in less than 60 seconds using a new builder tool called Chainlizard, according to a blog post released on February 20 by Amazon.
With an alpha version live, the complete version of Chainlizard will be released during the second quarter of 2019, which will include nodes, a block explorer, and a software wallet.

As of 21:46:31 (UTC) Feb 20, Coinhills statistics show that the Japanese Yen remains the most traded national currency for Bitcoin, dominating 51.72% of the global fiat-to-Bitcoin market, followed by the US Dollar (43.21%), the Korean Won (1.84%), the Euro (1.09%), and the Turkish Lira (0.58%).

A new report called "The State of Stablecoins 2019: Hype vs. Reality in the Race for Stable, Global, Digital Money" shows that stablecoins will play a major role in crypto adoption in the future.
This report, led by crypto advisor George Samman, collected information from over 40 crypto companies. One of the predictions made by the author of the reports was that the price of stablecoins would help them to play a crucial role in adoption as they are way less volatile than most cryptos, like Bitcoin, are.
The United States dollar (USD) will be the most tokenized asset in the next 12 to 24 months, the author believes. However, the author also believes that if the USD is too massively adopted as a stablecoin, it can also have a negative effect and make the fiat currency inflate in price, which could lead to instability.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cleveland Division, recently published a request to the public, looking for "potential victims who invested in the cryptocurrency BitConnect coin (BCC)."
Back in 2018 at the beginning of the year, two securities regulators at a state level had issued a warning to the public regarding the "Ponzi-type nature" of BitConnect. Subsequently, BitConnect ended up shutting down the platform.

CoinNess.com now delivers a special report featuring the closing prices of the U.S. blockchain stocks at the end of the day.
NYSE Bundle: Eastman Kodak Company (KODK): $3.03, -1.94%; IBM Common Stock (IBM): $138, -0.50%; Accenture Plc (ACN): $159.71, +0.14%; Square Inc (SQ): $75.97, -0.77%.
NASDAQ Bundle: Overstock.com (OSTK): $22.06, -0.41%; Marathon Patent Group Inc (MARA): $0.70, -4.11%; Riot Blockchain Inc (RIOT): $3.74, +12.31%.

Samsung's latest flagship phone, Galaxy S10, will include a dedicated secure storage function designed for cryptocurrency private keys.
In a press release, Samsung explained: "Galaxy S10 is built with defense-grade Samsung Knox, as well as a secure storage backed by hardware, which houses your private keys for blockchain-enabled mobile services."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seriously evaluating blockchain's potential to allow Internet users to log in to various services via one set of credentials without relying on third parties.
Such as a use for the technology would make a compelling alternative to services like Facebook Connect, the social media giant's single sign-on (SSO) application, Zuckerberg said in a recently posted video interview with Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain.
"A use of blockchain that I've been thinking about… though I haven't figured out a way to make this work out, is around authentication and… granting access to your information to different services," he said. "So, replacing the notion of what we have with Facebook Connect with something that is truly distributed."

Coinflex has now launched its physically delivered cryptocurrency futures exchange. The new Hong Kong-based leveraged trading platform is a spin-off from one of the United Kingdom's oldest cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinfloor. Last month it was reported that the trading venue plans to offer futures contracts for BTC, BCH, and ETH, all paired against USDT.

Institutional-grade cryptocurrency investment services firm BitGo will provide wallet and custody support for TRX later this year, making it available for institutional investors. TRX thus joins over 100 other digital currencies already supported by BitGo.

During YouTube's Cryptocurrency Virtual Summit, the co-founder and creator of Cardano (ADA), Charles Hoskinson, dug dipper into the progress which Cardano made until now since its debut and what kind of mindset does it take to run a project of this scale even during cold weather.
"It's a hard process. It's a brutal process. Doing it during crypto winter was especially hard because while we were making great progress and great achievements, the price keeps going down... But being able to overcome all of that and keep moving forward... prove that we're resilient,... we know how to execute, and.. we're going to be here for a long time," Hoskinson said.

According to Bitcoin.org, the website now supports more than 25 languages. Over the past year, as part of its ongoing content translation initiative to help spread information about Bitcoin all around the world, many people have helped extend and update the site into their own native languages.
This accomplishment should enable billions of people to potentially learn more about it and how to get started using it as easily as possible as the original website domain registered by Satoshi Nakamoto in association with the technology and one of the first results people encounter when searching the web for more information about Bitcoin, according to an article posted on the official website of Bitcoin.org.

According to NHK, lawyers in Japan have assembled and started to provide free telephone consultation for victims who suffered the drastic losses in crypto related investments. In most cases, the scams promoted to return a profit so high as 80%. There were common cases in ICO scams like the contacts went missing after they have collected all the funds from the victims.

Investment platform eToro has released the results of its market survey, which shows that 71% of millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) responding to eToro's survey said they "would invest in crypto if it was offered by traditional financial institutions." Other notable results from the trading firm's poll included "half of [the] online investors expressing interest in a crypto allocation in their 401k plans." In the US, a 401(k) is a retirement savings plan that is "sponsored by an employer." The plan "lets workers save and invest a piece of their paycheck before taxes are taken out."

India's largest e-commerce firm, mjunction services limited, has entered into a strategic partnership with blockchain shipping firm Shipnext, global maritime news agency Sea News reports Feb 20. The new partnership intends to boost efficiency across mjunction's supply chain, bringing value-added services to its clients, mjunction CEO Vinaya Varma said.

Citing information from bunshun.jp, the Japanese crypto exchange Komuro Coin was suspected in a crypto scam, setting up a foundation in the name of Komuro Kyu, Fiance of the Japanese Emperor's granddaughter. The founder of the foundation was reportedly Deloris May, a friend of Komuro Kyu from Fordham University School of Law in the year of 2019. However, bunshun.jp has researched into the 2019's alumni list of Fordham Law; there is no such person called Deloris May. Komuro Kyu is currently travelling in Europe and has not yet made a response to this issue.

Monitored by CoinNess.com, the current Bitcoin unconfirmed transactions read 11,374. The 24-hour transaction rate (txs/s) marks 3.95. The network hash rate is 44.17 EH/s. Bitcoin's mining difficulty marks 6.06 T by press time and is estimated to grow by 2.72% to 6.23 T in three days and 17 hours.
CoinNess.com Market Index: BTC, $3,986.19, +0.05%.

New research from Hacken System's Crypto Exchange Ranks (CER) shows that traditional banks like JPMorgan and Bank of America dwarf the nascent cryptocurrency exchange industry.
Hacken System compared data from the five largest US and UK banks, five local banks in emerging countries, and the five largest crypto-exchanges (according to wallet balances). On average, the crypto-trading platforms lag behind local bank deposits by a factor of 15, and their wallet balances hold over 1,000 times less than the top five global banks.
Click 'Read More' for details.

According to the Nikkei News, the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint has invested 40% to the Thailand's cryptocurrency exchange Bidders, which has obtained the cryptocurrency exchange license from the local authority. Bidders will list five cryptos including BTC and XRP by April.

The Bank of Japan's official website has published a paper related to the cryptographic currency of the central bank. The paper explored the possible impact of central bank issued digital currency on the efficiency of the settlement, financial intermediation of banks, liquidity crisis, financial policies, etc.
Click "Read More" for the original paper.

Spanish cryptocurrency mining startup CryptoSolarTech will return $68 million raised during its initial coin offering (ICO). A screenshot of an official letter sent to investors was posted on Twitter Wednesday, Feb. 20 by Spanish IT lawyer Sergio Carrasco.
CryptoSolarTech apparently aimed to build a crypto mining facility powered by solar energy in Southern Spain, but failed to get a building permit. Citing reasons beyond their control, the founders of the project promised to return funds within 60 days. The startup also claimed that it is not responsible for any of the tokens purchased after Feb. 19.

Monitored by CoinNess.com, as of 20:00 (UTC) on Feb. 20, the Ethereum unconfirmed transactions read 35,347, indicating a more congested network than the same period yesterday.
CoinNess.com Market Index: ETH, $146.91, -0.74%.

According to the Nikkei news, the Japan Cryptographic Exchange Association on the 20th publicly disclosed the number of crypto exchange accounts in December 2018. Those are the initial data the association has ever disclosed. The association will release the balance of the assets and number of exchange accounts in a monthly period. The association collects the data by a version revised from the fund settlement algorithm, including 16 registered companies and two registered companies. The current exchanges' balance of deposits at the end of December 2018 is approximately 278.6 billion yen (about $2.51 billion). 206.9 billion yen, (approximately $1.86 billion) are the value converted in cryptocurrencies and 71.6 billion yen (about $645 million) in cash. There are currently 2.85 million accounts according to the released statement. As of December 2018, there were 1.61 million accounts, which have made at least one transaction; indicating a 56% active accounts. However, the number of exchange accounts have decreased significantly compared to the $3.5 million accounts, reported by the association as of March 2018.

Spain's largest multinational telecommunications company, Telefónica, has announced an initiative to support entrepreneurs in innovative technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), according to an official press release published on Feb 19.
Click "Read More for details.

According to the latest data shared by Data Light, a cryptocurrency data analytic platform, big money might be making its way into the Bitcoin market right now. The basis for this is the past one year data revolving around 24 hours transactions, transaction count and an average fee of a transaction.

Said on a Twitter post, Roger Ver stated gold's industrial uses that were separated from being a store of value. He said that "It's those other uses that enable gold to be used as a store of value."
This controversial statement has drawn active discussions among netizens on Twitter as many users have sharply refuted by citing Wikipedia that "Gold was a store of value LONG before industrial revolution or any form of industrial production."
Click "Read More" for the original Twitter thread.

FairFX, an e-banking, and international payments group has announced that it has been granted access to settlement accounts with Bank of England [BoE] and has become a direct partner of UK's Faster Payments Scheme. UK's Faster Payment Scheme aka FPS has been growing rapidly since its inception as its the only real-time 24/7 service that is increasing in demand concerning business and personal customers. Furthermore, the company's direct connection to the Faster Payments Scheme has been enabled by the New Access Model that extended access to the RTGS accounts held at the Bank of England.
CoinNess.com Market Index: XRP, $0.32, -2.12%.

Zebi, a blockchain player, has acquired Element42, a Bengaluru-based firm working in the same space, for an undisclosed sum. Post acquisition, Zebi will have a total workforce of 75. This acquisition will transfer all of Element42's clients to the acquirer. "We are going to double the number of employees this year. We will add 150 in the following year," said Sudheer Kuppam, Chief Executive Officer of Zebi. Addressing a press conference to announce the acquisition, he said the company is looking to have 1,000 employees in the next 3-4 years, as it expands blockchain-based services.