The State of the Market: Cryptocurrency prices finally saw a day of green today, following weeks of a relentless market downturn. The recovery was led by Ethereum (ETH) which saw a 10% increase up to just under $290 on the day. Bitcoin (BTC) also rallied, with a more modest gain of 4.24% up to just over $6,300. In addition, the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization increased by almost $12 billion to recover once again to above $200 billion levels.
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Gemini Cryptocurrency Exchange CEO, Tyler Winklevoss said that “it will take time” for the big Wall Street players to truly embrace cryptocurrencies. Winklevoss said that he and his brother have no intention of reducing their efforts to have their BTC-ETF application approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). While it has been a tough year for the Winklevoss twins, Tyler resolutely claimed that “Wall Street is taking cryptocurrencies seriously. However, the vast majority of Wall Street firms are still not participating in the cryptocurrency market, which remains primarily a retail-driven market.” In spite of poor market conditions, Gemini is keeping busy by doubling its staff to 150 employees and laying down plans to grow its retail business (read more).
The Kin Ecosystem Foundation, backed by the developers of the popular Kik messaging app, recently announced their selection of 40 apps in their ‘development incubator.’ The incubator will act as a funding engine for the development of miniature in-app “kin economies,” in order to spur the adoption of the Kin platform, which raised $98 million last year through an initial coin offering (ICO). Dany Fishel, the president of Kin, remarked that “The Kin Developer Program allows us to harness the creativity of the global developer community to achieve our goal of becoming the most used cryptocurrency in the world” (read more).
Jeremy Light, the vice president of Ripple’s (XRP) strategic accounts in Europe, recently stated in an interview with CNBC that his company was looking to expand the adoption of its distributed ledger platform into Chinese markets. Light remarked: “China is definitely of interest, it is definitely a target… China is definitely a country and region of interest” (read more).