One of the biggest custodians will secure funds.

The Litecoin Foundation has announced an agreement with BitGo, one of the largest crypto custody providers on the market. Though the Litecoin Foundation and other LTC holders are not obligated to deposit funds with a custodian, doing so provides institution-grade security. The news was first revealed on Twitter on Jan. 3, 2019.

Fear dominates the Bitcoin and crypto markets, but growth and adoption continues unabated.

According to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which gauges the general market sentiment by analyzing and aggregating multiple data points into a single number on a scale of 0 to 100, whereby 0 signifies extreme fear and 100 extreme greed, the prevailing sentiment of the crypto markets in the past six months has been mostly “fearful” — continually oscillating in the range of 20 and 40.

The recent U.S. airstrike in Iran pushed the price of Bitcoin up 4%, along with gold and oil. Further possible conflict in the region could drive BTC’s price even higher, affirming its role as a safe-haven asset.

• XRP has a bearish short and medium-term trading bias
• The four-hour time frame shows that a bullish inverted head and shoulders pattern may be forming
• The daily time frame shows that a bearish wedge breakout remains in play 

XRP is attempting to recover towards the $.20 level, after the third-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization slipped to its weakest trading level since Dec 18 earlier this week.

The broader cryptocurrency market came under pressure on the second trading day of 2020, as Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies slipped into negative territory for the month.

The first cryptocurrency fell back towards $7,050 after being rejected from its 200-period moving average on the four-hour time frame.

BTC/USD shorts on the Bitfinex trading exchange were at their highest level since Dec 20, while BTC/USD longs were at their weakest since Dec 16

• Basic Attention has a bullish short-term trading bias and a negative medium-term bias
• The four-hour time frame shows that a bullish inverted head and shoulders pattern has formed
• The daily time frame shows that a bullish breakout from a falling wedge pattern is underway

Basic Attention is searching for direction on Thursday after the cryptocurrency posted gains of around 5% on the first trading day 2020.

The Ethereum Muir Glacier hard fork was successfully completed, once again delaying the mining “difficulty bomb” that threatens to freeze the network.

Muir Glacier (EIP-2387) was initially proposed because of an underestimation in the onset of the difficulty bomb. As said by Tim Beiko, a product manager working at Ethereum:

New Year’s Eve attack nearly wreaks havoc.

Ethereum experienced an attack this week that threatened to cause significant downtime. Beginning on Dec. 30, an attacker sent invalid blocks to the network, causing node operators using the Parity client to lose sync with the network. Sergio Demian Lerner, a cryptocurrency security consultant, explained on Twitter:

NGC Ventures, one of the largest institutional investors in the blockchain sector, is launching “NGC Ventures Fund II” ⁠— an “All-Weather Crypto Fund” specifically designed to capture market beta and secure consistent returns in both bloom and gloom market conditions. 

Private transactions are closer than ever.

Litecoin’s Mimblewimble-based privacy efforts are finally underway. David Burkett, the developer behind the subproject, has announced that he has completed the first month of development. “After months of planning, development of the Mimblewimble extension block has officially started,” Burkett posted to Litecointalk on Dec. 29.