Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) teased more rangebound moves on July 7 as traders recovered from a day of volatility.

BTC price gets a bid after volatile 24 hours

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC price action hugging $30,000 overnight.

Bitcoin bulls had hoped that new yearly highs the day prior would allow BTC/USD to exit its months-long trading range for good, but ended up disappointed.

The largest cryptocurrency saw rejection at $31,500, falling below the $30,000 mark just hours later to challenge the lower part of the range.

Looking ahead, traders thus reverted to risk-off mode in the short term.

BarnBridge DAO members have been told to pause “all work” related to the project after a reported probe by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In a July 6 post to the platform’s Discord channel, Douglas Park, a lawyer for the decentralized autonomous organization revealed the news to members.

“I am letting you know that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Barnbridge DAO and individuals associated with the DAO,” Park said.

In order to “reduce potential further legal liability,” Park suggested “all work” on BarnBridge-related products should stop — including the closure of liquidity pools — and that individuals should not receive compensation for work flowing from the investment efforts of the DAO.

Co-founder Tyler Ward, presumably dubbed “Lord Tyler” on Discord, confirmed Park’s message was true on BarnBridge’s Discord shortly after.

Bitcoin mining companies outperformed BTC price by a huge margin amid the recent bullish price action in the top cryptocurrency.

The average year-to-date gains in 2023 across the stocks of top nine public Bitcoin mining firms by market capitalization stood at 257.14%. The figure is almost three times higher than BTC’s gain in the same period.

The higher gains represent the leveraged beta effect that mining stocks enjoy. Leveraged beta suggests that during Bitcoin upside, these stocks outperform. Whereas, when Bitcoin slumps, they face deeper downside risk.

Due to a high levered beta, Bitcoin’s price performance will remain a crucial factor in determining the direction of mining stocks.

The trends within the mining sector show that miners are positioning themselves for the long-term by buying more machines. However, they have yet to exhibit accumulation levels that match previous bull markets, suggesting that the uptrend in the stocks could stall in the medium term.

A pair of researchers from the University of Tsukuba in Japan recently built an AI-powered cryptocurrency portfolio management system that utilizes on-chain data for training, the first of its kind according to the scientists. 

Called CryptoRLPM, short for “Cryptocurrency reinforcement learning portfolio manager,” the AI system utilizes a training technique called “reinforcement learning" to implement on-chain data into its model.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an optimization paradigm wherein an AI system interacts with its environment — in this case, a cryptocurrency portfolio — and updates its training based on reward signals.

CryptoRLPM applies feedback from RL throughout its architecture. The system is structured into five primary units which work together to process information and manage structured portfolios.

These modules include a Data Feed Unit, Data Refinement Unit, Portfolio Agent Unit, Live Trading Unit, and an Agent Updating Unit.

The start of June saw negative price action across the cryptocurrency market after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought fresh lawsuits against the world’s largest exchanges, Binance and Coinbase.

However, the sentiment quickly turned bullish after a crucial exchange-traded fund proposal was filed by the world’s largest asset management firm, BlackRock, on June 16. A wave of ETF fillings and institutional trading interest in digital assets followed BlackRock’s ETF filling.

The launch of EDX Markets backed by Wall Street giants Fidelity Investments, Citadel Securities, and Charles Schwab on June 20 fueled a particular sector of the market in Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) and other proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies like Kaspa (KAS).

The exchange debuted with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and BCH. The inclusion of BCH catalyzed an uptrend across other Bitcoin forks.

Among the top gainers in June, three Bitcoin forks populated the list, followed by Kaspa and FLEX Coin (FLEX). FLEX benefited from its integration with Open Exchange, backed by co-founders of the bankrupt Three Arrows Capital digital fund.