There will never be 21 million Bitcoins in circulation?

Summary:

• British MP proposes adoption of blockchain to the UK public services

• Bitcoin (BITCOIN on xStation5) fails to break above the $6700 handle

• Litecoin (LITECOIN on xStation5) still remains in between 8- and 21-session moving averages

The rally started at the beginning of this week on the cryptocurrency market seems to ease as most of the coins at least partially erased gains. However, the capitalization of the whole market sit just a notch below $275 billions while excluding Bitcoin this figure stands at $159 billion.

Eddie Hughes, one of the British MPs, recommends the UK government to implement blockchain technology to the public services databases. According to politician such action would increase an efficiency of the public services as well as help rebuild social trust. Hughes points that adopting new technology could result in 1% savings that for the UK would amount to around 8 billion GBP annually. To achieve the highest degree of technology efficiency MP encourages to set up an international blockchain competition to attract talented blockchain developers. These developers would later on design and apply the technology to the UK public services. The whole process would be overseen by Chief Blockchain Officer, a function that does not exist now but will be created solely for this purpose.

After breaking out of the support zone ETHEREUM found resistance around $470 handle. However, the long lower wick painted yesterday on H4 interval (orange circle on the chart above) suggests that buyers are still looming in the vicinity of 78.6% Fibo level and 33-period moving average. Source: xStation5

More than 17.1 million Bitcoins have been already mined. Various crypto enthusiasts suggest that as the supply is fixed at 21 million the price should rise in the longer term as we move closer to mining the last Bitcoin. The last Bitcoin is not expected to be mined in this century therefore it seems to be a distant future. However, the truth is that there will never be 21 million Bitcoins in circulation. Why? It simple. According to some reports about 4 million of already mined Bitcoins have been permanently lost. Most of these Bitcoins were probably lost due to their owners forgetting passwords to the wallets. Keep in mind that Bitcoin have been here for longer than 2017 and few years ago his price and significance was much more smaller thus it was much easier to play down its potential. Apart from these 4 millions additional 2 millions of Bitcoins have been stolen in various heists and hacks. Therefore if these figures were to remain unchanged a maximum of 15 million Bitcoins could circulate in the market one day.

Yesterday we pointed that BITCOIN would need a clear break above the resistance at $6700 to begin an uptrend. Such scenario did not materialize as BITCOIN failed to break above this obstacle. However, do notice that the price was unable to break $6500 handle either therefore we may see another bulls’ attack at the earlier mentioned resistance in the nearby future. Source: xStation5

Speaking of stolen coins it is worth highlighting a report by the cryptocurrency start-up CipherTrace. According to the company around $761 million worth of digital assets have been stolen from the cryptocurrency exchanges so far this year. To put this figure into context CipherTrace estimated that in whole 2017 cryptocurrencies worth $266 million were seized by hackers. Reporters notice that as most of the retail digital asset holders fail to provide enough security to its wallet they make a perfect target group for hackers as a simple technique like phishing may allow thief to access victims wallet with no effort.

 In line with our previous analysis the LITECOIN price trades between two moving averages. A break of one of those technical hurdles could suggest a direction of potential move. Source: xStation5