Weekly News Overview: Cryptocurrency

Ukrainian Regulations States That Mining Does Not Require Governmental Oversight

Ukrainian’s powers stated that crypto mining does not require regulatory activity from governmental oversight bodies or other third-party protocols.

In its legal article on virtual assets published on Feb. 7, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine specified that mining does not necessitate directives by state authorities as this activity is measured by the protocol itself and network members.

Internet Surges 300% In North Korea Over The Past 3 Years

North Korea’s internet use saw a 300% surge over the past three years, as the country’s regime has continued to rely on cryptocurrencies for various activities.

Misuse of crypto and blockchain technology is among the primary tactics for the country to generate revenue as well as transfer and use illicitly obtained funds, a new study says. Blog

U.S. Think Tank Contradicts Need For Federal Digital Currency

Conservative United States think tank the Heritage Foundation argues that instead of launching a central bank digital currency (CBDC), the government should ensure that the public can use the currencies they prefer, including private ones.

In a commentary piece published on Feb. 12, the Heritage Foundation notes that Facebook’s Libra global stablecoin project “is just the latest reminder that providing money does not have to be a centralized function of government.” The report answers to the idea that the public sector must ensure that sovereign currencies stay at the centre of each nation’s financial system.

Blockchain Education Is Becoming Popular Than Ever Before

As blockchain weaves its way deeper into the world economy, more American universities are teaching the technology, offering more courses and expanding delivery methods.

Kevin Werback, a professor and blockchain club mentor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Cointelegraph, “Even if they aren’t pursuing a career in the area, most students aren’t confident they can figure it out on their own. Blockchain is just so darn weird.”

US Intelligence Community Sees Crypto As A Threat

The United States intelligence community is seeking a researcher to model risk scenarios for how and why the dollar could lose its global supremacy, and how best to respond. The role was advertised on Feb. 14 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The successful candidate will be tasked with evaluating threats to the dollar’s status as world reserve currency — most notably cryptocurrencies and the rise of major new economies such as China and India.

Ukrainian Regulations States That Mining Does Not Require Governmental Oversight

Ukrainian’s powers stated that crypto mining does not require regulatory activity from governmental oversight bodies or other third-party protocols.

In its legal article on virtual assets published on Feb. 7, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine specified that mining does not necessitate directives by state authorities as this activity is measured by the protocol itself and network members.

The agency further added that it will contribute to the development and implementation of decentralized technologies, as well as establish sandboxes for their evaluation and verification, and assessment of potential risks to the market.

The agency swore to promote collaboration between the financial market and virtual assets and their effective development, international best practices on taxation of virtual assets, as well as establish effective mechanisms to prevent abuse and offense from business and law enforcement.

Ukraine has appeared to be actively exploring the digital currency and blockchain space, in recent months. At the end of January, Ukraine’s Finance Minister reportedly said that the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine (SFMS) would be the authority responsible for tracking the sources of origin of the funds on citizens’ crypto wallets. Thus, the SFMS would be able to not only find out the origin of crypto but also detect how those funds have been spent.

Last December, the Ukranian government approved the final version of a money laundering law that will handle virtual assets and virtual asset service providers per FATF guidelines.

The new law comprises some guidelines on how the government aims to monitor and regulate the trading of cryptocurrencies. One of the guidelines focuses on individual crypto transactions worth less than 30,000 hryvnia ($1,300), from which the administration will only gather the public key of the sender for the purpose of financial monitoring.

Cryptocurrency News Overview

Liechtenstein Based Start-up To Issue Tokens At The Value Of Collectable Cars

Investment platform CurioInvest and Seychelles-based digital asset platform MERJ Exchange Ltd. will jointly begin offering a token backed by collector luxury cars.

The so-called Car Token (CT1) token is set to be attached to the value of collectible cars giving more people a chance to have a portion of an asset, BNN Bloomberg informed on the 30th of January, 2020.

Bitspark Shuts Down

Hong Kong-based blockchain remittance start-up Bitspark has abruptly announced its closure, citing internal restructuring issues.

On Feb. 3, Bitspark co-founder and CEO George Harrap officially announced the platform’s plans to shut down its services on the 4th of March, 2020.

According to the statement, Bitspark users will be able to withdraw their cryptocurrencies from Feb. 3 to March 4 as the platform’s functionality will stay intact over the period. After March 4, account logins will be disabled for a period of 90 days, with users being able to withdraw their funds via Bitspark customer support.

Crypto Ponzi Scheme Lures Unknown Number Of Baseball Players

Two men charged over an allegedcrypto trading ponzi scheme lured investors, including professional baseball players, with social media posts boasting about their luxurious lifestyles.

On January 30, the Secret Service arrested the Arizona-based founders of Zima Digital Assets, John Michael Caruso, aged 28, and Zachary Salter, aged 27.

Caruso commonly refers to himself as “Krypto King” in social media posts and claims he’s been a cryptocurrency investor since 2012. He has a criminal history and was last released from prison in late 2017.

Cryptojacker Convicted In Japan

A Japanese court has demanded a man who infected website visitors with cryptocurrency mining malware face justice — after acquitting him.

As local daily news outlet The Mainichi reported on Feb. 7, the Tokyo High Court overturned a previous ruling which cleared the man, who was not named, of any wrongdoing.

Justin Sun, Tron Founder, Finally Meets Warren Buffett For Charity Lunch

Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun has finally had his charity lunch with Berkshire Hathaway chairman and famous billionaire Warren Buffett after a series of delays last year.

On Jan. 23, Sun met with Buffett in a private not-for-profit country club in Nebraska, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Feb. 6. The guests also included the founder of Litecoin Foundation, Charlie Lee, the CFO of Huobi, Chris Lee, the head of the Binance Charity Foundation, Helen Hai, and the CEO of eToro, Yoni Assia.

Indian Crypto Community Gets a Excited With The Start Of A New IEO

Despite regulatory uncertainty and banking restrictions imposed by the Reserve Bank of India, WazirX — the Indian cryptocurrency exchange recently acquired by Binance — launched its WRX coin through an initial exchange offering on Binance Launchpad. On Feb. 5, 2020, WRX coin became available for live trading on Binance. The move was dubbed as a big achievement for the Indian crypto industry, as it will likely lead to global recognition.

Earlier, Cointelegraph reported that the 9,033 winners of WazirX’s token sale on Binance Launchpad were announced. Over 20,000 users participated and more than 136,000 tickets were claimed.

Explained: Elliot Wave Theory

The underlying theory behind the Elliott wave principle is based around how price moves, which typically is not in a straight line, but in a series of waves. A great analogy would be one that compares an ocean tide coming in as the water rises, and flowing out as the water recedes into the sand below.

Within any financial market (including cryptocurrency), every action creates an equal and opposite reaction. When price movement moves up, a contrary downward movement must follow.

Price action within any financial marketplace is often divided into trends and corrections (sideways movement). Upward or downward price action will showcase the direction of a trend, while corrections will always move against the trend. These repeating patterns have been shown to occur within all financial marketplaces since the dawn of time.

A man by the name of Ralph Nelson Elliott, first discovered these repeating patterns, known as impulsive and corrective waves. He noticed that these impulsive waves, which always coincide with the main trend, tend to respond in 5 waves.

Even on a smaller scale, each of these impulsive waves can be found and continue to repeat themselves inside the larger Elliott wave patterns. These “waves within waves” are labelled as “wave degrees” within the Elliott Wave Principle.

Human social nature can be found within these repetitive patterns due to the predictive manner of human psychology in which the powers of greed, FOMO, and “weak hands” rule. You can call it another “self-fulfilling prophecy” all you want; however, these patterns show up within all financial markets due to these reactive and basic human emotions.

As discussed above, Elliot waves come in 2 different phases: motive (the trend) and corrective phases. The motive phase forms 3 advancing waves of 1, 3, and 5. The counter waves (downward) are comprised of 2 and 4.

During the corrective phase, you’ll typically find 2 receding ways labeled A and C, with a counter wave (upward) labeled B.

The rules behind the motive waves are as follows:

Wave 2 never moves below the beginning of wave 1.
Wave 3 is never the shortest wave.
Wave 2 and 4 can sometimes alternate in form, for example, Wave 2 can show up as a zigzag wave while Wave 4 will be flat.
At least one of the waves (1, 3, or 5) will be much longer than the other two. Most of the time, the third wave is the longest of the three, but that is not always the case in crypto.

Rules for the corrective phase are as follows:

Wave B terminates at or below the start of Wave A
Wave C typically terminates below Wave A.
In the cryptocurrency market, corrective waves typically claim more than 60% of the all-time high price (top of 5th wave). Some would argue that the norm is 75 to 80% and 100 to 120% retracements can be found if correlated with bad news.

Just remember that if you get confusing results from your chart, it’s most likely that you’ve miscalculated and dismissed some of the rules mentioned above. Don’t worry though; you’ll most likely miscount these waves the first several times you try.

In order to combat this miscounting issue, here’s a trick you can use to spot these waves.

Go to the top bar where you can change the candlestick display on TradingView and choose the Heikin Ashi candlestick. This type of candlestick helps you better view red or green candles that correspond with a particular trend.

The Heikin Ashi displays the average pace of prices, which is great at identifying trending periods. This is what Elliott waves are all about. It will greatly reduce the confusion on whether candlestick patterns are showing bearish or bullish patterns. Trust me, these help immensely.

The Elliott Wave Principle is another highly useful chart pattern that many veteran traders use to recognize the beginning and end of a trend.

Never buy into the news or hype alone. These systems are used to fool people into buying the tops or bottoms of the market, which is a sure-fire way of failing.

Do your own research before buying and selling into the market. Know what phase the market is currently in (motive or correction) and make an informed buying decision utilizing the Elliot Wave Principle.

Crypto Ponzi Scheme Lures Unknown Number Of Baseball Players

Two men charged over an alleged crypto trading ponzi scheme lured investors, including professional baseball players, with social media posts boasting about their luxurious lifestyles.

On January 30, the Secret Service arrested the Arizona-based founders of Zima Digital Assets, John Michael Caruso, aged 28, and Zachary Salter, aged 27.

Salter is an aspiring R&B singer who releases music under the name “Sweet Talker.”

Despite claiming no taxable income, the pair’s extravagant social media posts about their luxury good purchases helped draw in new investors.

They were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering.

The complaint alleges that Salter and Caruso defrauded more than 90 investors out of at least $7.5 million since June 2018. That figure includes an unknown number of former pro baseball players and senior citizens. Zima is still actively taking investments so the total amount lost is unknown.

Zima’s website claims the firm “operates various private funds focusing on investments in cutting-edge technologies, including crypto and other blockchain based assets,” and Caruso and Salter were featured as successful crypto investors in Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Cigar Aficionado.
A press release that looks an awful lot like an ordinary Business Insider story referred to Caruso as “the Michael Jordan of algorithmic cryptocurrency trading.”

Forensic accountants believe that none of the money Zima took from its would-be investors was actually invested in cryptocurrency. The pair instead used the money to live it up, spending $350,000 on luxury car rentals and another $610,000 on private jets, a mansion rental (dubbed “the Krypto Castle”), as well as a variety of jewellery and designer clothing.

Caruso had a fleet of luxury cars including a Lamborghini, and the pair lost $830,000 within 134 hours of gambling at Las Vegas casinos.

They frequently posted about their lifestyles on Instagram and Facebook, including a video suggesting Zima had $1 billion in assets under management. They used direct messaging on the platforms to contact potential investors.

Their victims include former Major League Baseball players and their families, along with a 76 year old man who lost $200,000 and an 86 year old who lost $60,000.

The investigation found that $1.9 million of the funds was paid back to investors in the form of “returns.”

“The pattern of investor payments against investor payouts with no investment of funds is consistent with … a Ponzi scheme,” court filings show.

XcelToken Plus- News Bitspark Shuts Down

Hong Kong-based blockchain remittance start-up Bitspark has abruptly announced its closure, citing internal restructuring issues.

On Feb. 3, Bitspark co-founder and CEO George Harrap officially announced the platform’s plans to shut down its services on the 4th of March, 2020.

According to the statement, Bitspark users will be able to withdraw their cryptocurrencies from Feb. 3 to March 4 as the platform’s functionality will stay intact over the period. After March 4, account logins will be disabled for a period of 90 days, with users being able to withdraw their funds via Bitspark customer support, the announcement reads.

Harrap emphasized that the firm’s abrupt closure comes despite the “excellent performance” that Bitspark has seen since the release of its new remittance service Cash Point in 2019. According to Harrap, Bitspark saw a 400% month-over-month growth after releasing the product.

Co-founded by Harrap and Maxine Ryan in 2014, Bitspark emerged as a major blockchain-powered financial services company for the Asia-Pacific region, serving countries like Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Bitspark’s closure comes a month after its co-founder Ryan announced her intention to step down from her position as chief operating officer. According to the official announcement, Ryan’s decision caused internal restructuring issues that have been exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak in China as well as anti-government protests in Hong Kong,which drove Bitspark to close the firm:

“Unfortunately due to internal restructuring that hasn’t worked out, and a decision taken by shareholders internally, we have made the decision to close our doors. While the HK protests and now virus epidemic haven’t affected us much, it hasn’t helped either.”

In a Twitter thread on Feb. 3, Ryan confirmed Bitspark’s reasons for the closure:

“What caused the closure. As of a month ago, I made the decision to step down from my position as COO of Bitspark. This naturally caused a need to restructure the company which unfortunately landed this result […] This paired with the landscape of Hong Kong with protests and the coronavirus where Bitspark HQ is located. The team and shareholders decided this was the best way forward to prevent integrity decay of the company.”

Bitspark conducted an initial coin offering amid the ICO hype of 2017, launching its Zephyr (ZEPH) rewards token ICO in November of that year for a project specializing in the transfer of fiat money on a blockchain.

Liechtenstein Based Start-up To Issue Tokens At The Value Of Collectable Cars

Investment platform CurioInvest and Seychelles-based digital asset platform MERJ Exchange Ltd. will jointly begin offering a token backed by collector luxury cars.

The so-called Car Token (CT1) token is set to be attached to the value of collectible cars giving more people a chance to have a portion of an asset, BNN Bloomberg informed on the 30th of January, 2020.

The company specified that the appeal of the token also lies in the fact that the value of such goods continues to increase in value. “When you look at fine art, collectible cars, they have been perceived historically as safe havens,” said Fernando Verboonen, founder and CEO of CurioInvest.

Verboonen added that each holder of CT1 tokens will be an advantage from holding a portion of an asset, though did not delve into a comprehensive explanation at that juncture. CurioInvest’s site stipulates that a token owner is able to share in any latent profit when the vehicle is resold, where the amount of money they get is directly proportional to the value of the car.

It is also said that “any vehicle that increases in value by more than 20% will be resold by CurioInvest so that investors can share in the profits.” As such, the partners are planning to list 500 collectible cars on the exchange worth over $200 million.

Although the token is backed by the value of classic cars, CurioInvest told Cointelegraph that it does not consider it a stablecoin but rather a security token as it comes with and by the Financial Market Authority approved prospectus and International Securities Identification Number.

Jim Needham, head of digital strategy at MERJ, further said: “You can have a guy in Uganda who’s able to invest in a rare car that’s kept in a vault in Stuttgart, tokenized by a company in Liechtenstein and it all fits within this recognized regulatory environment.” However, that Ugandan investor will hardly be able to drive the car he invested in..

When asked what would push people to hold such tokens and what would be the impetus behind it, CurioInvest said that individuals can invest in multiple cars and thus “invest in the virtual garage of your dreams, backed by tangible, real-world assets.”

For the future, CurioInvest plans to allow investors to monitor their vehicles via webcam, occasionally visit the vehicles, and participate in driving experiences involving similar cars.

Considering the way depreciation could affect the token value, CurioInvest pointed out that all forms of investment are vulnerable to risks. The company also noted that cars are real assets, which may be subject to material risks such as potential vehicle damage, and added:

“The value of an investment is determined by market forces and thus, it can fluctuate in both directions. You will make a profit if the value of the vehicle exceeds maintenance costs when it is resold by Curio. If you are selling Car Tokens peer-to-peer, there is no guarantee that you will locate a buyer willing to purchase them at your desired price.”

Some other car manufacturers have also embraced blockchain in regard to classic cars. Thus, Italian luxury sports car brand Lamborghini began using the Salesforce Blockchain to authenticate heritage Lamborghini cars. The platform enables Lamborghini to trace, certify andauthenticate heritage cars faster and more securely using its blockchain platform.

Explained: Blockchain Oracles

Oracles feed the smart contract with external information that can trigger predefined actions of the smart contract. This external data stems either from so ware (Big-data application) or hardware (Internet-of-Things). Such a condition could be any data, like weather temperature, successful payment, or price fluctuations. However, it is important to note that a smart contract does not wait for the data from an outside source to flow into the system. The contract has to be invoked, which means that one has to spend network resources for calling data from the outside world. This induces network transaction costs. In the case of Ethereum, this would be “gas.”

There are different types of oracles:

Software Oracles
handle information data that originates from online sources, like temperature, prices of commodities and goods, flight or train delays, etc. The so ware oracle extracts the needed information and pushes it into the smart contract.
Hardware Oracles
Some smart contracts need information directly from the physical world, for example, a car crossing a barrier where movement sensors must detect the vehicle and send the data to a smart contract, or RFID sensors in the supply chain industry.
Inbound Oracles
provide data from the external world.
Outbound Oracles
provide smart contracts with the ability to send data to the outside world. An example would be a smart lock in the physical world, which receives payment on its blockchain address and needs to unlock automatically.
Consensus-based Oracles
get their data from human consensus and prediction markets like Augur and Gnosis. Using only one source of information could be risky and unreliable. To avoid market manipulation, prediction markets implement a rating system for oracles. For further security, a combination of different oracles may be used, where, for example, three out of ve oracles could determine the outcome of an event.
Blockchain Oracles

A blockchain oracle is a third-party information source that has the sole function of supplying data to blockchains which permit for the creation of smart contracts. A smart contract at a fundamental level is simply a self-executing piece of code; smart contracts evaluate incoming data from an oracle and initiate a flow of execution depending on the information received.

To conclude, blockchain oracles are a third-party information source that supply data to smart contracts. They increase the scope of what blockchain protocols can do by providing a means for them to communicate outside of their own network.

Oracles require a level of trust that is contradictory to the trustless and decentralized nature of blockchain-based protocols. As a result, smart contracts require an increased level of complexity, such as, sourcing data from multiple oracles in order to mitigate the amount of trust placed in any one oracle.

Explained: Asset Diversification And Allocation For Cyptocurrency

In the traditional world of finance, the performance of different assets could vary under different market conditions. For example, real estate investment trusts could outperform general equities in a turbulence market, and defensive stocks could disappoint investors when the appetite for risk is heightened. That’s when diversification comes in. The main purpose of exposure to different asset classes is to balance risk and return in a portfolio.

In the cryptocurrency space, diversification could also be one of the ways to manage risk exposure. However, some would argue that it is impossible to diversify a crypto portfolio due to the fact that major altcoins are highly correlated with Bitcoin. However, with a carefully selected basket of altcoins — in conjunction with stablecoins — investors could able to navigate the market more effectively with manageable risk.

There has always been a debate about putting all your eggs in one basket. While in some cases concentrating on only one asset could maximize profitability, this also maximizes the risk exposure. On top of that, a heavy-concentration strategy gives investors no room for any errors in analysis, and it overexposes the investor to unnecessary risks.

However, over-diversification could also hurt investment returns. Some investors believe that the more assets they own, the better return they can have — and that’s not the right concept. It could increase investment cost, add unnecessary due-diligence efforts and lead to below-average risk-adjusted returns.

Asset Allocation

Financial professionals almost universally acknowledged asset allocation as the most critical decision in the entire investment process. Consensus research has proven that 80–90% of a portfolios’ risks and returns can be attributed to asset allocation. However, the allocation process is often the most ad hoc and ignored step in investment decision making.

Many investment advisors want to exclude cryptos from the allocation process as they consider the assets “too risky”. But one must evaluate the benefits of the asset class when combined with more traditional allocations.

4 Types of coins to diversify and allocate

Bitcoin- 25–33% of your portfolio

Bitcoin is currently the largest cryptocurrency based on market cap and makes up over 50% of the entire cryptocurrency world. It would be fair to say that the entire cryptocurrency market is highly correlated to Bitcoin’s price movements. Bitcoin is also the default base currency of the cryptocurrency world. Anyone that wants to buy any other altcoins or tokens, would need to purchase Bitcoin first in order to easily acquire any other coins. This is because local cryptocurrency exchanges usually limit the amount of coins that can be purchased by local fiat money.

Ethereum- 15% of your portfolio

Ethereum is one of the coins that is used alongside Bitcoin as a base currency since it is much faster than Bitcoin. The utility of Ethereum is also correlated to its price; the more developers and projects built on Ethereum, the higher the demand for ETH coins, which will lead to a price increase. Having a portion of your investments in established and credible coins such as Ethereum is vital in stabilizing your portfolio.

Passive Income Provider- 25% of your portfolio

XcelToken Plus is a great passive income provider. ERC20 token on the Ethereum Blockchain Platform, that is painstakingly crafted with the purpose of building, engaging and fostering a large crypto-community within the hospitality, retail and gaming sectors.

By holding a good portion of a passive income earner token, you will be rewarded regularly for keeping faith with the brand. As a keen investor, you want to be in a position of having a mix of risk in your portfolio ranging from high to low. A passive income earning-token is a must-have.

Stablecoins- 35% of your portfolio

Stablecoins are a great way to protect your portfolio from volatility and provide you with much-needed liquidity (or ‘cash’) whenever you have a need. Imagine putting all of your money into cryptocurrencies and the market takes a deep dive; you would lose a major portion of your investments. It is therefore important for you to always keep a portion of your portfolio in stablecoins so that you can cash-out when needed or simply buy more cryptocurrencies when prices take a dive. This action plan will also prevent massive losses in your portfolio.

A well-diversified portfolio goes a long way in ensuring success in the ever-evolving and volatile cryptocurrency markets. There are over 2,000 coins and tokens with varying degrees of risks and characteristics for investors to choose from. Having a balanced portfolio with all the four categories of coins could save you from lots of headache and worry. Lastly, investors should always perform thorough due diligence before investing in any coin.

Weekly Overview: Cryptocurrency

Canada Issues Guidelines For Cryptocurrency Exchanges

Canadian authorities have issued new direction to regulate which digital currency trading platforms fall under derivatives law.

The Canadian Securities Administration (CSA) clarified new provisions in the “Guidance on the Application of Securities Legislation to Entities Facilitating the Trading of Crypto Assets” published on the 16th of January, 2020.

To know more check out our previous blog.

Canadian Teen Charged For Cryptocurrency Theft

A Montreal resident, age 18 if facing 4 criminal charges connected to a $50 million SIM Swap scam that targeted cryptocurrency holders.

“Eighteen-year-old hacker Samy Bensaci is accused of being part of a crime ring that stole millions of dollars in crypto-currency by gaining unauthorized access to the cell phones of crypto-currency holders in America and Canada.” — Infosecurity Magazine. 17th January, 2020

To know more check out our previous blog.

South Korea Considers Imposing Income Tax on Cryptocurrencies

The Ministry of Economy and Finance of South Korea, is considering levying a 20% tax on the incomes made through cryptocurrency transactions.

According to a news report published by The Korea Times on the 20th of January, 2020, the ministry had reportedly ordered its income office to review cryptocurrency taxation. The Korea Times cited an anonymous official who reportedly said that the ministry has not finalized its plan, but noted that the government may impose a 20% tax on crypto income.

To know more check out our previous blog.

PornHub Adds Tether As A Payment Option

Adult entertainment website Pornhub has added a new cryptocurrency payment option after PayPal had abruptly stopped servicing its models in late 2019.

According to a Jan. 23 blog post, Pornhub now supports Tether (USDT) — a major United States dollar-pegged stablecoin — to allow instant and zero-fee payments via the crypto wallet and browser extension TronLink.

Binance Invests In Taiwanese Startup Numbers

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance has invested an undisclosed sum in blockchain data monetization startup Numbers.

According to a post published on Binance’s official blog on Jan. 21, Numbers aims to create an open, transparent and traceable data sharing, verification and management system. The firm’s open source application reportedly allows individuals to own and monetize their personal data.

Ether Is The Most Correlated Cryptocurrency To Other Coins

Recent research shows that Ether (ETH) was the cryptocurrency most correlated to the rest of the crypto market in 2019.

In a report published on Jan. 22, the research arm of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance suggests that throughout 2019, ETH had an average correlation coefficient of 0.69.