Crypto Markets Continue To Fall, But Not By Much

Sunday, Feb. 25: the crypto markets are down almost all across the board, but not by very much. Of the top ten coins listed on CoinMarketCap, no coin is down more than 5 percent in the 24-hour period by press time.

Only altcoins Litecoin (LTC) and IOTA out of those top ten coins are in the green. Litecoin is trading for about $208.53, up almost 2.8 percent over a 24-hour period by press time. IOTA is up even more, roughly 5 percent over a 24-hour period, trading for about $1.80 by press time.

Bitcoin (BTC) has spent the past day and a half below $10,000, a mark that it had broken through again on Feb. 15. This week saw BTC almost hitting $12,000 before slowly dropping until it hit an intra-weekly low today.

BTC is currently trading for around $9,552.92, down a little more than 3 percent over a 24-hour period by press time.

Ethereum (ETH) is down 1.21 percent over a 24-hour period by press time, trading for around $827.65.

Total market cap is almost $420 bln by press time, down from the intra-week high of over $500 bln, but higher than the intra-week low thus far of around $417 bln.

Breaking: Mobile Payments App Circle Acquires Crypto Exchange Poloniex For $400 Mln

Multi-currency money-sending app Circle has announced today, Feb. 26, that they have acquired major US-based cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex for $400 mln, Fortune reports.

Earlier this month, Cointelegraph had covered previously unconfirmed rumors that this acquisition was set to soon take place.

Goldman Sachs-funded Circle is made up of three parts: Circle Pay for fiat transfers, Circle Trade as a liquidity provider of cryptocurrencies, and the upcoming Circle Invest, an app that will allow retail customers to invest in crypto markets.

The Poloniex exchange offers trades in 68 different coins, and is currently the 14th largest crypto exchange by 24-hour volume on CoinMarketCap, trading a total of almost $140 million today to press time.

In today’s announcement on the Circle blog, Circle co-founders Sean Neville and Jeremy Allaire wrote that the first step for Circle is to address customer support and the technical side needed to support the Poloniex platform. Secondly,

We also look forward to scaling Poloniex up and out through market expansion and localization, increasing token listings where possible and appropriate, and exploring the fiat USD, EUR, and GBP connectivity that Circle already brings to its compliant Pay, Trade, and Invest products.”

In the future, Neville and Allaire write that they plan on growing the Poloniex platform into more than a crypto-only exchange, writing that they envision a

“Robust multi-sided distributed marketplace that can host tokens which represent everything of value: physical goods, fundraising and equity, real estate, creative productions such as works of art, music and literature, service leases and time-based rentals, credit, futures, and more.”

Poloniex’s press release echoed Circle’s sentiments, writing that they are looking forward

“To bringing Circle's experience to increase the scalability and reliability of our platform and operations. User experience is paramount. If we aspire to build a token marketplace that will change the fundamentals of global value exchange, we cannot settle for anything less than excellence in our product.”

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-markets-continue-to-fall-but-not-by-much