Over the past day, the crypto space saw two well-known blockchains – Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Stellar (XLM) – suffer network issues. Also, a week after its worst-ever hack, Binance resumed full functionality of its crypto exchange. We also heard TD Ameritrade and eBay each come out and deny what were fast-spreading rumors they were on the verge of entering the crypto industry.
Bitcoin (BTC) has hovered around the $8,000 mark for much of the past 24-hour period. At the time of writing, BTC is trading at $8024.3 (+1.23%). As for ether (ETH), it spiked to $262.2 (+12.4%), its highest price since September 5, 2018. Additionally, the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 3,698.1, a 4.9% rise over the past 24 hours.
Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, Suffer Network Issues
After going through a planned system-wide update, the Bitcoin Cash network stopped processing transactions for various blocks, over what some claimed to be an issue with the Bitcoin ABC client. Eventually, developers released new code to fix a bug that had – until it was patched – resulted in a string of empty transaction blocks. The Bitcoin Cash blockchain has since resumed processing transactions normally.
Similarly, as broken by Tim Swanson via Twitter, the Stellar network also went down yesterday. The downtime lasted “for about 2 hours,” according to the Post Oak Labs director of research, who went on to note that “only those who run validators [would have] noticed it.” In explaining what happened, Swanson tweeted “that a critical mass of nodes went down causing a cascading failure and so the entire network went down but because it isn’t frequently used, few notices.”
Bolstered Binance Resumes Services
Binance announced it was back online after completing a security upgrade prompted by a data breach suffered early last week, which resulted in hackers stealing the equivalent of over $40 million in bitcoin.
Following the upgrade, Binance announced trading would recommence at 13:00 UTC, along with the ability for users to cancel open orders and process deposits. Despite the top-tier crypto exchange stating, “the withdrawal function will be available shortly after trading resumes,” this has yet to occur – at least entirely. According to the below tweet from Binance’s co-founder and chief executive Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, withdrawals have been opened for most, but not all, tokens.
Withdrawals are open for most tokens, the balance will be open shortly.
A new requirement to be logged in while confirming the withdrawal mail was added. It caused a small conflict while using the app so it will be rolled back shortly.
— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) May 15, 2019
TD Ameritrade, eBay, Deny Rumours of Crypto Expansion
U.S.-based online brokerage firm TD Ameritrade and e-commerce giant eBay have quashed fast-spreading rumors they each were set to expand into the crypto space. With regards to eBay, a spokesperson told Bloomberg “cryptocurrency is not accepted as a form of payment on the eBay platform, nor is it part of [eBay’s] payments strategy.”
As for TD Ameritrade, the company’s head of digital assets told the news site “currently [TD Ameritrade is] not,” testing bitcoin and litecoin spot trading on its brokerage; referencing a (false) tweet on April 23 by Litecoin creator Charlie Lee.
The pair of now-debunked speculative stories coincided with the significant price run-up that took place in the cryptocurrency market earlier this week. News of eBay’s and TD Ameritrade’s expansions were widely thought to have contributed, at least in part, to the strong upward price movement.
