Some reasons for this rise may be Chinese President Xi expressing support for blockchain technology or the recent events involving the stable coin Tether, as Ivan Manuel Molina Lee, president of Crypto Capital, was arrested yesterday due to accusations of money laundering.
Molina Lee Arrested
Authorities wrote that Molina Lee’s crimes included “laundering dirty money ($390m) for Columbian drug cartels using a cryptocurrency exchange.” Polish prosecutors claim that Molina Lee and Bitfinex laundered illegal proceeds through the country.
Molina Lee was accused in the past of running a “shadow banking” service that provided bank accounts for crypto companies. His company, Crypto Capital, allegedly lost $880 million of Bitfinex’s cash. This may have caused some fud making people move their funds from the Tether stablecoin to Bitcoin.
President Xi's Support for Blockchain Innovation
Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, said that the country needs to utilize blockchain technology. He mentioned:
“We must take the blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies and clarify the main direction, increase investment, focus on a number of key core technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation.”
Increase in Bakkt's Trading Volume
Bakkt acts as a trusted funnel for companies, due to its reliability, enabling them to trade Bitcoin. Despite Bakkt’s disappointing volume during its first days of launch with very few Bitcoins traded in a day, yesterday it managed to reach 1,179 BTC in daily trading volume, which amounts to $11,259,119. Bakkt belongs to ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) whose subsidiary is the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Today we set a new daily record of 1,179 Bakkt Bitcoin Futures contracts traded
— Bakkt (@Bakkt) October 25, 2019
This move affected positively the $ price of most major alts while their BTC value went down.
