Fidelity is all set to launch the Bitcoin (BTC) custody offering in March. Fidelity previously announced the launch of Fidelity Digital Asset Services early in October 2018. The company will be providing for trade execution and digital services for institutional investors for family offices, hedge funds, and market intermediaries. However, this service will not be open for retail investors.  It is geared toward institutional investors.

Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity, stated at a New York Conference that she is from the “financial services company that has not given upon digital currencies.”

The likelihood of theft is highly reduced in custody services, and these kinds of services were third-party services in traditional systems for stocks and bonds. They were pretty commonplace. However, custody systems did not permit storage of financial assets for their ends.

There is a massive increase seen in the numbers of the Bitcoin addresses and the average numbers of transactions made per block. However, the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to be in the red.

Per Huobi research, “Total numbers of addresses of Bitcoin and Ethereum network touched upon 32.52 million and 54.66 million respectively.” This is excluding prestigious addresses.

With the prices; however, being in the red, Vinny Lingham, Civic CEO indicated that there would be a further decline in the price of the Bitcoin, thus creating a “Crypto Nuclear Winter.” 

Lingham tweeted, “If we break below $3000 for Bitcoin, Crypto Winter will become Crypto Nuclear Winter.”

Research from the authors at Diar’s report that the numbers of on-chain transactions for BTC throughout Q3 as having breached the quarterly high per year-to-date. Thus, ousting the transactions of the first quarter by 70,000.

The numbers of BTC transactions amounted to 20 million over the past three months; this was up by 13.6% from the second quarter which was at 17.6 million.  The numbers of transactions are on the uptrend.  Despite the overall Bearish projection, BTC is said to sustain an increase in the numbers of transactions with a month-over-month growth crossing 5%.

The increase in the transaction volume is related to the Segwit-enabled addresses and the Lightening network that has provided for a drop in the average transaction fee.

The Hashrate of Bitcoin is on the decline due to a decrease in the mining process. This has, in turn, contributed to a decline in the Network growth cycle of Bitcoin.  The hashrates are fluctuating between 40-60 exahashes per second.  There was a slight decline in the Bitcoin’s hashrate figure beginning in November. However, with several miners continuing to hold their beliefs in Bitcoin as a form of digital gold, the future of Bitcoin as a decentralized network is sustained.