Another losing week on the equity markets and another flat one on the crypto market. This week was marked by surging commodities prices, which left its mark on the market sentiment. The further inflation fears are again active, as Saudi Arabia announced oil production cuts, while gas prices surged by 10% in the EU due to union strike in the largest gas production facility in Australia. SPX is ending the week below 4.500 level, BTC continues to hold above 25K support line, while ETH manages to stay above 1.6K.
The previous week put commodities back to the spotlight of the markets. Namely, it started with an announcement of Saudi Arabia that the country will extend its 1 million barrel daily voluntary oil production cut. Decrease in production will last at least till the end of this year, and will be reviewed on a monthly basis. Few other OPEC nations will also join Saudi Arabia with their cuts in production till the end of this year, which is a silent agreement outside the OPEC+ agreement. Highest Brent crude oil price reached was 90/barrel after the news was announced. Such a news was also perceived negatively across markets, considering that it puts into jeopardize efforts of western countries officials to fight inflation. Further increase in oil prices might imply higher inflation and probably more rate increases in the future.
At the same time with the surge of the oil prices on the markets, came the news that gas prices in the EU jumped by 10% due to the strike in the major LNG facilities in Australia. The unions are currently in negotiations with the US energy company Chevron over jobs and salary conditions. It is expected for decreased gas production to be prolonged during the week until the agreement is made between the company and the work union. The EU economy is struggling with both inflation and decreased economic output, in which sense, increased gas prices during the winter period might further hurt the EU economy.
In light of the dozens of filings with SEC for the first spot BTC ETF, during the previous week ARK Invest and the crypto investment firm 21Shares filed for the SEC`s approval for the first spot ETH exchange traded fund. This filing counts among the first ones with the aim to invest in ETH instead of BTC. Although SEC recently postponed its decision on BTC ETF`s for October this year, the decision of Ark Investment to file for ETH ETF was supported by the Grayscale`s win of a lawsuit against SEC after SEC refused to provide green light to Grayscale for a conversion of its Bitcoin Trust into an ETF.
Reuters is reporting that HongKong digital asset financial services firm HashKey Capital will invest $100 million of its funds into altcoins. BTC will take less than half of these funds, while ETH and two other altcoins will take the rest of the funds. A decision was also supported by Hong Kong`s clear regulation on digital assets, putting it as a world`s leading crypto hub.
Crypto market cap
Previous week was the one with commodities in focus, while other market events were more or less put aside. The increasing oil prices caused by Saudi Arabia's announcement of continuation in decreased oil output at least till the end of this year, impacted the oil prices to go as high as 90/barrel. This news was not well perceived by financial markets as expectations on further increase in inflation emerged. If the oil market does not calm down in the coming period, it might imply further rate increases by central banks in order to fight inflation. Regardless of developments on the oil market, and investors’ concerns, the crypto market slowed down further during the previous week, losing modest 1% on a weekly basis or 77B in nominal value. Currently this market is set to react to any news related to SEC`s moves on BTC and ETH ETF`s applications which might impact further flat moves in the coming period. Daily trading volumes reached their lowest levels since December last year, moving around 28B on a daily basis. This is also a significant drop from 60B traded during the week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at level of 35%, where it has added total 267B to the market cap.
During the previous week the crypto market was performing in a mixed manner. Major coins were on a losing track, while several altcoins performed relatively good on a weekly basis. BTC lost 3.2B in market value or 0.65%, while ETH was down by 1% with a loss of 22B in its market cap. XRP was another coin with a drop in value of 3.5% or almost 1B. In a relative terms, other altcoins which finished the week in red were ADA with a drop in value of almost 2%, Litecoin was down by almost 3%, Polkadot decreased its value by 5%, while Uniswap was down by 5.3%. On the opposite side were several altcoins with relatively good performance, like Maker, which was up by around 10%, Miota was winner of the week with an increase in value by 19.5%, OMG surged by 6.6% , while LINK and Dash were up by more than 3%. It seems that some funds flows occurred from major coins toward the several altcoins during the previous week. There has been some increased activity when it comes to the coins in circulation. For the first time in many months, BTC has increased its circulating coins by 0.1% w/w. Solana and Filecoin had an increase in coins in circulation by 0.7% both, while Monero managed to add even 3.3% to its total circulating coins. Such activity in new coins on the market has not been recently seen, especially taking into account significantly decreased daily trading volumes on the crypto market.
Crypto futures market
The crypto futures continued their downtrend for the third week in a row. Both BTC and ETH futures finished third week in red on the CME. BTC short term futures were trading around 1.5% lower from the week before, while the long term ones were down by 0.7% on average. Futures maturing in December this year were last traded down by 2.13% w/w ending the week at price of $26.420, while those maturing in December next year were traded down by 0.7% and closed the week at price $28.940. This was a drop from the $ 29K level, traded during the week before. ETH futures performed in a similar manner. Short term futures were down by 1.6% on average, while long term ones were down by almost 1% on a weekly basis. December 2023 was down by 1.7% and ended the week at price $1.665, while December 2024 was down by 0.95% with a closing price of $1.776. This was a further decrease from the 1.8K level for ETH. At this moment expectations of the market for both BTC and ETH are not positive.
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