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MARKETS week ahead: January 22 - 27Last week in the news The market optimism continues to hold on financial markets for the second trading week in a year. The S&P 500 reached new all-time highs, surpassing the highs from the year 2022, reaching level of 4.840 on Friday. As USD gained a bit in strength, the US Treasury yields followed the path, while Gold remained relatively stable during the week. The crypto market continues to slow down after the approval of the first BTC ETF, with Bitcoin ending the week above the $41K. The most important news from the previous week is certainly a new ATH of S&P 500, reached at Friday`s trading session. The highest level reached was 4.840, still strongly supported by the tech companies. Investors continue to trade with a positive sentiment at the beginning of this year, supported by the good economic performance of the US economy and in expectation of forthcoming rate cuts. However, CNBC summarized the current market sentiment as investors "focus on good and ignore the bad, no matter how bad the bad parts might look sometimes". The “bad” part relates to the Fed`s expectations of a slow down of the US economy in the coming period, as well as currently strong geopolitical uncertainties. The annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was another topic which occupied the news during the previous week. Considering that this meeting gathers all important world economic and political leaders, it is closely watched by investors. When it comes to the EU economy, the ECB President, Christine Lagarde noted that the economy will most certainly not return into a “normality” during this year, but is more positive when it comes to developments in 2025. She sees consumption, trade and inflation as topics which need to return to the “normal”, which means to the levels prior to the pandemic. However, on the opposite side was German Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, who perceived developments in 2023 as a “new normal” in contrast to Lagarde`s “normalization”. He is supporting his standing taking into account current trends in the world, which is characterized with high geopolitical uncertainty, high oil prices, higher debt levels and low global growth perspectives, but he also noted developments around artificial intelligence. News is reporting that JPMorgan analysts are giving the 50% chance for the first ETH ETF to be approved. Their standing is supported by the fact of currently many outstanding SEC lawsuits against crypto exchangers for their product of staking crypto coins, where majority of the staking products is related to ETH. In this sense, the Bank analysts are noting, until these are resolved the SEC might postpone its decision on Ark21Shares filing for the spot ETH ETF, which is due on 23th May this year. At the same time, ARK and its founder Cathie Wood are shorting holdings of BITO (ProShares Bitcoin ETF) and are moving funds into its own ARKB, the bitcoin ETF, as per news reports. Crypto market cap While stock equities are again in the spotlight of investors, pushing the S&P 500 index to its highest levels ever, the crypto market continues to slow down for the second week in a row. There is a modest transfer of funds, where speculative money, invested in expectation of the significant increase in the price of BTC after the approval of the BTC ETF, is now searching for new opportunities for a short term profits outside the crypto market. Although it seems that the fun days of BTC and ETH are over, still, the crypto futures market is showing a completely different picture. Namely, investor’s expectations for the future price of BTC are quite positive, where futures maturing in December 2025 reached the price above the $47K level within the first week of trading. Total crypto market capitalization decreased by 3% on a weekly basis, with an outflow of $50B in the value of the market. Daily trading volumes also dropped to the level of around $99B on a daily basis, from $174B traded two weeks ago. Total crypto market capitalization decrease since the beginning of this year stands at 3%. For the second week in a row, Bitcoin is the coin which is mostly dragging the crypto market to the downside. Although two weeks ago the crypto market was traded in a mixed manner, still, during the previous week the majority of crypto coins lost in value. BTC finished the week 3% lower from the week before, losing more than $25B in value. ETH followed the path of BTC, with a drop in value of almost 4% or $12,2B. Among significant weekly losers in nominal terms were XRP, with a drop in value of $1.3B or 4.3%, Cardano was down by $1.2B or 6%, Polkadot was down by 1.4B or almost 14% on a weekly basis. Among other coins which lost in value were Ethereum Classic, with a drop of 15%, Bitcoin Gold was down by 20%, while Miota and Algorand lost more than 10% in value. There were only a few coins who finished the week with a gain, like Binance Coin, which managed to attract more than SEED_TVCODER77_ETHBTCDATA:1B in value, increasing it by 2.3%, while LINK managed to increase its value by 11.4%. Increased activity with circulating coins also continues for the second week in a row. The most significant change occurred with BNB coins, where 1.4% of circulating coins were withdrawn from the market. At the same time, Polkadot decreased the level of circulating coins by 3% within a single week. The majority of other altcoins had a modest increase in coin on the market, ranging around 0.1%, where Polygon had an surge of 0.6% while Maker`s number of coins were up by 0.2%. Crypto futures market In line with the spot market, the crypto futures market also slowed down during the previous week. Still, developments are showing that investors continue to be positive about the future prices of both BTC and ETH. Previous week two new maturities were listed on the CME for both coins, for June 2025 and December 2025. During the first week of trading, BTC`s December 2025 futures ended the week at price above the $47K, while ETH futures for the same maturity were closed at price $2.728. BTC`s short term futures dropped by more than 4%, but still were trading above the $41K. Although longer term futures dropped by more than 11%, still the prices were holding above $43K. Futures maturing in December 2024 ended the week at price of $43.860, while March 2025 was last traded at $44.675. ETH short term futures were last traded lower by more than 1% compared to the previous week, while longer term ones were down by less than 6%. Futures maturing in December this year were last traded at price $2.584, while those maturing in March 2025 closed the week at price $2.618.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: January 14 - 20Last week in the news At the start of this year Bitcoin reached another important milestone in its further acceptance into the mainstream. During the previous week the US Securities and Exchange Commission approved the first spot BTC Exchange Traded Fund. Through this milestone, BTC managed to secure its future on the mainstream markets. How it will secure the destiny of other altcoins is to be seen. During the first trading week in this year, markets were traded with a positive sentiment. The US Treasury yields continue with downtrend in expectation of rate cuts during this year, while gold continues to hold above $2K, following USD recent weakness as well as Middle East tensions. A long awaited news regarding approval of the first spot BTC ETF finally came to fruition. During the previous week the US SEC approved filings from several large Wall Street names, among which, the largest one is certainly the BlackRock asset manager. This represents a huge milestone for BTC and its wider acceptance among market participants. With this move, large institutional investors will have an approach to the crypto market, through traditional market channels. In this manner, the existence of the BTC is secured for the future period. How this will affect other altcoins is to be seen in the future. The SEC is still of opinion that the majority of these are simple securities in a digital form, which needs to be aligned with already existing law on securities in the US. This is also a relevant question when it comes to existing filings for the first ETH ETF pending SEC`s approval. Anyway, regardless of the BTC`s win at the beginning of this year, there are emerging challenges in the tech and financial industries which will compete with the BTC during the coming years. In this sense, a regulation within the crypto industry comes at the first place and is followed with the rise of AI in finance and other industries, as well as growth and innovations of alternative finance within the field of FinTech, DeFi and other non-traditional financial channels. It all implies that the BTC will have to put additional effort during the year, in order to continue to attract investor’s funds. As investors are relieved by information that BTC ETF is approved, BlackRock`s CEO, Larry Fink, is now eyeing the approval of the first ETH ETF. In his interview to CNBC, Fink supported further tokenization, noting “I really do believe this is where we are going to be going”. It was also interesting to hear his standing that Bitcoin is an asset class that can hedge investor’s funds against geopolitical risks. BlackRock`s product iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has its debut on Thursday, after the SEC approved its product, with roughly a $1billion in trading volume. Previous week was also the one where US banks were posting their quarterly results. The environment of significantly increased interest rates left its mark on bank earnings, as well as few takeovers which occurred during the previous year, after several bank collapses. JPMorgan was among those whose earnings slipped by 15% q/q. The bank's earnings were also hit by $743 million in investment losses due to the rescue of banks in the banking crisis during the year 2023 in the US. Crypto market cap A long awaited first spot BTC ETF has been approved by the SEC, but the market turned the price of crypto coins to the downside, instead to the upside. Many analysts were predicting that the price of BTC might skyrocket after the approval of the first ETF, noting some figures of even $100K, but it did not happen. Obvious question is if there is something wrong with their analysis or something else happened on the market? Well, in economic theory which relates to traditional markets, there is a topic called market efficiency. The core of this theory is that the market will always price all known information at this moment so that the current price of some asset will reflect its real price. As BTC is getting more and more involved in the traditional markets, the rules of traditional markets will more and more apply to this asset. With wider acceptance of the BTC, we can expect that its price will see more stability in the future period. This is exactly what had happened to BTC. Namely, as of the last quarter of 2023 with the first market rumor that the first spot BTC ETF could be approved, the majority of investors, but also market speculators, the price of BTC headed toward the $45K. This was a huge move to the upside, when the market reached its top. After the SEC`s approval, the balloon which was heating the market was released, so the majority of speculators could pick their profits and move their funds into some other promising asset which would provide them excess profits. At the same time, one should not forget that there is a developed derivative market for crypto assets, in which some leveraged positions were closed, supporting in this manner the spiral to the downside. At one moment, some investors will see a good purchasing opportunity, when the downtrend will be halted and BTC will start its new cycle, but this time, on much healthier grounds from the previous one. Total crypto market capitalization remained flat during the previous week, moving around $1.64 trillion. Daily trading volumes were significantly increased to the level of $174B on a daily basis, which was not recently seen on the crypto market. During the first two days since the approval of BTC, around $4.6B in volume was traded on the market, which significantly contributed to the overall trading volumes. With the approval of the first BTC ETF, it was Ether who actually gained the most. BTC lost some of its value, around $ 20B, during the previous week, due to reasons mentioned above. At the same time, the price of ETH was up by almost 12% on a weekly basis, adding around $ 33B to its market cap. This is again sort of speculative move, considering market expectations that the first ETH ETF will soon be approved after the BTC`s fund was approved. Certainly, these are only expectations, while the certainty of it is known only to the SEC. When it comes to other altcoins, there was sort of rebalancing between different coins on the market. On one side, there were those with significant gain during the week, while on the other side, there were those with significant loss during the week. Coins like Maker, Filecoin, Polygon, Tron, Uniswap, even Binance Coin were among those who gained during the week. On the opposite side were coins like XRP, LINK, DOGE, ADA, Monero, Solana, Algorand which were among losing altcoins. As for coins in circulation, there has been significant activity during the previous week. It seems that the approval of the BTC ETF has moved many coins which were staked somewhere to get back into the market again. There has been an increased volume of circulating coins for the majority of altcoins. Tether managed to increase its market cap and value by increasing its circulating coins by more than 4% on a weekly basis, which has not been recently seen with this coin. Crypto futures market The crypto futures market reflected developments on the spot market, but only through the short term futures. While BTC short term futures were last traded down by more than 2%, at the same time, ETH futures were up by more than 7%. Developments on BTC longer term futures were positive, and were traded by more than 5% higher from the end of the previous week. Futures maturing in December 2024 were traded at price $49.785 or 5.16% higher, while major development was with futures maturing in March 2025 where the price for the first time reached the $50K level, ending the week at $50.710. This expresses positive investors sentiment over the future price of the BTC. Similar situation was also with ETH longer term futures. They ended the week around 13% higher from the week before, where December 2024 was last traded at price $2.743, while March 2025 ended the week at $2.782 or 15.5% higher from the week before. Regardless of the positive market movements, it is still evident that investors are a bit skeptical when ETH`s future value is in question.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: January 8 - 13Last week in the news Markets are slowly heating up after a Holiday break and summary of last year's results. For the majority the year 2023 was a positive one, although with a glimpse of turbulence. Gold managed to finally break the $2K psychological line, ending the year above $2.050 level. The S&P 500 also managed to reach new highs at the end of the year, in expectation of interest rate drops somewhere in Y2024. On the same grounds, the 10Y US Treasury benchmark ended the year around 3.8%. For another year, the crypto market managed to beat the traditional ones, with significant yearly gain of more than 100%. The story related to the first spot BTC ETF is still holding the value of the whole market, especially the price of Bitcoin. Previous year on markets, although the turbulent one, still managed to end on a positive note and significant yearly gains. The policy makers were certainly the ones in the center of market interest. After strong rate increases of more than 500 bps, the US Fed reached the point of a potential for a reversal. Inflation of targeted 2% is in the center of Fed's monetary policy, but the inflation has been resistant for some time. This imposed a discussion among market participants whether there will be a hard landing, soft landing or no landing at all in the US economy? However, the US economy showed a clear resilience for the strong interest rate hikes, surprising even the FOMC members. During Q4 2023 market slowly started to ignore Fed`s narrative, in expectation of a soon pivoting point. In Q4 the Fed gave up from further rate increases, which was the moment of celebration in markets. They were relieved to finally start positioning for a rate cut in the coming year. This was also a starting point for the Y2024. Still, regardless of the US economy's resilience, not all industries were resilient to strong rate increases. During Y2023 we witnessed several bank collapses like Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, Heartland Tri-State Bank. Relatively bad asset and liability management, connections to the crypto industry and bank run-offs were some of the main reasons for these financial institutions to discontinue their businesses. Luckily, there has not been a high scale of contamination, in which sense, the rest of the financial system went through these crises intact. The crypto industry was also in the center of market interest due to several reasons. First, there were several pledges and proceedings made by US authorities, especially the SEC. The most well known scandal over the FTX exchanger ended in November last year, when its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven charges of money laundering and fraud. Another news that spotted the market interest was a finalization of court proceedings against the founder of Binance exchange, Changpeng Zhao, who was found guilty of violation of several rules related to anti money laundering. Binance has settled charges by agreeing to pay $4.3 billion to the US regulators. Within the next five years, the Binance exchanges would most probably cease to exist. Although this was huge news, still, the market reacted positively to it, increasing the value of the crypto market. This actually came as a positive news for investors as they perceived that there will finally be some order within the crypto industry, so that the market would be able to further develop into a mainstream. Another big news within the both crypto and main financial industries was that some of the biggest players on the Wall Street have filed with the SEC to start operations with a spot BTC Exchange Traded Funds. These names include BlackRock, VanEck, Valkyrie Investments, Fidelity and Wisdom Tree Investments, to name a few. It should be added that few asset managers like BlackRock and Ark Investment applied for first spot ETH ETF. Filings are still on the table, waiting for a final call from the SEC. This continues to be one of the main topics on the crypto market for Y2024. In case that ETFs are approved, analysts are betting on a further significant increase of the value of the crypto market. Crypto market cap The first half of the year 2023 was quite a challenging one for the crypto market capitalization. The market cap fell even below the $1 trillion mark, and many analysts were predicting its further move to the downside. However, in Q4 2023, something happened which the market is calling the “BlackRock effect”, when the largest asset manager in the world announced its filing for the first spot BTC ETF in the US. This was a huge breakthrough for the crypto market, when it bounces back, ending the year above $1.6 trillion. This is still below its all time highs, however, currently the market looks at a positive direction. On this road there are still some obstacles mostly related to the regulatory environment. It should not be forgotten that regulators still perceive this market in the gray zone when it comes to full compliance with regulation. While the market participants are calling for a clear regulation within a field of the crypto industry, the SEC and its Chair Gensler, continue to stick with the narrative that regulation already exists and that the vast majority of both coins and crypto products should fully comply with the US Law on securities. In other words, anyone who wants to offer any kind of crypto product, especially staking, should first file with the SEC for approval to offer security-like products. Challenges for the crypto industry within the regulatory framework will continue to be a high priority of the regulators all around the world. As per US regulators, they still perceive both altcoins and stablecoins as highly risky assets, with high potential of frauds and those not fitting into anti money laundering laws. On the opposite side is the whole crypto industry, which is still holding the view that they just need a completely new set of regulatory rules. All challenges from Y2023 will stay in place for Y2024. Both promise and uncertainty will be in place for the crypto market during this year. Certainly increased adoption and continued institutional involvement could fuel further growth of this market. Still, the regulatory clarity and technological advancements will play an important role in shaping the future of the crypto market. Total crypto market capitalization ended the year at a level of $1.638 trillion, which represents its starting point for Y2024. This level also represents a yearly gain of 117% where the crypto market added $882B. Crypto futures market The crypto futures market closely watched developments on the crypto spot market during the year 2023. Although the first half of the year was a bit shy when it comes to prices of long term futures, still, during the second half of the year there has been a record number of large open interest holders for both BTC and ETH futures. This was a promising sign that institutional investors are still not ready to give up on the crypto assets, especially BTC and ETH. As the market continued to express interest, the CME launched micro BTC and ETH futures, and made them available for smaller investors for investing or hedging purposes. However, it should be noted that such a move was additional support to increased trading volume and liquidity on the futures market. Long term BTC futures ended the year at levels above $ 48K, while ETH futures sustained a $2.5K level.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: December 24 - 30Last week in the news During the previous week the Western markets were preparing for the forthcoming Holiday session before the year-end. The positive market sentiment continued to prevail on the markets, as traders were preparing to book profits this year. The US equity markets were closed higher from the week before, with S&P 500 closing the week at yearly highs. Gold continued to hold above $2K level, as USD was losing some of its value. The US Treasuries continue to be in the spotlight of the market, with decreasing yields and increased prices. The crypto market finished the week also in a positive sentiment, where BTC is ending another week modestly below the $44K. After the Fed decided to keep its interest rates unchanged in December, the markets got a new level of optimism, wondering when the first pivoting point will occur. The majority still perceive that the Q1 of next year could mark the start of Fed`s cutting interest rates. As for Powell's rhetoric, the Fed is still not thinking about this step. Certainly, by their projections, it is clear that rate cuts will occur during the course of 2024, where the expected rate at the end of the year ahead would be 4.6%. The dynamics of rate cuts would certainly depend on the inflation behavior in the coming period. During the previous week the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index was published for November, showing further relaxation in inflation in November. The index was standing at 3.2% for the year, while core PCE was up 0.1%, for the month, which was below Fed`s expectations. This is an indication to markets that the inflation will most probably continue to move within the down-road, decreasing the probability of any sort of rate increases in the coming period, while at the same time increasing the probability that the Fed might cut rates sooner than expected. Last week in the news was an astonishing yearly result of the British fin tech company Revoult. Its revenues have increased by 45%, for the year, regardless of a drop in net profits to 6 million pounds. The company has a significant base of clients, reaching 26.2 million, and has filed with the British authorities to obtain the banking license. Revoult is by far the most valuable start-up in Britain. As markets are still focused on a question whether the first BTC ETF will be approved or not, the SEC continues to be focused on making some order within the crypto industry. Last week, SEC Chair Gensler commented that frauds continue to be one of the main concerns for regulators within the crypto industry and its full compliance with the regulation. Last week BarnBridge DAO, a company within the crypto industry, made a settlement with SEC, in order to settle SEC`s allegations. Total agreed amount to be paid by BarnBridge is $1.7 million. The SEC accused the company for offering illegal securities in crypto to the U.S investors. This refers to their product called SMART Yield. Crypto market cap The year-end market optimism was holding also on the crypto market during the whole last month. Although the initial frenzy was initiated by the stories related to the first BTC ETF fund, still, during the second half of December, US macro fundamentals left their mark on the positive market sentiment. Two weeks ago, there was a small correction in this cycle, however, the last trading week brought some profit-taking season also on the crypto market. A clear slow down in the US inflation, as well as anticipation that the Fed might quite soon start with rate cuts, increased the appetite in investors to search for riskier assets in order to increase their potential for profitability in the year to come. Despite some volatility during the course of this year, the crypto market is managing to end the year 116% higher from the end of the previous year. Total crypto market capitalization was increased during the previous week by another 6%, adding a total of $88B to its market cap. Daily trading volumes continue to be at a higher level, moving around $127B on a daily basis. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 116%, where it has added a total $874B to the market cap. Regardless of a general increase in cap during the previous week, not all coins contributed to it. It was another week with domination of Bitcoin and Ether, while some other altcoins ended the week with a small decrease in value. BTC has another positive week, where it has increased its value by 3.56% on a weekly basis, followed by ETH, which managed to add 2.11% w/w. Ethereum Classic was also in the spotlight of investors, where the coin managed to increase its value by 4.6%. Few of altcoins had excellent performance during the week, where Solana managed to increase its cap by an incredible 27.13% w/w, while Algorand was up by 17.03%. From other coins, it should be mentioned Binance Coin, with an increase in value by 9.54%, NEO was up by almost 8% on a weekly basis, while LINK added 7.92% to its cap. On a losing track were DOGE and Cardano, which both decreased their cap by more than 1% while Miota was down by 2.6% on a weekly basis. As for coins in circulation, there has not been significant changes on a weekly basis. Certainly, this does not include Tether, which continues to strongly add its circulating coins, adding new 0.14% during the previous week. Crypto futures market Positive market sentiment was also reflected on the crypto futures market, and this time especially in long term crypto futures. Both BTC and ETH futures gained during the previous week. BTC short term futures were traded above 3% higher, in line with the spot market. December 2024 ended the week at a price of $43.815. It was interesting to see that BTC long term futures are still trading higher, where December 2024 ended the week at $47.340, while those futures maturing in March 2025 were last traded at price $48.215 or even 2.6% higher from the week before. These are reflections of a positive sentiment for the future value of BTC, as the market is currently not expecting that the BTC`s price might return to some lower levels from current. ETH futures were also traded higher, less than 3% compared to the week before. Futures maturing in December were closed at 2.97% higher value from the week before, closing at $2.324. Those futures maturing in December next year were last traded at $2.500, for the first time since last year. However, futures maturing in March 2025 ended the week at $2.408, expressing market insecurity whether ETH could sustain these levels on a longer run.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: December 18 – 24Last week in the news Both the FED and the ECB left the rates unchanged during the previous week. The US Treasury yields slipped further in expectation of rate cuts, while US equities finished another week in green. The USD lost some in value, while Gold gained on a weaker dollar. The crypto market eased during the previous week, where Bitcoin slipped toward $ 42K, from $45K week before. The FOMC members left rates unchanged on December`s meeting. The rhetoric of Fed Chair Powell in after-the-meeting statement was finally aligned with the market, and estimation that there will be no more rate hikes. The Fed acknowledged that the inflation has eased, without a significant drop in employment. However, the FOMC estimate is that the inflation is still high, and that further effort is needed in order to bring it down to the targeted 2%. The economic activity in the US has slowed down substantially in Q4, so the Fed is expecting GDP growth rate to reach 2.5% in 2023, as a result of strong consumer demand. FOMC members are projecting that the inflation will clearly reach level of 2% in year 2026. Although Powell did not exclude possibility for further rate increases if necessary, the FOMC members continue to perceive Fed's funds rate at 4.6% at the end of 2024, and its further decline during the consecutive years. As per CME Group`s FedWatch tool, the market is currently pricing a 25 bps rate cut in March, with expectations for current Fed funds rate to be lower by around 150 bps by the end of year 2024. The European Central Bank also held a policy meeting during the previous week, leaving the rates unchanged. Although their US colleagues are at least mentioning expectations of rate cuts in 2024, the ECB diverged from such a scenario, mentioning that the rates will stay sufficiently higher for as long as necessary. The most recent inflation reading in November for the Euro Zone, shows that the inflation has eased to the level of 2.4% on a yearly basis. Still, considering Europe’s dependence on energy, analysts are noting the possibility for prices to swiftly move to higher grounds. On the other side are economists, which are projecting first ECB`s rate cut in June 2024. During the year 2022 Coinbase submitted a request to the Securities and Exchange Commission with a petition for the establishment of the crypto regulation. The SEC finally provided an answer to the petition noting that there is no need for such a course of action as “the existing securities regime appropriately governs crypto asset securities”. The US Financial Stability Oversight Council met during the previous week, issuing a report on risks coming from the crypto assets. The same report was issued also as of the end of the previous year, while the latest report did not add almost anything new to last year`s topics. The risks that should be overseen and regulated continues to be the volatility of the crypto assets, a high amount of leverage, the cyber security and risks for investors and potentially financial markets. Crypto market cap The Fed has finally aligned with the market. Although Fed is still not excluding the option of further increase of interest rates, still, Powell noted that majority of FOMC members are perceiving rates at 4.6% as of the end of the next year. Such rhetoric stands in line with the market expectation on further easing of inflation and Fed`s cut of interest rates by 25 basis points in March 2024. Market reacted positively to Powell's speech, and brought US equities to higher grounds, while Treasury yields fell sharply on the news. Still, the crypto market reacted in a negative manner to news that the SEC does not have plans to introduce new regulation which will cover specifically crypto assets. Instead, SEC Chair Gensler is of the opinion that current regulation in the US is sufficient to cover all regulatory aspects of crypto currencies. Total crypto market capitalization modestly dropped during the previous week by 2,4%, losing around $39B. On a positive side that daily trading volumes remained at higher level, moving around $94B on a daily basis, a bit lower from $121B traded a week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 107%, where it has added total $810B to the market cap. A drop in total market capitalization during the previous week was mostly driven by major coins, BTC and ETH. Bitcoin dropped around 3.4%, losing $ 29B in market capitalization. ETH lagged a bit behind the BTC, with a drop in value of 4.6% or above $13B. XRP was also in a group of significant losers with a weekly drop of more than 9% or $3.5B. Other altcoins were mostly on a weekly losing side, except a few which managed to finish the week in green. Among higher losers on a weekly basis were, ZCash, Link and Bitcoin Cash which dropped by more than 10% each. Algorand and Maker decreased their value by more than 9%. Litecoin, Stellar and EOS were down by more than 7%. Among several coins which managed to gain during the previous week were OMG Network, with a gain around 10% in value, while Filecoin increased its market cap by almost 3.5% w/w. There has been some increased activity with circulating coins, where Polygon managed to add 2.9% of new coins into circulation and was followed by LINK, which made an increase of 2.0%. Within a group of higher weekly gainers of coins are Uniswap, with an increase of 1.7% and Filecoin whose coins on the market surged by 0.8%. For several weeks Tether continues to build the number of coins on the market, increasing it by an additional 0.6% during the previous week. Crypto futures market After three weeks of strong push to the upside, crypto futures eased during the previous week, in line with developments on the spot market. However, it is important to note that long term ones are managing to hold at elevated levels, despite the modest drop. BTC short term futures were traded more than 5% lower from the week before. Futures maturing in December this year were last traded down by 5.73% on a weekly basis, still ending the week at level of $42.450. Longer term futures dropped a bit less, around 4.5%, with December 2024 ending the week at price $46.500, which is 5.18% lower from the week before. March 2025 is still holding above the $47K level. ETH short term futures dropped by more than 5%, while longer term once had a drop of more than 2%. December 2024 closed the week at $2.257, or 5.84% lower on a weekly basis. Futures maturing in December 2024 were down by 2.3%, closing the week at level of $2.433. March 2025 is still holding above $2.4K level, despite the drop of 2.26% w/w.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: December 11 – 17Last week in the news The strong resilience of the US economy continues to support market optimism, after the latest posted US jobs data for November. The USD gained during the week as well as both US and EU equities. While Gold is trying to get back into correlation with USD, US Treasury yields continued with a decline. The crypto market continues to be supported by both the resilience of the US economy and the BTC ETF frenzy, with Bitcoin reaching new highs for this year, below $45K. The US non-farm payrolls rose by 199K in November, modestly better from market forecast. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell down to 3.7%, from 3.9% posted for October. The job market continues to be resilient to macroeconomic developments. November figures came as a surprise to analysts, but eventually some of them call it a “relief” as it shows that despite strong rate increases during the past year, the US economy managed to sustain jobs and businesses. The European Union is aiming to regulate AI technology and products like ChatGPT. There has been a lot of discussion during the previous months, related to data privacy on platforms like ChatGPT or biometric models. At the same time, Italy, France and Germany are opposing tight regulating rules, especially for foundation models, stressing the concern that it might impact their competitiveness with the Chinese and the US tech industry. The Binance exchanger has withdrawn their license for the investment license in Abu Dhabi. The company has noted that such a move is not related to recent legal settlements with US regulators, but they find it “unnecessary for the company’s global needs”. A global regulator of the financial industry, the Basel Committee, is looking at risks that stablecoins pose for financial security, aiming to bring up regulations which will decrease identified risks. This regulation should address bank`s exposures to the crypto industry and mitigate potential risks of defaults like recently Silvergate Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. El Salvador, the first state that made Bitcoin a legal tender, is going further with its state experiment with crypto currencies. The recently started project called “Freedom VISA” aims to attract 1.000 people on a yearly basis, which will gain El Salvador long-term residency permit, based on a minimum $1 million investment worth of bitcoin or USDT stablecoin. The country is estimated to receive at least $1 billion of cash inflow every year through this program. Crypto market cap The positive mood on financial markets continued through December, promising a very happy forthcoming New Year holidays. The latest published jobs figures for November this year supported further market optimism over the resilience of the US economy. Both EU and US stock markets reacted in a positive manner, boosting also further the crypto market, which is in addition, still moving within a sentiment over its further adoption by the mainstream. Analysts and investors are currently moving away from the US Fed rhetoric and pricing their view on the course of the economy in the future period. Total crypto market capitalization was increased by significant $179B, with an increase of 12.6% on a weekly basis. Daily trading volumes have also significantly increased to the level of $121B on a daily basis, which is a further boost from $ 67B traded the week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 112%, where it has added a total $840B to the market cap. Total crypto market significantly gained during the previous week, with the majority of coins finishing the week in green. In nominal terms, Bitcoin was once again star of the week, adding 13.8% to its market cap, or almost $105B. The second place belongs to Ether, with a surge in value of 12.6%, adding $ 32B to its market cap on a weekly basis. As a significant gainer should be mentioned Cardano (ADA) with a surge in value of $8.2B or 60.2%. This was a reflection of Cardano`s Robinhood listing in the EU. Solana was also in the spotlight of the market with a gain of $6.3B in market cap or more than 24%, which was supported by the successful network upgrade. DOGE gained $2.5B, increasing its cap by 21%, BNB also gained $ 2B which surged its value by 6%. Polkadot was also a $ 2B gainer of the week, adding more than 24% to its value. Majority of other altcoins gained significantly during the week, where especially should be mentioned Algorand, with an incredible surge in cap by 52.5%. There is still no official news what exactly was standing behind such a move. Activity in circulating coins remains relatively high during the last couple of weeks. The highest changes during the week were with Tether, which added 0.9% of new tokens, Stellar increased the number of circulating coins by 0.4%, while Filecoin traditionally continued with a surge in coins on the market, adding 0.6% during the previous week. The only negative change was with Polkadot, which decreased its coins by 3.7% on a weekly basis. Crypto futures market In line with the spot market, the crypto futures market made its significant move during the previous week. This market is also providing some important inputs over the sentiment of investors on the crypto market. BTC both short and long term futures were higher by more than 14% on a weekly basis. Futures maturing in December this year reached the last price of $45.030. At the same time those maturing in December 2024 reached the price of $49.040, which is the first time within the last year that those futures finished the week around the level close to $50K resistance. Still, it should be noted that prices of futures maturing in March 2025 reached $47.760, which is a bit lower from December 2024. Similar situation was with ETH futures. Short term ones were traded higher by around 11% on average. December 2023 ended the week at a price of $2.397, while December 2024 was last traded at $2.490. It should be also noted that March 2025 ended the week at $2.525 indicating current investors positive sentiment regarding future ETH price.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: December 4 – 10Last week in the news December started in a positive tone on financial markets. Gold hit new yearly highs above $2K, in expectation of Fed's rate cut during the course of 2024, while US equities reached this year`s highs for one more time, on the same assumption. The crypto market is still under expectations of the approval of the first spot BTC ETF, where the price of BTC surged to the levels above the $38K. Previous week started with sad news that one of the greatest investors and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger died just one month after his 100th birthday. His investment philosophy along with his partner, Warren Buffet, left the mark on generations of new investors on financial markets. During his long career, both Charlie and Warren managed to build the Berkshire empire, today worth $800 billion. Released second estimate for the US GDP annualized growth rate of 5.2% for the third quarter of this year was a huge surprise for financial markets. This is perceived as the fastest growth of the US GDP since the year 2021. This has additionally heated investors’ confidence that the Fed might sooner than expected cut interest rates. On the other hand, Fed Chair Jerome Powell held a speech at Spelman College in Atlanta on Friday, where he for one more time noted that talks about rate cuts are premature and that the Fed is currently ready to tighten the policy further in case that it is necessary in order to return the inflation rate down to targeted 2%. For one more time within the latest cycle, the markets and the Fed are on the opposite side when it comes to expected monetary moves. Expectations and preparations for the approval of the first spot BTC ETF are still in the spotlight of the crypto industry. Coindesk is reporting that a crypto asset manager Grayscale just hired John Hoffman, who formerly held a position as a Head of Americas investment department in Invesco company. His new role at Grayscale will include a leading position in the distribution and partnership team, in expectation that Grayscale`s filing for its spot BTC ETF will be approved by the SEC. The asset manager Invesco is one of the biggest issuers of ETFs in the US. ARK Invest, an asset manager led by Cathie Wood continues to offload shares of Coinbase (COIN). As per reports, ARK Invest just made its third sale of COIN shares, with market value of around $4.7 million. Previously, ARK Invest sold another $15 million worth of shares during November this year. At the same time, COIN shares are currently traded at the highest level since April last year. Crypto market cap December started in a positive mood on the crypto market, but only at first sight. Namely, the frenzy over the potential first spot BTC ETF is still strong on the market, pushing this week BTC`s price to the levels above the $38K resistance line. Still when it comes to developments with other altcoins and especially futures market, some modest market exhaustion could be spotted. Market expectations on potential Fed's rate cut in May next year, is an additional aspect that should be taken into account. Namely, the market is currently pricing a potential cut, pushing the value of the US equities to the highest level for this year. On the other hand, Fed Chair Powell stressed for one more time that Fed is not thinking about rate cuts and that potential further increase is still on the table for FOMC members. Considering that markets pushed the prices of equities higher and dropped Treasury yields lower after his statements, shows that the market and the Fed are once again on a different side when the state of the economy and further moves in the monetary segment are in question. Who is right, the time will show. Total crypto market capitalization was increased by additional $23B or 1.6% during the previous week. The highest funds inflow into this market is coming from Bitcoin. Daily trading volumes decreased during the week, moving around $ 67B on a daily basis, from $ 81B traded a week before. This is the first sign of market exhaustion. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 89%, where it has added a total $670B to the market cap. For one more week, Bitcoin was in the spotlight of the market, considering the on-going frenzy about the first BTC ETF. BTC gained $ 20B in market value which is an increase of 2.7% within one week. ETH gained modest $2.4B or less than 1% on a weekly basis. Other coins were traded in a mixed mode. One of the significant gainers on a weekly level was Solana, with an increase in the market cap of $1.44B or 5.8%. Miota should also be mentioned in relative terms, considering that this coin increased its market value by an incredible 77% within one week. This was a market reaction to IOTA`s $100 million Ecosystem DLT foundation in Abu Dhabi. Several other coins with solid weekly performance were LINK with an increase in market cap of 6.45% w/w, while DOGE added 7.2% to its cap. Majority of other coins had an increase between 2% up to 5%. There were almost equal numbers of coins which finished the week in red, like Filecoin, which decreased its market cap by 2.25%, Tron was down by more than 3%, BNB decreased its value by additional 2.7%. There has been increased activity when it comes to circulating coins, where the highest drop on a weekly basis had Maker, with a drop of 6.1% of coins in circulation. Tron and Polkadot decreased their available coins by 0.1% both. On the other side were Miota, with an increase of 0.6% of coins, Solana had an increase of 0.2%, while Filecoin increased the number of coins on the market by 0.5%. There should be mentioned Tether, which added 0.9% coins during the previous week. Crypto futures market During the previous week the optimism from the spot market was not clearly reflected in the crypto derivatives market. This refers to ETH futures, which actually finished the week lower from the end of the previous week, although ETH gained almost 1% on the spot market for the week. Short term futures were traded 0.42% lower from the week before, where December this year finished the week at a price of $2.119. Longer term futures were down by 1.6% on average, where futures maturing in December 2024 ended the week at price $2.178 and March 2025 at $2.208. It represents a sort of exhaustion of investors for ETH at current levels, which are still not quite sure about the ETH`s potential for the future period. At the same time, market exhaustion was reflected in the long term BTC futures. Namely, although the short term ones were traded higher by more than 2%, with December this year ending the week at price of $39.290, longer term futures were traded almost flat compared to the week before. Futures maturing in December 2024 are still holding modestly above $ 41K level.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: November 27 – December 3Last week in the news Due to Thanksgiving holiday in the US, the markets were relatively calm but in a positive mood during the previous week. Bets on Fed`s pausing were supporting the price of Gold and, at the same time, weakening of the US Dollar. Regardless of the negative news for Binance, the crypto market was traded mostly in green where Bitcoin managed for one more time to test the $38K resistance line. One of the most striking news during the previous week was that Changpeng Zhao stepped down from his position as a CEO of the Binance exchange. The decision was made after he officially pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program in his company. At the same time, agreement has been made with the US Department of Justice for Binance to pay $4.3 billion in penalties. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen comments shortly on the case noting that this is the largest settlement in the history of her department. As part of the settlement, Binance will completely exit from the US. Also, during the period of next five years the US Treasury Department will have complete and full access to both Binance`s records and systems. CZ is still waiting for the final sentence, one of which might be 18 months in prison, as news is reporting. Binance`s token BNB strongly reacted to negative news, with a strong sell side, dropping the price of BNB by 20%, however, the crypto market did not make any significant move on the news. As analysts are commenting, this case, along with recent court decision regarding a failed FTX exchanger, is actually positive for the crypto market and might even lead to the approval of the first crypto ETF. As JPMorgan analysts are noting, the court decision will decrease a systemic risk originating from a potential collapse of the Binance exchanger and shift the whole crypto industry toward the better regulated one. FOMC November meeting minutes were released during the previous week, revealing that for the moment, Fed officials do not have any appetite for rate cuts anytime soon. Their concerns are still related to a possibility for inflation to move to higher grounds in the coming period, hence, they are of the opinion that rates should be kept at higher levels, until they are confident that inflation is under control. Market expectations are that the Fed is done with hiking rates, while potential for its cut is set for May next year. World`s most popular retail discount day, better known as the Black Friday, came with a dose of skepticism among retailers this year. The majority of large retailers in the US came with a bit pessimistic expected sales figures for the fourth quarter of this year. Few of them cited challenges like uncertain consumer spending behavior considering persistent inflation or simply dry-up in the consumer spending. Economists and analysts are closely watching forecasts of the largest retailers in the US, considering that it might provide a clue of an actual state of the US economy, and guidance on expectations on the final economic output for this year. Crypto market cap The news regarding Binance`s settlement with US officials, which will cost Binance $4.3B in penalties, was perceived positively by the crypto market. Although this does not seem quite logical at first sight, still, a broader perspective needs to be taken into account in order to understand why such action actually has a positive impact on the crypto industry. Since last year there have been a lot of negative developments related to some big names within the crypto field, including a huge scandal with the FTX exchange. Cases like this represent an actual threat to further development and wider acceptance of the crypto by the mainstream, as investors were strongly losing confidence, and in some cases, even money due to inappropriate behavior of unregulated crypto market participants. During previous years, Binance became quite a large exchanger, which collapse might impose a systemic risk, with high impact on other market participants and investors with business connections with this exchanger. A court decision means that such a scenario will not happen, but also implies that some level of order and compliance with the US laws will be in force with the crypto industry increasing safety of this business for investors. As per some analysts, this will also imply higher probability that the SEC will approve the first BTC ETF. Having all that in mind, total crypto market capitalization increased by 3.2%, during the previous week, adding $ 43B to its total cap. Daily trading volumes modestly dropped to $ 81B on a daily basis from $92B traded two weeks ago. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 86%, where it has added total $647B to the market cap. Total weekly gain in cap of $ 43B was mainly driven by two major coins, Bitcoin and Ether. Bitcoin added 3% during the week, increasing its market cap by almost $22B. Ether gained higher in relative terms, of 5.8%, adding almost $ 14B to its cap. Tether was another coins with a gain above $ 1B, which represents weekly increase of 1.2% for this coin. Among coins with relatively good weekly performance in a relative terms were Uniswap, with an increase in value of 21.4%, Maker was up by 6.7%, LINK surged by more than 8%, while Theta increased its market cap by 12%. There were only few coins which finished the week in a negative territory, like Doge which was down by 2.3%, Polygon lost 5.6%, EOS decreased its cap by 2.5%. Of course, due to negative news Binance Coin finished the week down by 4.3%, losing total $1.6B in value. Several coins increased the total number of their circulating coins, where Polkadot added 4.6% of new coins on the market, Filecoin 0.4% and Polygon 0.2%. Several other coins added around 0.1% more coins on a weekly basis. Crypto futures market In line with the spot market, the crypto futures market also reacted positively on news regarding Binance exchanger. Short term BTC futures ended the week by more than 3% higher from the week before, with December this year closing week at price $38.290. Longer term BTC futures were up by around 5%. Futures maturing in December 2024 ended the week at price $40.940, while those maturing in March 2025 reached the price of $41.690. This is the sign that investors are perceiving positively future price developments of BTC expecting its increase to the levels above $ 40K. Similar developments were also with ETH futures, where short term futures closed higher by more than 7%, while longer ones were up by more than 6% on a weekly basis. ETH futures maturing in December this year ended the week at price $2.128, while those maturing a year later closed the week at the level of $2.213. This is the first time after many months that all maturities of ETH are finishing the week above the $2K psychological level.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: November 20 – 26Last week in the news Inflation data was driving the markets during the previous week. US equities finished the week slightly higher from the week before, while Treasury yields continue to slow down. While the US Dollar weakened slightly, the price of Gold reverted once again toward the $2K as markets are betting on further Fed`s pause on monetary tightening. The crypto market is still driven by the ETF hype, with BTC reaching $38K resistance during the week. The wholesale prices in the US recorded the biggest drop on a monthly basis since April 2020. As per published data the producer price index in the US was down by 0.5% in October, beating market expectation of an increase of 0.1%. Inflation rate in the US in October fell to the level of 3.2% on a yearly basis, modestly below market estimate of 3.3%. Core inflation remained at a bit higher levels, reaching 4.0% in October, while expected was 4.1%. These figures are showing to investors that inflation is certainly on the road of further easing and that the Fed will not further increase interest rates. The market's attention is now switched toward the question when the Fed will start decreasing its rates, the so-called “pivoting”, a slang widely used by market participants. Equity markets reacted positively on a potential for Fed`s pivoting during the course of the next year, bringing main US indices to the higher grounds. There has been discussions in the news during the previous week, related to soaring US credit card debt. As per official data US citizens increased use of the debt on their credit cards to the level of $1.08 trillion in the Q3 this year. Economists are for now sure that it will not lead to the next financial crisis and that the level of debt does not represent the systemic risk for the US economy. On the other hand, there are some analysts as well as market participants who perceive it as a risk for a recession in the coming year, along with a looming housing and car market. On the other side are investors such as Ray Dalio, who in an interview with CNBC pointed to a rising US government debt which might pose a systemic risk for the US economy. The race within the tech industry influenced Germany to make some significant changes in its capital markets framework. The reforms are expected to be enforced as of the beginning of the next year, and include changes in the listings and taxation of companies for stock-based compensations at start-ups. The main aim of these reforms is to support the tech start up industry in Germany, which will now become more competitive to Silicon Valley in the US. Another goal which should be addressed with law reforms is a “brain drain”, where for several years now, the best people from Germany were switching their country for the US largest tech giants. The largest Swiss bank, UBS Group AG will allow its clients to trade exchange traded funds which are linked to crypto currencies on the Hong Kong platform. This option will be allowed to clients with minimum $2 million in funds. Hong Kong has officially announced its intention to become a “global crypto hub”, supporting a regulated trading of crypto products on its exchanges. Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission provided authorisations for three crypto ETF`s in this country, which are backed by both BTC and ETH. Crypto market cap The hype about the first crypto ETF in the US is still quite strong on markets, where any news on this topic is moving the crypto market to the upside. Same was during the previous week, when once again news related to BlackRock`s ETH ETF pushed the price of BTC up to the level of $38K resistance line. Still, as of the week end, the hype eased, after officially published data on the US inflation and potential for Fed`s so-called “pivotal” point during the next year. This was one of the main reasons why the focus of the market was switched to the US equities, leading to a modest decline in the total crypto market capitalization. Regardless of the hype from the beginning of the week, the crypto market is ending the week 2.4% lower from the week before, losing a total $33B. Daily trading volumes were modestly decreased to the level of $92B on a daily basis, from over $100B two weeks ago. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 80%, where it has added total $604B to the market cap. Although the previous week started in a positive manner for the majority of crypto coins, still, the weekend brought a short reversal point for the crypto market. Ether was leading the market toward the downside will total loss of $13.1B or 5.2% on a weekly basis. Bitcoin took the second place, with a total loss of almost $ 9B or 1.2%. Other major coins followed the path, with Ripple decreasing its market cap by $3.4B or 9.4%, LINK was down by $1.5B or 16.2%, and BNB lost $1.4B or 3.6% in value. Other altcoins with significant loss in relative terms during the week were NEO, which was down by 15.3%, Theta lost 12.5% in value, DASH was down by more than 8%, same as Polkadot. There were only a few coins which managed to increase their market cap, such as Maker, which was up by 4.7% on a weekly basis, Polygon was up by 0.4%, while Tether increased its value by 1.2%, by increasing its coins in circulation by this percentage. In line with higher volatility on the crypto market, there has been further increased developments with circulating coins. As previously mentioned, Tether managed to increase its coins in circulation by 1.2%, not recently seen on the market. While Miota and Filecoin increased the number of their coins by 0.6% both, Polkadot had a decrease of 4.0% compared to the week before. Several other altcoins had an increase in coins which are circulating on the market by 0.1%. Crypto futures market After a strong shift of the crypto futures during the last four weeks, the previous week brought some relaxation in prices of the crypto futures. Short term correction from the spot market was reflected also in both BTC and ETH derivatives. BTC short term futures ended the week by more than 2% lower from the week before, with December this year ending the week at a price of $37.075 or 2.4% lower on a weekly basis. Longer term futures ended the week at some lower pace, around 1.8%. Futures maturing in December next year were last traded at price $39.135 or 1.88% lower from the week before. March 2025 was closed at $39.850 and slipped from $40K level, traded two weeks before. ETH short term futures had a higher drop of more than 7% on a weekly basis. Futures maturing in December this year ended the week at the level of $1.973, slipping from the $2K psychological level. At the same time, longer term futures were traded more than 4% lower, where December 2024 ended the week at price $2.087 and managed still to hold above the $2K line.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: November 13 – 19Last week in the news Fed Chair Powell's speech one more time impacted the market sentiment, where EU equities finished the week lower, while positive sentiment still holds the US equities. Gold and commodities eased during the previous week, as well as 10Y US Treasuries. The crypto markets continue to be under impact of the ETF frenzy, which might continue to hold in the weeks to come. Bitcoin tested levels above $37K; however, $38K resistance remains a hard task. Fed Chair Powell held a speech for the IMF audience in Washington during the previous week, where he noted that he is still not sure if he and his Fed colleagues have done enough to bring the inflation down to targeted 2%. He noted that they are still balancing between doing too much and doing too little. He also addressed the market expectations that the Fed might cut rates during the course of the next year, noting that Fed will increase further interest rates if inflation “reaccelerates”. After the speech, the equity market headed for lower levels, while 2Y Treasury yields again headed toward the 5%. Rating agencies continue to lose confidence in the US Government. During the previous week, the rating agency Moody's cut the US long term credit rating to negative from stable. This is the result of rising risks when the country's fiscal policy is in question. As noted in the agency's statement “in the context of higher interest rates, without effective fiscal policy measures to reduce government spending or increase revenues”, the agency puts into question further debt affordability for the US Government. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse expressed his opinion that the SEC has “lost sight of their mission to protect investors” in an interview with CNBC. The SEC and the crypto industry have been on different sides for some time now. While, on one side SEC is insisting to put the crypto industry into the current legal framework related to securities, even through legal disputes, the crypto industry is not ready to comply, requesting a different set of laws. Several legal cases have been won, where dispute with Ripple was the first, and lasted for more than two years. Ripple won as the judge ruled that XRP is not a security. Garlinghouse expressed his hopes that the crypto regulation will stop being ruled by court decisions and that laws governing digital currencies will be adopted by the Congress. While the spot BTC ETF frenzy is still hot on the market, another one hit it during the previous week. There has been news that BlackRock, the largest asset management fund in the world, is seeking ways to list its first ETH ETF, while still waiting for the SEC`s approval of its first BTC ETF. The news came out that the entity called iShares Ethereum Trust has been registered in Delaware, US. Whether this news is true, BlackRock officials refused to comment, however, ETH was significantly supported with it, reaching $2.1K during the week. The United Kingdom has scheduled a world conference for crypto tax evasion for the year 2027. The aim of this initiative is to set rules by which tax authorities between countries, signatories of the agreement, will exchange information between each other with the aim to fight offshore crypto tax evasion. Currently 48 countries signed up, however, several largest countries when it comes to the crypto industry, like Turkey, India, China, African countries and Russia are not within signatory to the statement. Crypto market cap ETF frenzy is widely shaking the crypto market. During the last few weeks it was all about potential introduction of the first spot BTC ETF, however, starting from the previous week, the frenzy added to it Ethereum`s token ETH. Namely, there has been published news that BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, is seeking the way to list its first spot EFH ETF. The company refused to comment on this news, so for the moment, there is a question whether such news is officially true or not. Still, as markets like to buy the news and later sell the fact, it did not matter too much for investors who were rushing to invest both into BTC and ETH. Total crypto market capitalization was increased by 10% during the week, adding $125B to its value. The crypto market cap reached the level of almost $1.4 trillion, the last time seen in April last year. Daily trading volumes were significantly increased during the week, reaching a level of $104B on a daily basis, which might be treated as the crypto market is getting back to its old track. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 84%, where it has added total $637B to the market cap. It was another positive week for almost all crypto coins on the crypto market. Gains during the week are reminiscent of a period when the crypto market was booming. Almost all coins gained during the week, with BTC and ETH leading the market. In nominal terms BTC was once again the weekly winner of the market, which added $47B to its market cap or almost 7%. ETH managed to beat BTC in relative terms, by increasing its market cap by 13.3%, adding to it almost $30B on a weekly basis. Major altcoins also had significant gains, like Solana, with an incredible weekly increase in value of 43% where it has added a total $7.5B to its market cap. Among significant gainers are also BNB, which gained $2.8B or 8%, LINK added $2.8% or 45%, ADA surged by $2.45B or 21.5%. Both Polkadot and Polygon increased their market cap by $1.4B both, increasing it by around 24%. It should be noted also significant gain made by XRP of $3.4B or 10.6% on a weekly basis. All other altcoins were among weekly gainers. There has also been significant activity when it comes to coins in circulation. Tether is back in the game, by adding 1.5% coins and increasing its market value for this amount. Polkadot managed to increase its circulating coins by 4.6%, while Algorand`s coins were up by 1.0%. Filecoin has also added new coins into circulation of 0.9% w/w. There have been a lot of other altcoins which increased the number of available coins by at least 0.1%. Crypto futures market The frenzy from the BTC and ETH spot market was also reflected in the futures market for these coins. BTC short term futures were last traded higher by more than 7%, while the longer term ones were up by more than 4%. Futures maturing in December 2023 were last traded at price $37.985 or 7.59% higher from the week before, while those maturing in December next year closed the week at price of $39.885. It is interesting to note that BTC futures maturing in March 2025 reached the price of $40.615, which is a significant breakthrough when it comes to the expectations of the BTC price for the future period. ETH futures were strongly supported by the unconfirmed news that BlackRock will probably file for the ETH ETF in the future period. Short term futures were traded higher by an incredible 14%, while long term ones were up by more than 12% on a weekly basis. ETH futures maturing in December this year finished the week at price $2.135, while those maturing in December next year were last traded at $2.175. It is positive for ETH that its price for the future period managed to finally break the $2K psychological line.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: November 6 – 12Last week in the news The Fed has temporarily stopped further increase of interest rates, as per Fed Chair Powell, but the market perceives that interest rates have topped. The US equities started November with a positive sentiment, as well as US Treasury bonds. Gold was testing $2K resistance during the whole week, amid geopolitical tensions. The crypto market is still under ETF hype mode, gaining during the week, but Bitcoin is still holding modestly below $35K resistance. The major event during the previous week was the FOMC meeting, and rate decision as of November 1st. The Fed decided to hold interest rates unchanged, but at after-the-meeting testimony Fed Chair Powell noted that potential further rate increases are not excluded by FOMC members, as such decisions will depend on further developments in the US economy with respect to inflation and employment. Friday’s trading session was positively supported by the US unemployment figures. Non-farm payrolls were increased by 150K in October, lower from market expectations of 170K, while the unemployment rate rose to the level of 3.9% from 3.8% posted for the previous month. Wages were increased by 0.2% in October for the month, to 4.1% on a yearly basis. These figures represent one of the gauges for the Fed as a potential inflation indicator, in which sense, market expectations are that the inflation might further ease till the end of this year. News that occupied the attention of the public during the previous week was the finalization of the trial of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. The jury found him guilty of all seven counts, by which, he is currently facing a potential sentence of 115 years in prison. October ended, but the US Securities and Exchange Commission did not issue any approval or disapproval of several filings for the first spot BTC ETF. The SEC`s Chair Gary Gensler commented on Thursday that the SEC has 8 to 10 filings for considerations, without any further comment on the topic. It seems that the SEC still needs more time in order to make the final decision. Until then, analysts are speculating over the potential funds to inflow into the crypto market after the approval of the first ETF. Current estimates are ranging from $ 14B up to $55B within the next three years. As Coindesk is reporting, the SEC requested additional documentation for PayPal`s stablecoin PYUSD. As seen by the reporters, this represents the latest regulatory action amid businesses that include crypto assets. As noted, it does not necessarily mean that potential lawsuits might be in store for PayPal, considering SEC`s perception that majority of altcoins and stablecoins are securities and should be officially registered with the SEC. Crypto market cap October is over, but there has not been any news related to the first spot BTC ETF. The SEC remained silent, neither approving, neither disapproving several ETF fillings. The only news reported by Reuters is that SEC Chair Gensler shortly commented that the Commission is currently reviewing 8-10 ETF filings. When the final decision will be brought up is unknown at this moment. Regardless of a new postponement of the decision, the market remains optimistic about the crypto market and its further inclusion into mainstream markets. During the previous week total crypto capitalization was increased by additional $35B or 2.8% on a weekly basis. Although Bitcoin continues to dominate the crypto market cap, still, this week other altcoins contributed to the total increase of the market value. The last time the crypto market held this level of capitalization was during May last year. Daily trading volumes continue to hold at increased levels of $60B on a daily basis, without change on a weekly basis. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 68%, where it has added total $512B to the market cap. Although Bitcoin is for one more week leader on the market when it comes to the total market cap increase, still, during the previous week there has been significant inflow of funds into major altcoins on the market. BTC increased its total capitalization by $11.8B on a weekly basis, which is an increase of 1.78%. ETH also had a solid performance with a surge of $5.3B in total market cap or 2.48% w/w. During the previous week Solana had an excellent performance, with an increase in its market cap by almost $ 4B, which represents a surge of 29.3% for this coin. XRP had another good week, by managing to increase its cap by additional $3.5B or 11.9% on a weekly basis. When it comes to excellent weekly performance, it should be mentioned ADA, which added more than $ 1B to its cap, which is an increase of 10.3%, and was followed by BNB, which added $1.2B and an increase in cap by 3.5%. Altcoins with good performance in a relative terms were NEO, with surge in cap of 15.3% w/w, Theta was up by more than 12%, same as OMG Network, Uniswap has increased its value by 13.7%, while Polkadot was up by more than 10%. It should be mentioned that only a few coins finished the week in red, like Bitcoin Cash, which was down by 3.55% w/w, Maker lost more than 9% of its value, while DOGE lost 0.7% in value. During the previous week there has been modestly increased activity related to coins in circulation. Miota increased its circulating coins by 0.6%, followed by Filecoin, with an increase of 0.5%. Stellar`s coins were up by 0.3%, while Solana`s coins were higher by 0.2%. Tether should be mentioned, as the coin increased its value and circulating coins by 1.0% on a weekly basis. On the opposite side, few altcoins decreased the number of its circulating coins, where Polkadot`s total coins decreased by 1.1%, Polygon's drop in circulating coins was 0.7%. Crypto futures market Positive market sentiment is still holding with crypto investors, both on spot and futures markets. BTC futures for all maturities were traded higher by more than 2% on a weekly basis. Short term maturities were up 2.75%, with December 2023 ending the week at price of $35.305 on CBOE. Longer term maturities are still holding above the $38K price range, which is very positive for BTC, as investors are pretty confident at this moment regarding the potential for future price increase of the BTC from current levels. Futures maturing in December 2024 ended the week at level of $38.225 or 2.65% higher from the end of the previous week. At the same time, futures maturing in March 2025 ended the week at price $38.925, which supports the sentiment of further rise in the value of BTC. ETH short term futures were traded more than 2% higher on a weekly basis. December 2024 is ending the week at a price $1.859, which is 2.64% higher from the end of the previous week. Same as with BTC, investors are also expecting further increase in value of the ETH, with December 2024 futures ending the week at price of $1.937 or 0.99% higher, while those maturing in March 2025 ended the week at $1.964. Still, what is interesting to note for the price of ETH is that it is still not able to cross the $2K psychological level.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: October 30 – November 5Last week in the news The US stock market continued with its correction cycle, losing 10% from its peak in July this year. The ECB left rates unchanged, as expected, but it did not help EU stocks to gain during the previous week. At the same time, Bitcoin reached its resistance level at $35K, amid news on a potential approval of the first ETF. For the second week in a row Gold lost its correlation with USD, and was traded higher, due to geopolitical risks. In short, it was the second week in a row on financial markets with challenging earning aspects. After straight ten consecutive rate hikes, the ECB left its benchmark interest rates on hold during the previous week. Its key rate remained at 4%, the level at which ECB hopes the inflation will slowly return back to its 2% target. The ECB Council members have confirmed their expectations for mid-term inflation expectations of 2.1%. Although there has been no news with respect to the future economic moves, rhetoric of the ECB modestly differed from their colleagues in the US. Namely, as the Fed narrative for interest rates is “higher for longer”, the ECB is speaking the same narrative, but for inflation. On the opposite side, the ECB did not make comments regarding potential for rate cuts in the future period, considering that the inflation forecast for this year still stands at 5.6% and 3.2% during the course of the next year. At the same time, economists are concerned over EU economic growth, where rate cuts might come sooner, in order to support an economy which is on the downturn. Fed`s favorite inflation gauge, PCE Index was left unchanged in September at 3.4% and core PCE at 3.7%. Posted figures for GDP growth in Q3 surprised markets, by reaching 4.9%, higher from market expectation of 4.3%. Although the US economy looks in good shape at the first sight, still, there have been several discussions during the previous week concerning deterioration in consumer spending. Namely, analysts are warning that consumer figures look strong, but at the same time, the household savings ratio has decreased, while during the last three months, the real income of the US households has been negative. There is an increasing number of both economists and analysts who are actually concerned about the real outlook for the US economy in the coming year. The Bank of England is preparing for introduction of the central bank digital currency in the future period. It was the reason why they left the CBDC consultation paper on public discussion, after which, they received more than 50.000 responses. Still the majority of responses were related to concerns regarding safety of the digital currencies, following its programmability while a significant majority of participants were concerned over the decline in cash. The BoE did not bring a formal decision over introduction of the CBDC, nor did they have defined a deadline for such a move. Crypto market cap To be or not to be an ETF is the major topic on the crypto market during the last two weeks. Regardless of any other economic or political developments, the crypto market is currently following its own story. During the previous week capital inflow into the crypto market continued, however, strong push to the upside was supported by significant levels of both margin calls on derivative markets, as well as re-positioning on the options market. The odds for the approval of the first BTC ETF are increased by market participants; however, it should be considered that the last word will be by the SEC. Although the SEC postponed the decision on the approval of ETF filings from several big names in the financial industry for the end of October, it should be acknowledged that SEC might do this again or, in the final case, reject all these filings. Risks for the crypto market are still very high. Still market sentiment or speculation is hard to avoid in situations like this, so the price of the crypto assets might continue with high volatility in the coming week(s). Total crypto market capitalization was increased by 11.5% during the previous week, adding $127B to its cap. Most of these funds are coming from BTC and ETH. Daily trading volumes were also increased compared to the week before, ranging around $60B on a daily basis, from $55B traded a week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 63%, where it has added total $477B to the market cap. Another week ended in green for the majority of crypto coins. BTC continues to be the most traded coin, which added $85.6B to the total market cap of the crypto market, increasing its value by more than 14% on a weekly basis. BTC was followed by ETH, which managed to gain market optimism and increase its market cap by additional $22B or more than 11% on a weekly basis. During the previous week BNB managed to get back in the crypto game, adding $2.15B to its market cap, increasing it by 6.6%. XRP also had another positive week, with a surge in the market cap by $1.7B or more than 6%. Other coins with good performance during the week were LINK, with an increase in cap by $1.7B or 38.4%, DOGE gained additional $1.2B or 13.8%, ADA was up by $1.28B or more than 14%, while Solana gained $1.3B or 11% on a weekly basis. Another coin that should be mentioned in relation to its performance was NEO, with an increase in value of 35%, OMG Network surged by 17%, while Filecoin was up by almost 13%. Majority of other altcoins gained during the week. Considering coins in circulation, the highest weekly inflow had Solana, with an increase of 0.6%. Tether is also gradually building its circulating coins, adding another 0.5% to it during the previous week. Polkadot and Filecoin also added 0.3%, while several other altcoins have increased their circulating coins by 0.1% w/w. Crypto futures market Based solely on crypto derivative markets, it seems that investors' positive sentiment for crypto currencies is back on the market. During the previous week both BTC and ETH futures gained significantly compared to prices from the end of the previous week. BTC futures maturing in December this year were traded higher by 13.8%, reaching the price of $34.360. At the same time, longer term futures were traded above 18% higher from the week before, where December 2024 ended the week at level of $37.240. This was a huge move for BTC, as the market was struggling for a long time to sustain the price of $30K for this maturity. ETH futures also managed to finish the week with a positive investor sentiment. ETH futures maturing in December this year were last traded higher by 11.7% on a weekly basis, ending the week at level of $1.811. At the same time, futures maturing in December next year finished the week at level of $1.918 or more than 14% higher from the week before. It should be noted that futures maturing in March 2025 ended the week at price $1.945, which indicates current market sentiment with expectation for the price of ETH to continue to move to the higher ground in the years to come.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: October 23 – 29Last week in the news Geopolitical risks and Fed`s mimicking to the markets are continuing to shape the sentiment of investors. The US 10Y Treasury yields reached 5% for the first time since 2007, US equity markets were traded lower, while Gold is traded near $2K. The crypto market also had a positive week, with Bitcoin headed back toward $30K. It was a week full of news and surprising developments on financial markets. Fed Chair Powell gave a speech to the Economic Club of New York on Thursday. He noted that the road to bringing inflation down to 2% will be “bumpy” and that currently nobody knows exact timing when this goal will be reached, but Fed officials will stay on the course of achieving their goals. He also did not provide indication that FOMC is necessarily pushing for higher interest rates from current levels. After his speech, the market changed sentiment, decreasing the probability of another rate hike during the course of this year. However, Powell once again noted that a fight with inflation will mean that economic growth and the labor market would have to slow down in the coming period. At the same time, he refused to comment on the potential for rate cuts at this moment. Bicoin topped $30K for one more time at Friday`s trading session, amid increased investor`s confidence that the first BTC ETF might be approved by SEC as of the end of October. These assumptions were fueled by a comment from Coinbase Chief legal officer Paul Grewal, in a comment to CNBC. His rationale was “I`m quite hopeful that these (ETF) applications will be granted, if only because they should be granted under the law”. Although analysts are not sure if this will be the proper reason for SEC to approve first BTC ETF, still, markets are increasing probability of approval of filings of few big names in the financial industry, as well as, that SEC did not appeal the ruling in the Grayscale`s case. JPMorgan also issued a report on this topic, expressing their positive opinion on the possibility that the BTC ETF will be approved. Their deadline is set for 21st January next year, as this is the last date when application of Ark21Shares should be approved or dismissed. The rationale that JPMorgan is stressing in this case is that SEC would rather approve several applications at once, instead of providing market advantage to any specific fund. After receiving a $42.5 million fine from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2021, backed by allegations that USDT is not fully backed by USD, Tether announced that the company will publicly disclose data on its reserves backing USDT, starting from 2024. In its latest report, the company was holding $3.3 billion in excess reserves. Crypto market cap News about potential for the approval of the first BTC exchange traded fund are emerging as many investors and market practitioners are heating the market with their optimism. Even Larry Fink, the CEO of the BlackRock commented first BTC rally toward $30K after the fake news about ETF approval as “example of the pent-up interest in crypto”. The crypto market is for some time set for approval or disapproval of the ETF and only pending is final resolution. For some time in the past, the crypto market was traded sideways, waiting for the final SECs resolution. In case that an ETF is approved, this is going to be a huge milestone for the crypto market, with expectation that significant funds currently sitting on money market funds will be transferred to the crypto market. Estimates differ, depending on an analyst, but one thing is for sure and that is that the positive outcome of ETF filings by several large names in the financial industry, will certainly bring a lot of funds back into the crypto market. During the previous week total crypto market capitalization increased by more than 7%, adding $75B to its market cap. Daily trading volumes were increased to the level of $55B on a daily basis, compared to $ 41B traded during the previous week. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 46%, where it has added total $350B to the market cap. Almost all coins gained during the previous week. Of course, BTC is the coin that will gain the most from the ETF approval, in which sense, the value of BTC increased the most during the week, adding $56B to its total market cap, which is a significant increase of more than 10% on a weekly basis. ETH also had a relatively good week, with an increase in market cap by $ 6B or more than 3% w/w. XRP was also in the group of significant gainers, with a surge in capitalization of $1.5B or 6%. During the previous week Solana had an excellent performance, where it added around $2.9B to its market capitalization, which is an increase of 31.4%. Following a surge in BTC value, Bitcoin Gold managed to increase its value by 13%, while Bitcoin Cash was up by 11.3%. Few other coins with relatively good performance during the week were LINK, which was up by 10%, while IOTA and Polygon increased their market value by more than 7% both. There have been significant developments with circulating coins also. It seems that the majority of stake coins are slowly getting back on the market. The highest weekly movement had IOTA, with a surge in circulating coins of 7.2% on a weekly basis. Uniswap`s circulating coins were increased by 1.9%, while Polkadot managed to increase its coins by 1.5%. It also seems that Tether is getting back in the crypto game, as coin managed to increase its coins by 0.7%, which has not been seen for several months now. Majority of other coins gained at least 0.1% of new coins in circulation. This trend shows that the crypto market is slowly waking up, after the last two months of quiet movements. Crypto futures market Strong shifts on the spot market made an impact on the crypto futures market. Both BTC and ETH futures were traded higher during the week, for all maturities. BTC short term futures were traded higher by some 10%, while long term ones were traded above 7% higher from the end of the week before. BTC futures maturing in December this year ended the week at level of $30.190 or for 10% higher, while those maturing in December next year were up by 7.6%, ending the week at level $31.525. This is positive for the BTC, as investors are expecting the price of BTC to hold above $30K after eight straight weeks traded below this level. ETH futures gained a bit less from BTC futures, but it was generally a positive week for ETH. Futures maturing in December this year gained the most from all other maturities, ending the week at level of $1.620 or 4.3% higher than the week before. Futures maturing in December 2024 ended the week at level $1.681 or 2.3% higher from the week before. It is interesting that there has not been enough market interest for these ETH maturities, so the price is still holding below $1.7K, for the second week in a row.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: October 16 – 22Last week in the news Increased geopolitical tensions in the Middle-East impact some volatility on financial markets, as they represent concerning events for investors around the globe. The US equity markets finished the week in green supported by the US economic data. Treasuries have eased due to the same reason, while the crypto market continues with its side trading. Bitcoin ended the week above $26K, while Ether is still holding above $1.5K. The FOMC meeting Minutes were released during the previous week. Question whether interest rates should be further increased was sort of conflicting for FOMC members, but the unique opinion was that they should stay elevated until Fed officials are convinced that the inflation is clearly on its way to reach 2%. The FOMC members also noted the resiliency of the US economy, still, citing several risks, including the slowdown in growth and potential short-time inflation reversal. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held a meeting during the previous week in Morocco. Few conclusions from this meeting were related to the world economic outlook, which has been revised from 3.5% to 3% for this year and 2.9% for 2024. They are also expecting for global inflation to slow down to 5.8%, where central bankers around the world expressed readiness to end further increase of their reference interest rates. As the main challenges for global growth in the coming year, the IMF and the WB officials see higher policy rates, strong US dollar and geopolitical issues. The car company Ferrari announced last week that it will start accepting crypto currencies from its customers for luxury car payments. This service will initially be available for clients in the US, but the plan is to extend this service also to EU clients. The rationale for such a decision, Ferrari officials are noting that a significant number of their clients have invested into crypto currencies, and the company is willing to provide them an option to purchase their favorite cars through payments in crypto currencies. At the initial stage, Ferrari will accept bitcoin, ether and USDC, and will not charge any additional fees for payments in crypto currencies. Through the company Bitpay, coins will immediately be transferred into traditional currency, in which way, Ferrari will not carry any risk originating from coins volatility. The crypto market nervousness regarding the first BTC ETF is heating up. News regarding SEC moves around potential approval or disapproval of fillings for both BTC and ETH ETF funds is closely watched by the market, and impact significantly BTC`s price. During the previous week, BTC sharply reacted to news that the SEC will not react to the court's reversal of SEC`s decision by which SEC did not approve company Grayscale to convert its trust funds into an exchange traded fund, as reported by the Condesk. The deadline for SEC`s appeal was until the end of Friday. Crypto market cap The latest information provided by the Fed officials from September`s FOMC meeting seems finally fully priced by financial markets. At the same time, the released inflation rate for the US for September showed modest movement to the upside of 0.1% on a yearly basis, to the level of 3.7%. While the US equity market showed some positive sentiment during the previous week, and Treasuries relaxed yields, still, the crypto market remained on its old course of side trading. What the market is expecting for some time is the resolution of several fillings for the first spot BTC exchange traded fund, where even big players like BlackRock filed for. The time for SEC`s response was postponed till the end of October, which should occur within the next week or two. Until its final resolution, the crypto market might continue with side trading. Total crypto market capitalization decreased by $ 41B during the previous week, which is a total drop of 3.8%. Daily trading volumes remained relatively flat compared to the week before, moving around $ 43B on a daily basis. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 36%, where it has added total $275B to the market cap. Major coins on the market were the ones that made a negative impact of $ 41B drop in total market capitalization, although the majority of altcoins finished the week in red. Bitcoin made a significant drop of $21B or 3.85% of its value compared to the end of the previous week. ETH was following BTC on its negative path with a loss of $ 10B or 5.05% in value. XRP was another major coin which made a higher loss in value of almost $ 2B or 6.8% in value on a weekly basis. BNB made a lower loss of $0.89B or 2.7% of its value. Among altcoins with a higher loss in relative terms were Polygon, which dropped by 8.7%, Polkadot was down by almost 8%, Bitcoin Cash was down by 6.2% and ZCash dropped by 6.8%. As for coins in circulation, there have been changes with several coins which added around 0.1%, except for Filecoin, which added 0.6% of new coins in circulation, while Solana added 0.5% of new coins. Algorand and Polkadot increased their circulating coins by 0.2% both. Crypto futures market Crypto futures for both BTC and ETH were following developments on the spot market during the previous week, dragging prices of both long and short futures further to the downside. BTC short term futures ended the week around 4% lower from the week before, with December 2023 ending the week at level of $27.435 or 3.72% lower from the week before. Longer term futures were last traded around 3% lower. Futures maturing in December 2024 were traded again a bit below $30K for the first time after two weeks holding above $30K. December 2024 ended the week at a price of $29.295 or 2.95% lower from the week before. ETH futures were also trading in red compared to the week before, but with some interesting developments. Namely, futures from October till December this year ended the week at the same price of $1.555. Never before had there been such developments on the ETH futures market, which points to investors' current insecurity regarding the future course of ETH`s price. At the same time, almost all maturities were traded between 5% to 6% lower from the week before. Futures maturing in December next year ended the week below $1.7K level, at price $1.642 or 5.41% lower from the week before.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: October 9 – 15Last week in the news The market star of the previous week were US Treasury bonds, which continued with drop in prices, reaching 16 year lows, in an aim to adjust to the new Fed narrative. Equities were trying to adjust to this new sentiment on bonds, but still finished the week in green territory. The crypto market continues to be side traded, while gold was adjusting to new US Dollar highs. This could be a short summary of the previous week on financial markets. The US equity markets reacted positively on posted jobs figures on Friday, although, not all analysts are of the same opinion regarding the reason for this increase. The unemployment rate remained flat at 3.8% in September, although the markets were expecting to see 3.7%. At the same time, non-farm payrolls were significantly above market estimates of 170K, reaching a figure of 336K new jobs in September. Regardless of continuously strong jobs data, wage increases slowed down a bit in September, providing some relaxation to market participants that the effect of the job market on inflation will not be significant. Average hourly earnings were up by 0.2% in September, standing at 4.2% on a yearly basis. On the other side are several analysts who are noting that Friday`s surge in equity markets is a result of its heavy oversold side during September, as well as, a modest easing in US Treasury yields. Fed`s Governor Michelle Bowman, noted her standing that interest rates should be increased further on next FOMC meeting. She repeated this on Connecticut Bankers Association during the previous week. She also commented on Friday`s job figures as “solid”. As per CME Group`s tracker, market participants are currently anticipating 43% probability that the Fed will increase rates before the end of this year. FundStart, a company specialized in analysis, posted a report which revealed that the venture capital funding for projects within the crypto industry dropped by 75% on a yearly basis in Q3 this year. This also represents a six consecutive quarterly drop within this area. Tokenized US Treasury bonds will be offered on the Coinbase exchange. This was announced by Backed Finance, a Switzerland based company, which specializes in asset tokenization. Since this product is issued under Switzerland`s tokenized securities law, it could be offered only to companies which follow the know-your-customer and anti-money laundering rules. The tokenization businesses are gaining in popularity, and could reach a market capitalization of $16 trillion in 2030, as noted by the Boston Consulting Group report. Crypto market cap The US Treasury bonds were the ones that collected market attention during the previous week. Their drop in prices intensified after the latest FOMC meeting, where Fed Chair Powell introduced a new Fed`s narrative called “higher for longer”. The stronger adjustment to this new narrative was conducted during the previous week, where the 10Y US Treasury benchmark rate reached the highest level at 4.88%. While equities were also moving within a correction path, still, on Friday they managed to make a bit of an upside move, during the easing of Treasury yields uptrend. During this period, the crypto market remained short at a side of investors interest, ending the week relatively flat, with a modest increase of total crypto market capitalization of 1.3% on a weekly basis, adding total $ 14B to the market cap. Daily trading volumes are still relatively low and were moving around $ 41B during the previous week, a modest drop from $56B traded a week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 42%, where it has added total $316B to the market cap. Bitcoin was the one that drove a market cap up $ 14B during the previous week. BTC added a total of $18.4B to its cap, or around 3.5%. Other coins were traded in a mixed manner. Ether finished the week in red, losing 2.5% on a weekly basis, or around $5B. Coins with solid performance during the week were Solana, which increased its market cap by 8.6%, Polygon also managed to increase its value by 6.6%, while Monero was up by 4.4% on a weekly basis. Bitcoin Gold also gained during the week, adding a little bit less than 4% to its market cap. Coins which finished the week in red were LINK, with a drop in value of 7.7%, DASH was down by 6.2%, Theta lost 4.6%, while Ethereum Classic decreased its value by 5.9%. There have also been some movements within circulating coins. Algorand gained the most coins in circulation during the previous week, increasing it by 1%, and was followed by Filecoin, with an increase of 0.7%, and Solana by 0.3%. At the same time, Polkadot decreased its circulating coins by 0.2%. Crypto futures market The crypto futures market was following developments on the spot market during the previous week. BTC short term futures were last traded higher around 4%, while longer term ones were traded relatively flat. BTC futures maturing in December this year ended the week at price $28.495 or 4.42% higher from previous week`s close. There has not been much change with prices of futures maturing in December next week, as they were closed at $30.185 or 0.12% higher on a weekly basis. It is positive for BTC that it managed to hold a price above $30K for the year ahead. Opposite to BTC, ETH` short term futures were traded between 1.4% and 3.3% lower from the week before. Futures maturing in December this year closed the week at price $1.634 or 3.37% lower on a weekly basis. Those futures maturing in December next year were down by 3.07% and were last traded at price $1.736. Positive for ETH is that those futures are still managing to hold prices above $1.7K for the four weeks.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
1
MARKETS week ahead: October 2 – 8Last week in the news “Higher for longer” continued to shape investors sentiment, ending September in losses. During the last trading week of the month, equity markets both in the EU and the US continued with correction, while US Treasury yields continued to be elevated, reaching higher levels from the 2008 financial crisis. The S&P 500 finished the month some 4.7% lower. The crypto market gained some 2.4% on a weekly basis, but still with fragile strength to sustain higher grounds. Although the general sentiment on financial markets is pretty negative during the last period, the investors are continuing to closely monitor inflation developments, anticipating the next Fed`s move. During the previous week, the Fed`s favorite inflation indicator was published, posting the core personal consumption expenditures price index to 0.1% in August, lower from market expectation of 0.2%. At the same time, core PCE on a yearly basis was down to 3.9% in August from 4.3% posted for July. This was a small positive sign for market participants that inflation is indeed slowing down and that measures imposed by the Fed in the previous period are giving the results. Based on the latest report, markets are currently giving only 15% probability for a potential rate increase at November`s FOMC meeting. In line with the US inflation gauges, inflation in the Euro Area also seems to slow down. As per published data, the inflation in the EU fell to the level of 4.3% on a yearly basis in September, although the markets were expecting to see the figure of 4.5%. Although core inflation reached 4.5% y/y, it was still a significant drop from 5.3% posted for August. August inflation figures are at its lowest levels since October 2021. Based on the latest ECB projections it could be expected for inflation to fall down to 3.2% next year, and finally reach targeted 2% in 2025. The ECB is also following Fed`s rhetoric of “higher for longer” interest rates. JPMorgan Chase decided to block their crypto-related operations in the U.K. over concerns on the “rise in frauds” related to the crypto assets. Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong criticized such action of JPMorgan and other banks which took the same course in the UK when it comes to their crypto related businesses, strongly disagreeing with a decision to de-platform the whole crypto industry. Instead, he is noting that regulators should be the ones to make a decision on what is allowed and what is not on the market, and not banks. Ripple announced that the company is discontinuing its initial intention to purchase a chartered trust company Fortress Trust, based in Nevada. As announced at the company, Ripple will continue to be an investor in this company. Although there has not been officially noted the reason for such a decision, the market speculates that it might be due to the recent theft occurred at Fortress Trust, totalling around $15 million, due to “unnamed third-party vendor, that had fallen victim to a phishing attack”, as Coindesk reported. Crypto market cap Markets are continuing to digest the “higher for longer” rhetoric from FED during its September`s monetary meeting. Investors continue to be focused on inflation figures in a hope that the Fed will skip further rate hikes for this year. As per current CME questionnaire, market has lowered expectations for another rate hike at November's FOMC meeting, but still, surprises by Fed officials are possible, especially after Fed Chair Powell`s announcement that there will be yet another rate hike till the end of this year. After that, the US interest rates will continue to be elevated through the course of the next year. But even with these elevated interest rates, the Fed is not expecting to reach its 2% inflation target until year 2025. It seems that monetary authorities are ready to accept generally changed global economic circumstances where increased inflation becomes a part of the economic reality. Although US equities and Treasuries lost in value during the previous week, the crypto market gained from investors' slowly emerging appetite for riskier assets in anticipation of higher returns for this year. Total crypto market capitalization has increased by 2.3% during the week, adding total $24B to its market cap. Daily trading volumes were modestly increased to $56B on a daily basis, from FWB:33B traded a week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year reached a level of 40%, where it has added a total $302B to the market cap. It was a generally positive week for crypto coins, where the majority of them gained in value. BTC and ETH were major coins with highest participation in total crypto market cap increase during the previous week. BTC gained $8.8B on a weekly basis or 1.70%. The winner of the week was ETH, with a gain of $10.8B or 5.65% increase within a single week. BNB could also be mentioned as a significant gainer in nominal terms, as this coin managed to add $0.85B to its total value, which represents a 2.6% increase for this coin. There have been several coins with solid gains in relative terms, like Maker with a surge in value of 18.4%, LINK was up by 15.8%, Bitcoin Cash was up by 13.3%, OMG Network gained 12.7% w/w. There have been only a few losers during the week, with relatively smaller drop in price like NEO, with a drop in value of almost 2%, Stellar was down by 1% while Polkadot lost 1.75% on a weekly basis. There has been modest movements in circulating coins for several currencies, where Polkadot lost 3.8% of its coins in circulation while Filecoin added 0.4% new coins. Crypto futures market The crypto futures market was holding a positive sentiment during the previous week. Both BTC and ETH futures were traded at higher grounds from the end of the previous week. BTC short term futures were traded some 1.5% higher from the week before, and in line with developments on the spot market. Futures maturing in December this year ended the week at price $27.290 or 0.7% higher, while December 2024 managed to return to the levels above $30K as of the end of the previous week. ETH short term futures were traded around 4.6% higher on a weekly basis, but still lower from the spot market. December this year ended the week at a price $1.691 or 4.9% higher from the end of the previous week. At the same time, longer term futures prices were increased by more than 4%, with December 2024 ending the week at price $1.791. Regardless of the developments on the spot market, investors are still holding precaution when ETH future prices are in question.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: Sept 25 - Oct 1Last week in the news Soft landing, hard landing or no-landing is the pending question among market participants after the FOMC meeting held on Wednesday. Markets are never happy with uncertainty, which brought some increased volatility on US markets. After Fed Chair Powell's speech, Treasury yields reached their highest levels since 2007, equity markets sharply fell, while Bitcoin followed the drop on the stronger US dollar. The FOMC meeting was held on Wednesday where the Fed left rates unchanged, still, leaving some space for another rate hike till the end of this year. Fed Chair Powell delivered an after-meeting speech where he pointed toward the higher-for-longer interest rate levels. One of the important notes from this meeting is expectations from the Fed to cut rates during the next year. Gross domestic product was sharply revised to the level of 2.1% for this year, but is expected to fall during the next year. Markets immediately priced the new Fed`s standing of higher-for-longer rates, where Treasury yields were significantly elevated and the US stock markets fell sharply during the Chair Powell's speech. Another topic that spotted investors interest during the previous week was Japanese yen weakening against the US dollar. As per analysis from JPMorgan experts, a further yen weakening might influence the Government of Japan to increase interest rates, which could further spark the repatriation of Japan's capital kept in the foreign markets. As per analysts, such an event might further increase volatilities across the US markets. The Bank of Japan is still holding short term interest rates at a negative territory, at level of -0.1%, while 10Y Government bond continues to yield around zero. JPMorgan analysts commented on Ethereum in their latest research report published on Thursday. As per their opinion, Ethereum`s Shanghai upgrade, which was implemented in April, did not provide expected results. The activity on this network modestly dropped during the last few months, while they presented the result of a 12% decrease in daily transactions since the Shanghai upgrade was implemented. At the same time, several other analysts are noting that there is a general drop in activity on the crypto market, hence, it does not mean that the drop in activity on Ethereum network is necessarily a consequence of the Shanghai upgrade. Binance Holdings and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao have filed a request to the US court to officially dismiss a lawsuit made by the US Security and Exchange Commission. The basis for such a claim is that the SEC overstepped its authority through this lawsuit, considering that there is still no clear guidelines on how crypto companies should comply with the law in the US while the SEC should not impose any further guidelines retroactively, as they are trying to do in the case of Binance Exchange. Crypto market cap The pivotal event of the previous week was certainly the FOMC meeting. Fed officials changed rhetoric a bit, as well as projections for the next two years. Although they left the interest rate unchanged at this meeting, still, based on their projections, there is still room for rates to be increased until the end of this year. The Fed`s pivotal point should be expected somewhere during the next year, when they will start slowly with interest rate decrease. Expectations on the growth of the US economy for this year are revised up to the level of 2.1%, with a decrease in the year ahead. Also, the unemployment rate is expected to reach its highest level around 4.1% during the next year. The economists are quite divided on such projections, noting that the latest Fed`s revised projections would certainly need another revision in the coming period. Anyway, markets did not perceive well what they have heard from Fed Chair Powell, and the downturn on the markets began even during this speech. Bitcoin also followed mainstream`s markets path to the downside, amid stronger US dollar, but overall, the crypto market remained relatively flat. Total crypto market capitalization remained at almost the same level, losing some $2B in value, which represents around 0.2% of its total market cap. Daily trading volumes were again decreased, to the daily levels around $ 33B, from $ 43B traded the week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year remained flat at level of 37%, where it has added total $278B to the market cap. Another mixed week on the crypto market. Total market capitalization remained flat week on week, however, there has been some reallocation of funds between coins. Bitcoin had a relatively volatile week, but managed to end it relatively flat, adding 0.11% to its market cap. At the same time, ETH lost $5.5B in value, decreasing its cap by 2.8% w/w. Altcoins with significant increase in value during the week were LINK, with an increase of 13.29% in value followed by Algorand, with an increase of 5.4%. XRP, Theta, ZCash and Solana ended the previous week more than 2% higher from the week before. On the losing side were Miota, with a drop in value of 4.65%, Bitcoin Cash was down by 2.9%, Stellar lost 3.3%, while ADA dropped by 2%. As for coins in circulation, the situation was a bit calmer from the week before, where Polkadot increased its circulating coins by 4.8% w/w, Stellar`s coins were up by 0.6%, while Solana increased coins in circulation by 0.3% same as Filecoin. Crypto futures market The crypto futures market was generally following developments on the spot market during the previous week. Bitcoin short term futures ended the week in a modest green territory, where December 2023 futures were traded 0.67% higher compared to the week before, and ended the week at level $27.095. At the same time, longer term futures were traded some 0.40% lower on a weekly basis. December 2024 ended the week at level $29.640 or 0.45% lower on a weekly basis. ETH futures did not have a good week, as all maturities dropped between 2% and 3% compared to the week before. Short term ETH futures were traded some 2% lower, with December 2023 ending the week at level of $1.612 or even 3.13% lower from the end of the previous week. December 2024. was closed at price $1.712, some 2.93% lower on a weekly basis. ETH`s future prices continue to be negatively perceived by the markets.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: September 11 – 17Last week in the news 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 $7B 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 $2B 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.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: September 4 – 10Last week in the news Equity markets started September in a positive territory, erasing some of the losses incurred during the previous month. Treasury yields slowed down on reported US unemployment figures, while the crypto market was supported by the Grayscale`s lawsuit win against SEC`s after the regulator denied its application for BTC ETF. Bitcoin is ending the week close to $26K, while ETH manages to hold above $1.6K. The crypto market has been supported during the previous week with the news that the US Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Grayscale in its lawsuit against the US Securities and Exchange Commission, after the SEC has denied Grayscale`s application for conversion of company`s Bitcoin Trust into an Exchange Traded Fund. Such a decision is important in a manner that it might support other companies which have filed with SEC for the first BTC ETF, to gain approval. This is at least per market expectations. However, the last word is with the SEC, so it might be too early for higher optimism. As the news was published, BTC surged by more than 7%, while other major coins also gained in value. The US Securities and Exchange Commission delayed to issue a response to all applicants for spot BTC ETF`s, including BlackRock, WisdomTree, VanEck, Valkyrie Digital Assets and others. As per information provided, such a decision could be expected to be brought up in October this year. One of the rationales for such a decision is expectations to have adequate public feedback on applications. Bitcoin dropped more than 4% on this news. The US banks continue to struggle with regulation, opting for their survival of current unfavorable economic conditions. In their latest call to regional banks, the US regulators unveiled plans by which regional banks, with at least $100 billion in assets, will be forced to increase their capital through debt issuance in order to strengthen their position. The aim of such a decision is to protect depositors in case of some further difficulties faced by banks in the US. Analysts perceive such a government move as a negative, considering that it is going to increase costs of conducting business for banks, which are already struggling to sustain their profitability and capital levels. Paolo Gentiloni, the European Commissioner for economic affairs, requested CNBC journalists not to call the current state of the EU economy a “recession”. He rather preferred the wording of “double crisis”. The double crisis refers to geopolitical impact and “subsequent economic hit” to the EU. As per IMF estimate, the Euro Zone ended 2022 with GDP growth of 3.5%, while expected GDP for this year would account to 0.8% and 1.4% in 2024. At the same time Gentiloni is certain that the Euro Area can avoid a recession. Crypto market cap Previous week was a bit volatile for the crypto market considering two important news which hit the market. Both were related to the probability for the first spot BTC Exchange Traded Fund to see the light of the day. First the market was thrilled with the court decision which ruled out in favor of Grayscale, a leading crypto asset management fund, in its lawsuit against SEC for denying the company to convert its Bitcoin Trust into an Exchange Traded Fund. The market perceived positively such a court decision, increasing the probability that the SEC might finally approve the first spot BTC ETF. However, the optimism was soon reverted by the SEC`s decision to postpone the response to all applicants for spot BTC ETF for October this year. Currently the waiting list includes names like BlackRock, WisdomTree, VanEck, Valkyrie Digital Assets and others. On this news, almost all previous gains on the crypto market were erased. Total crypto market capitalization remained flat for another week in a row. Compared to the week before, total market cap was down by $5B, ending the week at a level of $1.025 trillion. Daily trading volumes increased a bit during the week, moving around $60B on a daily basis. This was an increase in volumes from previous week`s $43B. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year remained flat at level of 36%, where it has added total $269B to the market cap. Crypto coins were traded in a mixed manner during the week. Major coins were mostly on a losing side, while several altcoins had quite a good performance. BTC lost $2B in value or 0.43%, while ETH was down by 0.6% losing more than $1B in value. XRP also finished the week in red, down by $1B or 4.2% w/w. Among other altcoins some of the highest drops in value were with Stellar, which was down by more than 7%, Uniswap dropped by 4.5%, Solana was down by 3.2%. There have been several altcoins with relatively good performance, like Bitcoin Cash, who managed to increase its market cap by 5.15% w/w. IOTA was up by an incredible 9.7%, OMG Network also had a good week with an increase in value of 8.3%. The winner of the week was Maker, which managed to surge by 12% in a single week. As for coins in circulation there has not been significant changes, except for Polkadot, which increased its circulating coins by 5.7% on a weekly basis. Filecoin`s circulating coins were up by 0.5%, while Stellar and Solana also had an increase of coins in circulation by 0.2% both. Crypto futures market The crypto futures market has stabilized a bit during the previous week, after a strong downtrend in futures prices since three weeks ago. Short term BTC futures were traded around 2% lower from the end of the week before, while long term futures remained relatively flat on a weekly basis. Futures maturing in December this year, ended the week at price $26.655 without significant change from the previous week. At the same time, December 2024 was last traded at price $29.285, also without significant change on a weekly basis. ETH short term futures were traded down by 1.5% on average, while there has not been significant changes in prices for longer term futures on a weekly basis. December 2023 ended the week at $1.666, down by 1% from the previous week, while December 2024 was last traded at $1.800, almost flat from the week before.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
Markets week ahead: August 28 - September 3Last week in the news Major weekly event, a Fed Chair speech at the Jackson Hole on Friday left the markets relatively volatile, as well as the US Treasury yields. At the same time the crypto market was traded in a flat mode. Bitcoin is ending the week around $26K, while Ether manages to hold above $1.6K. Major event during the previous week was the Jackson Hall symposium, and speech of Fed Chair Powell as of the end of the conference. The markets were waiting for his speech with high interest, considering many opposite standing points of both analysts and economists in the US whether the country will be able to avoid a recession in the coming period and if the Fed will start to cut interest rates somewhere at the beginning of the year ahead. Fed Chair Powell stressed that the ultimate goal of Fed's policy is bringing inflation down to 2% target and that the Fed might increase interest rates to the higher levels if inflation remains persistent. The policy will remain restrictive “until inflation sustainably slowing”. Since some progress has been made, the Fed will proceed carefully but flexibly from this moment. Negative news for Binance continues as Mastercard decided to end its partnership with this company, and will no longer offer cards in Latin America and the Middle East for Binance-brand. Binance's card issuer in Europe was Visa, however, this company also ended the business relationship with Binance during July. As per publicly available information, the rationale for such decisions is currently ongoing regulatory scrutiny of Binance in both the EU and the US. The company noted that only a small portion of its users will be affected by this decision, as customers are usually using Binance Pay, a “ borderless and secure cryptocurrency payment technology designed by Binance''. The U.S. Treasury department finally proposed amendments to the tax law, by which, crypto brokers will be differentiated from the traditional brokerage companies. The new amendments also address the question regarding user’s personal data, which these companies should gather. Namely, based on the proposal, crypto companies will declare their tax obligation on a new form – called 1099-DA. Miners are excluded from this new form. Amendments are currently open for a public view and discussion, while its final adoption could be expected by the end of this year. The Monetary Authority of Hong Kong will further explore possibilities of the bond market tokenization. This decision comes after the Government issued $100 million of tokenized green bonds in February this year. Their aim is to dig further into potential for increasing efficiency, liquidity and transparency of the bond market. Crypto market cap After the final break to the downside two weeks ago, the crypto market remained relatively quiet, in anticipation of the Fed Chair Powell speech at the Jackson Hall conference. Generally, markets did not hear anything new from his speech; however, it brought some modest optimism to the equity markets. The bottom line is that there is still a way to go when it comes to inflation, and the Fed might increase interest rates even higher if inflation remains persistent. The crypto market remained relatively flat during the week. Total crypto market capitalization was increased by modest $1B, actually, without much change from the week before. Daily trading volumes modestly increased to the level of SGX:43B on a daily basis, from $35B the week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year remained flat at level of 36%, where it has added total $274B to the market cap. Crypto coins were traded relatively flat during the week, with modest movements in prices of coins. There were almost equal numbers of coins that finished the week on a positive and negative side. BTC managed to gain $2.5B in its market cap, which is an increase of 0.5% on a weekly basis. ETH was shiny down by $1.1B or 0.5%. XRP was one of the major winning coins during the week, with an increase in market cap of $1B or 4%. Few other coins with relatively solid performance on a weekly basis were Tron, with a gain of 4.85%, Miota was up by 2.5% and Litecoin with a modest surge of 2.1%. Several coins finished the week in red, like Filecoin, which was down by 7.7%, Uniswap lost 6.7% in its market cap and Solana decreased its value by 6.5%. As for coins in circulation, there also has not been too much change. Tron was the one coin whose coins in circulation were down by 0.1%, while Polkadot increased the number of its coins in circulation by 0.2%. Crypto futures market Although the crypto spot market remained relatively flat during the week, the crypto futures market went through some changes in investors long term perception for both BTC and ETH futures. Analysts from JPMorgan were commenting on current open interest on the crypto derivative markets and noted that current unwind of long positions can be perceived as they are in the end phase. “As a result we see limited downside for crypto markets over the near term”, as noted by a JPMorgan analyst. If that is the case, then traders might hope that September will be a better month for cryptos, than it was August. BTC short term futures ended the week down around 1% on average, but the longer term ones suffered a huge drop of around 7% on a weekly basis. During the first part of August and major downturn, BTC long term futures were holding pretty steady, however, this is the first week when December 2024 dropped below $30K levels, ending the week at price of $29.145. At the same time, futures maturing in December this year were last traded at $26.730, or 0.63% lower from the week before. With ETH futures the situation is a bit different, considering that almost all maturities dropped by more than 5% on a weekly basis. Futures maturing in December 2024 were last traded at price $1.793 or 5.13% lower from the week before, while those maturing in December this year were also down by 5.30% ending the week at price $1.684.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: August 21 – 27Last week in the news China is evidently slowing down, while Fed's meeting minutes revealed the possibility for interest rates to move even higher from currently expected levels. Negative sentiment continues to prevail on financial markets. Both EU and US equities continued their negative trend for the third week in a row, while US Treasuries continue to rise. Bitcoin had the worst week since May this year, followed by other crypto coins. Markets are clearly revisiting their optimism from the beginning of this year. China's housing market is passing through difficult times. During the previous week markets were hit by a series of negative news related to some Chinese big players within this industry. One of the largest real estate companies, Country Garden, defaulted on its bond payments on Monday. On the other side, by far the largest real estate company in China, Evergrande, registered in the US, filed for protection under the bankruptcy law in the US. The company was previously in trouble, trying to save the business through restructuring, but it failed to find supporting funds for that mission. Further destiny of the company is currently unknown. Another important event which made an impact on market sentiment was a release of FOMC meeting minutes from its meeting held in July. One of the concerns expressed at this meeting was the possibility that more rate hikes will be necessary in the future period in order to fight inflation. Several FOMC members were concerned that a tight job market could support further increase in inflation, which would require more rate hikes. Markets were holding to previous Fed Chair Powell's statement over possible two rate hikes till the end of this year. Since the Fed increased rates in July, markets were expecting another one in September through December. However, minutes revealed something on which markets were not prepared, and that is the possibility for further rate hikes, which made them reassess their economic growth prospectus for the next year. Minutes mentioned another important topic, which is related to FOMC members' concern over the issues in commercial real estate and problems which they can cause to some banks and financial institutions. The market reaction was that both the equities and crypto market lost in value during the week, while Treasury yields surged. Coinbase announced that the company gained the regulatory approval from National Futures Association to offer crypto future products to US customers. The company also noted that it filed an application for this product in 2021. This approval refers to only federally regulated futures. News was perceived positively by the markets, as shares of Coinbase gained 5% after the announcement. Although CBDC`s are still not officially launched, many companies are preparing for this moment, and trying to create full ecosystems around CBDC`s. One of the world’s largest payment and cards companies, Mastercard, organized a forum related to this topic, including some of the well-known names from the crypto industry, including Ripple, Fireblocks and Consensys. At this moment, their program partnership includes only discussions on innovation drives and efficiencies, however, it could be easily expanded in the future. Crypto market cap Final break to the downside occurred on the crypto market during the previous week. There are two major reasons which supported negative market sentiment. On the one side are published FOMC meeting minutes which revealed concerns of some FOMC members that more rate hikes will be necessary in the coming months / year in order to cope with inflation. There is also expressed concern over issues in commercial real estate which can bring potential negative consequences to some banks and financial institutions. At the same time, China's real estate market exposed some huge concerns, when big real estate company Country Garden defaulted on part of its bond payments, while the biggest player in this field, company Evergrande, filed for protection under the US bankruptcy law. Economists called such developments “a perfect storm” for financial markets. Not only that crypto market lost a significant portion of its value within a week, but was also followed by US equity markets. Total crypto market capitalization decreased during the week by 9%, losing a total $107B. Daily trading volumes almost doubled during the week, trading around $65B on a daily basis, from $35B during the week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 36%, where it has added total $273B to the market cap. All coins lost during the previous week, however, drop in value of $107B on a weekly basis was driven by major coins, which participated with 89% in this drop. BTC lost FWB:68B or around 12% on a weekly basis, and was followed by ETH, with a drop of $23B or more than 10%. XRP was another coin with a significant drop in value of $6.6B or less than 20%. BNB was down by almost $4B or 10.6%. DOGE decreased its value by 17% or $1.8B in nominal amounts. Both ADA and SOL dropped around $1B losing 9.8% and 11.5% in value respectively. Majority of all other altcoins lost between 10% and 20% in value. As for coins in circulation, Tether managed to lose 0.7% circulating coins in a single week, which is not recently seen on the market. At the same time, Solana increased its circulating coins by 0.4%. Crypto futures market Negative news and investor’s sentiment left its mark also on the crypto futures market. As per Coinglass data, around $1B loss in liquidations of long positions were wiped out from this market. It was one of the worst sell-offs of the year. Short term BTC futures ended the week around 11% lower from the week before, while ETH futures dropped by more than 10%. On a positive side is that longer term futures suffered a lower drop in prices. BTC long term futures were down by more than 5%. Futures maturing in December this year ended the Friday`s trading session at level of $26.900, while those maturing in December next year were last traded at price $31.275. On a positive side is that December next year is still holding above $30K level. ETH long term futures dropped more than 6%, with December 2023 ending the week at price $1.778. Futures maturing in December 2024 dropped below $2K level where they were managing to hold for a few weeks. Last price for those futures was $1.890.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: August 14 – 20Last week in the news The stock markets continued with their modest correction for a second week in a row. US banks ended the week in negative territory after Moody's downgraded ten banks and put some big US names on watch for a downgrade in the coming period. At the same time US Treasurys modestly increased during the week, after published inflation data in line with expectations. Crypto market gained on Moody's downgrade of US banks. Bitcoin is ending another week below $30K, while Ether found strong support above $1.8K level. The US Consumer Price Index published for July increased 3.2% y/y, less than market expectations, rising 0.2% for the month. Core CPI also rose 0.2%, running at 4.7% on a yearly basis. Figures are showing that the inflation is slowing down in the US, but it is still running above Fed's target of 2%. Many analysts are of the opinion that this trend would make the Fed probably to hold its next rate increase and postpone it till the end of this year. On the other side investors are looking for a moment of Fed`s pivot, which would mean that the Fed would start to decrease interest rates. Still, Fed Chair Powell noted that it should be expected for rates to stay elevated for a longer period of time even if inflation slows down further. Two weeks ago credit rating agency Fitch downgraded US government long-term currency issuer default rating to AA+, while during the previous week another credit rating agency Moody's downgraded ten US banks. In addition, Moody's put several banks to watch for the downgrade, including some big names like Bank of New York Mellon, State Street and Northern Trust. As a rationale for such a decision, Moody`s is noting asset-liability practices in these banks, with high exposures to the interest rate risks, coming from depression of Treasury holdings due to increased interest rates which might deteriorate banks value and earnings potential. This news supported Bitcoin trading, while negatively affecting equity markets. Tesla`s Chief Financial Officer, Zach Kirkhorn, announced to step down from his position in the company, after spending the last four years in this position and a total 13 years in Tesla. There has not been announced reason for such a decision. Markets reacted in a negative manner, pushing TSLA shares 3% lower. Nvidia passed the $1 trillion valuation, with the latest surge in stock price, putting this company in line with other big 4 names – Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet. This came as a result of making the best graphic processors for OpenAI and ChatGPT. Although investors see high earnings potential with this company, still, there are analysts who are arguing that the company is highly overpriced at this moment. Their opinion is that the general AI market is highly overvalued and its potential to drive future gains. Some analysts are even making a parallel between the 1999 dot-com bubble and current frenzy about AI. PayPal launched its stablecoin PayPal USD (PYUSD) aiming to keep pace with increasing interest for payments in crypto currencies. Analysts see it as a positive move from PayPal as it will be able to adjust easily for forthcoming central bank digital currencies, which will be available in the near future. Crypto market cap Markets continue to move flat, digesting both positive and negative news. Credit rating agencies in the US are continuing with downgrades, after Fitch downgraded US Government long term debt by one notch, Moody's downgraded ten US banks with more of them on the watchlist for the same move in the coming period. On a positive side is that the inflation in the US is slowing down, holding at the level of 3.2% in July. Although this is positive news, still, analysts are questioning whether this slowdown in inflation would impact Fed's decision to hold with further increases of interest rates. A fear of recession vanished on the market, with increasing voices over so-called soft-landing of the economy. With a strong jobs market, strong earnings and higher than expected Q2 GDP assumptions on soft-landing are well supported. Total crypto market capitalization remained flat during the previous week, with a modest increase of FWB:14B or less than 1% on a weekly basis. This is the third week when daily trading volumes have significantly decreased. Previous week`s range was around $35B on a daily basis, which is a further decrease from FWB:46B traded a week before. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 50%, where it has added total $380B to the market cap. The crypto market entered into side trade during the previous week. Significantly decreased daily trading volumes are not able to push the price to either side. Still, the majority of coins finished the previous week on a shy green side, with few of them with good weekly performance. Bitcoin added $5.5B to its market cap during the week, increasing its value by less than 1%. Same performance had ETH with an increase in cap of $2B. In a relative term, Solana continued with gains, adding more than 10% during the previous week. Algorand also had solid performance with an increase in value of 6.4% w/w. LINK gained 4%, while DASH managed to increase its cap by 5.8%. Few coins were on a losing side, like Bitcoin Gold, which decreased its value by 3.5%, Ethereum Classic was down by 1.1%, while Maker and Polkadot were both down by 2.4% w/w. There has not been significant changes in coins in circulation, where Filecoin was the highest gainer with 0.6% increase in its circulating coins. Crypto futures market The crypto futures remained relatively flat during the previous week, in line with developments on the spot market. BTC short term futures were up by some 0.5% on average, while long term ones were traded higher by modest 0.3% w/w. BTC futures maturing in December this year are still holding above $30K, and finished the week at level of $30.425, while those maturing in December next year were traded modestly higher with last trade on Friday closed at price $33.065. ETH futures were also in a flat mode. Short term ones were traded down by some 0.4% on average, while long term ones were traded in green. December 2023 is finishing the week at level of $1.894, 0.37% lower from the week before, while December 2024 was traded 0.2% higher and finished the week at price of $2.013. It remains positive that the long term price of ETH sustains the levels above $2K.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX
MARKETS week ahead: August 7 – 13Last week in the news The rating agency Fitch downgraded the long term credit rating of the US by one notch to AA+ from previous AAA. Market reacted with a negative sentiment, bringing the US equity markets lower and Treasury yields to the upside. The crypto market was traded flat most of the week, sliding down as of Friday`s trading. Bitcoin is ending the week at FWB:29K , while Ether is still managing to hold modestly above $1.8K. Quite a negative news hit the markets at the beginning of the previous week. One of the largest US credit rating agencies, Fitch, downgraded the US Government long-term currency issuer default rating to AA+, from previous AAA grade. The rationale for such a decision was “expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years” as well as lack of governance for its debt-ceiling. This was certainly a huge surprise for markets which were traded in a red zone through the rest of the week. However, economists have different opinions. On one side are those who are questioning why such a decision is coming at this point of time, when all said in the Fitch`s report is well known from a long time ago. On the other side are those who are cheering such a decision as it could help the Fed to finally halt its monetary tightening. Markets were cheering Ripple Lab`s win over SEC with higher optimism that it could be of some use in other SEC`s disputes with several crypto market participants, for which closure is still pending. It was a sort of surprise and also disappointment for markets when this ruling was rejected by the Southern District of New York Judge Rakoff in a case between SEC and Coinbase. Rationale for a rejection was “a misinterpretation of the Howey test”. This makes it an extremely hard task for Coinbase to use Ripple`s ruling for its own benefit in this case. Finally some good news for Binance. Binance`s CEO CZ officially announced that a subsidiary of the company in Japan will start its operations in this country from August 14th. Binance entered Japan`s market in November last year, by acquiring Sakura Exchange BitCoin crypto exchange. This is good news for Binance in a moment when the company is facing scrutiny from regulators in the US and the EU. As per CME reports, investors have doubled their positions in the crypto options during July. Options trading activity increased by 24% in July from the month before for both BTC and ETH options. This might be an indication that investors are currently looking for a hedging tool for their positions in these coins. Filings for BTC exchange traded funds are growing among financial institutions in the US. While BlackRock is still waiting for the final resolution of its application with the SEC for the first BTC based ETF, during the previous week ProShares and Bitwise also filed their applications for both BTC and ETH exchange traded funds. In case that BlackRock receives a positive outcome for their filing, it will be a huge gain for the BTC and crypto community, and would certainly open the door for other ETF`s based on other coins, like ETH. Crypto market cap Markets are calming down after surprising news during the previous week that the Fitch rating agency has downgraded the US long-term debt by one notch, to AA+ from previous AAA. How this move would impact the future economic outlook is about to be seen. Economists are noting that a downgrade would mean further increase of costs of borrowing, considering that the financial industry would now seek higher interest rates on borrowed funds, in order to cover increased risk for borrowing funds. Higher costs of borrowing might further slow down economic activity, but to what extent, is to be seen, as the US economy has been pretty resilient to significant increase of Fed's interest rates during the previous period. The crypto market continues to be on hold, marking the third week on a downside. Total crypto market capitalization decreased by additional 2% during the week, losing $24B in total value. Daily trading volumes continue to decrease, moving around FWB:46B on a daily basis. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year currently stands at 48%, where it has added total $366B to the market cap. Another week the crypto market finished in red. Two coins were leading the drop in total market cap in nominal terms. Ether lost almost $5B, dropping its value by 2.2% on a weekly basis. ETH was followed by XRP, with a drop in value of more than 12% or $4.5B. This time, Bitcoin took the third place, whose market value dropped by $2.2B or 0.4% compared to the week before. Solana was another coin with a significant loss of $1B in value, dropping by more than 10% on a weekly basis. At the same time, BNB managed to sustain its value flat during the week. Significant losers in relative terms during this week were Stellar, with a drop of 13.6% w/w, Litecoin was down by 9.4%, LINK lost almost 8% in value same as OMG Network, Theta also dropped by 7.5%. The only coin with a significant increase in value was Bitcoin Gold, which managed to increase its value by more than 16% during the week. At this moment there is no official information available as to why this surge occurred. Coins in circulation remained relatively stable during the week, except for Polkadot`s increase of circulating coins by a significant 1.4%. Solana had a modest surge by 0.2%, same as Stellar. Crypto futures market For the third week in a row, crypto futures were traded lower. Short term Bitcoin futures were traded around 2.8% lower from the week before, however, longer term futures were traded in a green zone at Friday`s trading session on CME. Futures maturing in December 2023 ended the week at price of $30.355, while December 2024 managed to end the week at price of $32.955. Although the price did not manage to reach levels above BER:33K , this is still a positive sign of investors' expectations for the future price of the BTC. Market optimism for ETH futures is still lacking a higher level of confidence. Short term futures were down by some 2.5% on average, while longer term futures were last traded about 1% lower from the week before. Futures maturing in December this year were last traded down by 1.5%, ending the week at price $1.892. Futures maturing in December 2024 finished the week at level of $2.009, or 1.13% lower from the week before.
CRYPTOCAP:TOTAL
by XBTFX