840_aHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS91cGxvYWRzLzIwMjEtMDYvZTM0NTgxNzQtYTY2Ni00YzE3LWI1MWQtY2Q3YTVmMTI1ZTk5LmpwZw3D3D
Bitcoin, Ethereum, FOMO, Legal Tender, Novogratz, PancakeSwap
June 20, 2021
0

3 reasons why Ethereum may underperform Bitcoin in the short-term

Ether could take longer than 12 months to regain ground versus Bitcoin due to increased uncertainties surrounding the shift to ETH 2.0 and reservations from institutional investors.

Ether (ETH) price outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) by 173% from March 28 to May 15. The incredible bull caused the token to reach a $4,380 all-time high. However, as cryptocurrency markets initiated a sharp drop on May 12, the trend started to reverse, and since then, Ether has underperformed by 25%.

Some might say it is a technical adjustment after a strong rally. While this partially explains the move, it excludes some critical factors, including the fast advance of smart-contract network competitors and Bitcoin being adopted as an official currency for the first time.

Ether / Bitcoin price at Binance. Source: TradingView

Notice how the ETH/BTC ratio rallied again on June 8, reaching 0.77 despite Ether’s price remaining 36% below its all-time high and ranging near $2,800. To understand what could have been driving the ratio, analysts need to analyze Ether and Bitcoin price drivers separately.

Mike Novogratz may have been misinterpreted in his interview

Ether’s bull run potentially got an extra leg due to intense praise from institutional investors. Traders could have picked up a sense of urgency, known as FOMO, and promptly shifted their Bitcoin exposure towards the leading altcoin.

On May 13, New Yorker magazine published an interview with Mike Novogratz, the founder, and CEO of Galaxy Digital. In the conversation, Novogratz said:

“All of a sudden, you have decentralized finance and NFTs both on Ethereum at the same time roughly, with wild accelerating growth.”

Novogratz was then questioned on how much higher Ether could reach, to which he answered:

“You know, it’s dangerous to give predictions on the highs. But could it get to $5,000? Of course it could.”

While an Ethereum holder might have interpreted it as a prediction, others could have understood it as a wild guess, likely depending on general crypto market conditions.

However, roughly a week later, a report from Goldman Sachs revealed the global investment bank believed that Ether had a “high chance of overtaking Bitcoin as a dominant store of value.” Interestingly, one of the main quotes in the report was directly from Novogratz’s interview with the New Yorker.

At its peak, Binance Chain controlled 40% of DEX volume

While Ethereum has kept its 80% dominance on net value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has reached a 40% market share on DEX exchanges.

PancakeSwap DEX daily volume vs. top 10. Source: DeBank

The successful growth of the DeFi industry and non fungible token (NFT) markets caused intense congestion on the Ethereum network, raising median fees to $37 in mid-May. That bottleneck triggered an activity exodus to competing networks, and PancakeSwap was best positioned to capture that flow.

Related: Here’s why one analyst says Bitcoin will outperform Ethereum in the short term

To make things worse, important DeFi projects expanded to Binance Smart Chain, including yield aggregator Harvest Finance and decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch. Investors quickly realized that the trend could continue as the competing smart-contract network provided an easy solution for dApps looking for cheaper alternatives.

No country is adopting the ‘Ethereum standard’

Bitcoin might have had a subpar performance over the past 30 days because it has failed to break the $42,000 resistance multiple times. However, a major milestone was achieved when El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender on June 12.

After the Central American country made the decision law, a handful of other Central and South American countries began discussing the advantages of taking a similar path.

Ethereum is undertaking a redesign that will change the issuing rate and how entities get paid to secure the network by moving away from the Proof of Work model. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is making sure that every upgrade is backward-compatible and maintaining its strict monetary policy.

That is the main reason why Ether will not outperform Bitcoin over the next 12 months, or at least until there’s a better understanding of how Ethereum network dominance of smart contracts will be.

Professional investors avoid uncertainties at all costs, and cryptocurrency markets already present plenty of that. There’s just no reason for institutional investors to ignore the risks while competing networks eat Ethereum’s lunch.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

12-june
Hodler's, Hodler's Digest
June 20, 2021
1

Bitcoin under threat, El Salvador rejected, Mark Cuban stung, McAfee ‘has nothing’: Hodler’s Digest, June 13–19

Coming every Saturday, Hodlers Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

 

Hawkish Fed comments push Bitcoin price and stocks lower again

The crypto markets had started the week with a spring in their step.

Last Sunday, Elon Musk revealed that Tesla would be prepared to accept Bitcoin as a payment method again once it could be proved that 50% of the energy used by miners comes from clean, renewable sources.

Traders reacted positively to the tweet, and there were green candles aplenty. Upbeat sentiment helped drive Bitcoin above $40,000 for the first time in over a fortnight. Unfortunately, though, it seems prices above this level were unsustainable.

A new wave of selling reared its ugly head days later after Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell suggested that interest rates may rise in 2023 a year earlier than planned. Other officials went further, indicating the first increase could happen in late 2022.

Bitcoin wasnt alone in suffering the sell-off. Stocks and gold also fell, eating away at the narrative that BTC is an uncorrelated asset.

With prices falling as low as $35,000, there are now fears that a death cross may be forming for Bitcoin. Some traders are forecasting that $32,500 could be the next stop before BTC revisits the swing low at $30,000.

 

World Bank refuses El Salvadors request for help on BTC transition

As determined as El Salvadors president may be to introduce Bitcoin as legal tender, a series of unfortunate events this week showed that its harder than it looks.

The World Bank has refused to assist the country in its transition, citing the environmental and transparency shortcomings associated with the digital asset.

Although prominent Bitcoiners werent pleased with the World Banks refusal, its fair to say that they werent surprised either.

One particularly sarcastic contribution came from Blockstreams chief strategy officer Samson Mow, who tweeted: BREAKING: WORLD BANK CANNOT HELP EL SALVADOR MAKE WORLD BANK OBSOLETE. Miaow.

Elsewhere, an El Salvadorean minister denied reports that the country was examining the possibility of using Bitcoin for salary payments, warning such talk was too premature.

Economists have also been continuing to issue warnings about the potential ramifications of El Salvadors move. Steve Hanke pulled no punches when he said going through with this law has the potential to completely collapse the countrys already fragile economy.

Striking a cheery note, he said the politicians who backed President Nayib Bukeles Bitcoin Law were stupid, adding: Youre not going to pay for your taxi ride with a Bitcoin. Its ridiculous. […] 70% of the people in El Salvador dont even have bank accounts.

 

Mark Cuban calls for stablecoin regulation in wake of Iron Finance bank run

Billionaire crypto enthusiast Mark Cuban has called for stablecoins to be regulated after losing money in a dramatic rug pull.

Iron Finance fell victim to a historical bank run that detailed the price of the IRON stablecoin. Consequently, the value of its native token TITAN crashed by almost 100% over two days from all-time highs of $64.04 to a mere fraction of one cent.

In an email sent to Bloomberg, Cuban wrote: Even though I got rugged on this, it’s really on me for being lazy. The thing about DeFi plays like this is that it’s all about revenue and math and I was too lazy to do the math to determine what the key metrics were.

Crypto Twitter, already reeling from the U-turn performed by Elon Musk, wasnt a fan of Cubans remarks.

Krakens CEO Jesse Powell said a lack of regulation wasnt the problem, tweeting: Not doing your own research and YOLOing in to a terrible investment because your time was worth more than your money is your problem.

 

The death of NFTs? CNN, Fox, Mila Kunis (and the U.S. Space Force) dont think so

Earlier this month, some critics were sounding the death knell for nonfungible tokens after a Protos report suggested that sales had slumped by 90% since the peak in early May. However, things may not be as dire as they first appear.

First off, lets not forget that Sothebys auctioned off a rare CryptoPunk for $11.8 million earlier this month setting a new world record in the process. Also, its worth noting that theres no shortage of new NFT announcements.

Heres just a few that have emerged in recent days. CNN said that its planning to tokenize historic moments from the news. That came as Fox, another U.S. media behemoth, revealed its launching a $100 million fund for NFT content creation. Sothebys confirmed that it is going to auction off the source code for the World Wide Web in the form of a digital collectible. And not to be outdone, A-lister Mila Kunis is wading into the very masculine crypto space by launching her very own NFT project.

Even the much-ridiculed U.S. Space Force thinks that NFTs are out of this world. Its tokens are literally going to the moon paying tribute to Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the lunar surface.

Given how all of these projects have the chance to capture the publics imagination, it may be unwise to characterize NFTs as a passing fad thats fading away.

 

I have nothing: Imprisoned John McAfee claims his crypto fortune is gone

Still behind bars in Spain as he battles extradition to the U.S., antivirus software pioneer John McAfee has told his one million Twitter followers that he doesnt have hidden crypto.

He wrote: I wish I did but it has dissolved through the many hands of Team McAfee (your belief is not required), and my remaining assets are all seized. My friends evaporated through fear of association.

And, striking a defiant note, he added: I have nothing. Yet, I regret nothing.

A Spanish court is set to make a decision on whether to approve McAfees extradition within days. The businessman is accused of tax evasion and failing to declare income from paid crypto promotions, consultancy work, and gains from his investments.

During a court hearing earlier this week, he claimed the charges against him were politically motivated and that he would die behind bars if he is flown to the U.S.

 

Winners and Losers

 

 

At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $35,702.06, Ether at $2,228.54 and XRP at $0.79. The total market cap is at $1,496,219,684,262.

Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Quant, XinFin Network and Theta Fuel. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Kusama, Internet Computer and Decred.

For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraphs market analysis.

 

 

Most Memorable Quotations

[Crypto is] the first genuinely new asset class in about 150 years.

Ric Edelman, Edelman Financial Engines founder

 

While [El Salvadors] government did approach us for assistance on Bitcoin, this is not something the World Bank can support, given the environmental and transparency shortcomings.

World Bank

 

For new investors, its best to buy when the market is well below trend. Now is one of those times.

Dan Morehead, Pantera Capital CEO

 

There’s little risk of the #dollar dropping in value vs. similarly depreciating currencies, which means that diversification into store-of-value assets like #gold and #Bitcoin is simply a prudent move, in our view.

Mike McGlone, Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist

 

Michael Saylor is clearly focused on a long-term investment strategy rather than short-term gains or losses. Putting company debt on the line is risky, but it could obviously lead to a massive return as well.

Kadan Stadelmann, Komodo chief technology officer

 

Youre not going to pay for your taxi ride with a Bitcoin. Its ridiculous. […] Youve got 70% of the people in El Salvador dont even have bank accounts.

Steve Hanke, economist

 

When more people are buying cryptocurrency than investing in a stock market ISA, you have to conclude the worlds gone crypto crazy.

Laith Khalaf, AJ Bell financial analyst

 

In my view, it looks like the bottom is in.

Jurrien Timmer, Fidelity Investments director of global macro

 

Even though Musk is temporarily causing turmoil in the market, his involvement could be beneficial for crypto in the long-term, as he is attracting new people to crypto, albeit for sometimes the wrong reasons.

Erik Nurm, CoinSwap founder

Prediction of the Week

 

Even Elon Musk cant save Dogecoin from crashing another 60%, analyst asserts

A dreaded head and shoulder pattern has emerged in Dogecoins charts and according to one analyst, this indicates the meme coins price could fall by another 67%.

Pseudonymous trader Tyler Durden claimed in a tweet that a fall to $0.05 is programmed, adding: Even Elon can’t save this with his tweets. He’s tried and each time he just created another lower high. Gulp.

With prices now dipping below $0.30, DOGE is a long way from the all-time highs of $0.73 seen in the first week of May the culmination of a jaw-dropping 15,000% increase since the start of the year.Interest in the joke cryptocurrency is now falling across several metrics, indicating Doge may have had its day.

FUD of the Week

 

Scammers mail out fake hardware wallets to victims of Ledger data breach

The consequences of Ledgers major data breach continue to be felt almost a year later.

A Reddit user who was among those affected claims they received a fake Ledger Nano X wallet in the mail wrapped in seemingly authentic packaging.

The device came with a poorly written letter purporting to be from the Ledgers CEO that warned you must switch to a new device to stay safe.

Even worse, they also received a fake manual asking them to enter their private Ledger recovery phrase to connect their cryptocurrency wallet to the new hardware.

 

Crypto fan tokens a mixed bag for game-deprived soccer fans

Not everyone is a fan of soccer fan tokens, it seems.

Organizations representing football fans in England and Wales have accused teams of trying to squeeze extra money out of supporters only to give them a cosmetic say in how clubs are run.

The value of fan tokens plunged along with the rest of the crypto market after peaking in April and May. This volatility, combined with rising matchday costs in general, has left some fans feeling priced out of having their voices heard.

Sue Watson, chair of West Ham United Independent Supporters Association, asked: Why should you have to pay to have any sort of say in the club?

 

This unknown cryptocurrency soared by 164,842% in hours, only to crash 99%

About $7.65 billion entered the cryptocurrency market in just three hours via a widely unknown altcoin on Monday.

WebDollar (WEBD) surged from $0.0003711 to $0.6121 in just three hours a 164,842% rise in its market valuation.

Over a five-minute period, its market cap went from $1.84 million to $1.5 billion. It had fallen back to $5.12 million 40 minutes later. And, 50 minutes after that, it surged again with a vengeance hitting a staggering $9.5 billion.

At one point, WebDollar was the 18th-largest cryptocurrency in the world by market cap, leapfrogging the likes of Stellar, VeChain and Tron.

It wasnt to last. Two hours after topping $9.5 billion, it crashed by more than 99%, with its ranking rapidly falling down to No. 873.

 

Best Cointelegraph Features

An asset for all classes: What to expect from Bitcoin as a legal tender

New tech that reduces costs of international payments would be a boon for poor countries that rely on remittances but will BTC as legal tender fix that?

Joining the ranks: Bitcoins correlation with gold and stocks is growing

BTC used to be an uncorrelated asset, but thats no longer the case. What can gold and stocks suggest about the crypto markets?

Bullish all the way? MicroStrategy doubles down on its Bitcoin bet

MicroStrategys latest bond offering seeks to deliver a yield of 6.25%6.5% significantly higher than an average junk bond yield of 4.01%.

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Bitcoin, BTC Price, China, correlation, DXY, FED, Inflation, Markets
June 20, 2021
1

Data suggests the strong US dollar makes Bitcoin weaker argument is flawed

Analysts and traders are linking Bitcoin’s bearish turn with the growing strength of the U.S. dollar, but data suggests otherwise.

At the moment, there seems to be a general assumption that when the U.S. dollar value increases against other global major currencies, as measured by the DXY index, the impact on Bitcoin (BTC) is negative.

For the past few weeks, analysts and influencers have been issuing alerts about this inverse correlation, which held true until March 2021.

However, no matter if you track a 20-day or 60-day correlation, the situation reversed over the past three months.

Dollar Index DXY (blue) vs. Bitcoin (orange, logarithmic). Source: TradingView

The correlation indicator (red) has been ranging above 50% since mid-March, indicating that both DXY and Bitcoin have generally followed a similar trend.

The dollar strengthened after the Fed speech

As Cointelegraph reported, May’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report showed inflation hitting a 13-year high, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged that inflation could run higher than planned in the short term. Still, he clarified that “longer-term inflation expectations are anchored at a place that is consistent with our goal.”

The market gave the Fed a ‘vote of confidence,’ causing the U.S. dollar to appreciate versus major global currencies. Meanwhile, Bitcoin dropped 8% to a $35,300 low on June 18, further reinforcing the inverse correlation thesis.

Related: Forget Elon, here’s why Bitcoin traders should be watching the U.S. Dollar Index instead

Correlation is a longer-term indicator, not an intraday metric

Even though pundits and influencers love to dissect those events and extrapolate 1-day movements, one should analyze a more extended timeframe to understand the potential impacts of the DXY index on the Bitcoin price.

Dollar Index DXY (blue) vs. Bitcoin (orange, logarithmic). Source: TradingView

Notice how both markers weakened during May, after a relatively flat period in late April. It seems premature, at least, to call the recent decoupling an inverse correlation. Multiple forces could be behind Bitcoin’s failure to sustain a $40,000 support on June 16 and the subsequent price correction.

For starters, Liu He, Vice Premier of China and a member of the all-powerful eight-person politburo, led a meeting on preventing and controlling financial risks on May 24. Among the decisions was a crackdown on Bitcoin mining and trading activities.

Bitcoin’s hash rate dropped to the lowest level since November 2020 as miners are starting to move away from China. Huobi temporarily suspended futures trading to Chinese users, while Futures platform Bybit revealed it would have closed accounts registered with Chinese phone numbers.

Furthermore, on May 26, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said the regulators are looking forward to working with fellow regulators and Congress to fill gaps in investor protection in crypto markets.

Therefore, the potential U.S. regulation and the current China crackdown on mining and trading activities seem vital to Bitcoin’s recent underperformance. Once those issues are no longer threats, the gap that has been created from DXY’s positive move could fade away.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

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Uncategorized
June 20, 2021
1

Canada’s Hive Blockchain Technologies approved for Nasdaq listing

The Canadian miner with a focus on green energy should be available to trade in the coming weeks.

While the SEC continues to slow-roll the listing of a Bitcoin ETF, traders on legacy exchanges eager to get some exposure to crypto will soon have another outlet. 

In an announcement on Friday, Canada’s Hive Blockchain Technologies revealed that it has received approval to list shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Hive currently trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker HIVE.V, and focuses on both Bitcoin and Ethereum mining.

Per Hive’s website, the company has a particular focus on green energy — an increasingly important topic to critics of crypto’s significant energy consumption. This month, noted Bitcoin accumulator Michael Saylor revealed the details of the forthcoming Bitcoin Mining Council, which, among other duties, will help to shed light on the ecological impact of cryptocurrency mining. 

“HIVE owns state-of-the-art green energy-powered data centre facilities in Canada, Sweden, and Iceland which produce newly minted digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum continuously on the cloud,” reads Hive’s announcement. “Since the beginning of 2021, HIVE has accumulated the majority of its ETH and BTC coin production, which we hold in secure storage.”

RELATED: Chinese Bitcoin mining shakeout may have surprise BTC price consequences — analyst

Hive closed on Friday at 3.05 CAD, down 3.79% on the day and 44% from 6.8 highs earlier in the year. 

Historically, Bitcoin miners have outperformed the base asset, often by significant margins. Analysis last month showed that while Bitcoin was up 900% on the year, four of the largest mining stocks rallied 5,000%.

Along with the rally in price, many miners are increasingly becoming powerful voices on the global political stage. This month, the CEO of Nasdaq-listed Canaan Inc called on China to lighten its Bitcoin mining ban.

840_aHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5jb2ludGVsZWdyYXBoLmNvbS91cGxvYWRzLzIwMjEtMDYvZjc5NGQzYTYtMzJiNi00MTY2LTkzNGUtZDNkNDQ0NDg4MDE3LmpwZw3D3D
knc, kyber, markets pro, newsquake, rune, thorchain, trading, vortecs
June 20, 2021
0

A RUNE with a view: How smart crypto traders caught a 48% price pump

THORChain and Kyber provide the perfect examples of how quant analysis and breaking news can help cryptocurrency investors to capitalize on volatile markets.

Disparities in information access and data analytics tech are what give institutional players an edge over regular retail investors in the digital asset space.

The core idea behind Markets Pro, Cointelegraph’s crypto intelligence platform powered by data analytics firm The TIE, is to equalize the information asymmetries that permeate cryptocurrency markets.

Markets Pro bridges the gap with two world-class functionalities: the quant-style VORTECS™ score, and breaking NewsQuake™ alerts.

The former is an algorithmic comparison of several key market metrics around each coin to years of historical data, which assesses whether at any moment the outlook for this asset is bullish, bearish, or neutral given the historical record of price action.

NewsQuakes™ are automated notifications driven by an AI routine that monitors thousands of information sources to deliver potentially market-moving news to members, often within seconds.

Neither of these is a predictive tool. What both the VORTECS™ score and NewsQuakes™ are designed to do is to notify traders that something has just happened that, in the past, reliably moved asset prices. That’s why a good Markets Pro chart is the one that shows events happening in the right order and in the right time: First comes the indicator, and then price action follows.

In the last couple of days, we have observed a number of exemplary scenarios illustrating classic Markets Pro reads on the market.

RUNE: VORTECS™ shoots up, price follows shortly

June 13 did not start off as a particularly great day for those who were invested in THORChain (RUNE) and looking to make some gains. The coin has been on its way down, falling from above $9.00 a couple of days ago to just above $7.00.

However, the coin’s VORTECS™ score has been steady in the green (bullish) zone, sometimes even venturing into dark green (confidently bullish).

While most traders only saw what was on the surface — a coin’s weak performance — Markets Pro members have had access to a wider view. Even if the price trend did not look promising at all, the market conditions remained historically favorable for RUNE, suggesting a dip potentially worth buying.

Shortly before noon, RUNE’s VORTECS™ line tipped over 80, foreshadowing a rally that began to unfold six hours later. When the price went up, it went up sharply: from $7.00 to the peak of $10.34 twenty-six hours later.

It might also seem from the chart that fuel for the rally came from a NewsQuake™ detected a couple of hours before the pump. While the announcement of a RUNE giveaway by an investment company Qi Capital has definitely added to the momentum, it is unlikely that it had actually triggered the massive pump: As a sequence of strong VORTECS™ scores pointed out, RUNE’s breakout was propped up by an overall healthy outlook in the first place.

KNC: Polygon partnership news shakes up the market

Big announcements that promise more liquidity for the DeFi sector are usually a boon for the coins involved. When Kyber protocol’s team announced the deployment of their first liquidity mining program on Polygon and Ethereum, worth $30M in rewards, the market rewarded the KNC token with a pump from $1.78 to $2.06 (a 16% increase) within 8 hours.

However, the effect of the news began to recede almost as quickly as it kicked in, so only those quick to react were allowed to feast at the profit table. A safe way to secure a spot was through receiving a NewsQuake™ (red circle in the graph) notifying users of the collaboration. Alerts were sent to Markets Pro several minutes after the deal was publicly unveiled, but before the price of KNC had begun ascending.

These classic patterns are replicated day in, day out on Cointelegraph Markets Pro, where the top-performing strategy the team has been monitoring since Jan 3 2021 (Buy at 80, Sell after 24 hours) has now delivered a staggering 3,694% return in live-testing. Full details of the methodology used are available here.

Cointelegraph is a publisher of financial information, not an investment adviser. We do not provide personalized or individualized investment advice. Cryptocurrencies are volatile investments and carry significant risk including the risk of permanent and total loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Figures and charts are correct at the time of writing or as otherwise specified. Live-tested strategies are not recommendations. Consult your financial advisor before making financial decisions. Full terms and conditions.