$BTC 24 Hour High $34,823
$BTC 24 Hour Low $33,620
$ETH 24 Hour High $2189
$ETH 24 Hour Low $2103
Happy Monday from HKbitEX! It has been another dull week for crypto investors. Most cryptos have traded softly and ended in the red. Our king - $BTC - has traded between 32k and 35k for the majority of the time following a couple of failures in breaking the resistance. In addition, regulatory scrutiny towards Binance continues to grow, this time from the banking side, as both Barclays UK and Santander UK have blocked payments to the Exchange. Luckily, the joining of London-based hedge fund Marshall Wace to the crypto game, together with the SPAC confirmations from Circle and Bullish has brought the community some sunshine. Market-wise, the upcoming GBTC unlock still serves as the main point of uncertainty for short-term market momentum. As usual, my suggestion is for this to be another week of monitoring, but if you do insist on participating and want to take advantage of the volatility, do set your stop-loss and minimize your leveraging.
The $BTC and $ETH market
$BTC has traded mainly between $32k and $35k over the week. It started the week weak, with a 4% loss that left it struggling throughout the rest of the week. The bulls have made a couple of attempts to break the $35k resistance, however their failure to do so has resulted in a two-week bottom of just over $32k. While traders generally agree that $BTC will need to overcome the $36k major resistance level and close a daily candle there to regain its bullish signal (and $42k to confirm the bullish trend) the low trading volume, together with the upcoming GBTC unlock has made the situation more difficult. Fortunately, the news is not all bad as we have started to see the $BTC hashrate rebounding and the Liveliness index decreasing, implying that $BTC is being hodled. At the time of writing, $BTC is trading at $34,377 with $36,000 as its next major resistance level and $32,000 as its next key support level.
$ETH wise, the second largest cryptocurrency has recorded a 7.8% drop over the week. Similarly to $BTC, $ETH started the week with a 5.4% correction. However, things were bit different from there, with $ETH climbing to a 3-Week High of $2410. The surge was highly related to the confirmation from Ethereum developer Tim Beiko that the expected London hard fork will take place on August 4th with block 12,965,000. However, failure to close the candle above the $2400 level has resulted in a short-term correction towards the $21k level (20-day MA) and continuous trading around that level for the remainder of the week. The $ETH/$BTC figure presented a similar idea, as it hit the highest 0.069 on Wednesday and then traded south towards 0.062, meaning $ETH at one time did perform better than $BTC but was unable to maintain its momentum there. At the time of writing, $ETH is trading at $2156, with $2400 as its next major resistance level and $2000 as its next key support level.
Mainstream adoption
According to the announcement from Sygnum Bank last Tuesday (6/7), the bank will offer Ethereum 2.0 staking to its clients, allowing them to stake Ethereum conveniently and securely through Sygnum’s banking platform and benefit from a yield of up to 7 percent annually. “Sygnum clients can participate in the new proof-of-stake Ethereum and benefit from potentially higher staking rewards now. This is a compelling choice for long-term investors in the Ethereum ecosystem.” said Thomas Brunner, Sygnum’s Head of Accounts and Custody.
According to the Financial Times last Tuesday (6/7), the UK hedge fund Marshall Wace, which manages over $55 billion in assets, will soon invest in the crypto market. The report also revealed that the fund expects to increase its exposure to the crypto sector to 7.2 percent of their assets on average in the coming 5 years.
Circle, the issuer of stablecoin USDC, announced last Thursday (8/7) that it will go public through merging with a special purpose acquisition corporation Concord Acquisition Corp (NYSE: CND.U). Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle emphasized that “once it becomes publicly traded, Circle intends to become the most public and transparent operator of full-reserve stablecoins in the market today…… With scale and success comes greater expectations and the need for greater transparency.”
Another cryptocurrency exchange, Bullish, also announced last Friday (9/7) that it will go public on New York Stock Exchange through a merger with Far Peak Acquisition Corporation (NYSE: FPAC).
Alts & DeFi
Alts and DeFi wise, Defi TVL (Ethereum network) remains at around $56B at the time of writing. For some well-known tokens, over the week, Yearn Finance ($YFI) recorded -0.59% decline, Aave ($AAVE) is +0.58%, Compound ($COMP) is +0.45%, Uniswap ($UNI) is -1.52%, Polkadot ($DOT) is -1.82 %, Chainlink ($LINK) is -4.46%, Cardano ($ADA) is -6.34% and Polygon ($MATIC) is -9.07%.
#happytrading