We report the traditional weekly crypto market analysis based on the contribution by Aayush Jindal (Cryptonews.com). The analysis was made on August 7.
Despite the strong performance shown by bitcoin yesterday, the price still ended up below the important $12,000 mark, and below the recent high from August 2 of 12,134. The two levels now make up the two most immediate resistance levels for bitcoin, and a break above these levels would almost certainly boost the confidence of bitcoin bulls further.
Ethereum is still looking strong from a technical perspective, with the sharp uptrend that started around July 20 still intact. Zooming in on the shorter-term, however, the price is still below the high of $415 reached just before the correction started on August 2, which now acts as resistance to the upside. With higher lows still being seen on both the daily and the 4-hour charts, however, there is little doubt that the bulls still remain in control of the ETH market.
Moving over to bitcoin cash, it’s clear from the daily chart that the coin lacks the same bullish momentum as bitcoin has seen over the past couple of days. The coin has failed to move above the key $300 level, even as bitcoin passed 11,500. BCH also has a way to catch up with the high of 338.5 from before Sunday’s correction, and the previous uptrend seen on the daily chart has been broken.
Similarly, cardano (ADA) is also stuck in a weaker uptrend than BTC and ETH, although the structure on the daily chart for this coin looks robust. The price is currently consolidating between the $0.133 and $0.149 levels, and a break above the upper end of this range would open the door for further gains to come.
Lastly, XRP finally appears to be taking a breather from its near-parabolic rally on the daily timeframe between July 20 and Aug 3. The coin is now consolidating its gains in a triangle pattern, with a potentially imminent breakout to either side signaling the near-term future direction for the price.
Fed’s ‘Lower Rates – Increase Inflation’ Strategy Might Help Bitcoin Too
Sead Fadilpašić (Cryptonews.com) writes that “the US Federal Reserve might announce its policy review soon, a major aspect of which would be keeping interest rates low for years to come while trying to increase inflation and employment numbers. This strategy would be “bullish” for alternative asset classes, bitcoin including, according to analysts. The goal, according to the recent statements by the Fed officials, is to move to “average inflation” targeting “in which inflation above the central bank’s usual 2% target would be tolerated and even desired.” Therefore, they would pledge not to raise interest rates until they hit both the inflation and employment targets.
“There is one major problem though,” wrote Anthony Pompliano (Morgan Creek Digital), “the Federal Reserve has been horrible at hitting their targets in the past.” Pompliano argued that the worst scenario would be the Fed overshooting the inflation target and not be able to increase rates quickly. They would be “accelerating inflation at the exact moment that they should be reigning it in.” “My anticipation is that real estate, gold, bitcoin and stocks are all going to run much, much higher than they already have. Bitcoin is going to be the largest winner out of all assets since it is the most volatile. […] just don’t get caught holding cash while the Federal Reserve is systematically devaluing the asset under the guise of creating economic activity,” he said.
Similarly, Jameson Lopp (Casa), tweeted: “The Fed is expected to make a major commitment to devaluing your money. Whatcha gonna do about it?”
Ed Yardeni (Yardeni), told CNBC that the Fed “publicly would welcome inflation in a range of 2% up to 4% as a long overdue offset to inflation running below 2% for so long in the past” – and this, he said, would be “wildly bullish” for alternative asset classes, such as stocks, as well as precious metals.
Mati Greenspan (Quantum Economics), stated that bitcoin and the crypto markets are once again no longer correlated with the traditional markets. “The number one factor that moves prices is the Federal Reserve, and their propensity to print,” Greenspan continued, and when they print, the prices in all markets go up. But to reduce the risk to their assets, portfolio managers diversify their holdings with different asset classes. “Now, with the bond markets in trouble and yields sinking to levels so incredibly low that it’s hardly attractive for investors to hold them long-term, my guess is that portfolio managers are actively looking for other ways to achieve diversification,” Greenspan said.
Last week, Fitch Ratings gave the US a credit score warning, while Goldman Sachs analysts warned about the risk of the US dollar losing its dominant reserve currency status. But the “dollar weakness has also helped buoy crypto demand,” argued major crypto wallet provider Blockchain.com. They found that, while July was USD’s worst month in a decade, major cryptos “significantly” outperformed other asset classes, including stocks and gold. The company added that “the next major financial meltdown” is on its way. And while central bank digital currencies come with great benefits, there are also great risks (e.g. hack).’
Ethereum Trading Volume Almost Doubles
Fredrik Vold (Cryptonews.com) writes that “Following a sharp rise in both the price and trading volumes of ethereum (ETH), data from Twitter and Google shows that user interest in this major network has increased even more. Over the past month, trading volume in ETH has almost doubled. Comparing the average trading volume in the last 7 days in June and the past 7 days now, it’s up by 94%, to USD 12.6bn. Meanwhile, bitcoin (BTC) trading volume increased by 29%, to USD 20.3bn. Looking at real numbers, ETH got an extra USD 6bn in trading volume, while BTC – USD 4.6bn.
Also, in terms of trading volume, ETH is much closer to BTC than in terms of market capitalization, Google searches and tweets, where BTC is several times larger. However, it seems that Ethereum is getting more and more attention lately.
Google search data shows that search interest for the term ‘Ethereum’ has picked up significantly, rising nearly four times between June 30 and August 3, which is the latest day covered in the usage data from Google Trends. And while the searches for the term ‘Bitcoin’ have grown less than two times over the same time period it is still significantly more popular than ‘Ethereum’.
Also, while search interest in Bitcoin hasn’t caught up with the highs from early May, interest in Ethereum is at its highest for the entire 12-month period covered.
Similarly, aggregated data from the activity on Twitter also shows a more than two times increase in the number of tweets mentioning Ethereum, versus around a 10% increase in the number of tweets mentioning Bitcoin between June 30 and August 5. Also, similarly to the trends on Google, there are a few times less Ethereum-related tweets, compared to BTC. However, ETH mentions have become more frequent over the past three months than at any point since May, while the bitcoin-related twitter activity is still well below levels from May.
In terms of sheer price performance, ETH has been the winner over the past month, with a 30-day gain of more than 66%, versus 26% for BTC. However, not everyone is convinced that the ETH rally will hold up. Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, called the latest ETH rally “more speculative” compared to the “favorable demand vs. supply conditions supporting bitcoin,” while also noting that ETH “faces plenty of competition” from other similar cryptoassets.”