Welcome to this week’s Crypto Buzz by Kalkine TV my name is Sage.
The global crypto sector has taken a proverbial sigh of relief with big news for crypto as
the market cap has officially regained the $1 trillion level.
Earlier this month and in June, large Bitcoin miners Core Scientific and Bitfarms had reported
selling masses of the crypto.
With Core Scientific being prominent with a reported market cap of $525.52 million.
The third largest publicly traded miner by market cap globally, having announced the
sale of 78.6% of it’s bitcoin holdings.
Bitfarms also was reported to sell close to $62M of it’s bitcoin in June.
It’s been interesting to note that during this downturn bitcoin mining hash rate has
remained comparatively high.
Mining hash rate sometimes correlates with price action, with high hash rate increasing
the price of bitcoin in the past.
Bitcoin’s mining hash rate has been sitting around 5% below it’s all time high.
The reason for this could be pointed to the diminishing growth of bitcoin’s relative
growth of hash rate and how it is correlated to the absolute growth of the total crypto
sector, which has increased significantly, through more institutional investment.
Hive Blockchain a Canadian miner with a strong ecosystem are also up today 4.35% with it’s
share price having moved up 20.86% over the last 7 days.
Although trading volume is still below it’s average, it is gaining positive sentiment
from the investors for future growth.
It’s share price was up close to 11% on Monday 18th July.
The company is committed to a strong ESG strategy using 100% renewable energy for it’s mining
operations of Bitcoin and Ethereum in Canada, Sweden and Iceland.
Iceland is where it began for the company in May 2017 when it acquired a mining data
centre and commenced trading publicly on the Toronton Stock Exchange.
The price of Bitcoin has been stuck in a range somewhere between $19k-21k over the last month.
However, it witnessed somewhat of a breakout from that sideways price action with a surge
up this morning of about 5% pushing the price to close to $23k - $22,831 before it moved
back down to just under $22k.
During the Asian mid-session BTC is now priced at close to $22, 200 according to data from
Coinmarketcap the largest crypto by market cap has moved up about 11% over the last 7
days.
Ethereum has clearly maintained it’s upward trend that it’s been developing over the
last week with a close to 40% increase in it’s share price, according to data from
Coinmarketcap.
The price of ETH today is up about 9% reaching $1539
Some of the reasons for this rally could be reporting season for company’s like Goldman
Sachs proving better than expected.
The up-coming final merge to Ethereum’s new mainnet due to occur sometime this year,
although no date has been set is also adding to the excitement.
The merge will enable Ethat is on the more environmentally friendly mining consensus
known as Proof of Stake instead of Proof of Work.
This will mean a large amount of staked ETH which was required to mine ETH on the proof
of stake consensus will be freed.
These surges in price for BTC and ETH haven’t been profitable for all, as millions of short
orders were liquidated in the last 24hours.
But as the tousle between the Bulls and the Bears continues, we’ll have to wait and
see if this is classic head-fake territory with the investors taking their profits, which
could push the price down.
According to Fxstreet analysts, the investors who bought the dip last week and risked catching
dropping knives actually made gains in the current move upwards.
However, whether the support level has been identified yet for ETH and BTC is still open
to contention with Grayscale Investments most recent report showing that if their analysis
is correct the current bear market could continue for another 250 days based on stochastics
of previous market cycles and the repayment of losses from Mt Gox which could be happening
as soon as August this year.
This bear cycle has tested the DeFi players with many having filed for
bankruptcy due to the 20-1 leveraged lending that have not worked well for
Three Arrows Capital, Voyager Digital or Celsius.
DeFi on the whole has shown
that there is something there other than a house of cards cash machine, with
it’s transactions recorded on the blockchain transparently.
DeFi an be seen as
the backbone of almost the entire industry with incentivization to liquidity
providers, protocols that prevent slippage and front running.
On a general
basis it Aave, Compound & MakerDAO have all managed to remain somewhat
buoyant with their DAO’s and governance protocols enabling a fairer and more
equitable decision-making process.
Maker Dao’s MAKER token is up about 4% in the last 24hrs over the last 7 days
it is up 17% over the last 30 days it is up 38% according to data from
Coingecko.
Compound’s COMP token is up 95% over the last 30 days and over the last 7
days it is up 15%.
Over the last 24 hours it is down about
Aave’s token AAVE is up 2% over the last 24hrs and over the last 7 days it is up
48% and over the last 30 days it is up 89%.
Although many people have been gloating in the recent crypto market slump, with many
criticisms on the sectors high energy consumption being exacerbated.
The traditional banking system was not cleansed of it’s “evils” either after the GFC
crash led by Lehman Brothers and lenders Freddy Man and Fanny Mae.
As people are still trying to decide if crypto is a glorified casino, it does pay to do your
research into the benefits of tokenisation and the advantages that blockchain technology
can offer before you make your final decision.
The user experience for some crypto protocols can still be clunky but it’s potential to
bring more efficiency and liquidity to financial mechanisms such as overseas transfers as well
as new funding models in the emergence of Web 3.0 is worth the look.
In Australia we have seen neo-banks like Volt who trade in the traditional finance sector
also collapse.
Banking fees for example are costing consumers almost the same amount of money as the GDP
of 84 nations combined or close to $6.6B.
The same amount of money that according to the UN food-assistance branch could rid the
world of 42 million starving people in about 43 countries it was reported by Pantera Capital.
DeFi smart contracts have each transaction coded into the blockchain which is immutable
in nature which creates a trustless economy with benefits and rewards for loyalty
and participation.
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Crypto Buzz as always anything reported is
for informational purposes and is not financial advice.
Please tread carefully when investing in digital assets as the market is highly volatile.
Keep watching Kalkine Media for more live expert talks and market insights.
Till the next episode may the hodling continue - this is sage signing off.