Last Week In Crypto: A New Sign Of Bull Run?

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Market Cap:

• $121,161,519,167
• 24h Vol: $19,180,751,188
• BTC Dominance: 52.7%

From Monday 11th when the evaluation of the cryptocurrency market has $123,118,696,977 at its highest point which is the first spike above the channel’s resistance on the global chart below, the evaluation has been moving sideways.

As you can see from the global chart the evaluation has been stuck inside a horizontal range between a $122–120B level which was the support zone from the previous range and is now serving as resistance zone which is why the evaluation has been stuck in it and is having trouble moving above.

Since the market evaluation parabolically increased last Friday at first I considered this as a re-tracement with trend continuation ahead, but since the evaluation hasn’t started moving to the upside immediately after it pulled back and instead continued moving sideways for the last 7 days this range could be interpreted as the stagnation in which both buyers and sellers are consolidating.

This consolidation is soon to end but a breakout direction hasn’t been indicated still. If the momentum behind the last Friday’s move is still present we are going to see a continuation to the upside, but if the buyers have backed out because of this stagnation we might see a straight downfall.

The market is in green today since the evaluation increased from yesterday when another interaction with the channels support line was made and is currently in the upward trajectory but since the increase is small the average percentage of change is insignificant.

The biggest gainers today are in double digits like Holo with an increase of 10.76%, MOAC by 11.68% and aelf by 12.1%

Bitcoin’s market dominance has been also standing still as it has been hovering around 52.8% from the start of the week.

News

From Monday there wasn’t any significant news pushing the market’s evaluation as evident from the global chart. However, there were some significant headlines this week.

The first significant headline is from the blockchain research firm Diar published on Monday 11th

Bitcoin’s Transaction Fees Fall to 2014 Levels

>Median Fees are also at levels not seen since 2015 despite the total monthly Bitcoins moved on-chain standing at higher levels than seen throughout most of 2018.

(Source: Diar)

This only goes to show what is going on “under the hood” for the leading cryptocurrency and its network.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s mining rewards are at the lowest levels ever according to a report on Cointelegraph. In the report, it has been stated that:

On February 10th, 13,370 new ETH have been created, down from over 20 thousand in December 2018 and an all-time high of over 39 thousand reported on July 30, 2015.

The reason behind this decrease is of newly mined ETH was evidently caused by a sudden increase in Ethereum mining difficulty, which Etherscan data revealed on Feb. 10

While we are on the subject of mining a headline worth mentioning regards the NVIDIA’s annual financial report in which it has been stated that the company has managed to increase its revenue by 21%, but that increase was “driven by all-time high sales of its gaming, datacenter, professional visualization, and automotive products.”, and not graphics card sales. The company reported a 24% decrease in revenue in Q4 last year compared to the same quarter in 2017.

Two of the headlines caught a lot of attention by the hopelessly cheering bull runners and were echoing out all throughout the cryptocurrency space.

Two US Pensions Lead $40 Million Round in Morgan Creek’s New Blockchain Fund

Morgan Creek Digital, which launched its Digital Asset Index Fund in August last year, sealed the funding from two of the three benefit plans from the Fairfax County Retirement Systems.

This headline caught a lot of attention as it sounds like the pension funds are going to get exposure to Bitcoin but as stated further the new venture capital fund called “Morgan Creek Blockchain Opportunities Fund” is reportedly focused on investing in the digital asset industry which doesn’t mean that the funds aren’t necessarily going to be used for direct investment into a particular cryptocurrency however the looming interest looks promising as the main street is starting to get on board.

The second and the headline that caught the most attention this week and is in line with what was previously said is certainly

JPMorgan Chase to Launch ‘JPM Coin,’ Using Crypto to Speed Settlements

United States banking giant JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is launching its own cryptocurrency in a U.S. banking first, CNBC reported on Feb. 14.

This was considered as the major story since a lot of the hype around it was created either positive — by those who interpreted this as a sign of adoption or negative — by the critics of the hypocrisy and attempt to previously manipulate the market’s sentiment by Jamie Dimon chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase who previously bashed Bitcoin calling it a fraud.

The headline also created a lot of backlash among Ripple holders as the JPM Coin’s use case is similar to Ripple’s unique value proposition and that is the international bank settlements competing with the SWIFT system.

The last headline that could be fitted into the adoption category is that NASDAQ is set to launch two new indices tracking cryptocurrency prices — Bitcoin Liquid Index (BLX) and the Ethereum Liquid Index (ELX)

The indices will offer real-time price updates in thirty-second intervals for clients using NASDAQ’s Global Index Data Service (GIDS) and are the product of United States blockchain and crypto asset market data company Brave New Coin.