The global crypto market recovered by $ 100 billion (~10%) in a week, from $844 billion to $940 billion. BTC’s market capitalization went up from $365 billion to $ 400 billion over the past week, showing some respite. Bitcoin Fear and Greed Index score has risen from 6 to 14 in the same period. Bitcoin’s energy consumption has reportedly declined drastically in the past three weeks. Estimates from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index on Friday show that the network now consumes 25% less power than it did at the start of the month. Albania will start applying a 15 % tax on crypto earnings from 2023, indicating that some form of regulation is kicking in.
Ethereum is still 60% down this year, even after rallying from its extreme lows. ETH and BTC reached their peak over the last 10 days on Sunday, after the market showed some signs of stabilization. The second-largest cryptocurrency rallied by 6% to $1,279 on Sunday before pulling back this morning. The rally came after ETH dropped as low as $880 on June 18. The asset seems to have found support around its 200-week MA, at $1,200. BTC hit a high on Sunday at C$28,191, after it touched a low of C$22,950 on June 18. The overall market capitalization regained its $1 trillion level on Saturday, though it breached that level slightly early this morning, but seems to be trending at that level at the time of writing. BTC dominance stands at 42.4%, while ETH dominance is at 15.6%. Cryptocurrencies have had a tough year so far. The FED’s rate hikes and consistently high inflation have been the major contributors to this, along with the LUNA/UST crash. A major options expiration on Friday was viewed as a likely source of volatility. However, short risk cleared surprisingly efficiently for Ether, which is most likely due to the unexpected stability.
In other positive developments, during the past week, PayPal announced that it will support the transfer of cryptocurrencies between PayPal and other exchanges as well as wallets. This new functionality will allow PayPal customers to transfer supported coins in and out of their PayPal accounts. Moreover, Citadel Securities, founded by the billionaire ace hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, will be creating a cryptocurrency trading platform with HFT firm Virtu Financial. Citadel Securities already works extensively with crypto venture capital firms such as Paradigm and Sequoia Capital. This new project is aimed at creating highly effective and efficient access to crypto asset liquidity for potential institutional traders.
Tether is all set to launch on Tezos. Tether said that it will launch USDT on Tezos, with the aim to power applications across Decentralised Finance (Defi) and payments. Now Tether will have thirteenth chains on its network. The market capitalization stands at $80 billion, and USDT will now be able to provide liquidity to other Defi protocols on the platform, unlike several other tokens, giving it a huge competitive advantage and adding to its utility.
While there are some signs of a recovery setting in, industry experts remain bearish. The market continues to be in a consolidatory phase, and pretty range bound. Inflows continue to be dim, and liquidations are on a spree. The silver lining is that the market hasn’t broken the current support levels, and continues to rebound from it, which is a sigh of relief. The uncertain macroeconomic environment continues to remain a threat, and only time will tell where we head from here.
