Monday Market Report | January 15th - 21st

Jan 22, 2024

byNDAX Labs

📢 Weekly TL;DR

Every Monday, we cover the latest developments and trends in the dynamic and ever-evolving world of cryptocurrency. From price movements, industry news and our favorite resources, we strive to provide our readers with a comprehensive overview of the crypto landscape.

Following the considerable excitement surrounding the approval of the highly anticipated Bitcoin Spot ETF, here's an update on its performance during the first week of trading.

What does TradFi think of their new Bitcoin ETF toys?
A first for Bitcoin! But what’s a “Golden Cross” and why should we care?
2y price highs, ephemeral blobs and proto-danksharding: An ETH update.

So, fair question: It’s been a week. How are those Bitcoin ETFs performing? Historically speaking, it was the most successful ETF (or IPO for that matter) launch on record. Given the very large trade volume ($1.8B in the first three days of trading), the mixed price action can largely be attributed to Grayscale investors cashing out of their positions. That said, in the first 2 days, the BlackRock trust took almost 12K bitcoins off the market, followed very closely by Fidelity (now holding 10K coins for their clients), and this, after Bitwise had taken an early lead. (Graph below courtesy of Sprout Finance)

(Notably, later in the week, Blackrock became the first Bitcoin ETF to reach $1B BTC AUM—a 43% increase on the numbers above). And including GBTC? 21Shares (Ark partners) President Ophelia Snyder mused that the initial trading volumes reflected pent-up demand, and noted she expected “a second wave of activity in the coming weeks and months as this becomes more mainstream.” She added that focusing on short-term flows into such funds was “crazy short-sighted and largely not the point,” Snyder said “it’s going to ramp over time, so I think the short-term view is a mistake.” Blockworks

Golden Cross, Bart Simpson, Hang Man, Superman (jk there’s no Superman)... What do these strange terms have in common? They are visual mnemonics of important occurrences in Technical Analysis. A Golden Cross is a basic technical indicator that occurs in the market when a short-term MA (moving average, 50-day) of an asset rises above a long-term MA (200-day). But you’ll tell us, “Bitcoin’s 50-day MA has crossed above its 200-day MA many times before, so why is this important?” Ah, but this is a first because we're talking about a weekly golden cross, meaning Bitcoin’s 50-week MA has passed above its 200-week MA. In english: Very bullish long-term indicator. But—while traders often interpret this as a sign of a long-term bull market, skeptics note that crossovers are historical indicators and may lag current prices. The bullish sentiment is also challenged by Bitcoin's recent 10% decline from its $49,000 peak, attributed to lower-than-expected ETF flows following the introduction of 11 spot exchange-traded funds in the U.S. The effectiveness of golden and death crosses (its opposite) in predicting trends remains mixed. Coindesk

After its native token Ether grew by around 15% last week to recapture 2-year price highs, Ethereum's core developers have successfully deployed the Dencun upgrade on the Goerli test network, a prelude to its imminent launch on the mainnet. Despite encountering challenges, including a potential chain split due to client synchronization issues, the upgrade on Goerli testnet was finalized. The Dencun upgrade introduces EIP-4844, featuring a novel transaction mechanism called ephemeral blobs or proto-danksharding. This allows Ethereum nodes to temporarily store and access off-chain data, reducing storage demands and lowering transaction costs for decentralized applications (dApps), especially benefiting Layer 2 rollup chains. The mainnet release is scheduled for the end of Q1 2024, following phased implementations on various testnets. The Block

📰 Other Community News

In the cryptocurrency community, there's always something going on. Here are a few events and happenings that you might be interested in:

Sam Bankman-Fried's Parents Ask Court to Dismiss FTX's Lawsuit Seeking to Recover Funds Coindesk
Multiple US Senate bills object to CBDC's definition of ‘money’ Cointelegraph
Chainlink Teams Up With Circle to Allow Cross-Chain Stablecoin Transfers Coindesk
Trump Vows to 'Never Allow' U.S. CBDC if Reelected Decrypt
Morgan Stanley: Can Crypto Dethrone U.S. Dollar Dominance? Decrypt
BlackRock Wants to Follow Bitcoin ETF With an Ethereum ETF. Marketing It Might Not Be So Simple Coindesk
Ripple CEO cites SEC's 'hostile' crypto stance for not prioritizing IPO The Block

For more new stories, visit our LinkedIn

📈 Weekly Moves

Market Summary

The global cryptocurrency market has reached a total market capitalization of CAD $2.17 Trillion.
Bitcoin continues to lead the market with a dominance of 49.8%, followed by Ethereum at 18.1%.

Performance

Bitcoin is currently the top trading pair on NDAX, followed by Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Cardano, Dogecoin, Arbitrum, Shiba Inu and Chainlink.
Week over week, the value of Bitcoin (BTC) is down 3.31% and currently trading at $55,350, while Ethereum (ETH) is down 2.88%, now trading around $3,278.

Top Weekly Movers @ NDAX

Who was the top performing asset on NDAX last week?

Most small cap cryptos, as they are sometimes known to do, followed the king crypto in its price consolidation over last week.

Bitcoin was down almost 9%, Ethereum was down 3.5%, and Arbitrum, after a near 90% leg up over the last 6 weeks, took a breather as well (ARB is down 13$).

Weeks like these are good to learn about staking! Are you putting your PoS assets to work for you on NDAX? Learn more about how to do just that right here.

As of 01/22/2024 12:00 AM EST, values in CAD.

Keep an eye on the market here 👉 Cryptocurrency Prices

📅 Upcoming Events

Mark your calendars!

Jan 26 - CME options expiry
Jan 31 - FOMC benchmark rate decision
Feb 13 - January CPI
Mid April - Bitcoin block reward halving

📖 Educational Resources

For those of you looking to learn more about bitcoin and crypto markets this week:

In this episode with investment strategist Lyn Alden we discuss: Her 2024 macro-outlook for equities, bonds, gold and Bitcoin - What happened to the consensus about a 'hard landing' for the economy? - Could consensus about a Bitcoin bull run be wrong? - Global economic deceleration - Impact of the spot Bitcoin ETFs and Bitcoin halving - The need for privacy tools on Bitcoin - Coin Stories w/ Natalie Brunell - Lyn Alden on Bitcoin and Macro in 2024: Is the Consensus Wrong?
NLW explores the last-minute questions surrounding the Bitcoin spot ETF. – The Breakdown w/ NLW – How Much Will Flow Into BTC Post ETF Approval?
Back in 1933, they seized the gold. But now, digital gold is back. – Balaji Srinivasan - The Bitcoin ETF is the spiritual reversal of Executive Order 6102
Explore the future of finance in this episode where Leon Wankum discusses Bitcoin's potential impact on real estate values, comparing it with traditional investment strategies. - Bitcoin Fundamentals w/ Preston Pysh - BITCOIN & REAL ESTATE W/ LEON WANKUM

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide investment, legal, accounting, tax or any other advice and should not be relied on in that or any other regard. The information contained herein is for information purposes only and is not to be construed as an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of cryptocurrencies or otherwise.