BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER
BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Tuesday, June 15, 2021
This 2020 factor could be the key to BTC reclaiming $60k level Institutions
made
their
presence
known
towards
the
end
of
2020.
B
itcoin’s past week of decline has been analyzed again and again: the why, the how and how long. Quite a few factors have been deemed responsible for its drop. From weak market sentiment to over-leveraged trades, every reasoning is backed by an argument. Yet, there is a particular influence, or simply the lack of it, which may have rolled the dice on BTC’s calamitous month.
How is no one talking about Institutions? Say what you may, Institutions made their presence known towards the end of 2020. Whether it was Grayscale’s aggressive accumulation or MicroStrategy’s massive BTC buy, its impact was evident. From 1 October 2020 to the 3rd week of February 2021, Grayscale’s BTC holdings increased from 449.8k BTC to 655.47k. Then, the spending suddenly came to an abrupt halt, and a significant weekly correction of 21% was observed. Many analysts speculated that Grayscale stopped adding to their BTC holdings as GBTC premium was exhibiting negative rates. Now, Since 25 February, GBTC premium is yet to record a positive rate. On 14 May, it reached an all-time low of 21.23%. The drop in GBTC discount suggested that institutional demand has softened in the market considerably since February.
E
ven though India was still deliberating regulations for cryptocurrencies, some top officials from the industry believed that the country could be looking at classifying Bitcoin as an asset class.
Coincidentally, the price action for Bitcoin hasn’t been great either. Bitcoin registered a high of $57,780 on 21 February, following which only an 11.14% rise was observed over a month. The momentum had visibly tapered down. Therefore, it can be speculated that the decrease in Institutional spending may have halted BTC’s rally following Q1 2021. Retail traders haven’t been able to inject substantial momentum to the rally, as leveraged trades rekt the price’s value off late. What can be taken as positive for Bitcoin? There is no way of confirming a correlation be-
tween Bitcoin bull-run and Institutional spending. However, both have occurred in the same period, so an argument can be made based on influence. One of the positives that can be taken out of the current market is that Grayscale could start accumulating at previous prices again, seen during the start of February. Another inference that can be drawn is that Institutions are currently waiting for the price to drop deeper, before executing another major buy order. Whatever it may be, institutions’ intervention currently looks significant for Bitcoin, if the asset wants to improve and progress higher on another bullish rally.
WazirX gets show-cause notice over claims of ‘money laundering’
I
ndia’s Directorate of Enforcement, on Friday, issued a show-cause notice to Indian crypto-exchange WazirX for violating FEMA guidelines for transactions involving cryptocurrencies worth Rs. 2,790.74 crore ($381,862,278 approx).
to wallets of other exchanges which could be held by foreigners in foreign locations. The ED has also alleged that WazirX did not collect the required documents and that in turn contravened the mandatory Anti-Money Laundering (ALM) and Combating Financing Terrorism (CFT) rules and FEMA guidelines.
The ED initiated the FEMA investigation on the basis of an ongoing money laundering investigation into Chinese-owned illegal online betting applications.
“In the period under investigation, users of WazirX via its pool account, have received incoming cryptocurrency worth Rs 880 crore from Binance accounts and transferred out cryptocurrency worth Rs 1,400 crore to Binance accounts. None of these transactions are available on the blockchain for any audit or investigation.”
The officially registered entity M/s Zanmai Labs Pvt Ltd was incorporated in 2017 as a native Indian crypto-startup and the directors - Nischal Shetty and Sameer Hanuman Mhatre have been called out in the ED’s notice. Here, it should be noted that global crypto-exchange Binance had acquired WazirX two years after incorporation in 2019. The ED’s statement highlighted, “During the course of investigation, it was seen that the accused Chinese nationals had laundered proceeds of crime worth Rs. 57 crore approximately by converting the INR deposits into cryptocurrency Tether (USDT) and then transferring the same to Binance Wallets based on instructions received from abroad.” According to the probe agency, WazirX of-
Will India classify Bitcoin as an asset class soon?
fers a wide range of crypto-related transactions, including exchange of CCs with INR and vice-versa; exchange of CCs; Person to Person (P2P) transactions; and even transfer/receipt of cryptocurrency held in its pool accounts
Curiously, according to CEO Nischal Shetty, WazirX is yet to receive any show-cause notice, with the exec stressing that the exchange is in compliance with all laws and regulations. He added, “We go beyond our legal obligations by following Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) processes and have always provided information to law enforcement authorities whenever required.” Here, it’s worth noting that crypto-regulations in India are very foggy at the moment.
Sources linked with the industry expressed that the government has moved away from its aggressive stance towards virtual currencies and was like to classify Bitcoin as an asset class in India soon. Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Board of India [SEBI] could be the regulator for crypto. Despite the leniency shown by the government regarding crypto, the RBI recently clarified that there was no change in its stance and that concerns still prevailed regarding cryptos. The RBI Governor, Shaktikanta Das had earlier stated: “There is no change in RBI’s position (regarding cryptocurrencies). And, with regards to RBI’s position, we have major concerns about cryptocurrencies, which we have conveyed to the government. And, with regard to investors, it is for each investor to do his own due diligence and take a very careful and prudent call.” This was a response to its latest circular that directed the banks to stop flagging customers over crypto transactions, citing a 2018 circular that was later quashed by the Supreme Court. While many mistook this circular as the central bank warming up to crypto, the RBI cleared the air with the above statement. Nevertheless, there have been discussions about the formation of a new committee with the finance ministry and crypto industry to oversee the regulations. It has been reported that an expert panel at the ministry was already studying the matter and the chances of a crypto bill making its way to the monsoon session of the Parliament was likely. Ketan Surana, Director and chief financial officer, Coinsbit, and Member, Internet and Mobile Association of India said: “We can definitely say that the new committee which is working on cryptocurrencies is very optimistic on cryptocurrency regulation and legislation... A new draft proposal will soon be in the Cabinet, which will look into the overall scenario and take the best step forward. We are very hopeful that the government will embrace cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.”
02
BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Why you should look closely at BTC, Eth, other alts’ trading volumes
T
rading volume has been an important metric to gauge the amount of market activity in 2021. While assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum have dominated the proceedings before, volumes have been much more distributed over the course of the last few months. While Ethereum’s trading volume has caught up with Bitcoin on Binance, Bitcoin led the charge for a significant period of time before the month of May.
In this article, we will be looking at the different levels of trading volumes across different exchanges and what they may indicate in terms of identifying the general investor (Trading volumes
of only USDT pair assets have been considered). May was a turbulent month for the ecosystem as both buying and selling volumes were taking over the industry. Now, according to Coinmetrics, Binance’s trading volume has been largely dominated by altcoin trading in 2021. One of the reasons being its heavy altcoin list with USDT pairs, but it took a noticeable leap over Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2021. And yet, in the month of May, Ethereum registered the highest trading volume, and it was followed up by Bitcoin. Dogecoin, Binance Coin, XRP, and Cardano. On Coinbase, the spread coverage by Ethereum was more dominant than on Binance, where BTC, ETH volumes were almost neck and neck. Altcoin volumes lagged strongly on this platform. On FTX, the trading volume was more comparable again for Bitcoin, Ethereum, with other assets hardly accruing relatively high trading activity. Finally, the CME was the only platform where Bitcoin outperformed Ethereum in terms of Future volumes, a finding that meant that institutional investors were still favoring Bitcoin over Ethere-
um. Here, it is important to note that ETH Futures were only recently introduced on the exchange. Now, there are a few things that can be inferred from the aforementioned trading volume differences on multiple exchanges, with respect to multiple coins. When it came to altcoin trading, it has been limited to only Binance’s platform since it caters to the largest retail investors’ group. So, a majority of trading for these assets usually comes from one particular end.
BTC: hash rate drops after China warns Xinjiang against mining
On the question of Bitcoin and Ethereum, however, unsurprisingly, the interest was widespread and cohesive. It can be stated that both East UTC and WEST UTC time traders were involved with Ethereum, Bitcoin trading, Hence, it can be speculated that there is a higher chance that altcoin trading concentrated only on one platform might have been prey to some form of wash trading over time. Bitcoin, Ethereum have maintained relatively active trading activity (not quantifiable) across multiple platforms. While an argument can be made that the listing of different altcoins makes a difference, major altcoins are still pretty popular across all exchanges.
B
itcoin’s price has been going through a volatile phase lately, making the crypto-asset extremely sensitive to all kinds of developments. Previously, the rehashing of China’s crypto-ban had contributed to the price dropping massively. However, now that the country is cracking down on mining, we may be in for another dump. China recently announced a ban on the mining of cryptocurrencies in the Xinjiang zone citing “energy-saving environmental protection.” Xinjiang, along with Inner Mongolia and Sichuan, made up three important places in China contributing highly to the mining pool. There have been strict actions taken in all three areas by the authorities to prevent the mining of cryptos. With China being a major player in terms of Bitcoin mining, the hash rate has been already impacted. According to Chinese reporter Colin Wu, the total BTC hash rate fell on 11 June by 20E. The reporter added,
Although many Bitcoin enthusiasts believe that this is FUD meant to hurt the already tumbling value of the world’s largest crypto, mining pools like AntPool, F2Pool, and Poolin have been seeing their hash rate fall over the past couple of days.
Why this BTC cycle is ‘going to be somewhat different’
W
ith a market cap of almost $700 billion, Bitcoin was trading within the $36k price bracket at press time.
When the news first broke about Xinjiang, the hash rate across Chinese mining pools fell by between 11% to 30% within 24 hours.
After noting an intermediate peak recently, popular analyst Benjamin Cowen had asserted that Bitcoin’s market cycle top was still well away. Nevertheless, as circled and highlighted in the attached chart, Bitcoin has been ahead of both cycle two and cycle three during different stages. That being said, it has failed to persist and keep pace with either of them. Here, it is essential to note that the above Bitcoin market cycle ROI chart is measured from the market cycle bottom. Drawing parallels with the previous cycle, Cowen now highlighted, “For us to continue to follow the last market cycle, Bitcoin will have to go up by $300,000 by the end of the year.” Over the past 6 months, Bitcoin has registered a 100.15% surge. If the same 100% is applied to the current $36k market price, Bitcoin would just cross the $72k range. What’s more, according to the analyst, the journey from $30k to the $300k band defi-
Similarly, other mining pools run by prominent exchanges like Huobi and Binance also noted a 10% decline.
nitely looks too “far-fetched” for now. Highlighting other obstacles in Bitcoin’s path, Cowen added, “Basically, higher the market capitalisation, the harder it is to move the price. For Bitcoin it’ll take a lot of more volume and with each cycle it’s going to get harder and harder to push it up the curve.” The analyst also suggested that it would become essential for institutions to step up to take Bitcoin’s price to the aforementioned level. How-
ever, an earlier analysis had pointed out that the same could act as a hindrance and surprise people later. Further elaborating on the same, Cowen said, “This is the cycle of institutions and I’ve always been skeptical that every institution owned by man is going to FOMO into Bitcoin in 2021… I think a lot of institutions will continue to pour in and this cycle is going to be somewhat different than any other cycle we’ve seen.”
Here, it’s worth adding that the drop in the hash rate also followed a difficulty adjustment that took place nearly a week ago. The hash rate often falls if the difficulty is adjusted higher, but this time the difficulty was adjusted lower to 21.05 trillion at a block height of 685,440, which was a 16% drop compared to its ATH reported in May. Bitcoin holders may want to pay attention to Bitcoin’s price as the dropping hash rate could invite selling pressure. At the time of press, BTC was trading at $37,425, with the dominant sentiment remaining one of ‘Extreme Fear.’
03
BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Is the worst finally over for BTC? what’s in store for for 2021?
M
arket perspective is vital while analyzing the trend of an asset. Consider this Observing Bitcoin’s 1-hour chart at the moment could completely demoralize potential investors. However, the 1-day or 12-hour chart would not seem drastically bad as the asset is still accruing capital gains for 2021. Therefore, it is essential that we analyze Bitcoin and its recent sell-off from a fundamental point of view, and figure out if we are heading towards a long-term bearish period or if it is just a bump in the road.
D
espite a wave of motions and replies over the last few weeks, talks of a settlement between Ripple Labs, its execs, and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission are never far away. In fact, the same was referred to recently by attorney John Deaton when he claimed that,
Over the past few months, we have discussed several on-chain metrics that seemed over-bullish at times and suggesting an impending correction. However, we continued to ignore and invalidate these signs as the market rallied forward, until the recent crash. Now, according to data, certain indicators have undergone a reboot, and these signs may allow panic to settle down.
“While the trial lawyers are fighting it out and arguing over almost everything, the settlement lawyers are kicked back trying to find a path of least resistance.” Now, let us assume that these lawyers have successfully been able to keep the intensity of the lawsuit behind them to push out a settlement. What will such a settlement look like? Attorney Jeremy Hogan is the latest to take a crack at this question, with Hogan asserting that such a likelihood can only be entertained if the settlement involves clauses that satisfy both parties.
Before analyzing the reversals, it is significant to acknowledge the gravity of this capitulation event. 19 May registered the largest realized losses for Bitcoin on the daily scale at $4.5 billion. It was larger than the losses witnessed in Jan-Feb 2018 and March 2020. And yet, only 9-9.5% of the value were unrealized losses, a figure that was relatively small. In March 2020, 44% was unrealized, whereas the magnitude was 114% back in 20218 (Unrealized losses determine the percentage that may still panic-sell in the market). Now, one major positive that can be taken from the Net Unrealized Profit/Losses or NUPL is the retest at the support of 0.5. According to the chart above, this particular support kickstarted multiple bullish cycles in 2013 and 2017 and presently, it is reaching the 0.5-level for the first time in 2021.
Right now, the funding rates across exchanges are cooling off as well, with the selling pressure subsiding in the market. The worst could be over for now, and with the fundamentals relatively bullish, the market remains on course for a strong 2021.
Additionally, miners did not have anything to do with the sell-off this time. During major bearish cycles in the past, miners have been responsible for strong sell-offs.
In the next article, price market structure, ing and selling zones for the long-term movement
This time, however, short-term holders were more responsible for extended corrections. Bitcoin Token holders between 1 month-6 month possibly chased the retail price throughout the cycle, and once the price collapsed, panic selling ensured the higher realized losses for BTC bought between $50,000-$60,000.
Now that we have a proper understanding of the key factors that have undergone a reset, we will identify how it affects Bitcoin’s market structure. It is important to note that Bitcoin exhibited an aggressive market rally in 2021. It lasted more than 4 months, from the beginning of January until the market sell-off in May. A cooldown period is essential for such price surges, otherwise, the structure would only be looking for a deeper drop from the top.
Higher liquidations for leverage trades also led to a short-squeeze which dragged BTC down to $30,000 for a brief moment.
What might a settlement in the XRP lawsuit look like?
we will discuss the with potential buyBitcoin, and estimate for the digital asset.
Coming to the important schematics of
a bull cycle, there are two particular ranges where most institutions like to trade around - the Demand Zone and the Supply Zone. The Demand Zone represents a range during a period of correction, one which enables a sharp surge upwards within a few price candles. Similarly, the Supply Zone is a range where the asset may witness a sharp correction after a bullish rally. Both of these zones represent key windows of buying and selling and are currently evident on BTC’s chart. As observed, the Demand Zone was re-tested during the price correction, following which BTC surged immediately. One of the main reasons why the Demand Zone facilitates a quick recovery is that institutions largely trade from these ranges. Here, it is important to note that institutions do not chase the market price, only retail traders do. Accredited investors wait for a correction before getting their orders through, and that is exactly what probably happened during the sell-off.
Both parties, the attorney argued, will want different results from such a settlement. According to Hogan, the SEC, for instance, will want to put an end to this lawsuit without any damage to their “street cred” with other crypto-companies. This will include not only language enjoining Ripple from any illegal sales in the future, but also a civil penalty to show that “Ripple did something wrong.” Then, there’s the question of disgorgement. Now, this was something very specific the agency sought when it first charged the San Francisco-based blockchain firm. In fact, Hogan himself had alluded to the same being a key part of the SEC’s prosecution during an interview a few months ago. However, in the present day, “There’s just no way to fairly “disgorge” profits to investors because there’s no way of fairly knowing who to “disgorge” to. How would you even come up with a plan to disgorge say a billion dollars that Ripple pays – to who? Plus, there’s that small problem that it was literally your lawsuit that caused the most damage.” What about the defendants then? According to Hogan, first and foremost, Ripple would want assurances that it will be able to maintain its business and ODL, with the civil penalty not being significant enough to induce bankruptcy. The first is a particularly significant assurance, especially since in the past both Garlinghouse and Larsen have bemoaned the lack of regulatory clarity in the United States to hint at a move abroad. It’s worth noting, however, that in a later interview, when the narrative took an “us v. them” turn, the Ripple exec was quick to say that he is “committed to San Francisco.” What’s more, the firm would want much-needed clarity going forward, clarity on the status of XRP, a development that will tell the secondary market that the “SEC thing” is well and truly over. Such clarity, ideally, should be enough to give exchanges the confidence to re-list XRP. Here, it’s worth noting that Hogan also entertained two other possibilities, each of which wouldn’t exactly be in the best-case scenarios for XRP or Ripple. These included possible limitations on the sale of escrowed XRP and Ripple being restricted to private sales to only companies and clients, the latter of which can be expected to “bottleneck the flow of XRP into the market for years.”
04
BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021
This time, have things changed between Bitcoin, Eth, and USDT?
Bitcoin still not out of the woods: 4 obstacles it needs to overcome
A
fter 19 May’s crash, the crypto-market witnessed another mini-crash on 8 June, and yet again, all eyes were on Bitcoin. The king coin slipped down as far as $31k, a level the market had not seen in a long time. While May’s crash was colossal too, the price did not kneel down to the aforementioned level. What’s more, with every drop on the charts, the death cross narrative is becoming even more prevalent.
B
itcoin and the Altcoins are currently in a market rut. The bullish recovery hasn’t been smooth sailing after the prices dropped at the end of May. While the industry has had its fair share of positive changes and signs of reversals, substantial results haven’t really panned out since the May 19th crash. High Tether reserves on exchanges have kept the bullish narrative somewhat alive. However, it might be time to incorporate another point of view; to understand that things might not follow previous factors, which were fundamentally bullish before.
such as USDT, USDC, etc have injected more liquidity into space, and have often acted as crypto reserves during choppy markets. At the moment, we are amid a choppy trading session and recovery has been expected to arrive when big USDT holders start buying back in. Stablecoin Supply Ratio or SSR has been identified as a bullish bias for the market. Whenever the SSR ratio is low, it is considered that the stablecoin supply has more “buying power” to purchase Bitcoin, hence driving the market up. Historically it has been observed back in the early half of 2018.
Is USDT going to pull Bitcoin down, and push Ethereum and other altcoins up?
However, the landscape might have changed now. Back in 2017-2018, only a few major assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin had stablecoin pairs on exchanges.
Stablecoins have become an integral part of the industry over the past 3 years. Assets
The supply was still low and its movement
was more reactive. The market dynamics have completely changed now, as most crypto assets have a USDT pairing on platforms. Hence it can be inferred that the SSR ratio cannot be considered as a ‘buying power’ for only BTC. The introduction of DeFi further complicates matters, as the desire for stablecoin yields became extremely popular. Demand increases for stable assets and now, the industry is possibly at a point where USDT has less impact on Bitcoin’s movement.
With a growing number of investors, institutions, and interest, the cryptocurrency market isn’t straightforward anymore, let alone the factors determining a bull-run. USDT and other stablecoins will continue to have a say on Bitcoin, Altcoins movement, but it is not as definitive as it was before. Tether reserves on exchanges dropped recently as well but the impact on BTC’s price hasn’t been outrightly positive. The digital asset class is evolving and USDT is currently embedded with that narrative.
EtC announces Magneto upgrade; Will the price react?
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While the team is working on the blockchain, ETC has been among the highest returning tokens this year. The digital asset, at press time, was returning 850% year-to-date and hit an all-time high at $184 recently. The growth of ETC has puzzled many chartists who expected the price to hit half of its current ATH by the end of the year. However, it looks like the ETC market managed to appreciate on the back of Ethereum and Bitcoin’s volatility before corrections eventually set in.
thereum Classic is in the news today after it announced the next network upgrade scheduled for 21st July. The upgrade dubbed Magneto will take place at block 13,189,133 and will implement ECIP1103. It will also include Ethereum Berlin upgrade features, as per the announcement. ECIP-1103 will allow the addition of all the protocol upgrades which were a part of the Berlin update that took place in April. The protocols include various EIPs optimizing gas and transactions which pertain to security enhancements important to the network. The implementation of ECIP-1103 will ensure maximum compatibility across the two networks. According to the schedule shared by the ETC team, changes must have been already deployed on the Mordor Classic PoW testnet on 2nd June and the Kotti Classic PoA testnet on 9 June. The team added, “To ensure a successful fork, we ask ETC
consumers to upgrade their node software to update their clients to a Magneto compatible version if they have not done so already. If you’re not operating nodes or services, but use ETC through other services, then check with that service to ensure they’re supporting the Magneto hard fork.”
In fact, Etherplan’s Donald McIntyre had asserted that it may continue to benefit from the volatility from ETH and BTC markets. According to him, the price of BTC will hit close to $125,693 by the end of this cycle while ETC’s value would be 5% of BTC’s valuation. This would place ETC at a value between $900 and $1,000. With the crypto-asset slipping by almost 70% from its all-time high on the back of the aforementioned corrections, the upgrade scheduled in July can help the crypto’s price and might bring it closer to McIntyre’s estimate.
It’s worth noting, however, that the asset bounced back and was trading around the $36,800-range, at press time. Since the price has already started moving up, is it safe to assume that Bitcoin has already bottomed out? Have we stepped into the early stages of an upward trend or is it merely a price swing? And most importantly, is this the right time for traders to step into the market? After the May crash, Bitcoin had to cling on to the $34k-level for a long time, and then continue moving upwards from there. However, that did not happen, and as a result, the market witnessed the 8 June crash. 1. Criteria one and two: According to technical analyst Michaël van de Poppe, a reversal looks like the most likely scenario at this point and the market ‘might’ get to witness a bullish divergence soon. “First step is that we get into the liquidity zone and the second step is to break back or bounce back and that’s what we’re doing. But we’re still not out of the woods yet.” 2. 2 more obstacles: Another popular analyst with the pseudonym Don Alt recently highlighted, “BTC needs to punch through this red resistance ($34k) and then it’s home free to do another crab run to $40k. Not out of the woods yet, but decent first signs of the range boundary holding.” Post that, according to Poppe, Bitcoin’s price has to sustain a breach of another crucial level at $35.3k. Even though the daily chart projected a favorable picture, the two-hourly chart painted a completely different scenario. Bitcoin was still making lower highs and lower lows there, and that according to the analyst did not give a concrete reversal confirmation. Nevertheless, if Bitcoin clears all the obstacles on its path and bounces back, “Then you are actually destroying the structure of making lower highs and lower lows and the next step is that you’re going to attack these highs once again.” Pointing out the ongoing scenario, he added, “It’s a good bounce that we’re seeing on Bitcoin right now, but most likely we’re going to see resistance. The emergence of a bullish divergence will make the market refuse to drop even further because of the bias pressure coming into the market and then you slowly start to adapt towards and upward trend.” Hence, this seems to be the right stage for participants to enter the market before the flagship crypto’s price steams even further. Projecting the upcoming “higher high,” when compared to the current market level, another analyst tweeted, “A fakeout to the downside that failed to make a lower low and completed in 3 waves- implying this was a corrective move down and keeping the “completed ABC” count in-tact. I think we continue to push higher from here.”