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Crypto Market Forecast: The week ahead, 18th March

Interested in staying up to speed with the events that will impact crypto prices in the week ahead? Then bookmark Crypto Market Forecast for a curated weekly summary of forward-focused crypto news that matters

As Bitcoin prices battled to break past the key ~USD 4000 level, crypto markets continued to enjoy a period of positive price performance and growing momentum. While the price of BTC rose a steady ~2%, the overall market cap for cryptographic assets grew ~4.5%. Large cap assets LTC and BNB maintained their recent price momentum, rising ~9% and ~11%, while emerging altcoins like Ontology and QTUM enjoyed double digit gains on the back of positive fundamental announcements.

The triple digit gains of LTC over the last 90 days have been tied to the emergence of new developer activity on Litecoin. As highlighted by Cryptocurrency Newsfeed, tweets last week that appeared to strengthen Litecoin founder Charlie Lee’s working relationship with the Mimblewimble privacy solution BEAM, may have helped generate late week buying momentum.

QTUM received its price boost on the back of news that it would be integrated into the ZEUX fintech payments service which will allow QTUM payments within the Apple Pay and Samsung Pay ecosystems, adding to the core utility of the QTUM network and token.

One of the biggest news stories of the last week was the delisting of CBOE Bitcoin ("XBT") futures with the futures exchange stating that it is "assessing its approach with respect to how it plans to continue to offer digital asset derivatives for trading".

A reason for the closure may be the relative underperformance (volume) of CBOE futures vs CME XBT futures, which have clearly emerged as Wall Street’s preferred USD cash settled Bitcoin trading market. A number of proposals for Bitcoin ETF’s set to be listed for trading on CBOE, have also been rejected by the SEC. The future of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency on the CBOE remain unclear at this stage.

There were a series of head scratching statements from blockchain industry leaders at the cross-technology South-by-SouthWest conference/festival. Joseph Lubin of Consensys, for example, proposed that 2019 could be the year of the Consumer-Token-Offering (CTO), non-security, non-investment vehicle, consumer centric digital tokens that don’t offer the wild returns of the ICO markets, thereby maintaining legal robustness and utility.

Upcoming crypto events

March 19th – Binance Launchpad Session, CELR Token

Following the highly successful launches of the Bittorrent and Fetch.ai tokens, which both raised multiple millions of dollars and sold out in minutes, the third Binance launchpad project releases on Tuesday. Celer (CELR) is a universal offchain scaling solution that is designed to be usable with any platform blockchain and has considerable hype behind it. Launchpad has been perceived as a strong driver of value into the BNB token which has risen ~73% in the last month.

19th to 21st March – [Money 20/20 Singapore conference]

Money 20/20 is a leading financial services conference in Asia with a strong focus on the region’s emerging Fintech ecosystem. Key focuses of the conference include avenues to disrupt the traditional banking models and cybersecurity while featured speakers include Stellar founder Jed Mccaleb and Crunchbase CEO Jager Mcconnell.

March 24th – Launch of Smart Media Tokens (SMT’s) on the Steemit blockchain

The Steemit blockchain’s latest major network update will let creators and entrepreneurs on the platform build custom tokens and create their own monetization and reward systems. The system is set to run with three second block times, and a proof-of-brain reward algorithm designed specifically for digital content tokens. The price of STEEM has shown excellent momentum in the last month rising 54% in value.

Marcap Top 10

Marcap 18032019

Many tokens in the Brave New Coin Market Cap Top 10 enjoyed a strong trading week as a number of altcoin markets continue to show signs they are breaking long term bear trends. Stellar Lumens (XLM), for example, joined the large cap alt party rising ~9% in the last week. The Stellar Foundation made headlines on the news that long time Mozilla COO Denelle Dixon would be joining the blockchain project as CEO. The ability to convince mainstream tech leaders to jump ship has historically been a bullish signal for token projects..

BLX 18032019

Bitcoin bulls have launched another attack on the key $4000 psychological level, and it remains unclear whether BTC’s next big move will be up or down. While there have been multiple occasions in the last three months when this level has been stubbornly held by market forces, some analysts think this most recent push may play out differently. Analysts suggest that $4200 is the next target post $4000, with ~$4800 and ~$6000 being possibilities if resistance is broken.

In other Bitcoin news, the Lightning Network has turned one and continues to grow – with a capacity (total amount transferable over the network) of 1059 BTC or approximately $4.2 million.


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