Crypto market forecast: 12th August

While the majority of the altcoin markets faltered, it was another green trading week for Bitcoin, which continues to increase its dominance of the crypto market cap. BTC rose ~5% in the last 7 days, while the overall crypto market cap excluding BTC, slid ~3%. The number 2 and 3 crypto assets on Brave New Coin’s market cap table, ETH and XRP, fell 3% and 5% respectively.

Bitcoin continues to enjoy favourability over other crypto assets as a safe haven asset. With global political and economic tensions growing due to macro events such as the China-US trade tensions, the Hong Kong protests, and increasingly aggressive monetary policy from central bankers, Bitcoin has enjoyed an extended period of positive price appreciation. This is driven by its proposition as an accessible, scarce, secure, digital, store of value with characteristics analogous to gold.

Other crypto assets such as ETH and XRP are being viewed by the market as riskier bets. There have been several occasions in recent weeks where Bitcoin has immediately gained in the aftermath of bearish global macro news events while alts have stagnated. Brave New Coin assesses Bitcoin’s current dominance of the crypto market cap at ~68%, the highest it has been since April 2017, and it continues to climb every week. The market continues to perceive altcoins as risky investments. Negative sentiment around key fundamental issues remains an issue for most altcoin projects, such as an inability to gain users or deliver on whitepaper promises.

Some in the crypto space reacted strongly to the August 5th release of FedNow, a new real-time payments, and settlement service from the US Federal Reserve. The program seeks to improve payment infrastructure in the country and make it easier for Americans to manage their finances and make money transfers.

The Bitcoin network already offers digital payments on a secure network and many in the crypto community were quick to point that out. Bitcoin payments also offer a high level of censorship resistance. The market appears unconcerned by the potential of the FedNow program to establish itself as an alternative payment network to crypto.

This week in crypto events

12th to 14th June- Blockchain Futurist event. The Futurist Conference is the largest and most high profile blockchain event in Canada. It will bring together 2300 attendees from around the globe to discuss the future potential of blockchain, AI, and other emerging technologies. Notable speakers include Vitalik Buterin, the inventor of Ethereum, and Tanya Woods, the managing director of the Chamber of Digital Commerce for Canada.

11th June- Monthly BTT airdrop to TRX holders

Beginning from February 2019, on the 11th of every month, TRX token holders on Binance will receive an airdrop of BitTorrent tokens (XBTT) directly into their exchange accounts. The number of tokens airdropped increases year-on-year and is designed to promote the BitTorrent token ecosystem by utilizing the support of an already active TRX token community. Like most altcoins, Tronix faltered in the last week, falling by ~7% despite events like the airdrop that was designed to incentivize buying.

A stand out performer in the large-cap crypto markets was Algorand (ALGO) which had a strong week driven by an upcoming coinbase listing. Algorand is notable for being built by Silvio Micali, a Turing award winner, and professor at MIT. It aims to create a scalable solution for building blockchain projects using a proof-of-stake algorithm.

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Bitcoin was able to sustain strong gains from the beginning of last week and find support to stay above key psychological price levels. Technical analysts have pointed at prices such as ~$11,142, as the key level buyers will have to defend to maintain Bitcoin’s bullish momentum in the near term.