Crypto market forecast: 26th August

It was another unsteady week in the crypto markets with the BTC price twice sliding under $10,000 briefly before bouncing back – in so doing shaking the ‘Bitcoin is a safe haven asset’ narrative – albeit slightly. As the global macroeconomic outlook continues to darken, it was gold, the traditional safe-haven asset, that pushed on to a new five-year high while Bitcoin led the crypto markets down.

The number two and three cryptos on BNC’s market cap table, ETH and XRP, fell 2.4% and 3.4% respectively. The alt coin markets were hit hard by the Bitcoin drop with Chainlink losing 17% during the week, and Algorand down 20%. Bucking the trend, Ethereum Classic gained an impressive 27% across the last seven days ahead of next month’s Atlantis hard fork to improve functionality, stability, and the compatibility of ETC with Ethereum. The overall crypto market cap was up just 0.2 – driven by a Bitcoin rally late in the week.

Bitcoin dominance continues to hover at around 68%. According to Into the Block, a blockchain analytics firm, 79% of all BTC wallet addresses are currently in profit. While this reflects Bitcoin’s strong 2019 price performance, leading alt coins have not performed nearly as well. The research suggests that 74% of ETH addresses are holding at a loss, while an eye-popping 95% of long-suffering Zcash holders are in the red. The reason that the majority of Bitcoin holders remain in profit is because BTC has only traded above $10,000 for a small percentage of its existence.

With Bitcoin now sitting at the key psychological level of $10,000, an anxious market awaits its next move. Any significant drop below $10K is likely to be met with buying pressure as long term Bitcoin bulls look to accumulate at four-figure prices. Meanwhile, analyst Willy Woo crunched the data to make the argument that alts may be heading into a region of support.

Outside the crypto markets, it is the worsening storm clouds across the macroeconomic environment that are likely to be key market drivers in the remaining months of 2019. The continuing escalation of the China / U.S. trade war is wreaking havoc across global stock markets and reinvigorating Gold and Silver markets.

Perhaps the most significant economic development over the week was the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gathering of U.S. Federal Reserve officials, academics and central bankers to discuss the state of the global monetary system. Here the mood could best be described as ominous, with James Bullard, president of the St Louis Federal Reserve telling the Financial Times the developed world had experienced a ‘regime shift’ saying “Something is going on, and that’s causing … a total rethink of central banking and all our cherished notions about what we think we’re doing. We just have to stop thinking that next year things are going to be normal.”

Ultimately, it was the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, who dropped the biggest bombshell, saying the dominance of the United States dollar as the global reserve currency “will not hold” and suggesting “a network of central bank digital currencies” to ultimately replace it.

This all bodes well for the narrative of Bitcoin as a nation-agnostic alternative to USD. Other significant macro bull signs for Bitcoin include increasing retail flows via onramps such as Coinbase, new institutional onramps via long-awaited launches from Fidelity and Bakkt, and the growing anticipation of Bitcoin’s 2020 halving event.

This week in crypto events

MPC19 Conference (Chicago) **August 26-28 **- The Mobile Payments Conference is a big event on the mobile remittance calendar. Although most guest speakers are from legacy providers like Mastercard, Paypal and Google, conference organizers have a clear focus on emerging tech, with an agenda featuring sessions on cryptocurrency, digital wallets, blockchains, and AI.

Blockchain Training Conference (Denver) **August 28-30 – **No shilling or ICO pitches here, as the purpose of the Blockchain Training Conference is to turn attendees into Certified Bitcoin Professionals (CBP). Organized by the non-profit certification and standards body the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium, the Blockchain Training Conference is a purely educational event with 16 hours of lectures plus exams.

Market Cap Top 10

Overall, it was a go nowhere week for the crypto top 10 that saw most assets aside from BTC, ETH and XLM in the red at the end of seven days. Extend the time frame out to 30 days, however, and it’s clear that most large cap assets have slid markedly – many in double-digit decline – with only Bitcoin making a modest gain of 3.75% in that time frame.

BLX 7 days

After peaking at $10,911 on August 20th Bitcoin lost almost 10% of its value by the 22nd then tracked mostly sideways before a five percent leap at the close of the week amid a torrent of troubling trade related news from the G7 summit in France.