Crypto Market Forecast: 4th November – Ethereum hits an all-time-high

• Digital asset markets have enjoyed a strong week so far with Ethereum (ETH) establishing new all-time highs, and Bitcoin (BTC) returning to the US$63,000 price level. BTC and ETH are up ~1.6%, and ~6.6% respectively this week.

• A new all-time high of US$4666.2225 was registered on BNC’s ELX on the 3rd of November, 19:02:30 UTC. It has been a strong week for Ethereum with Goldman Sachs predicting the asset will reach US$8000 by the end of the year.

• On Monday, Goldman’s global markets managing director Bernhard Rzymelka noted that ETH has been closely tracking inflation expectations for a few years. If this pattern continues, with global inflation set to be high in the coming months, Rzymelka believes Ether will have a strong Q4 2021.

• The CME, one of the largest futures exchanges in the world, announced that it will launch Micro ETH Futures on December 6th (pending regulatory approval). The Micro ETH futures will also be sized at 1/10th of one Ether, significantly lowering the barrier for CME traders to gain ETH exposure. BTC micro futures have been trading since May of this year.

• In Bitcoin news, on-chain data firm Glassnode shows that the illiquid supply of BTC has hit a new all-time high. This implies that investors are moving their BTC off crypto exchanges and putting it into cold storage. This would suggest less selling pressure in the medium term for bitcoin.

Altcoin Watch

• Like Ethereum, much of the altcoin market joined ETH in outperforming BTC. Large-caps like Solana (SOL), and Polkadot (DOT) have both established new all-time highs this week.

• Solana has risen to become the 4th largest asset in crypto replacing Cardano (ADA). This week, sales on the platform blockchain’s NFT ecosystem officially reached US$500 million after 3 months of strong growth. Check the latest Solana technical analysis on YouTube.

• Tokeninsight reports Solana-based token projects grew by more than 100% in Q3 2021. There are a slew of new projects set to launch on the platform in the next quarter signaling that further growth for the project may be incoming.

• DOT’s latest price rally came as traders honed in on the highly anticipated parachain auctions set to occur on November 11th. Polkadot’s parachains are the specialized, periphery blockchains that connect to Polkadot’s Relay Chain. They are core to the Polkadot multichain thesis and their launch should signal the release of Polkadot’s complete blockchain product.

  

Hot on the heels of Facebook changing its name to Meta and rebranding itself as a ‘Metaverse’ company, Microsoft and Nike have announced their own expansions into the Metaverse.

With the world’s largest tech giant shifting towards virtual reality and immersive digital worlds, crypto tokens already rooted in the Metaverse have surged. Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND) are up ~263% and ~285% in the last week. Other tokens in the metaverse space also surged as traders began to try and front-run the potential growth of metaverse technology.

The Sandbox gaming NFT project announced on November 2nd that it had completed a series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with support from Animoca brands, True Global Ventures, Galaxy Interactive, SCB 10X, Polygon Studios, and Samsung Next. Investors in earlier rounds include Square Enix. The Sandbox game is a grid-based world-building game that is partnered with over 150 brands like Walking Dead, The Smurfs, Care Bears, and Atari.

Ethereum, the blockchain that supports The Sandbox and Decentraland through its smart contract capabilities, is also set to grow as the blockchain metaverse expands. Ethereum saw similar growth following the boom in Decentralized Finance and Non-Fungible Tokens.