Crypto Market Forecast: 7th October

It was a middling trading week for the majority of digital assets, bar a few altcoins that enjoyed strong end-of-week rallies. Bitcoin fell ~2% and currently trades at $7,906, well below the ~$8,000 level it started the week at. Numbers 2 and 3 – ETH and XRP – rose ~0.5% and 6% respectively with XRP being one of the week’s big winners. Overall the crypto market cap rose ~0.2%.

The week’s top news stories were primarily bearish with several players in the crypto ecosystem facing new doubts and legal challenges. According to the Financial Times, Paypal appears to have dropped out of the Libra consortium last week – citing concerns around potential regulatory scrutiny.

With Libra stirring controversy and attracting the attention of global financial regulators, rumors are that MasterCard and Visa may also be considering leaving the group for similar reasons to Paypal. Libra’s continued legal battles are casting doubt on its potential to be the catalyst for mass future crypto adoption and there is now real concern the project may not get off the ground.

Stablecoin Tether has recently risen to the 4th spot on BNC’s market cap table, experience a boost in utility during the recent period of bearish price activity in crypto markets – and a successful deployment on the Ethereum blockchain. The token is never far from controversy, however, and last week issued a press release describing how it was expecting mercenary lawyers would soon be filing “meritless, reckless” and “shameless” lawsuits based on the thesis of an “unpublished and non-peer reviewed paper” that claimed Tether was manipulating the crypto market. The company strongly denies any such manipulation.

This week in crypto events

Devcon 5 (Ethereum) – October 8th-11th, Osaka

Many of the industry’s best developers and builders converge in Japan this week to talk all things Dapp and base layer developments. Speakers include Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and Consensys founder Joseph Lubin. Key agenda topics include Ethereum’s roadmap in 2020 and the blockchain’s privacy functionality.

Revenue boost Waves network– 7th October

Starting Monday the Waves blockchain launches a new fee structure designed to increase block generator and staking rewards. The move is part of an initiative to hand over monetary policy to the community and miners will have the opportunity to vote on whether WAVES per block should increase, decrease or stay the same moving forward. The price of WAVES rose ~3% in the week, potentially backed by a boost in demand for tokens in line with the new block production model.

It was a quiet trading week for most large cap assets with only small positive or negative movements. XRP was one of the week’s big winners, leveraging new deals with major crypto payments processor Bitpay and the acquisition of Icelandic crypto trading firm Algrim to drive buying pressure.

Bitcoin bulls were not able to clearly defend the $8000 price level last week and the price of BTC has slowly slid for much of the week. Despite a red finish, some technical traders suggested that this weeks BTC/USD weekly close may align with a potential bullish divergence pattern.