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Crypto Market Forecast: The week ahead, 18th February

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

Note- An earlier version of this article incorrectly contended that IOSCO ‘endorsed’ the Brave New Coin benchmarking procedure, under no circumstances does IOSCO endorse individual benchmarking procedures.

Last week was a middling one for cryptocurrency trading, with most digital assets facing nominal corrections following strong performance the week before, while a select few stood out and gave signs of further price breakouts. Crypto’s benchmark asset BTC rose ~0.5% over the last week, leading platform blockchain and crypto number 2 Ethereum rose ~11%, while XRP fell ~1%. The overall market cap for crypto rose a minimal ~0.1%.

A number of notable technical traders remain bullish about Ethereum’s prospects in the near term with price targets as high as ~$190 being suggested. Resistance at the $120 and $125 level broke with ease over the last 7 days. With buying pressure in markets continuing as ETH/USD & ETH/BTC volumes continue to retouch monthly trading volume highs, there are suggestions that Ethereum is in the midst of a long term trend reversal with technical analysis showing potential for a bullish reversal.

There were also a number of news stories in the last week that signalled the continuing interest of Wall Street institutions in the cryptographic asset investment space, and blockchain technology.

On February 12th leading stock exchange operator Nasdaq, announced it would be adding Brave New Coin’s Bitcoin and Ethereum Liquid Indices to its global data index service. The indices use part qualitative and part quantitative data, factoring in the stability and quality of constituency as well as the volume, book depth, tick size and other factors from qualified market participants, to calculate a fair global value for the price of Bitcoin and Ether, expressed in USD, every 30 seconds.

The issue of a ‘fair’ BTC and ETH price indicator has been an ongoing challenge for the industry because of conflicts of interest within market data providers and the lack of historical context.

Last week, leading US bank JP Morgan announced that it would launch the ‘JPM coin’, a stablecoin backed 1-for-1 with physical US dollars, hosted on the Ethereum-based Quorum private blockchain. It is designed primarily to be used by corporations to make transactions within JP Morgan’s international wholesale payments business.

The automated settlement of blockchain engineered finance likely offers speed and cross border operations settlement benefits versus legacy payment systems. The embracing of blockchain tech by JP Morgan is seen by some as another legitimizing signal for the space.

Upcoming events in crypto

22nd February – CME futures expiry

This Wednesday the latest round of BTCG19 CME futures (contract started on December 3rd 2018) ends. The nature of futures contracts means they need to be settled on a set, predefined date, based on a contract. All CME contracts will have to be traded, or settled, before this date. There is generally a fall in the trading volume of futures around expiration dates, that coincides with a rise in volatility and potential short/long squeezing.

25th February – IOST mainnet Ver1.0 launch

IOST, an emerging platform blockchain token solution releases the first version of its main network – Everest – at the end of the week. IOST post launch will be fully functional as the token on top of a native blockchain that uses its own novel consensus model, and will have new observed utility as a medium to allocate stake on nodes. IOST token has enjoyed a strong start to the month, rising ~32% since January 28th. Medium to long term price prospects of IOST will be determined more clearly once Dapp project start building on Everest.

20th February- Aeternity first hard fork (Minerva)

The Aeternity blockchain is scheduled to undergo its first official hardfork this Wednesday. Network updates include an improvement to the network’s smart contract language ‘Sophia’ and its virtual machine. Users will also have the chance to update previously held ERC-20 AE tokens to the new network version of the token around the date of the hardfork. The price of the Aeternity token has risen ~7% in the last week.

MCAP 1802

It was a mixed trading week for large cap assets, with some characterized by nominal movements (BTC, XRP, XLM), while others faced stronger corrections . Market stand out ETH enjoyed double digit gains. As highlighted by Cryptocurrency Newsfeed a potential driver for short term speculation may have been the onboarding of Ethereum’s ZK-snark technology by event ticketing solution Avetnus.

BLX 7day 182

The price of BTC hovered around ~$3600 for most of the week, occasionally flirting with $3650. While some have suggested that Bitcoin is presently being accumulated in large numbers on OTC platforms and crypto exchanges this has not been reflected in price, BTC value may have to touch lower levels before it tangible accumulation by investors can be observed by the market.

Hashrate, like the price of BTC has shown low volatility in the short term. No difficulty adjustment since January 14th has been larger than 5% and the next is expected to be -0.27%.


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