Crypto Market Forecast: The week ahead, 1st October

As we approach the final months of 2018 a relatively quiet week for crypto markets last week may well have been the calm before the Q4 storm — with many projects set to make big moves before the end of the year.

Listed events from multiple altcoins, including large caps like XRP (Ripple), Monero and Zcash include hardforks, exchange listings, major conferences and wallet releases. Overall the crypto sector appears to be gearing up for a big finish in 2018.

Whether the markets will respond to this activity with enthusiasm and long-term buying interest remains to be seen. The overall market cap for crypto remained relatively flat, falling just under 1%, as major gains by tokens such as VEN (Vechain) cancelled out big losses by others.

In terms of news that moved the market, Cryptocurrency Newsfeed provided useful alerts about Coinbase and Bitmain, given the significant role both organizations play in the crypto ecosystem.

News of Bitmain’s IPO filing in Hong Kong saw Bitcoin Cash up by 7% – driven by positive sentiment around the filing and the very large stake Bitmain has in Bitcoin Cash (in the same timeframe the Bitcoin price quietly slipped by 2%).

The Coinbase announcement of a new token listing procedure will mean new assets will appear on the exchange faster, but also signals that the crypto giant may limit people’s access to its platform based on a member’s IP address, stating "In practice, this means some new assets listed on our platform may only be available to customers in select jurisdictions for a period of time."

October 1st– Stellar(XLM) Lightning network beta

The XLM token, along with its underlying network Stellar, remains one of the success stories in the crypto bear market. Up ~20% in the last 90 days, and up ~1,100 % vs BTC over the last year, it has pushed a number of new payment based crypto applications, including a tie-up with IT giant IBM and the recent StellarX launch. It continues to push its solutions suite with the beginning of a Lightning network off chain transaction operation beta test this Monday.

October 2nd-3rd– Blockchain South Summit

One of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest crypto conferences reconvenes this week in Queenstown, New Zealand. Topics like security token infrastructure & institutional participation in the blockchain ecosystem are a part of the agenda, with the list of notable keynote speakers including Patrick Byrne of tZERO & Overstock, Jeff Pulver – ‘Voice Over Internet Protocol’ pioneer, and CoinShares chairman Daniel Masters.

**October 3rd-4th- **Crypto Springs Conference

Some of crypto’s biggest movers & shakers will meet in California on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss big picture ideas like the economics & future of crypto. Recognizable speakers include Meltem Demirors CEO of CoinShares, Jackson Palmer founder of Dogecoin and Elizabeth Stark of Lightning Labs. A unique element of the event is its focus on diversity, with over 70% of the speakers at the conference being female.

It was mixed results for crypto’s large caps, with BCH and XRP enjoying green trading weeks, while others such as XLM and ADA, saw strong gains from previous weeks impacted by selling activity. Ethereum faced another 7 days of middling losses, down ~5%, as analysts speculate that the network is yet to shake off the FUD surrounding ICO sell-offs and poor performance of hosted applications. XRP continues to challenge ETH as the 2nd largest crypto by market cap, with the difference in value between the two currently less than 2%. The psychological ‘ripples’ of a full flippening between the two could be significant, and may be a factor in ETH’s continued downward slide in price.

BLX – 7 day report

Bitcoin had another relatively quiet week of trading in the markets, after rising ~2.5% the week before, it fell ~2% this week. The asset found some buyer resistance as its price dipped below ~$6400 on the 25th of September, but it was unable to fuel a significant run with this momentum. With price volatility currently hitting lows for the year, the possibility of a big move, up or down, looms over the head of traders on BTC marketplaces.