Crypto Market Forecast: The week ahead, 23rd April

The price of Bitcoin and the wider crypto market continued to make steady gains in the last week. Most analysts now agree that the market has bottomed, and a widely read new report from Tuur Demeester and Adamant Capital makes the case that Bitcoin is in heavy accumulation. BTC’s price gained approximately 6% in the last week, while Ethereum and XRP, the second and third largest crypto assets by market capitalization, rose 7% and 1% respectively, while the entire crypto market cap rose ~5%.

Not all crypto assets benefited from the improving bullish sentiment, however, with large cap bitcoin forks, Bitcoin Cash (ABC) and Bitcoin SV, falling 7% and 4% respectively. Major crypto exchange platforms Binance, Kraken and Shapeshift each announced the delisting of Bitcoin SV following founder Craig Wright’s libel suits against popular Bitcoin personalities Hodlonaut and Peter McCormack. Hodlonaut and McCormack dispute Wright’s claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin. The crypto community has come out in full support of Hodlonaut’s right to anonymity and McCormack’s freedom of expression, with a strong public outcry driving the delisting decisions.

Last week, Forbes released its inaugural ‘Blockchain 50’, a list of leading billion dollar valued companies that offer blockchain based services, or implement blockchain based solutions. The list includes legacy names such as Amazon, Wal-Mart and Google, but also recognizes blockchain companies such as Coinbase and Ripple. The list covers multiple industries including financial services, supply chain and Information Technology. Publication of the list by Forbes endorses the continued interest and applicability of blockchain-based technology despite crypto’s 2018 bear market.

On Tuesday, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten announced the release of a new wallet and exchange service exclusively for Rakuten bank account holders. Japan has historically been viewed as a crypto-friendly jurisdiction, and Rakuten’s position as the Amazon of Japan has created a buzz around the implications the announcement might have for the adoption of crypto in Japan. It’s not yet known if the Rakuten exchange will be open to the general public or not.

This weeks events in crypto

April 23rd- Brave Milestone (0.63.x)

The increasingly popular Brave browser, the platform that supports the BAT token, released a significant update at the start of the week. The update aims to deliver a working ads model, with Rust-based blinded tokens for privacy-safe confirmation of ad views and interaction, and the ability to give BAT to users who see ads. This would increase the utility of BAT and potentially trigger positive price momentum. The update will also come with a number of UX and performance updates for Brave.

April 24th- Binance Launchpad- Matic ICO

The popular Binance launchpad IEO platform releases its latest offering this Wednesday for its second layer scaling solution, MATIC. The sale will be conducted purely in BNB. MATIC seeks to raise USD 5,000,000. The sale features new rules including a new staking-style model, with longer term BNB holders now more likely to be allocated tokens in the IEO lottery. BNB performed strongly in the last week with the release of the Binance chain blockchain solution and a shift away from functioning as an ERC-20 smart contract.

April 29th- Kraken ceases trading of Bitcoin-SV

This week, Kraken will officially delist the Bitcoin Cash hardfork token, BSV. During a period of sustained negativity from the crypto community towards the Bitcoin SV chain and its creator Craig Wright, Kraken ran a public Twitter poll asking its followers if the exchange should delist BSV. A majority of the 70,000 participants voted to delist and the exchange will now do so. ‘Consensus by Twitter’ may be a new form of governance within the crypto space. Kraken has publicly declared the Bitcoin SV team as ‘bad actors.’ Based on this and ongoing negative sentiment, this may drive ongoing selling pressure.

It was a generally strong week for crypto markets with large caps BTC, ETH and BNB posting new gains. A number of other large caps, including EOS, LTC and ADA, corrected slightly over the last week but held on to strong monthly and quarterly growth. Outside of the top 10, REP (Augur) jumped strongly following its addition to Coinbase. The Coinbase effect may be less pronounced, but can still drive short term price action.

A solid week of BTC trading was completed with a jump in price on Monday towards the ~$5400 price level. Monday trading came with a solid increase in volume which suggests Bitcoin bulls may be ready to push price upwards towards the $5,500 – $6,000 levels.

The next Bitcoin network difficulty update is expected to be positive, and Bitcoin hashrate continues to trend upwards backed by the recent positive price activity that has improved miner profits.