Crypto Market Forecast: The week ahead, 31st December

Following strong gains in the week leading up to Christmas, last week digital asset markets had a middling, primarily negative trading week. Crypto benchmark Bitcoin (BTC) ended the week down ~4%. The weeks big winner was leading platform blockchain Ethereum, as underlying token ETH rose a commendable ~7%. The overall market cap for crypto slid ~3.3%, with altcoin gainers similar to ETH few and far between.

Possible factors for ETH’s short run price momentum may be excitement surrounding the upcoming Constantinople hard fork in January (which will reduce the networks block reward from 3 ETH to 2 ETH making the token more scarce), and the squeezing of late shorts on Bitmex which were created when ETH traded at under $100.

Considering that the token fell from 4 digit valuation to a 2 digit one in under year, some sentiment reassessment on the value ETH should be expected in the short-to-medium term. Long term bulls may beginning to make speculative considerations surrounding the potential emergence of a new ICO and smart contract season at the turn of the year.

The crypto ecosystem also gained some mainstream exposure this week with Litecoin (LTC) signed as a primary sponsor of UFC 232, a major mixed martial arts sporting event. This was the UFC’s flagship event of 2018 and is expected to crack close to 1 million pay-per-view buys. It appears that this will be the first of many tie-ins between the two groups, and the partnership will likely build some momentum for Litecoin’s community reach and adoption.

Happy New Year, here’s to another year of thrills and spills in crypto markets.

Upcoming events in crypto

30th December- TenX token launch for PAY holder

On Sunday, Point-of- sale crypto solution TenX will launch a security style TenX token to accompany the existing PAY utility token. It appears that the value of the token will be derived from the underlying financial performance and business of the TenX pte ltd organization. As such the token is unavailable in jurisdictions like the USA and China. Given the recent FUD surrounding TenX’s ability to launch a viable product, this appears to be another attempt to revitalize the lagging PAY token.

2nd January- Horizen (ZEN) mandatory software upgrade

All mining pools, node operators and full nodes on the Horizon network will have to undertake the mandatory 2.0.16 upgrade this Wednesday. Key features of the upgrade, a change in the block reward schedule with the treasury account now receiving 20%, and not 10% of rewards, a new form of shielded transaction and improved speed of payment verification. The price of ZEN token has risen ~5% in the last 7 days.

3rd January- Cardano Roadmap Update

The ADA token of Platform blockchain Cardano maintained price stability over the last week, with price falling less than ~0.5% in the last 7 days. The project has a start of the year roadmap update on Wednesday that has some in the market excited. As report by Cryptocurrencynewsfeed some of this hype is based on recent bullish tweeting from the blockchain’s founder Charles Hoskinson. The possibility of a Coinbase listing & news on a mainnet launch following a successful testnet are possible points to be covered in the update.

Top 10 Crypto Summary

It was a primarily red trading week for large cap assets in digital markets, with ETH able to buck the trend with a strong green week and ADA and XRP able to minimize losses based on some strong end-of-week momentum.

Outside of the top 10, like driven by Ethereum’s short term buying pressure, NEO and Ethereum Classic also enjoyed strong trading weeks, rising ~5% and 7% respectively.

It was an up-and-down trading week for BTC, at one point before Christmas trading well above $4200, then dropping to around ~$3600 a few days later, before ending the week trading at ~$3850. This volatility has provided some short term profit opportunities for savvy traders.

The Bitcoin network’s next difficulty adjustment is expected to be large and positive, following a period of rising hash rate and falling block generation time.