Crypto Market Forecast: Week of March 15th 2021
A curated weekly summary of forward-focused crypto news that matters. This week, the bitcoin price hits new all-time highs and crosses USD60k for the first time ever, MicroStrategy continues to show unwavering faith in BTC and the digital asset derivatives space has a big week.
The bitcoin price hit a new all-time-high over the weekend, crossing the USD60,000 price level for the first time. BTC began its ascent early Saturday morning (GMT) starting the day at ~USD56,665 and reaching USD61,314 at day’s end – an aggressive ~8% price surge.
The bitcoin price threatened to hit all-time highs during the middle of last week, touching 57974 on Thursday 11th March but faced strong resistance at price levels near its February 21st all-time high of USD58,321.96. Later in the week when it challenged the same key psychological price level noted bitcoin bulls were ready to ensure that the bull run continued by setting up buying pressure near this resistance level.
One of the bulls willing to buy bitcoin at prices near the previous all-time high was Michael Saylor, CEO of publicly listed business intelligence company MicroStrategy. Saylor announced on Friday that his company had purchased an additional 262 bitcoins for USD15 million in cash at an average price of USD57,146. As of March 12th MicroStrategy holds 91,326 bitcoins acquired for USD2.21B at an average price of USD24,214. Based on current prices on Brave New Coin’s Bitcoin Liquid Index, Microstrategy’s bitcoin holdings are worth USD5.14 billion.
The week before MicroStrategy’s purchase, Meitu, a photo editing company publicly listed in Hong Kong, announced a major cryptocurrency investment, buying USD22.1 million of Ethereum (15,000 ETH) and USD17.9 million of Bitcoin (379 BTC). The trend of international institutions backing bitcoin continued with publicly listed Norwegian energy, fishing, and construction company Aker ASA launching a new company dedicated to investing in Bitcoin projects and companies. The new company will keep all its liquid assets in Bitcoin starting with 500 million Norwegian Kroner (USD59.3 million).
Institutions still being willing to buy bitcoin at historically high price levels, backing it to continue to rise even further, is fueling the optimism and strong hands of long-term crypto holders. Another group fueling the bitcoin bull run is derivatives traders. Data provider Glassnode reported that a new all-time high in Bitcoin futures open interest was hit on March 14th with market participants eager to trade the crypto market.
Crypto news for the week ahead
15th March – Symbol Launches on the NEM ecosystem
This week the NEM (XEM) group will launch the mainnet for Symbol, the next-generation enterprise-grade blockchain solution that is set to replace the original NEM blockchain. Initially, however, the two blockchains will run simultaneously and after the snapshot 1 XEM = 1XEM + 1XYM. Jeff McDonald, co-founder of NEM, spoke to BNC’s Andy Pickering about Symbol and all things NEM last year.
17th March- Bitmex launch TRX, YFI, and EOS perpetual swaps
Digital Asset derivatives platform Bitmex is set to release USDT priced Perpetual swap futures contracts for Tron (TRX), Yearn.Finance (YFI) and EOS (EOS). The contracts will allow traders to bet on the price movements of these coins without ever having to touch the coin itself or USDT. The contracts will allow for up to 33x leverage. Contracts allow traders to hedge and diversify portfolios and are important for the creation of efficient financial markets.
Trading set-ups for the week
Pro trader Josh Olszewicz explores trading options and signals for BTC and ETH – and lays out the trading setups he’s watching for the upcoming week. Start your week off right with Josh’s thoughts on trading strategies on a weekly basis.
Bitcoin, ALTs and Ethereum – Trading setup for the week of the 15th of March 2021
Top 10 Crypto Summary
It was a bullish week of trading large-cap assets on the Brave New Coin market cap top 10. Binance coin (BNB) showed strong resilience, rising ~15% in the last 7 days. This was despite reports that the Binance exchange, which the token supports, is being investigated by the CFTC to determine if it allowed US residents to trade derivatives on its platform in violation of US regulations. The market appears to be backing Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s convictions that news of any investigation is FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) and Binance will keep Building.
Bitcoin Price Chart
After a period of choppy trading to end February and begin March, bitcoin markets roared back to life last week to the beat of aggressive price gains and hit new all times. A factor in the run upwards was a short squeeze when in a 10 minute period, over USD100 million worth of short futures contracts were forced into liquidating. Short squeezes occur when traders who were betting on the price to fall are forced into making buy orders to cover or close positions because the market moved against them, adding further pressure to an already spiking market.
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