It has been a generally bullish week in digital asset markets marked by a period of strong positive price over the weekend. Not all assets were winners, however, the price of large cap asset XRP fell despite some discussion of a potential Ripple IPO at the recent Davos 2020 summit. Bearish fundamentals continue to be a medium term challenge for the asset.

Most digital assets enjoyed strong gains this week despite a sharp market wide sell off towards the end of the week. Many altcoins including Bitcoin SV, Dash, and Zcash hit new 2020 highs and experienced one day gains reminiscent of the 2017 bull market.

The crypto markets enjoyed a strong week of bullish trading activity creating new optimism for the new week ahead. CME markets launch their new Bitcoin options this week and there are signs it will have a more successful launch than similar institutional crypto product launches in 2019.

Volatility returned to the crypto markets this week. The BTC price bounced strongly over the weekend jumping by over US$500 in value after 5 days of bearish price activity. It was also a good week for blockchain fundamentals as segwit usage on Bitcoin hit an all time high and Monero's privacy abilities were publicly endorsed by a Europol analyst.

It was a quiet week in crypto markets with BTC only moving by a few percentage points. In the week ahead, leading platform blockchain Ethereum begins the year with a network wide upgrade and the Poloniex exchange continues with an extended zero-fee trading promotion.

It was a mixed trading week in the crypto markets with BTC enjoying healthy gains against a red week of trading in the altcoin markets. In wider crypto news, Blockchain financial services giant Ripple announced a successful series C funding round of US$200 million, putting the valuation of the company at US$10 billion.

The crypto markets continued to grind downwards last week. Market benchmark BTC slid towards the $7000 price level to close the week 6% down. Meanwhile, prime brokerage firm Tagomi announced reduced fees for institutional crypto traders, and Russia's biggest darknet marketplace announced a $146 million ICO.

The crypto markets were range-bound last week with most major digital assets moving by a few percentage points only. On the 8th of December Ethereum, the leading platform blockchain, successfully launched the pre-planned Istanbul hard fork to improve interoperability, transaction speeds, and gas costs.

The crypto markets were steady this week following large sell-offs earlier in November. The price of market benchmark, Bitcoin, rose by 4%. The week's major news story was the hack of popular South Korean exchange UPbit where ~US$50 million of ETH was stolen.

The crypto markets continued to grind down this week. The price of market benchmark, Bitcoin, fell by almost 20% following an announcement from the PBoC stating that the Chinese government remains opposed to the risks around cryptocurrency investment. Another factor in the bearish price action is the apparent market exit of a number of private mining operations.