Day: March 3, 2021

Tech Stocks Tank as Bitcoin Roars Past $50,000

by Decrypt

In brief

  • Bitcoin appears to be on a road to recovery today, flying high once again.

  • Tech stocks such as Square though, not so much.

It’s a good day to be a longtime crypto investor, as Bitcoin begins to recover from its largest dollar-denominated price drop in history. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, things aren’t looking so good for tech stocks, which today saw nothing but red—with some, like Tesla, falling as much as 5%.

Bitcoin appears to have finally broken a downtrend that traders have held it under for the last week, ever since the crypto asset hit an all-time high price of $58,367 on Coinbase. The cryptocurrency fell as low as $43,016 at the end of February, but is now steadily climbing back up.

Bitcoin number go up, again

On Monday, Bitcoin came close to $50,000 but fell between 3% and 5% throughout the day as markets tried to digest statements from SEC chair nominee Gary Gansler, who praised cryptocurrencies during his confirmation hearing but also called for more controls and regulations.

Bitcoin nevertheless rebounded and is currently trading for just above $51,000. That 6% price jump within the last 24 hours is likely a comforting sign for long-term hodlers—and also adherents of the “stock-to-flow” prediction model, which foresees a $100,000 Bitcoin price in the not-so-distant future. (Incidentally, it’s this enthusiasm, misplaced or not, that explains those “laser eyes” on Crypto Twitter profiles recently.)

Bitcoin is recoverying
Bitcoin bounced after a major correction. Image: TradingView

It’s been almost exactly one year to the day since Bitcoin started off on its current bull run. Following the COVID-induced market crash in March 2020, Bitcoin has been on a tear ever since. Retail investors initially sparked the flame, and an influx of institutional capital has more recently added fuel to the fire. 

MicroStrategy, Square, and Tesla have helped Bitcoin smash past its 2017 all-time high price of $20,000. Michael Saylor, CEO of the cloud computing software firm MicroStrategy, has led the way through massive Bitcoin purchases over the last year, and helping to push other companies to do the same.

In early February, Elon Musk’s Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, which catapulted the cryptocurrency to where it is today.

Tech stocks are losing ground

Meanwhile, tech stock hodlers are licking their wounds after an underwhelming day.

The “Tech Stocks That Move The Market”—a watchlist created by Yahoo Finance containing 18 of the most traded and promising tech stocks in the S&P500—had a 2.57% drop overall.

Every stock in this list registered losses today except for Alibaba and Yelp, which had only marginal gains of 0.79% and 1%, respectively. Tesla, for instance, fell 4.98%. Its price seems to be about to test support at $650 —a price line that held strong in December of 2020 and stopped a major correction on October 23.

The trend for Tesla appears to fly in the face of analysts at investment firm Wedbush, which last week said that Tesla stock “is now heavily tied” to Bitcoin. The idea is that as more investors seek exposure to BTC and other cryptocurrencies, some traditional financial products are starting to be considered close enough lookalikes. That includes things like shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, but also stock in companies like Tesla and MicroStrategy.

Tesla Stocks
Tesla Stocks are testing support. Image: Tradingview

Nevertheless, MicroStrategy (MSTR) also dropped 2.26% today. Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google are likewise all in the red. In the grand scheme of things, however, today’s market moves point to more of a market correction than anything else.

After all, Yahoo’s list of tech stocks has posted gains of 28% over the last month. Bitcoin, though, still beats it, up 36% in the last 30 days.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.

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Bitcoin Volatility Reached A 10-Month High In February As Prices Hit Records

by Forbes

Bitcoin volatility climbed in February, attaining its loftiest reading since April 2020 during a month where the cryptocurrency’s price hit fresh highs.

The digital currency’s annualized 30-day volatility reached 114.51% on February 8, the most since April 10, 2020, data provided by asset manager Blockforce Capital reveals.

This figure was far higher than the historical 30-day volatility of 63.78% that bitcoin has had going back to 2013, additional Blockforce Capital figures show.

The digital asset experienced these sharp changes in value during a bullish month, where its price rose to an all-time high of $57,487.03, CoinDesk figures show.

At this point, the digital currency was up more than 73% in February, additional CoinDesk data indicates.

[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]

A Bullish New Year

Bitcoin has had an excellent year so far, nearly doubling its price of roughly $28,900 at the start of 2021.

These latest gains have built on top of the bullish momentum that the cryptocurrency has experienced since falling to a local low of less than $3,900 in March of last year.

The digital currency has climbed close to 1,400% since dropping to that point.

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Bitcoin’s Resilience

Bitcoin prices have shown greater resilience during the current bullish trend than they did during the bull market of 2017-2018.

During December 2017, bitcoin reached nearly $20,000 on CoinDesk, but was unable to hold these gains, falling below $10,000 the following month.

The digital currency followed a downward trend, dropping to almost $3,000 in December 2018.

Optimistic Predictions

Going forward, nobody knows for certain where bitcoin prices will go.

However, many market observers have made highly bullish predictions for the cryptocurrency, with Anthony Pompliano, a well-known analyst, forecasting earlier this year that bitcoin might eventually rise to $1 million.

Vinny Lingham, cofounder & CEO of Civic, offered some more conservative input, stating that bitcoin could rise to somewhere between $100,000 and $125,000 over the next year without suffering a “crash,” which might cause it to lose more than 80% of its value.

However, he noted that if fear of missing out (FOMO) kicks in, bitcoin might rise to “$250k-$400k” in the next 12 months, a rally that would result in an “inevitable” pullback that could prove quite severe.

Disclosure: I own some bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, ether and EOS.

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New staking and governance features back Ocean Protocol’s 40% rally

by Cointelegraph

Data collection, aggregation and analysis have become some of the largest profit generators for companies like Facebook and Google who have designed an array of algorithms purposed with harnessing user data in order to better optimize the user interfaces of their applications and their online marketplaces. 

While collecting the data is the ultimate objective, the events of the past few years have also shown that securing it and ensuring that the privacy of customers and users is protected is imperative.

Combining data collection with the ability to securely store it on a distributed ledger seems like a natural fit, and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is one blockchain project that is looking to capitalize on the monetization of data.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that the price of OCEAN has increased 240% year-to-date as it rose from $0.31 on Jan. 1 to $1.38 on Feb. 12. Bitcoin’s recent sell-off from its $58,300 all-time high, caused OCEAN to correct sharply but as the market recovered, the altcoin was able to secure a swing high at $1.19 on March 3. 

OCEAN/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Three reasons for the continued strong performance for OCEAN include new listings at major exchanges, the integration of governance features with OceanDAO, and the growth of its data sets marketplace where token holders can earn a yield.

Major exchange announces support for OCEAN

On March 2 OCEAN announced that the token would be listed on Kraken which is the fourth-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world.

Following the announcement, OCEAN price spiked 30% from $0.89 to a high at $1.16 and its 24-hour trading volume saw a 246% increase to $90 million.

VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for OCEAN on Feb. 28, prior to the recent price rise.

The VORTECS™ score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. OCEAN price. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ score reached a high of 74 on Feb. 28, roughly 46 hours before the price spiked on March 2.

New governance features encourage community involvement

New features on OceanDAO appear to be the motivating factor for OCEAN’s bullish price action as token holders have an increased say in the key decisions that guide the project.

OceanDAO was announced on Nov. 30, 2020, as a way for community members to get involved in the development of the protocol. It is a community-led funding project that allows token holders to vote on which projects should receive a DAO grant to help them build a new feature, conduct outreach marketing, or unlock data.

For voting purposes, each OCEAN token equals one vote, and those wishing to participate must do so from a wallet they control. The third round of voting on OceanDAO began on March 2, which also coincides with the increase in the altcoin’s price and trading volume.

Oceans adds data set yield farming

The third force helping to drive OCEAN price higher is its expanding data sets marketplace that allows users to deposit tokens aearn a yield.

Originally launched as part of Ocean v3 in September 2020, Ocean Markets is an open-source community marketplace where users can publish, price, curate, discover, buy and consume data.

As the marketplace evolved so has its functionality. Currently, token holders are able to earn a yield on their tokens by staking them in a particular data set to earn liquidity provider fees.

Users looking for deeper involvement can also publish and sell data on the marketplace or build and launch their own market as a way to increase their earning capabilities.

The need for sourcing, distributing, and securing data is guaranteed to grow over the coming years and  Ocean protocol appears well-positioned to take advantage of this growing market. The inclusion of governance features and opportunities to earn a yield only make the project more attractive to investors looking to make strategic investments in the decentralized finance sector.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.