We’re a few days out from Xmas and it’s time for this week’s crypto market sentiment report. Plus, Jack Dorsey is not a fan of Web3. Why not?
Day: December 21, 2021
Bitcoin Bottom In? Veteran Trader Peter Brandt Looks at Capitulation History of BTC
Longtime analyst and trader Peter Brandt is looking at the capitulation history of Bitcoin to determine whether the king crypto has flushed out enough weak hands to mark a bottom.
Brandt tells his 601,900 Twitter followers that massive volume expansions during a deep correction often indicate that BTC is close to resuming its uptrend.
“Implications of volume. Key bottoms in BTC have occurred with high volume panic capitulation.
That has (yet???) to happen.”
Looking at Brandt’s chart, large-volume drawdowns have marked the bottom for BTC during the February 2018, November 2018, March 2020 and May 2021 corrections.
Brandt also says that while it is possible for Bitcoin not to print a capitulation volume this time around in order to carve a bottom, he’s still looking at volume to expand in order to sustain Bitcoin’s uptrend.
Meanwhile, fellow analyst and economist Alex Krüger believes that Bitcoin’s bearish market structure indicates that the king crypto has already bottomed out.
“BTC chart looks horrible, but charts always look horrible around the bottom. This is how the mind of many trying to time the bottom works: they are now thinking ‘chart heavy, $42,000 should trade again.’
But a push >$50,000, which is very close, will have them thinking ‘bottom is in.’”
Krüger also says that Bitcoin has a “very high” chance of recapturing $50,000 in the coming days.
Bitcoin is currently trading at $48,512, up 3.79% in the last 24 hours.
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.
Featured Image: Shutterstock/tomertu/Andy Chipus
Crypto.com Unveils List of Predictions for 2022, Says One Sector Will Dominate the Industry
Crypto exchange giant Crypto.com is looking back at a huge year for digital assets and making predictions for the future.
In a sprawling document published on the Crypto.com research page, the exchange’s research team is forecasts further crypto adoption in 2022 – led by one sector in particular.
First, the exchange giant predicts that the number of international crypto users will “reach 1 billion by the end of 2022.”
“Nations can no longer afford to ignore the growing push toward crypto by the public. We may in many cases expect a friendlier stance towards the crypto industry:
We expect developed nations to devise clear legal and taxation frameworks for crypto assets.
In parallel, more nations facing a highly inflationary economy & depreciating currency may adopt cryptocurrency as legal tender, following the example of El Salvador.”
Next, Crypto.com’s research team predicts that cryptos will become a staple in traditional finance portfolios.
“Crypto will become a fixture in the alternative asset class for investment portfolios.
The first crypto ETFs launched this year were met with demand beyond their capacity, suggesting that more crypto instruments in the mainstream finance industry will soon follow.
Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs [exchange-traded funds] like Valkyrie’s received approval earlier this year.
Traditional banks and financial houses like Morgan Stanley, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, E&Y, Bank of America, and Credit Suisse are seeking partnerships with crypto exchanges to integrate crypto into their main services from payments to transfers and investment.”
The exchange’s research team expects the mass crypto adoption to be fueled, in part, by the acceleration of one crypto sector in particular: the ever-expanding world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain gaming, and the metaverse.
“The metaverse has grown exponentially in 2021, leading the way for evolution in online culture through NFTs, gaming, and online identities. It is crystallizing as the gateway for crypto adoption by non-natives.
We predict GameFi/Play-to-Earn to be one of the main vehicles for mass conversion to the crypto space, with traditional game studios racing to incorporate these elements into their existing line-ups.
As Web 2.0 tech giant Facebook, now Meta, peers into the metaverse and uses it as a venue for monetization, we expect more to follow.
NFTs collectibles are booming, with NFT profile pictures as a stepping stone between the metaverse and the real world as the space matures.”
Read the full Crypto.com report here.
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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed at The Daily Hodl are not investment advice. Investors should do their due diligence before making any high-risk investments in Bitcoin, cryptocurrency or digital assets. Please be advised that your transfers and trades are at your own risk, and any loses you may incur are your responsibility. The Daily Hodl does not recommend the buying or selling of any cryptocurrencies or digital assets, nor is The Daily Hodl an investment advisor. Please note that The Daily Hodl participates in affiliate marketing.
Featured Image: Shutterstock/Liu zishan/Natalia Siiatovskaia
Bakkt Holdings to Provide Cryptocurrency Services to Manasquan Bank Clients
New Jersey-based Manasquan Bank will participate in Bakkt Holdings’ early adopter program. When effective, it will enable customers of the financial institution to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrencies.
Bakkt Inks Another Partnership
According to a recent press release, Bakkt’s project is anticipated to launch in Q2 2022. Initially, the platform will provide an entry point to adopt cryptocurrencies only to retail clients of Manasquan Bank. When the early adopter program gets effective, those users will be able to buy, sell, and hold bitcoin and alternative coins through the bank’s mobile application.
Sheela Zemlin – Chief Revenue Officer at Bakkt – described the opportunity which her firm provides to Manasquan Bank customers as “incredible.” She predicted that cryptocurrencies will be the center of the Web3 economy, where people could participate in new value creation and exchange digital assets.
“Bakkt is proud to roll out new and innovative ways to this burgeoning economy, enabling a path to buy, sell and hold crypto as an extension of the consumer’s relationship with their trusted local bank,” the executive concluded.
James Vaccaro – President and CEO of Manasquan Bank – said his company is focused on driving growth and introducing new features to clients so they can join the digital financial world. He stated that the collaboration with Bakkt comes at a time when customers have been looking for ways to enter the cryptocurrency space.
Bakkt Holdings is among the leading digital asset platforms. Two months ago, the firm joined the likes of Coinbase and had its shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). It started trading under the ticker symbols BKKT and BKKT WS.
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The Partnerships with Google And Mastercard
At the beginning of October, Bakkt expanded its cryptocurrency payment options by collaborating with Google. The initiative enabled users to add their Bakkt Visa Debit Card and make transactions via digital assets wherever Google Pay is accepted.
The crypto firm would also use Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider to market its services to leading US retailers and merchants.
Shortly after, Bakkt collaborated with Mastercard as the latter revealed plans to integrate digital assets into many of its products and tapped Bakkt to do so. At the same time, the cryptocurrency provider partnered with Fiserv, and the idea was identical to the aforementioned one.
Interestingly, the news had a dramatic impact on Bakkt’s stock prices. They surged from $11.5 to a daily high of $42.5, which represented a 270% increase in a matter of a single trading day.
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Despite Crackdown, Bitcoin Mining Is Still Alive And Well In China
The bitcoin mining crackdown was one of the major moves by a government that rocked the crypto space. The crackdown saw the mass exodus of bitcoin miners out of the presumed mining capital of the world as the Chinese government ramped up its efforts to push the miners out. During this time, the mining hash rate from the region had crashed to nearly zero.
Miners moving out of the country had had to quickly move their mining rigs and find new homes for them. During this time, the hash rate and by extension, the price of bitcoin, had suffered extensively but with time, bitcoin miners had found their footing in other places like the United States. The China crackdown was swift and intense but it did not necessarily drive out all of the bitcoin miners.
Related Reading | Struggling Prices Beats Bitcoin Expectations Down From $100K To $50K
Bitcoin Miners Remain In China
A new report from CNBC has shown that there are still active bitcoin miners that remain in China. The report estimates that about 20% of all bitcoin miners continue to operate in the region, albeit in the shadows.
The report follows ‘Ben’, a bitcoin miner who continues to operate in the region. This miner shares that they have had to go underground and hope that they do not get caught by the Chinese authorities. Nevertheless, Ben and others like him continue to carry out their mining operations while coming up with more creative ways to evade detection by the authorities.
BTC trending around $48K | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
It was stated in a report from Cambridge University that mining activities had ground to a halt in the country, putting China’s mining share at 0% but Ben and other miners who remain would beg to differ. These miners successfully hide their hash rate, leading the rest of the world to believe that the hash rate from the region is significantly less than it actually is.
“A pool doesn’t have to reveal any data,” said Ben. “You’re basically telling the world that my revenue is only half of what I actually have. You don’t brag about it.”
Mining Activities Continue
The main reason behind the China crackdown on mining had revolved around the energy shortages that were being experienced in the country. Bitcoin miners were singled out as the culprit due to the energy-intensive nature of the activities, and authorities banned mining in an effort to regain power in these places.
Related Reading | Billionaire Ray Dalio Explains Why He Owns Bitcoin And Ethereum
Most mining operations in the region are fished out using the energy consumption from particular consumers. However, Ben has found a way around this by spreading out his operation across multiple locations and only drawing power from local sources and not the main grid.
Qihoo 360, a Chinese cybersecurity company, reported in November that there are still about 109,000 daily active crypto mining addresses in the region. This is significantly less than at its peak but still puts China as a major player when it comes to bitcoin mining.
Featured image from CoinDesk, chart from TradingView.com
Ubisoft pursues NFT initiative with aleph.im following fan backlash
Earlier this year, gaming giant Ubisoft joined the aleph.im network as a core channel node operator after the blockchain-based storage and computing startup became a part of Ubisoft’s Entrepreneurs Lab. On Tuesday, aleph.im announced that it will offer a decentralized storage solution for Ubisoft Quartz in order to further incorporate nonfungible tokens (NFTs) into Ubisoft’s AAA games.
https://t.co/oTzJGUOcyw partners with Ubisoft to bring playable NFTs to AAA games for the first time!!!
Read all about how we did it here
https://t.co/JiFlATvFcX#aaa #games #decentralized #storage #computing pic.twitter.com/eytP8etvyI
— Aleph.im Network (@aleph_im) December 21, 2021
Players will be able to acquire dynamic NFTs called Digits on Quartz that will be used in Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Breakpoint game. Players can use Digits in-game and can also put them on sale on Rarible and Objkt marketplaces for others to buy. The metadata and the history of the item will be publicly available.
Aleph.im’s technology enables players to see the names and achievements of previous item owners, as well as item descriptions and videos. The advantages of aleph.im’s system includes securely storing the NFT metadata on a fully decentralized storage network of over 70 nodes, allowing all NFT ownership to be tracked on the Tezos blockchain.
Ubisoft and aleph.im claim they are working together to challenge traditionally static NFTs and enable the creation of dynamic NFTs with metadata that evolves as they transfer from player to player.
Didier Genevois, Ubisoft’s blockchain technical director, said players need to actually own their Digit in order to fulfill the technology’s promise. “Aleph.im’s role was key in building this experiment by allowing us to decentralize the storage of the Digits’ video asset and metadata,” he said.
Related: Ubisoft will seek to invest in and create blockchain games
Cointelegraph previously reported on the backlash that Ubisoft received when it first announced its foray into NFTs. The Ghost Reckon community was not entirely happy with what they deemed a “cash grab.” Ubisoft’s response is to pivot to dynamic NFTs with the help of aleph.im to ease their players’ concerns.
Kraken Acquires Staked in Fifth Acquisition of the Year
Key Takeaways
- Leading cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has acquired the staking-as-a-service company Staked.
- The acquisition means that users will be able to maintain custody over the crypto assets that they stake.
- The deal marks Kraken’s fifth acquisition of the year.
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Crypto exchange Kraken has announced that it has acquired Staked, one of the earliest staking-as-a-service companies.
Kraken Acquires Staked
Kraken has announced its acquisition of Staked, an early staking-as-a-service company.
“We are excited to add Staked to our portfolio of yield products, which has seen great uptake by a growing population of crypto investors,” Kraken CEO Jesse Powell stated.
Kraken’s acquisition will allow customers to stake crypto while maintaining direct control over their funds. By contrast, its existing service held custody over users’ staked funds.
Kraken introduced Tezos staking in December 2019. It has since added support for other assets, including Algorand (ALGO), Polkadot (DOT), Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and several others.
Staked, which was founded in 2018, was one of the earliest companies to focus on staking-as-a-service, long before major exchanges began to offer similar services circa 2019.
Kraken did not disclose the amount of money involved in the acquisition. The deal is its fifth acquisition of the year and follows earlier acquisitions of Crypto Facilities and Bit Trade.
The Staking Trend
Staking allows users to lock their coins for a period of time and earn interest. Though Proof-of-Stake blockchains allow users to stake from their own wallet, exchanges can simplify the process for users.
Other exchanges, including Coinbase and Binance, have also added staking features, as have trading apps such as eToro.
Staking has existed since as early as 2012 as a feature of early coins like Peercoin. However, the trend has been popularized by coins such as Tezos (XTZ) and Cardano (ADA) in recent years.
According to Messari research, Proof-of-Stake-based blockchains currently have roughly 58% market cap dominance.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and other cryptocurrencies.
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Kraken Ventures Raises $65M to Invest in DeFi, Web3
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Could Bitcoin Benefit From A Santa Claus Rally?
CNBC personality Jim Cramer has been pushing the possibility of a so-called “Santa Claus rally” across the stock market. But could this holiday-related trend have an impact on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies?
Mad Money Host Calls For “Santa Claus Rally”
Bitcoin has taken a beating, down substantially from what most of its backers believed the year would be closing at. The stock-to-flow model was predicting anywhere between $100,000 to $288,000 per coin, but instead the top cryptocurrency by market cap is below $50,000 or around half of the lower of the two targets.
Related Reading | Could An Elon Musk Time Magazine Cover Predict The Crypto Cycle Peak?
But the year isn’t yet over, and a potential Santa Claus rally narrative is slowly spreading across the world of stocks. CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer is giving the idea heavy press. First, he tweeted explaining that today is the day it would normally start.
Historically today is the day the Santa Claus rally starts. It worked even during 2007-2009. So it is hard to doubt..
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) December 21, 2021
On Squawk Box, Cramer later revealed that if “you bought today and you just held on even for six days, you made money almost every single year.”
According to Investopedia, a Santa Claus rally “describes a sustained increase in the stock market that occurs in the last week of December through the first two trading days in January.”
Statistics show that there is a remarkably higher probability of strong performance during these key dates based on the S&P 500. Such rallies are retail driven, and occur for various reasons which include:
- Increased investor enthusiasm around the holidays
- A low volume environment due to holidays and vacations
- More sophisticated short-sellers are on vacation
- The end of tax-loss harvesting by institutional or wealthy investors
But does such a phenomenon work for Bitcoin and crypto?
Ho ho how much could crypto climb? | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Will Bitcoin Climb This Christmas Into The New Year?
Reviewing past statistics related to Bitcoin price action around the last week of December into the first two trading days of January, data shows there is a lower probability of a Santa Claus rally in crypto than in stocks.
Only four years during such timeframe have been positive for Bitcoin, with the most recent occurring last year. With far less data available than in the S&P 500, anything is still possible when it comes to speculative digital assets.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Falls Flat: Examining A Rare Bull Market Corrective Pattern
Other seasonal type data related to this very day might prove to be more profitable. Today also is the Winter solstice, which in the past has been in close proximity to either a top, bottom, or a break of all-time high.
The Winter Solstice and Fibonacci | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
With this Winter solstice having failed to produce the peak of a rally, it could – like it has in the past – instead put in a short-term bottom that runs until the next equinox. And its possible that it starts with a Santa Claus rally.
Crypto is notoriously low volume compared to other markets, especially during holidays. The presence of institutional tax loss harvesting and more advanced short hedge positions could have kept Bitcoin price down during the December month, but with that out of the way, retail could push prices up in the near term.
However, according to the person who first mentioned a Santa Claus rally in The Stock Trader’s Almanac in 1972, Yale Hirsch, the rally itself isn’t what’s important. It is what arrives in the year that follows that matters.
“What’s important is not to catch this little rally but to use it as indication for what may happen in the coming year,” he said, calling it “an early indicator for the year to come.”
Hirsch’s father even came up with a phrase to help remember: “If Santa clause should fail to call, bears may come to Broad and Wall.”
I’m dreaming, of a green Christmas. With every #Christmas chart I draw. When #Bitcoin tops are possible; altcoin season, probable. Flip bear, then short it once again. pic.twitter.com/1wV6JYy4Vx
— Tony “The Bull” Spilotro (@tonyspilotroBTC) December 15, 2021
Follow @TonySpilotroBTC on Twitter or join the TonyTradesBTC Telegram for exclusive daily market insights and technical analysis education. Please note: Content is educational and should not be considered investment advice.
Featured image from iStockPhoto, Charts from TradingView.com
LUNA Hits ATH After Astroport’s Deployment, Why Terra Could Continue Growing In 2022
Maybe one of the best-performing assets in 2021, LUNA has been trending against the market for the past 2 weeks. While Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies remained rangebound, the native token for the Terra ecosystem re-entered uncharted territories.
Related Reading | Terra Begins LUNA Burning, Why It Could Target $140
As of press time, LUNA trades at $87 coming in from a monthly low at $38 which represents almost a 40% increase over that period.
As reported by NewsBTC, Terra deployed several improvements on its mainnet in the past months. These included Colombus-5, Wormhole v2, and an Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol.
The first of these upgrades could be the fuel that has triggered LUNA’s rally as it implemented a burning mechanism into the network. Effectively, this upgrade has turned LUNA into a deflationary asset that will continue to see buying pressure into the future.
Per a report by Delphi Digital, the Terra ecosystem has also benefited from the deployment of Astroport, an Automated Market Maker (AMM). The protocol is yet in an early phase but has already seen over $1 billion in capital inflows.
This capital injection into Terra’s ecosystem coincides with LUNA’s rally which goes to show the importance of adoption for this token’s performance. Delphi Digital said:
LUNA price notched another ATH today before retracing lower. The price increase over the last few days was likely triggered by investors buying spot LUNA to lock up in the Astroport lockdrop, then hedging their position via perpetual futures to remain delta neutral.
As the chart also shows, LUNA has the right ingredients to continue its rally: reaching price discovery on negative funding rates for the derivatives sector, which suggests speculators expected more downside in a short time. It remains to be seen if the trend will be able to hold in 2022.
Terra (LUNA) And Its Potential To Take Over 2022
LUNA’s ecosystem has displayed strength in other sectors. The network’s native stablecoin UST has been gaining more adoption and could potentially disrupt this sector of the crypto market.
Delphi Digital records an increase in market capitalization for UST since December 15th. This stablecoin has been in a close fight with DAI, one of Ethereum’s most prominent assets, as seen below. Delphi Digital added:
UST and DAI have been neck-and-neck in terms of market capitalization, with UST briefly overtaking DAI as the 4th largest stablecoin last week. Yesterday, UST overtook DAI more decisively as it had been trading higher for at least the last 24 hours.
Related Reading | LUNA Outperforms Bitcoin’s Rally, Why It’s Ready For Massive Gains
Christmas is still some days away, but December has already proven itself as one of LUNA and Terra’s most important months in 2021. With solid fundamentals, this network seems poised to continue its upwards trend in the near future.
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