Bitcoin, Ether, and XRP Weekly Market Update: November 8, 2018
Bitcoin managed to close above the $6,400 level on November 1, 2018, with a 40$ gain for the day. The BTC-USD pair extended its winning streak on the next day, November 2 and moved from $6,407 to $6,427.
BTC-USD
The notorious stablecoin Tether announced that it is now partnering with Deltec Bank & Trust, a banking institution based in the Bahamas. In a letter, dating November 1, the bank confirmed that Tether does have a balance in its USD account of $1,8 billion – enough to ensure all USDTs in circulation are backed by the greenback.
Another stablecoin, USDC, is also gaining popularity. Coinbase, the U.S. based crypto exchange, made another sudden move and added Basic Attention Token (BAT) to its trading portfolio. The BAT-USDC pair is currently only available on the Coinbase Pro platform and users can convert fiat to USDC in order to open orders with the asset.
And since stablecoin is the market’s favorite new buzzword, it is worth mentioning that the Russian State Duma committee is considering the launch of a central bank-issued stablecoin, pegged to the Russian ruble. Anatoly Aksakov, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Financial Markets described the model suggesting that the cryptocurrency will be backed by a banking deposit of a certain amount. The Central Bank will issue a corresponding amount of crypto assets by using blockchain technology and adhering to the 1:1 proportion.
Across the Atlantic, the U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley released a new crypto industry research paper entitled “Update: Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain.” According to the report, Bitcoin and altcoins have been a “new institutional investment class” since 2017, and significantly more institutional investors are now interested in the crypto and blockchain space despite the recent bear market.
BTC dropped below the $6,400 line on November 3 and began moving south, towards the $6,300 support during trading sessions. Bulls managed to retake control and pushed the price back to $6,390.
On November 4, the most popular cryptocurrency made an unexpected attack on the mid-$6,000s and gained 1.5 percent (or 100$) of value. The $6,500 line was then breached, but could not be defended. The week closed at $6,490 remaining flat over the seven-day period.
The overall stability of the crypto market comes as no surprise as Bitcoin futures trading on the U.S. Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) hit record low volatility levels in October. MarketWatch reported that the average weekly volatility for the week of October 26 was just three percent for XBT-CBOE Bitcoin futures, the lowest ever level since they launched on December 10, 2017. October overall has seen record-low volatility levels, boasting an average of 6.6 percent.
In last week’s report, BTCManager outlined Bitfury’s plans for an initial public offering (IPO). On November 6, the company announced it had completed $80 million private placement led by Korelya Capital, a European growth capital firm supported by South Korea’s internet giant, the Naver Group. According to the Bitfury press release, investors such as Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital, Macquarie Capital, Dentsu Inc., Armat Group, and others all participated in the private placement.
The new week started with a slight correction in price and the BTC-USD pair moved down to $6,468 on November 5. On November 6, however, bulls managed to successfully push prices above the $6,500 level and closed the trading session at $6,534.
All of the top ten cryptocurrencies (by market cap) experienced significant gains as the crypto community was hoping for another end-of-year bull run.
Unlike most of the altcoins, BTC continued its rally on November 7 and peaked at $6,572. It made a slight correction during the Asia trading sessions on November 8 though, as $6,600 and $6,700 levels continued to be out of reach.
ETH-USD
Ethereum marked its third consecutive green day on November 1 and moved closer to the previously critical support level at $200. The ETH-USD pair closed trading at $199.8 and extended the winning streak on the next day November 2, pushing the price above the mentioned line.
While observers saw a slight correction on November 3, bulls successfully defended their territory and did not give up the critical support.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin unveiled the so-called Ethereum 2.0 in a keynote presentation at the Devcon4 conference in Prague. The project known as Serenity will facilitate the transfer to the proof-of-stake algorithm (project Casper) and scalability improvements through sharding. No release date was mentioned, but according to Buterin launch is “really not so far away.”
Additionally, Buterin assured the community that he is not stepping away from the Ethereum project. In a tweet, the Russian-Canadian replied to a recent article by the MIT Technology Review entitled “Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin says his creation can’t succeed unless he takes a step back,” which claimed that Ethereum cannot succeed and achieve true decentralization if it depends on Buterin to lead its development. “No, I’m saying I’m continuing to focus on research but am less ‘in charge’ than ever. It’s about addition of other people’s work, not subtraction of my own,” he added.
The most popular altcoin was six percent up, to $212, on November 4 as a result of a sudden spike in price. The run helped extend weekly gains to 3.4 percent. The week started with a small $2 loss, but November 6 brought green signals back with 3.7 percent worth of winnings.
We saw price breaking below the $220 line on November 7 to $218, which was followed by a decline to $215 at the start of the European trading session on November 8.
XRP-USD
The Ripple token moved above the $0.46 support/resistance level and closed November 1 at $0.461. It extended the gains to $0.4626 on next day and was eyeing the $0.47 level.
The third biggest cryptocurrency stormed through the above-mentioned level on November 4 closing the week one percent up.
On November 5 and 6, XRP ran with the bulls as the altcoin enjoyed 6.4 percent and 11 percent gains respectively. XRP even briefly surpassed ether by market cap to become second-largest cryptocurrency
It is possible that the strong rally is a direct result from the series of good news around the project. On 1 November 2018, Canadian XRP-based exchange CoinField announced the launch of 20 trading pairs against the currency. Additionally, the financial rating agency, Weiss Ratings, gave a buy signal for the cryptocurrency October 31, 2018.
On November 7 and early morning hours of November 8, XRP entered a downward correction (or possible profit taking) and dropped from $0.555 to $0.541 and then to $0.512 at the time of writing.
