Crypto Market Forecast: The week ahead

Aditya Das 17 Sep 2018, 12:00 UTC

Bitcoin PriceCryptocurrency NewsEthereum Price

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Last week large cap altcoins outshone the traditional market leader Bitcoin, with Ripple (XRP), Ethereum (ETH) and Stellar (XLM) enjoying big weeks with gains of ~104% , ~36% and ~11%, respectively — while BTC only up a conservative ~3%. Overall the entire crypto market capitalization grew by ~8%. The spark of growth created a new wave of bullish optimism, and supported the idea that crypto may end 2018 with bull run, as new trading volume and external interest appeared to enter the market.

A number of factors may have influenced XRP's strong run over the 2nd half of last week: A major deal with top-10 American bank, PNC, to use the X-current Ripple service to expedite payments to commercial clients. The potential launch of a commercial version of X-rapid (which directly uses XRP) that will allow for transactions between XRP, USD, Mexican and Philippines Peso. And speculative momentum created by an upcoming annual conference featuring an impressive list of speakers including former president, Bill Clinton.

It was also an important week for crypto infrastructure, with the New York Attorney General's office publishing a crypto exchange report which covered key players including Coinbase, Kraken and Bittrex. The report did not mince words, containing direct accusations of market manipulation. It did, however, endorse steps taken by platforms like Gemini to improve their market monitoring and surveillance procedures, indicating that for some participants at least, there is active progress being made within the crypto infrastructure space.

Meanwhile in Asia, Japanese exchange Zaif suffered a multi-million dollar hack. While the breach did not negatively impact the crypto marketplace, it did lead to a major restructuring of the Zaif company, and created more question marks surrounding the perceived robustness of crypto regulation, and the overall security of platforms within traditional East Asian hubs of South Korean & Japan.

25th September- STEEM Velocity Hardfork

STEEM, the native token of the Steemit social content platform will undergo a major hardfork and implement a number of new features this Tuesday. The blockchain will now include a new internal token, Resource Credits (RC), which are non-transferrable and are rewarded based on the size of a user's stake and their transactions on the STEEM blockchain. There will also be significant restructuring of the account creation, curation, and witness (block producer) features baked into Steem. STEEM tokens have had a strong week, up over 20% and this update may help fuel more bullish momentum.

28th September- CME Bitcoin futures last trading date

This Friday the latest round of CBOE BTC futures (XBT) expires. The nature of futures contracts means they need to be settled on a set predefined date based on a contract. All CME contracts will have to be traded before this date, to avoid having to deal with the complication of having to deliver on the underlying asset. There is generally a fall in the trading volume of futures around expiration dates, as traders prefer cash settlement over an expired contract, and having to deal with delivery hassles.Daily volumes of Bitcoin futures have hovered between 2,000 and 6,000 on the CME platform over the last month, and a potential short squeeze driven by a bullish momentum may affect the BTC marketplace.

1st-2nd October- Ripple Swell conference

The 'Swell by Ripple' annual conference occurs early next week in San Francisco, and has generated genuine buzz thanks to an impressive list of political and industry speakers, including Bill Clinton, Deputy counsel of the IMF Ross Leckow and Former Superintendent of Financial Services for New York Ben Lawsky. XRP's short term momentum appears to be continuing through to the start of this week, and the keynote speakers at the event indicate that Ripple's clout extends beyond the blockchain/fintech space, and may help XRP continue its upward trend.

Top 10 Crypto Summary

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It was a very strong week of trading for large cap alts as mentioned earlier. Besides the strong weeks for XRP, ETH and XLM, Cardano(ADA) grew by ~31%, EOS by ~ 11% and BCH by ~10%. The rise of the alts has also diminished BTC's market dominance to under 52% and may be indicative of a market more willing to take risks and a re-emergence of faith in the wider crypto sector.

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It has been a comparatively quiet seven days for the BTC marketplace, with crypto's blue chip asset gently rising ~2.5%. The week's biggest 'lightbulb moment' may have been the ability of BTC markets to bounce back from news that the SEC would delay its decision on the much hyped Van Eck SolidX Bitcoin ETF for as long as six months. Indicating that for many in the market, a bitcoin ETF is no longer a 'must have' to justify their faith in the currency.

On a fundamental level, BTC's hash rate and difficulty continue to rise steadily. While other metrics such as Active Addresses and Sent from Addresses show steady short term growth patterns.

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