Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) will top $100,000 next year but a record-breaking bear market will follow, a popular trader believes.

In a Twitter discussion on Oct. 22, Credible Crypto endorsed a theory that Bitcoin’s next halving will also see macro lows of just $10,000.

BTC bulls need only wait a year for $100,000

With consensus calling for Q4 2022 to match the end of the 2018 Bitcoin bear market, few are in the mood to call a trend change.

While a bold prediction from LookIntoBitcoin creator Philip Swift recently gave the current bear market just months to live, most commentators continue to target new lows.

For Credible Crypto, however, the really interesting territory lies further ahead — but 2023 will constitute a major turning point.

The European country of Spain is officially home to the third-largest network of Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency ATMs after the United States and Canada. 

Spain currently hosts 215 crypto ATMs, pushing El Salvador — wi 212 crypto ATMs — down to the fourth position after surpassing the country by 3 crypto ATMs. Data from CoinATMRadar confirms that Spain represents 0.6% of the global crypto ATM installations.

Moreover, the revelation places Spain as the highest contributor to crypto ATMs in Europe, which represents 14.65% of total installations in the continent, followed by Switzerland (144 ATMs), Poland (142 ATMs) and Romania (135 ATMs).

In 2022 alone, Spain installed 43 crypto ATMs and has previously shared its intent to install a total of over 100 ATMs by the end of the year — taking up the total to nearly 300 crypto ATMs once completed.

MediaMarkt, a German electronics retailer, and Confinity, among others, are leading the drive to install crypto ATMs across Austria, Germany, Spain and Greece.

Hackers took over the official Twitter account of crypto exchange Gate.io, putting over 1 million users at risk of losing funds to an ongoing fraudulent Tether (USDT) giveaway.

Social media platform Twitter serves as the most effective medium to reach the crypto community. As a result, the trend of hacking into official Twitter handles of verified accounts to promote scams is on the rise.

Hackers of unknown origin took over Gate.io’s Twitter account and changed the website URL from Gate.io to gąte.com (https://xn--gte-ipa.com/) — a fraudulent website impersonating the exchange.

The fake website is actively promoting a fake giveaway of 500,000 USDT while asking users to connect their wallets (such as MetaMask) to claim the rewards. Once a user connects their wallet to the fake website, the hackers will gain access to their existing funds and end up draining the assets.

Blockchain investigator Peckshield also confirmed the ongoing attack as it detected the phishing website and alerted users about the risk of losing private keys.

Welcome readers, and thanks for subscribing! The Altcoin Roundup newsletter is now authored by Cointelegraph’s resident newsletter writer Big Smokey. In the next few weeks, this newsletter will be renamed Crypto Market Musings, a weekly newsletter that provides ahead-of-the-curve analysis and tracks emerging trends in the crypto market. 

The publication date of the newsletter will remain the same, and the content will still place a heavy emphasis on the technical and fundamental analysis of cryptocurrencies from a more macro perspective in order to identify key shifts in investor sentiment and market structure. We hope you enjoy it!

DeFi has a problem, pump and dumps

When the bull market was in full swing, investing in decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens was like shooting fish in a barrel, but now that inflows to the sector pale in comparison to the market’s heyday, it’s much harder to identify good trades in the space.

During the DeFi summer, protocols were able to lure liquidity providers by offering three- to four-digit yields and mechanisms like liquid staking, lending via asset collateralization and token rewards for staking. The big issue was many of these reward offerings were unsustainable, and high emissions from some protocols led liquidity providers to auto-dump their rewards, creating constant sell pressure on a token’s price.

Total value locked (TVL) wars were another challenge faced by DeFi protocols, which had to constantly vie for investor capital in order to maintain the number of “users” willing to lock their funds within the protocol. This created a scenario where mercenary capital from whales and other cash-flush investors essentially airdropped funds to platforms offering the highest APY rewards for a short period of time, before eventually dumping rewards in the open market and shifting the investment funds to the greener pastures.

Welcome readers, and thanks for subscribing! The Altcoin Roundup newsletter is now authored by Cointelegraph’s resident newsletter writer Big Smokey. In the next few weeks, this newsletter will be renamed Crypto Market Musings, a weekly newsletter that provides ahead-of-the-curve analysis and tracks emerging trends in the crypto market. 

The publication date of the newsletter will remain the same, and the content will still place a heavy emphasis on the technical and fundamental analysis of cryptocurrencies from a more macro perspective in order to identify key shifts in investor sentiment and market structure. We hope you enjoy it!

DeFi has a problem, pump and dumps

When the bull market was in full swing, investing in decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens was like shooting fish in a barrel, but now that inflows to the sector pale in comparison to the market’s heyday, it’s much harder to identify good trades in the space.

During the DeFi summer, protocols were able to lure liquidity providers by offering three- to four-digit yields and mechanisms like liquid staking, lending via asset collateralization and token rewards for staking. The big issue was many of these reward offerings were unsustainable, and high emissions from some protocols led liquidity providers to auto-dump their rewards, creating constant sell pressure on a token’s price.

Total value locked (TVL) wars were another challenge faced by DeFi protocols, which had to constantly vie for investor capital in order to maintain the number of “users” willing to lock their funds within the protocol. This created a scenario where mercenary capital from whales and other cash-flush investors essentially airdropped funds to platforms offering the highest APY rewards for a short period of time, before eventually dumping rewards in the open market and shifting the investment funds to the greener pastures.

Bitcoin (BTC) entered an ascending channel in mid-September and has continued to trade sideways activity near $19,500. Due to the bullish nature of the technical formation and a drop in the sell pressure from troubled miners, analysts expect a price increase over the next couple of months.

Independent analyst @el_crypto_prof noted that BTC's price formed a "1-2-3 Reversal-Pattern" on a daily time frame, hinting that $20,000 could flip to support soon.

Fundamental analysts are also attributing the sideways action to troubled Bitcoin-listed mining companies. For example, Stronghold Digital Mining announced a debt restructuring on Aug. 16 that included the return of 26,000 miners.

One public miner, Core Scientific, sold 12,000 BTC between May and July, while publicly traded mining companies sold 200% of their Bitcoin production. Bitcoin enthusiast @StoneysGhoster adds that excessive leverage caused the forced selling, not the mining activity, itself.

Regardless of the base case for Bitcoin's price recovery above $20,000, investors fear the impact of an eventual stock market crash as central banks continue to increase interest rates to curb inflation.

The 10-year Treasury yield in the United States rose to its highest level since 2008. Although this type of rally is usually negative for risky assets, the U.S. stock markets recovered ground after the Wall Street Journal reported that some officials of the Federal Reserve were concerned about the pace of the rate hikes and the risks of over-tightening.

While it is widely accepted that the U.S. will enter a recession, a debate rages on about how long it could last. On that, Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said on Twitter that the recession could last “probably until spring of ‘24,” and added that it would be nice to spend “one year without a horrible global event.”

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has witnessed a massive drop from its all-time high but its hash rate remains strong. This has increased Bitcoin’s discount relative to its hash rate in October to its highest since the first quarter of 2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone. The previous instance of the huge discount was followed by a massive rally that lasted till 2021. McGlone believes the same could happen again this time and Bitcoin may outperform most major assets.

Let’s study the charts of the S&P 500 index (SPX), the U.S. dollar index (DXY) and the major cryptocurrencies to spot any reversals.

SPX

The S&P 500 index rose above the 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) (3,702) on Oct. 18 but the bulls could not build upon this strength and challenge the downtrend line. This suggests that the bears have not given up and are active at higher levels.