Decentral Block Post

Blockchain technology pioneer Jed McCaleb is shifting some of his focus to a new frontier, space.

The prominent crypto billionaire announced the launch of his new venture “Vast” on Sept. 12, which is aimed at expanding “human habitation in space” — "enabling a future where millions of people are living across the solar system.”

According to a company statement, the space habitation start-up was founded by McCaleb in 2021 and will be tasked with developing the world’s first artificial-gravity space station to essentially allow humans to live and work in space.

McCaleb’s long history of being on the cutting edge of technology began in 2000 when he created eDonkey2000, one of the largest file-sharing networks of the time. In 2007, he founded another company that developed a videogame called The Far Wilds.

He is the creator of Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange, a well-known trading card website that was eventually converted to a Bitcoin exchange called Mt. Gox in 2011. He is also a Ripple Labs co-founder, though he left the company in June 2013.

The total size of tokenized illiquid assets, including real estate and natural resources could reach $16.1 trillion by 2030, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

In a newly released report from BCG and digital exchange for private markets ADDX, authors including BCG managing director Sumit Kumar and ADDX co-founder Darius Liu noted that “a large chunk of the world’s wealth today is locked in illiquid assets.”

According to the report, illiquid assets include pre-IPO stocks, real estate, private debt, revenues from small and medium businesses, physical art, exotic beverages, private funds, wholesale bonds, and many more. 

Reasons for this asset illiquidity are attributed to factors such as limited affordability for mass investors, lack of wealth manager expertise, limited access — such as when assets are restricted to elite cliques (in the case of fine art and vintage cars), regulatory hurdles, and other scenarios in which users have difficulty acquiring or trading an asset. 

On-chain asset tokenization could solve this problem, a market that surpassed $2.3 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $5.6 billion by 2026, as per the report.

On Sept. 12, Bitcoin is doing Bitcoin things as usual. Since Sept. 9 the price has broken out nicely, booking a near 16% gain and rallying into the long-term descending trendline which appears to have resistance at $23,000. 

Perhaps BTC and the wider market are turning bullish ahead of the Ethereum Merge which is scheduled for Sept. 14, or maybe the elusive bottom is finally in. Weekly chart data from TradingView shows that on June 27 and Aug. 15, Bitcoin’s relative strength index had dropped to lows not seen since 2019.

Currently, the metric has rebounded from a near oversold 31 to its current 38.5 reading. Some traders might also note a bullish divergence on the metric, where the RSI follows an ascending trendline while Bitcoin’s weekly candlesticks trend downward. Bitcoin’s moving average convergence divergence (MACD) has also crossed over as purchasing volume surged and BTC price attempts to break from its current 90-day range.

As pointed out in previous analysis, since Jan. 21, Bitcoin price has simply been range trading in what have turned out to be successive bear flags that see continuation to new yearly lows. Price has consistently encountered resistance at the overhead descending trendline and the price action witnessed today and in the past 90-days is not a deviation from the trend.

Traders should watch for BTC price to push secure a few daily closes above the trendline resistance and setting a daily higher high above $25,400, or even a breakout to the 200-MA at $30,000 would be an excellent sight of either a trend change or at least a leg up to a new consolidation range. Until that occurs, the standard practice among traders is to not go long at long term resistance and wait to see whether the bullish momentum holds or the prevailing trend remains intact.

On Sept. 12, Bitcoin is doing Bitcoin things as usual. Since Sept. 9 the price has broken out nicely, booking a near 16% gain and rallying into the long-term descending trendline which appears to have resistance at $23,000. 

Perhaps BTC and the wider market are turning bullish ahead of the Ethereum Merge which is scheduled for Sept. 14, or maybe the elusive bottom is finally in. Weekly chart data from TradingView shows that on June 27 and Aug. 15, Bitcoin’s relative strength index had dropped to lows not seen since 2019.

Currently, the metric has rebounded from a near oversold 31 to its current 38.5 reading. Some traders might also note a bullish divergence on the metric, where the RSI follows an ascending trendline while Bitcoin’s weekly candlesticks trend downward. Bitcoin’s moving average convergence divergence (MACD) has also crossed over as purchasing volume surged and BTC price attempts to break from its current 90-day range.

As pointed out in previous analysis, since Jan. 21, Bitcoin price has simply been range trading in what have turned out to be successive bear flags that see continuation to new yearly lows. Price has consistently encountered resistance at the overhead descending trendline and the price action witnessed today and in the past 90-days is not a deviation from the trend.

Traders should watch for BTC price to push secure a few daily closes above the trendline resistance and setting a daily higher high above $25,400, or even a breakout to the 200-MA at $30,000 would be an excellent sight of either a trend change or at least a leg up to a new consolidation range. Until that occurs, the standard practice among traders is to not go long at long term resistance and wait to see whether the bullish momentum holds or the prevailing trend remains intact.

The 13% gains in the six days leading to Sept. 12 brought the total crypto market capitalization closer to $1.1 trillion, but this was not enough to break the descending trend. As a result, the overall trend for the past 55 days has been bearish, with the latest support test on Sept. 7 at a $950 billion total market cap.

An improvement in traditional markets has accompanied the recent 13% crypto market rally. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index gained 6.2% since Sept. 6 and WTI oil prices rallied 7.8% since Sept. 7. This data reinforces the high correlation versus traditional assets and places the spotlight on the importance of closely monitoring macroeconomic conditions.

The correlation metric ranges from a negative 1, meaning select markets move in opposite directions, to a positive 1, which reflects a perfectly symmetrical movement. A disparity or a lack of relationship between the two assets would be represented by 0.

As displayed above, the Nasdaq composite index and Bitcoin 50-day correlation currently stand at 0.74, which has been the norm throughout 2022.

The FED’s Sept. 21 decision will set the mood

Stock market investors are anxiously awaiting the Sept. 21 U.S. Federal Reserve meeting, where the central bank is expected to raise interest rates again. While the market consensus is a third consecutive 0.75 percentage point rate hike, investors are looking for signs that the economic tightening is fading away.

The United States equities markets and the cryptocurrency markets have started the new week on a strong footing. This suggests that investors expect the Federal Reserve's possible 75 basis point rate hike in the Sept. 20 to 21 meeting to be priced in and it also could mean that investors believe inflation has peaked.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) rally above $22,000 cleared the closely watched metric of the realized price, which according to Glassnode is at $21,700. The next major barrier on the upside is the 200-week moving average near $23,330. A break and close above this resistance could indicate that the bear market may be ending.

The current bear market has not driven away institutional investors who continue to believe in the long-term prospects of the asset class. One such example was given by Irfan Ahmad, the Asia Pacific digital lead for State Street’s crypto unit State Street Digital, who said that their institutional clients continued to place strategic bets in the cryptocurrency space in June and July.

Could Bitcoin and altcoins continue their up-move in the near term? Let’s study the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin is attempting to form a bottom. Buyers pushed the price above the 20-day exponential moving average (EMA) ($20,831) on Sept. 9 and the 50-day simple moving average (SMA) ($21,944) on Sept. 12. This suggests that the bears may be losing momentum.