Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin’s (BTC) volatility has increased over the past few days. The price soared on Aug. 29 after Grayscale scored a victory over the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, the euphoria was short-lived as the price gave back all the recent gains on the news that the SEC delayed the decision on all seven spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund applications. 

News related to Bitcoin ETFs has been the major trigger for the markets in the past few days. Bloomberg ETF analysts remain upbeat over the possibility of the ETFs being approved by the regulator in 2023. In an Aug. 30 post of X (formerly Twitter), Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas bumped up the approval possibility of a spot Bitcoin ETF from 65% to 75%.

In the near term, the bulls face an uphill battle as September has traditionally favored the bears. According to CoinGlass data, Bitcoin has seen negative returns in September for the past six consecutive years. Will the trend continue in 2023?

The weakness in Bitcoin is affecting several major altcoins, which have dropped close to their strong support levels. Will the decline extend further or is it time for a bounce to happen? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin price analysis

The bulls failed to defend the 20-day exponential moving average ($26,947) on Aug. 31. That started a sell-off which pulled Bitcoin below the breakout level of $26,833.

Human ID project Worldcoin signed up over 9,500 users in Argentina in a single day in August, setting a record for single-day signups. To achieve this feat, facilitators onboarded participants at an average rate of less than nine seconds per person, according to an Aug. 31 announcement from the project.

Argentina has Worldcoin facilitators in 38 different locations, according to the project’s website. Most locations are in the country’s capital city of Buenos Aires.

Worldcoin is a blockchain-based project that allows individuals to prove they're human by having their irises scanned. When a user verifies their humanness, they are given a “World ID” that can be integrated into future applications to prove they are not a bot or artificial intelligence program. The project was founded by OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman, who argued that human IDs would be needed in the future as artificial AI programs become more sophisticated and less distinguishable from humans.

Worldcoin launched on July 25 and almost immediately came under criticism from data privacy advocates. Critics claimed that it is too centralized and could easily leak users’ biometric data, leading to negative consequences for users.

In their Aug. 31 post, the team claimed that many Argentinians are signing up for World IDs anyway, despite the controversy. “There was a significant increase in demand for World ID verifications in countries around the world [after launch],” they stated. This “continued into August, which saw 9.5K Argentinians verify their World ID in a single day.”

On the latest episode of Cointelegraph’s Market Talks, host Ray Salmond spoke with Luke Broyles, a popular Bitcoin (BTC) advocate and content creator on YouTube and X (formerly Twitter). During the show, Broyles laid out his Bitcoin investment thesis and his unique perspectives on how the asset’s price could eventually rise into seven-figure territory.

Broyles said that in 2020, he realized the bond market was broken. While searching for alternative investments, he discovered Bitcoin as a sound option. When asked about his Bitcoin investment strategy and how he stomachs the volatility, Broyles said: 

“I do not own bonds. I have sold off 97% of my stocks over the past three years, and I’m selling off the last 3% this week actually, so it’s funny that you ask that. By the end of this week, the only three assets that I will own will be U.S. dollars, aka cash, the best political currency in the world; second, real estate; and third, Bitcoin. That’s it. And I sleep better now than I did with a diversified portfolio.” 

Everything is overpriced and should crash

Another key factor backing Broyles’ Bitcoin investment thesis is his belief that “everything is overvalued, nothing makes sense, and everything should crash; however, we don’t want to deal with it. Politicians don’t want to deal with it. Lawyers don’t want to deal with it. I, as a real estate investor, don’t want to deal with it.” Broyles believes that stocks, healthcare, real estate and the education industry are highly overvalued, so people are losing faith in the dollar and their dollar purchasing power — which highlights the allure of Bitcoin as a supply-capped asset. 

“If we have a credit unwind, of course we’re going to print ourselves out of it.” 

The biggest new memecoin of 2023, Pepe (PEPE) suffered one of the worst possible fates that can befall a new crypto asset; a partial rug pull — after its anonymous developers abruptly sold nearly $16 million worth of the token on Aug. 24. 

The official Pepe X (formerly known as Twitter) account explained the drop was due to “three ex-team members” going behind their back and selling the tokens without their knowledge — a move that saw the price of Pepe plummet as much as 26% in the days following, without much respite. 

In the wake, crypto investors and memecoin enthusiasts are still scratching their heads — pondering if the frog-themed token could ever hope to return to pre-rug prices. 

Speaking to Cointelegraph, crypto trader Reetika Trades saw some potential positivity for PEPE, despite admitting the manner in which the devs sold wasn’t ideal. She believes that the event will ultimately have “negligible effects” on the token’s outlook in the long run.

“It’s a memecoin with no promise of utility, so some devs leaving makes no difference to the token,” she said.

Bitcoin (BTC) led the cryptocurrency markets higher on Aug. 29 following Grayscale’s victory in the lawsuit against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. However, the rally could not be sustained as analysts cautioned that the victory did not guarantee the approval of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.

Still, the victory may prove to be bullish for Grayscale. Glassnode analysts said in a X (formerly Twitter) post on Aug. 30 that the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) could return to premium next year. It is important to note that GBTC has been trading at a discount to spot Bitcoin price for the past two-and-a-half years.

In the short term, even though the S&P 500 Index is on a path of recovery and the U.S. dollar index (DXY) has turned down in the near term, the crypto markets are not able to sustain the higher levels. This shows that traders have maintained their focus on crypto-specific news.

Could bulls defend the support levels in Bitcoin and altcoins? Will that lead to a stronger recovery soon? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin’s range resolved to the upside with a sharp breakout on Aug. 29. This move indicates that the price is likely to oscillate inside the large range between $24,800 and $31,000 for a few days.

A trio of researchers from the University of Cincinnati recently developed a Crypto Literacy Scale (CLS) to help standardize and measure economic and financial knowledge as it relates to consumer and policy-maker understanding of cryptocurrencies and related technology.

The team’s research paper, titled “Measuring Crypto Literacy,” details the gap between traditional financial literacy and crypto literacy and the need for a Crypto Literacy Scale and policies that will support cryptocurrency education and literacy efforts worldwide.

According to the paper:

“Measuring financial literacy has encouraged policymakers and educators to create programs that improve financial decision-making and increase financial empowerment. However, there is no similar corresponding scale to measure crypto literacy."

The researchers point out that financial literacy “also plays a crucial role in preventing scams by equipping individuals with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to make informed financial decisions.”

Pepecoin (PEPE), once an extremely profitable memecoin, has plunged by more than 80% four months after its record high. Now, technicals suggest that the memcoin could be at risk of even bigger losses in the coming weeks or months.

Pepecoin faces rug pull allegations

On Aug. 24, several rogue Pepecoin developers changed the number of signatures required to move tokens from their multi-sig wallet from five-out-of-eight to two-out-of-eight. Then, they sent $16 million worth of PEPE to crypto exchanges, suggesting that they wanted to sell.

A segment of market analysts viewed these mov as a hint of an impending "rug pull," raising fears that the PEPE price may crash to zero in 2023. 

Previous "rug pulls" such as MULTI, the native token of Multichain's cross-chain bridging protocol, has dropped nearly 98% from its peak. The decline has appeared partially due to allegations that Multichain's $125 million hack in July 2023 was part of a broader rug-pull scam.

Similarly, in July 2023, a crypto developer associated with the Encryption AI project committed a $2 million rug-pull fraud. As a result, the Encryption AI token, 0XENCRYPT, crashed 99% to an all-time low of $0.02.

Shibarium, a new layer-2 blockchain for Shiba Inu (SHIB) has surpassed 100,000 wallets on its platform with 35,000 coming within 24 hours of Shibarium's relaunch on Aug. 28.

Shytoshi Kusama, the lead developer and co-founder of Shiba Inu, confirmed Shibarium was back up and running in an Aug. 28 blog post.

At the time, Kusama noted that Shibarium tallied 65,000 wallets across 350,000 transactions — however, those figures have rocketed upwards since, respectively increasing 55.8% and 20.2%, according to Shiariumscan.io.

Shibarium’s block explorer shows that 101,277 wallets have now facilitated 420,897 transactions across 344,614 blocks, with an average block time of 5 seconds.

In a statement, Kusama said the relaunch proved that funds are, and always were safe.

With as much as 130 million people introduced to cryptocurrencies since the end of 2021, millions of investors could soon be looking at their first crypto bull run, with some suggesting it could come as early as 2024.

However, unlike the current bear market, a bull market is “unlike anything else you've ever experienced” according to Ben Simpson, founder of education platform Collective Shift.

“It's complete and utter chaos. It's just a tornado.”

In August, Cointelegraph spoke to hedge fund managers, heads of research at digital asset companies, and other crypto traders to understand how they’re preparing for the upcoming bull market and some of the learnings they could pass onto newcomers.

Get in, get out

Simpson said one of the biggest mistakes that new crypto traders make is holding onto their crypto bags too long — most often caused by getting caught up in the euphoria that they could make more.

Bitcoin (BTC) is down about 11% in August, just shy of the 13.88% fall seen in the corresponding month in 2022, according to CoinGlass data. The picture does not look very bright for September either. History shows that every year since 2017, Bitcoin has declined in September. 

Bloomberg Intelligence senior macro strategist Mike McGlone is even more bearish on Bitcoin. While speaking to Kitco News, McGlone warned that in case of a “global economic reset,” Bitcoin could nosedive to as low as $10,000.

Although analysts have been giving both bullish and bearish targets, it is better to wait for the price to break out of the range before taking large bets. Typically, after a low volatile period, the volatility picks up but it is difficult to predict the direction of the breakout with certainty.

Do Bitcoin and the major altcoins show signs of a potential breakout? What are the important levels to watch out for? Let’s analyze the charts to find out.

S&P 500 Index price analysis

The S&P 500 Index (SPX) turned down from the moving averages on Aug. 24 but the bears could not sustain the lower levels.

Despite the recent hype around riend.tech, some decentralized social networks are still having a tough time getting users to sign up and stay on their social media platforms.

Two executives in the decentralized social (DeSo) media space told Cointelegraph that as much as 99% of users moving into DeSo for the first time will end up quitting, either due to clunky onboarding or simply not knowing anyone.

Ed Moss, the head of growth for layer-1 blockchain firm DeSo, said the process of cryptocurrencies from an exchange, transferring it to a wallet with an installed Chrome extension, and then paying high gas fees to transact on-chain or across chains is tedious and expensive for first-time users.

“We've found that 99% of mainstream users will drop off at that first step, so simplifying this flow is mission critical.”

Therefore, the single most important factor is to make sure the onboarding process is as frictionless as possible, Moss said.

Bitcoin (BTC) has gone silent over the weekend. CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju said in a recent post on X (formerly Twitter) that Bitcoin’s velocity has declined to a 3-year low. He said this could either be considered positive as whales were holding on to their positions or negative because the transfer to new investors was not happening.

The range-bound action continues to perplex investors about the next possible trending move. In that regard, there was a positive commentary from JPMorgan analysts who said that Bitcoin’s downtrend could be ending. They believe that the declining open interest in Bitcoin futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange suggests that the long liquidation is over.

As Bitcoin decides its next move, select altcoins are showing signs of strength. These altcoins could turn negative if Bitcoin’s range resolves to the downside but if Bitcoin turns up or stays in a range, then they may offer a short-term trading opportunity.

Let’s study the charts of the top-5 cryptocurrencies that may move up in the near term and identify the levels that need to be crossed for the bulls to take charge.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin formed an inside-day candlestick pattern on Aug. 26, indicating indecision between the bulls and the bears about the next directional move.