Decentral Block Post

The major United States stock market indices continued their decline last week as worsening macroeconomic conditions increased concerns of a global recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at its lowest level in 2022 and major indices recorded their fifth weekly close in the past six weeks.

Although Bitcoin (BTC) has only declined marginally this week, it risks closing at the lowest level since 2020. While a new multi-year weekly close is a negative sign, sellers will have to sustain the lower levels or else it may turn out to be a bear trap. The price action of the next few days is likely to witness heightened volatility as both the bulls and the bears battle it out for supremacy.

Several investors miss opportunities to buy during sharp corrections because they try to catch the bottom. Traders should rather focus on the projects they like and accumulate the coins in a phased manner lasting a few weeks or months. All coins do not bottom at the same time, hence it is better to focus on individual cryptocurrencies that show strength.

While Bitcoin is nearing its yearly lows, certain altcoins are holding up well. Let’s look at the charts of five cryptocurrencies that look interesting in the near term.

BTC/USDT

The Bitcoin bulls have successfully defended the $18,626 to $17,622 support zone in the past few days but they continue to face strong selling at the 20-day exponential moving average ($19,720). This suggests that bears continue to sell on minor rallies.

Bitcoin (BTC) headed for its lowest weekly close since 2020 on Sep. 25 as a week of macro turmoil took its toll.

Trader prepares for "important week" for BTC

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD trading near $19,000 with hours left to run on the weekly candle.

While only down $400 since the week began, the pair offered traders little optimism amid fears that the coming days would continue the bleedout across risk assets.

“The whole week traded within the monday range. Weekly close gonna be bearish, looking like a pin bar,” popular trading account Crypto Yoddha told Twitter followers in a summary post.

“Also consolidating at the range low. So need a bounce first before taking a position. Next week is gonna be important. (Q3 close + Monthly close).”

The infamous collapse of the Terra ecosystem, which erased market prices of TerraUSD (UST) and LUNA tokens, continues to trouble anxious investors as co-founder Do Kwon, crypto exchanges and the community together tries to identify the best route for a sustainable price recovery.

Most recently, Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao, the CEO of crypto exchange Binance, recommended a flat 1.2% trading tax on LUNC trades that could be burned to reduce the token’s total supply and improve its price performance. Addressing the community, CZ stated:

“We will implement an opt-in button (on the Binance exchange), for people to opt-in to pay a 1.2% tax for their LUNC trading.”

However, the exchange would begin the taxation for opt-in traders following the consensus of 25% of the LUNC investors, making sure that early adopters “are not the only few paying an extra 1.2%.”

A blanket trading tax of 1.2% will be implemented for all LUNC trading only after opt-in traders reach 50% of the total LUNC trading volume on the exchange.

It's a question that's infatuated scientists for decades: how can we prolong life expectancy — giving humans everywhere more years of good health?

This field is known as longevity science, and within this industry, experts argue care which regards ageing as a normal but treatable ailment are rare — and of the approaches available, they can only be accessed by those who are highly educated and privileged.

Just some of the key tenets that govern this approach to medicine involve therapeutics, personalized medicine, predictive diagnostics and artificial intelligence. The goal is to eliminate a "one size fits all" attitude toward treatment, and ensure that therapies are customized to an individual's unique medical profile. This can matter in many different ways — to the best method for tackling cancer, to the food we eat and our risk of heart disease.

And while predictive diagnostics offers an existing way of unlocking better patient outcomes, this often hinges upon using large amounts of anonymized data to determine what's happened in the past, and how greater levels of success are achieved in the future.

The S&P 500 index has declined about 5% this week while the Nasdaq Composite is down more than 5.5%. Investors fear that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes could cause an economic downturn. The yield curve between the two-year and 10-year Treasury notes, which is watched closely by analysts for predicting a recession, has inverted the most since the year 2000. 

Among all the mayhem, it is encouraging to see that Bitcoin (BTC) has outperformed both the major indices and has fallen less than 4% in the week. Could this be a sign that Bitcoin’s bottom may be close by?

On-chain data shows that the amount of Bitcoin supply held by long-term holders in losses reached about 30%, which is 2% to 5% below the level that coincided with Bitcoin’s bottom in March 2020 and December 2018. This metric suggests that Bitcoin could have more room to fall before it bottoms out.

Let’s study the charts of the S&P 500 index, the U.S. dollar index (DXY) and the major cryptocurrencies to determine whether the trend will continue or if a reversal is likely.

SPX

The S&P 500 index (SPX) broke below the 3,900 support on Sept. 16 and the bears successfully defended the level on retests on Sept. 17 and 21. Hence, this becomes an important level to keep an eye on as a break above 3,900 will be the first sign that bulls are on a comeback.

Crypto prices keep falling, but why? This year’s market crash has turned most winning portfolios into net losers, and new investors are probably losing hope in Bitcoin (BTC).

Investors know that cryptocurrencies exhibit higher than average volatility, but this year’s drawdown has been extreme. After hitting a stratospheric all-time high at $69,400, Bitcoin price crumbled over the next 11 months to an unexpected yearly low at $17,600.

That’s a nearly 75% drawdown in value.

Ether (ETH), the largest altcoin by market capitalization, also saw an 82% correction as its price tumbled from $4,800 to $900 in seven months.

Years of historical data show that drawdowns in the 55%–85% range are the norm after parabolic bull market rallies, but the factors weighing on crypto prices today differ from those that triggered sell-offs in the past.

XRP price posted a sharp rally against Bitcoin (BTC) on continued optimism about a potential settlement between Ripple, a San Francisco-based blockchain payment firm, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Settlement rumors fuel XRP price boom 

On Sep. 23, the XRP/BTC pair surged to 0.00002877 — its best level in 13 months — from 0.00002132, a 35% price rally versus Bitcoin in one day. Meanwhile, the same timeframe saw XRP rising as much as 42% against the U.S. dollar.

The big price leaps in the XRP market started appearing after Ripple and SEC filed motions for a summary judgment with the court on Sep. 12 regarding their ongoing legal battle over allegations that Ripple committed securities fraud.

In other words, Ripple and SEC agreed that the court should use available evidence to reach a verdict by December 2022 on whether the blockchain firm illegally raised funds by selling XRP, and thus avoiding trial. 

XRP's price has boomed approximately 75% and 60% versus Bitcoin and the dollar, respectively, since Ripple's court filing, fueled by optimism of a possible win for Ripple.

Crypto markets are flashing a bit of green on Sept. 22 as Bitcoin (BTC) price tacked on a 4.7% gain to trade above $19,300 and Ether (ETH) surged 6.5% to recapture the $1,300 level. 

RSR and Astar Network (ASTAR) also surged by 23% and 17% respectively, but the more notable mover of the day was XRP.

Currently, XRP price reflects a near 25% gain and the asset is up 41% in the past month. According to defense lawyer James K. Filan, on Sept. 18, Ripple Labs filed a motion for summary judgment — a legal process that involves the court making a final decision based on the provided facts, rather than ordering a trial — and a decision on whether XRP is a security is expected by mid-December.

Excitement over the news could be improving investor sentiment about the longer-term prospects for XRP.

Related: Crypto and stocks soften ahead of Fed rate hike, but XRP, ALGO and LDO look ‘interesting’

Cryptocurrencies have been in a bear trend since mid-August after they failed to break above the $1.2 trillion market capitalization resistance. Even with the current bear trend and a brutal 25% correction, it has not been enough to break the 3-month-long ascending trend.

The crypto markets' aggregate capitalization declined 7.2% to $920 billion in the 7 days leading to Sept. 21. Investors wanted to play it safe ahead of the Federal Open Markets Committee meeting, which decided to increase the interest rate by 0.75%.

By increasing the cost of borrowing cash, the monetary authority aims to curb inflationary pressure while increasing the burden on consumer finance and corporate debt. This explains why investors moved away from risk assets, including stock markets, foreign currencies, commodities and cryptocurrencies. For instance, WTI oil prices ceded 6.8% from Sept. 14, and the MSCI China stock market index dropped 5.1%.

Ether (ETH) also saw a 17.3% retrace during the 7-day period and many altcoins performed even worse. The Ethereum network Merge and its subsequent impact on other GPU-mineable coins caused some skewed results among the worst weekly performers.

Chiliz (CHZ) rallied 21.5% following two successful fan token launches from MIBR esports team and the VASCO soccer team from Brazil.

Fantom (FTM) is known for its speed and inexpensive layer-1 blockchain. Like other blockchains (for example, Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX)) that scale better than their counterpart, it has been dubbed an “Ethereum killer.” After raising $40 million in funds, Fantom launched its mainnet in December 2019. Since then, it has grown to become one of the most popular blockchains, sitting in the top 10 blockchains by total value locked (TVL) with $1.3 billion in TVL. 

Fantom’s high-throughput blockchain is an open-source smart contract platform. It is scalable and EVM-compatible, meaning you can deploy and run your Ethereum decentralized applications (DApps) on Fantom. Its structure enables the support for its decentralized finance (DeFi), other than managing digital assets and DApps.

The Fantom consensus mechanism is an adapted version of proof-of-stake, and it’s called Lachesis. It’s been designed to provide high-speed transactions, low fees and almost instant finality due to the aBFT algorithm. aBFT can scale to many nodes worldwide in a permissionless, open-source environment, offering a good level of decentralization.

The Fantom blockchain is powered by its native FTM token, and if you believe in the project and want to grow your FTM stack, you can consider staking Fantom to earn passive income.

What is Fantom staking?

Staking is making a blockchain more secure by locking up an investor’s digital assets for a certain amount of time. This security is provided by validators who validate transactions with their staked tokens, which becomes an economic incentive for them to behave according to the protocol’s rules.

The Federal Reserve hiked rates by 75 basis points on Sept. 21 and Fed Chair Jerome Powell projected another 125 basis points increase before the end of the year. If that happens, it will take the benchmark rate to 4.4% by the end of the year, which is sharply higher than the June estimates of 3.8%. The Fed also intimated that it only expects rate cuts to be considered in 2024.

The expectation of higher rates pushed the 2-year Treasury to 4.1%, its highest level since 2007. This could attract several investors who are looking for safety in this uncertain macro environment. Higher rates are also likely to reduce the appeal of risky assets such as stocks and cryptocurrencies and may delay the start of a new uptrend.

Even though Bitcoin (BTC) faces several headwinds in the near term, it did not deter MicroStrategy from buying more coins. After the latest purchase of 301 Bitcoin, the company’s stash has risen to 130,000 Bitcoin. This shows that MicroStrategy and its executive chairman, Michael Saylor, remain bullish on the long-term prospects of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin and altcoins are trying to stabilize after the Fed’s announcement. Could they start a recovery? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

BTC/USDT

Bitcoin plunged below the immediate support at $18,626 on Sept. 19 but the long tail on the candlestick shows strong buying at lower levels. The bulls again defended the level on Sept. 21, which is a positive sign.

Most crypto investors have probably never heard of Wintermute Trading before the Sept. 20 $160 million hack, but that does not reduce their significance within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The London-based algorithmic trading and crypto lending firm also provides liquidity to some of the largest exchanges and blockchain projects.

As a crypto-native trading firm, meaning digital assets have been the core since its inception in July 2017, Wintermute’s expertise in the sector is attested by $25 million in funding from global venture capital investors like Fidelity Investments, Pantera Capital and Blockchain.com Ventures.

Lending and venture capital firms have limited impact on day-to-day operations

An important distinction sets apart a market maker from the bankrupt crypto venture capital firms like 3 Arrows Capital or insolvent lending and yield platforms like Voyager Digital and Celsius Network. Wintermute’s $160 million hack could have a much more profound impact on the crypto industry, considering how essential liquidity is.

The very nature of these businesses is vastly different. For example, a venture capitalist typically invests in pre-seed or seed capital by funding the projects ahead of its launch. There is definitely a need for early-stage funding for tokens, NFT projects, a decentralized application (DApps) and infrastructure, but the money will eventually come up when a good team, idea and community is assembled.

Furthermore, the failure of a certain venture capitalist, whether it is or is not relevant to the industry, does not damage its competitors' reputation. In fact, the opposite sentiment emerges because it proves that picking the right projects pays off, if the firm has been correctly managing its risk exposure. The same can be said for the yield and lending platforms, which basically compete for client deposits and scramble to offer the best returns.

The cryptocurrency industry has grown at a staggering pace. There are now almost 21,000 different coins in existence, across a variety of subsectors. From metaverses to decentralized finance, investors are spoiled for choice.

But a burning question, especially among crypto skeptics, is this: Are there too many cryptocurrencies? We've repeatedly seen how new altcoins can be created in the blink of an eye. Tokens popped up hours after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars — pumping and dumping on low liquidity. And following the death of Queen Elizabeth, the markets were flooded by a flurry of "memecoins" bearing her name. Some critics felt this was in poor taste and argued it was "a bad look for crypto." 

Despite the proliferation of thousands of cryptocurrencies — some with names inspired by major coins — Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to dominate. Combined, the valuations of these two digital assets command a 58.2% share of the entire market. All of this leaves altcoins battling for a much smaller piece of the pie.

Is choice a good thing? 

Let's begin by discussing the arguments in favor of this overwhelming assortment of cryptocurrencies.

A self-styled 23-year-old 'Crypto King' is facing a raft of demands among 140 of his investors as they try to claw back a collective total of $35 million from his company AP Private Equity Limited.

According to a Sept. 20 CBC report, creditors are hard at work trying to unravel where all the money they allegedly gave Canadian Aiden Pleterski to make crypto and foreign exchange investments on their behalf ended up.

A bankruptcy trustee's report, creditors meeting minutes, court filings, and complaints made to Investigation Counsel PC reveal Pleterski owned 11 vehicles, leased four other luxury cars, regularly flew on private jets, and was living in a lakefront mansion costing $45,000 a month to rent.

So far roughly $2 million worth of assets have been seized, among them two McLarens, two BMWs and a Lamborghini.

Norman Groot, the founder of Investigation Counsel PC, a fraud recovery law firm claimed the "large lifestyle burn rate" still doesn't "account for the amount of money that's missing."

Prices remain soft across the market as traders await Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s statement on the size of the next interest rate hike. 

At the moment, the market consensus is a 0.75 bps rate hike and a sliver of analysts are banking on 1%.

Stocks also appear en-route to close the day in the red, with the Dow down 0.75%, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq registering a 0.79% and 0.64% loss. Bitcoin continues to fight what appears to be a losing battle at the $19,000 mark, while Ether (ETH) dug a little deeper into its post-Merge dip by making an intra-day low at $1,329.

While BTC, Ether and altcoins aren’t making any notable moves that defy the current downtrend, from the perspective of market structure and technical analysis, there are a few interesting developments occurring.

Lido (LDO) has corrected alongside Ethereum now that the Merge-trade fervor has subsided, but the asset currently trades in what some would say is a bull flag. While ETH bulls and traders might have taken profits on their long Ether positions, the Merge was a success, stakers and validators still derive yield from the altcoin and the fundamentals that turned investors bullish on Ether remain present.