Decentral Block Post

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls are again having a go at the overhead resistance of $31,000. The bullish sentiment may get a boost from the United States inflation report, which showed signs of slowing down. Economists were expecting the year-on-year consumer price index to rise 3.1% but the June print came in at 3%.

The month-on-month increase of 0.2% was also less than forecast. This suggests that the Federal Reserve’s rate hikes are having the desired effect. That may limit future rate hikes by the Fed.

Supported by macroeconomic conditions, institutional investors seem to be turning positive on cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. CoinShares report published on July 10 showed inflows of $136 million into digital investment products in the past week. That brings the total inflows of three consecutive weeks to $470 million, indicating a positive outlook.

Large investors could be turning positive on Bitcoin because they anticipate a huge inflow of traditional finance money if the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approves a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph that an ETF approval would unlock $30 trillion worth of capital for Bitcoin.

Could the tailwind of the positive triggers prove bullish for Bitcoin and the major altcoins? Let’s study the charts of the top-10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

Cryptocurrency scams have fallen a massive 77% from $3.3 billion to $1.1 billion over the first six months of 2023, according to a recent report by blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis.

The catch, though, is that ransom attacks are back in trend, with perpetrators pocketing 62.4% more revenue than the first six months of 2022.

On July 12, Chainalysis released its Mid Year Crypto Crime report, noting it’s the second consecutive year that scam revenue has trended downwards.

The firm observed that historically, scam revenue increases in bull markets — but that hasn’t been the case so far in 2023:

“Usually, positive price movements translate to higher scam revenue, likely because increased market exuberance and FOMO make victims more susceptible to scammers’ pitches. But 2023’s drastic scam decline bucks that long-standing trend.”

Ripple may be holding its breath a bit longer after a United States District Judge refused to rule on if the secondary sale of LBRY Credits (LBC) constitutes a security.

On July 11, New Hampshire District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro made the ruling in the case the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought against the decentralized content platform LBRY.

The ruling may have offered legal precedent to fellow District Court Judge Analisa Torres, who is set to make a decision on the SEC’s case against Ripple in the coming months.

In his ruling, Judge Barbadoro said:

“Accordingly, I take no position on whether the registration requirement applies to secondary market offerings of LBC.”

Caradano’s native gas-paying token ADA received a big blow at the start of June when the SEC regarded it as a security in its lawsuit against Binance and Coinbase.

The lawsuit triggered a 42.5% drop in ADA’s price from $0.37 to a two-year low at $0.21 within a few days after SEC’s lawsuit.

Additionally, the token faced further downside selling pressure due to delisting on U.S.-based trading apps Robinhood and eToro.

However, under the hood, the network has been making progress with an uptick in DeFi activity after a scalability upgrade in May.

The technical and on-chain analysis of the token also shows potential for a positive recovery.

A third straight week of positive digital asset inflows has fully corrected nine previous weeks of outflows for the market, according to a report from CoinShares published on July 10. 

This week’s inflows registered $136 million. Bitcoin (BTC) funds continued their trend of holding the anchor position, with 98% of the inflows coming from BTC. The other 2% mostly came from Ether (ETH), multi-asset holdings, and a handful of altcoins.

After nine weeks where digital asset outflows outpaced inflows, this third consecutive week of positive movement brings the current streak’s total to $470 million. According to Coinshares, this total fully corrects for the previous outflow streak.

Bitcoin inflows showed no signs of slowing down this past week after posting year-long highs in the previous two. As Cointelegraph previously reported, BTC inflows for last week were $123 million. This week adds $10 million, bringing the two-week inflow haul for BTC alone to $256 million.

This continues Bitcoin’s crypto market dominance by extending its total market cap from last week’s 51.46% to a reported 51.66% share as of July 11.

Polygon (MATIC) price is up today, mirroring upside moves elsewhere in the cryptocurrency market as traders assess a mix of fundamental factors.

On July 11, the MATIC price rose 2.32% to $0.75, its highest level in a month — outperforming the crypto market, whose valuation stayed relatively unchanged from the previous day at around $1.14 trillion.

New CEO, Polygon's 'decentralized governance' plans

MATIC's intraday gains come as a part of a broader price jump that started after Polygon appointed its former chief legal office, Marc Boiron, as the new chief executive officer (CEO) on July 7. Since then, MATIC/USD has gained nearly 15%.  

Boiron's appointment comes more than a month after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) argued that MATIC is a "security" in its lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase.

Meanwhile, the price gains also appear as Polygon prepares to implement a sequence of network upgrades as a part of its "Polygon 2.0" overhaul. Namely, the establishment of a "decentralized governance" protocol by July 17.

A team of researchers at Pennsylvania State University recently analyzed to determine whether attitudes and emotionality surrounding cryptocurrency could help predict returns. What they found may stand in stark contrast to related financial markets. 

According to the team’s research paper, social media plays an outsized role in adoption and activity rates while cryptocurrency journalism isn’t a great predictor of market movement:

“Our findings indicate that social media sentiment significantly predicts crypto returns, while sentiment from news media does not.”

The researchers used natural language processing to analyze millions of financial news articles and social media comments and generated sentiment scores along 53 topics and attention metrics for over 300 cryptocurrencies.

They then compared the ground truth returns over a given period of time to the coinciding news and social media sentiment.

Bitcoin has been struggling to rise and sustain above the $31,000 level for the past few days, but Standard Chartered has painted a bullish picture for this year and the next. In a report, the bank said that Bitcoin (BTC) could reach $50,000 this year and stretch the rally to $120,000 by the end of next year.

Large investors seem to be taking a bullish stance and are making the most of the stagnant Bitcoin prices. Behavioral analytics platform Santiment shows that sharks and whales, entities holding between 10 and 10,000 Bitcoin, have increased their hoarding by 71,000 Bitcoin since mid-June.

While the long term looks bullish, macroeconomic indicators hold the key in the short term. The United States equities market is likely to be influenced by the second-quarter earnings and the inflation data due to be released on July 12. That is likely to set the stage for a risk-on or a risk-off sentiment.

Could the S&P 500 Index (SPX) resume its rally over the next few days? Will Bitcoin and the altcoins follow the equities markets higher? Let’s analyze the charts to find out.

S&P 500 Index price analysis

The bulls are trying to protect the 20-day exponential moving average (4,373) but the long wick on the July 7 candlestick shows that bears are active at higher levels.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 209,000 in June, below economists’ expectations of an addition of 240,000 jobs. Although the figures show a cooling labor market, market observers remained concerned as the average hourly earnings growth held steady at 0.4% from May and 4.4% from a year ago. 

The report did not alter expectations of a 25 basis point rate hike by the United States Federal Reserve in the next meeting, according to the FedWatch Tool. That kept the U.S. equities markets under pressure, with all three major indices falling for the week. The S&P 500 was down 1.16% and the Nasdaq was lower by 0.92%.

Another minor negative for the crypto markets was a report by JPMorgan managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, which said that a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) may not prove to be a game changer for the crypto space. Panigirtzoglou cites lackluster interest in the spot Bitcoin ETFs in Canada and Europe as the reason for a possible low impact even in the U.S.

Could bulls regroup and kick Bitcoin above the overhead resistance? If they do, select altcoins could join the march higher. Let’s analyze the charts of top-5 cryptocurrencies that are showing signs of moving up.

Bitcoin price analysis

Bitcoin remains stuck between the 20-day exponential moving average ($29,854) and the overhead resistance at $31,000. This suggests uncertainty among the bulls and the bears about the next directional move.

Lawyers representing Elon Musk and Tesla asked a United States district court judge to toss out a motion to have them sanctioned over alleged conflicts of interest in a $258 billion lawsuit alleging Musk participated in an illegal racketeering scheme related to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency.

In a filing dated July 6, Musk and Tesla’s team responded to the June 25 motion filed by Evan Spencer, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case against Musk.

Spencer referred to the defendants’ lawyers as “yes men” in his filing and asked the judge to declare it a conflict of interest for the team to represent both Musk and Tesla. “Defense counsel is acting in this case as concurrent representatives of both Defendants,” reads the complaint, “while their real loyalty is to Elon Musk alone.”

Related: Elon Musk accuses Mark Zuckerberg of cheating: Twitter vs. Threads

The legal team representing Musk and Tesla minced no words in their response, referring to Spencer’s motion as “unsubstantiated” and “frivolous” three times in the table of contents alone.

Bitcoin is still struggling to stay above $31,000.

While a tight consolidation near the overhead resistance is a positive sign, the failure to rise above it may result in short-term liquidations. However, a shallow pullback should not be considered a trend change because, many times, the bulls take a step back to regroup and launch another attack at the resistance. If the barrier is overcome, the positive momentum picks up.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said in an “ask me anything” session on Twitter that Bitcoin (BTC) could witness a bull year after its halving in 2024. CZ added that BlackRock’s foray into cryptocurrencies will be “hugely beneficial” for the industry.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink made positive comments about Bitcoin while speaking in an interview with Fox Business on July 5. Fink said that Bitcoin was an “international asset not based on any one currency,” and investors could use it as a hedge against inflation or currency devaluation.

Could positive comments from Fink act as a floor during pullbacks? What are the important overhead resistance levels in Bitcoin and altcoins that need to be crossed to signal the start of a short-term up move? Let’s study the charts of the top 10 cryptocurrencies to find out.

On today’s Macro Markets show, veteran stock market and Cointelegraph analyst Marcel Pechman starts by analyzing Argentina’s 150% inflation, which proves that people continue to work and consume (somehow) even if their local currency loses its value.

What is the lesson here? For starters, everyone wants free money. That explains why altcoins and airdrops continue to attract attention, regardless of whether the majority of investors end up being unprofitable.

You might think that those investors would quickly learn their lesson, but in reality, quite the opposite occurs. All it takes is a new marketing strategy — a new way of promising free money — just like the Argentines have a tendency to forget the mess the governments have caused over the course of 10 years.

For Pechman, the bottom line is: Forget any promise of free money or dividends that don’t come explicitly from economic activity.

The show’s next segment covers the topic most loved by economists: the inverted yield curve. This event happens when shorter-dated Treasurys have higher returns than longer-term ones, suggesting the United States Federal Reserve will hurt the economy.

BarnBridge DAO members have been told to pause “all work” related to the project after a reported probe by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In a July 6 post to the platform’s Discord channel, Douglas Park, a lawyer for the decentralized autonomous organization revealed the news to members.

“I am letting you know that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Barnbridge DAO and individuals associated with the DAO,” Park said.

In order to “reduce potential further legal liability,” Park suggested “all work” on BarnBridge-related products should stop — including the closure of liquidity pools — and that individuals should not receive compensation for work flowing from the investment efforts of the DAO.

Co-founder Tyler Ward, presumably dubbed “Lord Tyler” on Discord, confirmed Park’s message was true on BarnBridge’s Discord shortly after.

A pair of researchers from the University of Tsukuba in Japan recently built an AI-powered cryptocurrency portfolio management system that utilizes on-chain data for training, the first of its kind according to the scientists. 

Called CryptoRLPM, short for “Cryptocurrency reinforcement learning portfolio manager,” the AI system utilizes a training technique called “reinforcement learning" to implement on-chain data into its model.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an optimization paradigm wherein an AI system interacts with its environment — in this case, a cryptocurrency portfolio — and updates its training based on reward signals.

CryptoRLPM applies feedback from RL throughout its architecture. The system is structured into five primary units which work together to process information and manage structured portfolios.

These modules include a Data Feed Unit, Data Refinement Unit, Portfolio Agent Unit, Live Trading Unit, and an Agent Updating Unit.

The start of June saw negative price action across the cryptocurrency market after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought fresh lawsuits against the world’s largest exchanges, Binance and Coinbase.

However, the sentiment quickly turned bullish after a crucial exchange-traded fund proposal was filed by the world’s largest asset management firm, BlackRock, on June 16. A wave of ETF fillings and institutional trading interest in digital assets followed BlackRock’s ETF filling.

The launch of EDX Markets backed by Wall Street giants Fidelity Investments, Citadel Securities, and Charles Schwab on June 20 fueled a particular sector of the market in Bitcoin forks like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV) and other proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies like Kaspa (KAS).

The exchange debuted with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and BCH. The inclusion of BCH catalyzed an uptrend across other Bitcoin forks.

Among the top gainers in June, three Bitcoin forks populated the list, followed by Kaspa and FLEX Coin (FLEX). FLEX benefited from its integration with Open Exchange, backed by co-founders of the bankrupt Three Arrows Capital digital fund.

Barking with community-driven enthusiasm and bone-rattling potential, dog-themed coins are forming a pack on the stage of emerging digital assets. In recent years, the cryptocurrency world has witnessed a surge in the popularity of dog-themed digital assets. These endearing tokens, which drew inspiration from the popular Doge meme, have swept the cryptocurrency industry by storm, enthralling both investors and enthusiasts.

While Dogecoin (DOGE) holds the reins as the pioneer in this pack, other dog-themed coins have also emerged as formidable contenders, boasting impressive market capitalization and dedicated communities. It’s a testament to the power of cute and lighthearted memes to bring people together within the dynamic and ever-evolving crypto landscape.

Despite their seemingly playful nature, these tokens prove that the crypto world has a knack for uniting individuals around assets that may not have an obvious practical purpose but capture the collective imagination.

Below are the top five dog-themed cryptocurrencies based on their market capitalization. However, please note that due to the dynamic nature of the cryptocurrency market, the rankings of the tokens discussed in this article are subject to change.

Dogecoin (DOGE)

In 2013, Dogecoin (DOGE) was launched as a meme-inspired cryptocurrency featuring the image of a Shiba Inu, a seated Japanese dog breed, with its paws folded over each other. It relies on a scrypt algorithm and offers features such as low prices and unlimited supply. While initially created as a satire of the cryptocurrency hype, Dogecoin has evolved into a unique altcoin with a vibrant community.