Triaconta Weekly #251

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly:

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • Market overview

Bundle performance
Summer is early this year with Bitcoin dominance rising to nearly 48% that we previously saw in June 2022 and June 2021 after which an altcoin rally started. Bitcoin has made a triple bottom at $26,700 which technical analysts say is an excellent pattern for another upward move. For now, however, we are moving sideways and waiting for a breakout down or up expecting the rest of the market to follow Bitcoin. The number of active wallets and the number of wallet addresses that have a balance in Ethereum or Bitcoin continues to rise, which bodes well for adoption of crypto around the world. The only bundle rising this week is the Big3 and only thanks to XRP.

Big3:
1 Month: 18.84% | 7D: 4.49% | 24H: -1.34%

Top30:
1 Month: -7.17% | 7D: -0.46% | 24H: -0.52%

Penny:
1 Month: -14.01% | 7D: -0.72% | 24H: 0.47%

DeFi:
1 Month: -11.83% | 7D: -2.95% | 24H: -1.20%

Winners & Losers
The most important riser is again XRP (+24%) due to increasing purchases by XRP whales, large holders of XRP tokens, especially on major Korean exchanges. As often happens, Stellar (+20%) is hitching a ride on this rise. Fine returns for Hedera (+17%) added to the PennyStock bund last month (again). As expected, OMG Network (-28%) dives back down after its inexplicable “pump” last week. Celer Network (-15%) corrects on its rise in recent weeks, and Aptos (-11%) falls, despite huge attention on social media due to initiatives in the music industry and NFT market.

Market overview

The United States government has expanded its bitcoin holdings to about 1% of the total supply, according to blockchain analytics. The U.S. government now has 214,682 bitcoin, more than ever before, worth about $5.8 billion. These all come from seizures such as Silk Road and the Bitfinex hack. The government already sold more than $7.2 billion worth of bitcoin through auctions between 2014 and 2020, basically just like seized cars or luxury goods. This method of selling fortunately has little impact on the market price. It has been some time (November 2021) since an auction, though. Perhaps the Justice Department is also counting on a higher Bitcoin price in the future with the next Bitcoin halving in just over a year?

With the deployment of new, more efficient miners, the Bitcoin hashrate rose to the 400 Exahash mark this week. Also, data shows that 56% of total energy now comes from renewable sources. This is mainly caused by the relocation of many miners from China to America. It brings to mind Elon Musk’s promise that Tesla would again accept Bitcoin if more than 50% came from renewable sources.

There is apparently not only a battle going on between proponents and opponents of crypto in America, but also a battle between various regulators over who will ultimately be in charge of crypto regulation. On Feb. 13, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a so-called Wells notice, a notice of investigation into possible criminal conduct, to stablecoin issuer Paxos, alleging that stablecoin BUSD is an unregistered security. Paxos immediately decided to cease issuing the stablecoin. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler recently indicated that he believes most crypto currencies and also Ethereum should be regulated as a security. This week, however, another regulator, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), is suing crypto exchange Binance because, according to them, Ethereum and the same stablecoin BUSD are actually commodities (and therefore not a security) and belong under their supervision and should not have been sold to Americans without registration with this regulator. Do you still get it?

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