Triaconta Weekly #286

The following topics will be addressed in this weekly:

  • Bundle performance
  • Winners & Losers
  • Market overview

Bundle performance
Bitcoin is rising fast for the fifth day in a row and the altcoin market grows even faster. Actually, we are a bit early for the Bitcoin Pre Halving Rally that should start in mid-February, but we accept that gladly. Things are moving so fast that analysts are already expecting a new highest Bitcoin price for 2024 this weekend. The Chinese Year of the Dragon starts 10 February and President Bukele has been re-elected president of El Salvador by a large majority also thanks to his optimism about Bitcoin. Interest in Bitcoin ETFs is undiminished and billions continue to be added to Blackrock and Fidelity Bitcoin ETFs in particular. The Penny and DeFi bunds are benefiting the most from the positive trend this week.

Big3:
1 Month: +1.82% | 7D: +7.99% | 24H: +3.07%

Top30:
1 Month: +4.04% | 7D: +5.44% | 24H: +2.33%

Penny:
1 Month: +4.73% | 7D: +8.98% | 24H: +2.94%

DeFi:
1 Month: +2.76% | 7D: +8.14% | 24H: +3.10%

Bitcoin halving countdown: 64 days.
This number is a weekly new estimate based on the current blockchain hashrate.

Winners & Losers

Thorchain (+20%) is on the way back up due to increased trading volumes. Defi Stacks (+17%), as we described earlier, always does fine when Bitcoin (+9%) rises. PennyStock JasmyCoin (+14%) shoots up especially today for now with no real news. Hedera (+13%) closed a $250 million deal with the Saudi Ministry of Investment. One of the small decliners is Aptos (-3%) with investors perhaps already factoring in a relatively large increase in tokens ($229 million Apt, 7.3% of total) scheduled for 11 February.

Market overview

Happy new year of the dragon! As almost always, for reasons unknown, the arrival of a Chinese New Year is accompanied by a (very) positive development in the crypto market. The year of the dragon is also known as one of the happiest periods in the Chinese zodiac. The downturn in China’s stock markets and real estate sector, may well shift attention to alternative investments. In doing so, however, analysts expect more from physical than digital gold. So far, they are wrong.

Ethereum broke through the $2500 mark with an announcement of the Dencun upgrade for 13 March. This upgrade should lower the cost of layer-2 transactions and improve data availability on Ethereum. It has been called the biggest change to the blockchain since April 2023. The SEC once again decided to delay approval of an Ethereum ETF product. This decision is mostly in line with analysts’ expectations for now and the final assessment can be delayed by the SEC until May 23 at most.

For months, Stellar (XLM) has been ignoring the upward trend in the alttcoin market. A major reason is the postponement of the Soroban Mainnet Launch that was scheduled for 30 January. According to the Stellar Community Fund (SCF), the launch was postponed to February to fix some minor bugs. The groundbreaking launch of Soroban Mainnet, which introduces smart contract functionality on the Stellar network, makes us keep an extra close eye on this currency. The SCF fund encourages the development of innovative tools and applications within the Stellar network. In 2023 alone, nearly $10M in XLM went to more than 130 projects.

The tokenisation of a Real-World-Asset (RWA) actually works the opposite way to the Bitcoin ETF. A Bitcoin ETF ensures that an digital-native Bitcoin is also available on the many times larger traditional stock market. Tokenisation of RWA means we are going to enable access to that large equity, real estate and money market via blockchain with expected greater transparency, greater reach and lower costs. Despite the enthusiasm with which ETFs have been received, we must realise that all Bitcoins together currently represent only a small amount compared to the huge stock market, real estate market or money market. It is precisely when we can provide access to those markets via tokens on a blockchain that we are going to see exponential growth in crypto. Traditional financial institutions need data, compute and cross-chain capabilities to widely adopt blockchains and tokenised RWAs. Only the Chainlink platform offers all three,” Chainlink said at X last week.