Your Cryptocurrency Newsletter for 11 August, 2020

If you are interested in cryptocurrencies, this newsletter is for you. [img] [img]( [FeedBinary Newsletter]( [Forex And Cryptocurrency Forecast]( EUR/USD. The dollar has been falling for six straight weeks. The USD index (DXY) fell to the minimum values since May 2018. In total, it has lost about 10% in the last five months. And now, it seems that the fall has stopped: the EUR/USD pair is moving along the side corridor within 1.1700-1.1910 for the second week in a row. Attempts to break through its upper border on August 05-06 ended in failure, and the pair completed the five-day period at 1.1785 on Friday August 07. The U.S. President, who attacked China’s social networks, added to the strength of the dollar. The bears await a full-scale resumption of trade wars between Washington and Beijing like manna from heaven, and hope that Donald Trump will not limit himself to this one-time attack. Congress, which has not yet been able to reach an agreement on new stimulus measures for the U.S. economy, helped the dollar to strengthen a little. As a result, the growth of stock indices stalled, and investors’ views turned to the American currency again. U.S. macroeconomic indicators released last week, also forced to talk about the fading of positive dynamics. The Private Sector Employment Report (ADP) looked rather weak, and activity indices based on credit card transactions and mobile traffic were at levels 10-30% lower than before the COVID-19 crisis. The NFP indicator seems to have turned green, but, in fact, the figure of 1.763 million is not newly created, but old jobs, to which people who had previously been sent on forced long-term vacations returned. Recall that in May and June this figure was 2.7 million and 4.8 million, respectively. So the July result was the worst for the period. GBP/USD. Since March, during the entire period of the crisis, the GBP/USD pair has been showing a close correlation with EUR/USD, practically repeating all its fluctuations. The British pound approached its March high on Thursday, August 06, reaching the height of 1.3185. Some analysts believe that this happened following the meeting of the Bank of England. However, one can disagree with this. Rather, the blame is the general drawdown of the dollar, the DXY index of which dropped to a low these days. The meeting of the British regulator, as expected, offered no surprises. The Bank of England decided to leave the key interest rate unchanged at 0.1%, and the target volume of the QE program at £745 billion. At the same time, the Bank’s management believes that the UK economy will recover from the effects of the pandemic until the end of 2021, and the pace of its recovery again will depend on the pandemic itself. In general, there is no certainty. At the same time, the regulator believes that there is no urgent need to adjust its monetary policy, and even more so, it is not worth discussing the introduction of negative interest rates. Such a move could create difficulties for banks, which are already suffering serious losses associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the British currency, just like the European one, moved sideways against the dollar, holding in a trading range 1.2980-1.3185. The final chord was set at 1.3055; USD/JPY. The Bank of Japan is a member of a consortium of several other central banks, including the UK, Europe and Canada, that have teamed up to explore the prospects and challenges of a digital currency launch. Now Japan is actively working to launch the digital yen, for which a special supervisory committee has even been created. Perhaps this event will attract the attention of investors, but so far the fiat yen has again dropped out of sight of large financial “sharks”: over the past five days, the range of its fluctuations did not exceed 115 points, and the Japanese currency ended the trading session almost in the same place where it started a week ago – at around 105.90; cryptocurrencies. The opinion that cryptocurrencies can make everyone, even a child, a millionaire, was confirmed last week. However, this does not always happen in an honest way. So, a few days ago, the police detained 17-year-old Graham Clark, who is accused of organizing hacker attacks on celebrity Twitter accounts. Among others, his targets were Elon Musk, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, on whose behalf he organized bitcoin fraudulent actions. So, this teenager turned out to be the owner of 300 BTC, which at the current exchange rate is about $3.5 million! As for adult residents of the United States, Cornerstone Advisors have recently published the results of a study according to which 15% of Americans already own bitcoins or other altcoins, and half of them have become crypto investors in the last six months. On average, new investors, who have invested more than $67 billion in the crypto market, spent about $4,000 each. Most of them are high-income people (about $130,000 a year) with college degrees. And interestingly, almost 100% of investors are men. And now for the news that scared many members of the crypto community. After an impressive rise to a height of $12,080, on Sunday, August 02, the price of bitcoin unexpectedly, within just a few minutes, collapsed to $10,500, causing panic among investors. However, to their delight, there was no further decline, and the quotes quickly returned to the $11,000 mark. Rupert Douglas, head of institutional sales at Koine, said the move was driven by the liquidation of long positions at high prices. Thus, on this day, positions worth $147 million were liquidated on the BitMEX cryptocurrency exchange. All in all, during this “gray Sunday” cryptocurrency market capitalization lost about $30 billion, falling from $361 to 331 billion. The level of $11,000 became a new powerful support for BTC/USD, pushing back from which, the pair was able to rise again to the zone of $11,500-11,850 by Friday 07 August. The total cryptocurrency market capitalization has also almost recovered, reaching $357 billion. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index is at 77, which is about the same as seven days ago. The ETH/USD pair is back in the $400 zone. It should be noted that the growth rate of ethereum trading volumes in spot and futures markets is increasing faster than the same rate of bitcoin. If the trade volume ratio between ETH and BTC was only 16% in September 2019, so far this figure has risen to 50%. In the futures market, it climbed from 8% to 29% over the same period. Figures are based on cryptocurrency exchanges Binance, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Kraken and Bitstamp. According to CoinGecko, daily trading volumes of transactions in ethereum currently exceed $15.1 billion, behind the same indicator of bitcoin by only 25%. However, the capitalization of ETH is still significantly – 5.25 times – lower than that of BTC. As for the forecast for the coming week, summarizing the views of a number of experts, as well as forecasts made on the basis of a variety of methods of technical and graphical analysis, we can say the following: EUR/USD. The Fed’s balance sheet has not been growing for several months, and the Treasury has accumulated more than $1.7 trillion in its vaults. As a result, we are seeing a slowdown in the recovery of the US economy, which is likely to still force the government and the Fed to take new measures to stimulate it. Otherwise, instead of a V-shaped rebound, a W-shaped recession will become reality, and Donald Trump will finally lose the already weak chances of re-election. 50% of the experts believe that the next stage of pumping the economy with liquidity and other measures of fiscal stimulus will not take long. Therefore, the dollar will continue its fall, and the EUR/USD pair will continue to grow. The nearest targets are 1.1840, 1.1900 and 1.2000. 20% of analysts expect the continuation of the lateral trend of the pair within 1.1700-1.1910, and the remaining 30% believe that within the next few weeks it will return to the area of 1.1450. Apart from half of the experts, graphical analysis is looking to the north, as well as 80% of oscillators and 85% of trend indicators on D1. The remaining 20% of the oscillators give signals that the pair is overbought. We are waiting for data on the US consumer market in the coming week, which will be released on Wednesday August 12 and Friday August 14. And if the consumer price index is forecast to stay flat, retail sales could show a decline in July from 7.5% to 1.7%. GBP/USD. Apart from the weak dollar, the Bank of England’s refusal to cut interest rates and increase the asset purchase program plays for the pound. On Wednesday August 12, UK GDP data for QII will be released, which is forecast to have contracted by 20.2%. By comparison, the Eurozone economy fell by 12% over the same period and the US one by 9.5%. And investors assumed that such a difficult situation could force the regulator to take additional stimulus measures. However, the firm position of the Bank’s management should allay their fears and help the British currency not only stay afloat, but also push it further up against the dollar. This is exactly what 60% of experts believe at the moment, supported by 90% of oscillators and trend indicators on D1. Resistance levels are 1.3185, 1.3200 and 1.3285. 40% of analysts have taken the opposite position. Support levels are 1.2980, 1.2900, 1.2765 and 1.2670. As for the graphical analysis, it draws a continuation of the lateral movement of the pair in the range 1.2980-1.3185 on H4, followed by a decrease to 1.2900; USD / JPY. 50% of experts, supported by graphical analysis on H4, believe that in the coming days the pair will once again try to test the level of 106.40, and, if successful, rise another 100 points higher. Intermediate resistance is at 106.65. 20% of analysts are in favor of sideways movement, and the remaining 30% are waiting for the pair to fall first to support at 105.30, and then to 104.75. The ultimate target is the July 31 low at 104.18. Now a few words about indicators. While their readings for EUR/USD and GBP/USD on H4 showed complete chaos and relative order on D1, the opposite is true for the Japanese yen. It is almost impossible to bring indicator signals on D1 to any denominator. But on H4 65% of oscillators and 80% of trend indicators are painted green. However, the number of oscillators signaling the pair is overbought is also quite large: 25%. And 10% of them have taken a neutral position, painted grey; cryptocurrencies. Bloomberg experts confirmed the forecast for the value of bitcoin at $20,000 by the end of this year. “After a slump of 60 percent in 2014, the value of the coin increased several dozen times over the following three years. The decline in 2018 was about 75 percent. Bitcoin had previously approached $20,000 and even took the corresponding barrier, but quickly slipped. In the current reality, the coin has every chance to gain a foothold at peak values,” Bloomberg experts say. The value of the cryptocurrency may also be affected by macroeconomic factors, including the policy of low rates of the US Federal Reserve. Many large countries are trying to get out of the crisis as soon as possible, and therefore allow the drawdown of fiat. Against the background of such fluctuations, bitcoin has a chance to come out on top in investor preferences. Well-known analyst TV presenter Max Kaiser, who expects a rapid rise in BTC/USD to $28,000, also confirmed his forecast. According to him, bitcoin will not have noticeable levels of resistance before this mark. The December 2017 high in the region of $20,000 will not become it either. “Then a short pullback, and an assault of $100,000 with renewed energy,” Kaiser continued his forecast, though he did not name a time frame for it. But it was identified by the co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Anthony Pompliano, who said that the quotes of the first cryptocurrency will reach $100,000 by December 2020. Another popular cryptanalyst, Plan B, indicated a longer term. Based on the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model, he calculated that bitcoin would rise to the specified mark only by the end of the next year, 2021. Experts of the Zubr cryptocurrency platform decided to somewhat cool the ardor of enthusiasts. They conducted a study of the volatility of BTC and came to the conclusion that, despite the increased volatility compared to traditional assets, the main cryptocurrency maintains “market equilibrium” most of the time. Analysts at Zubr found that after sharp changes in bitcoin price, in most cases, there is an almost symmetrical percentage move in reverse. This means that soon, after rising above $12,000, the price of bitcoin may return to the $10,000 mark. [Read Full Newsletter]( The post [Forex And Cryptocurrency Forecast]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [With All Eyes On Bitcoin, Another Crypto Is Up 500% In The Last Year—And It’s Still Soaring]( Bitcoin has been pushed back into the spotlight thanks to its recent rally and renewed interest from Wall Street and big-name day traders. The bitcoin price, jumping over $12,000 per bitcoin late Sunday evening, has added 30% in the last month—though some smaller cryptocurrencies have made far bigger gains. Chainlink’s link token has now added 120% to its price in the last month, climbing to over $13 per token, and building on gains of around 500% during the last year—with some investors saying link is still “wildly undervalued.” “Chainlink is on track to function as [the decentralized web3’s] de facto security layer for any and all transactions of meaningful value,” Michael Anderson, co-founder of Framework Ventures, the largest private holder of link tokens outside of the core team and bitcoin and crypto exchanges, said via email. “We believe the value of link will track the value of the smart contract platform it is securing, meaning the long term market cap of link will eventually be larger than ethereum’s current market cap today.” Chainlink, an ethereum-based token that powers a decentralized network designed to connect smart contracts to external data sources, currently has market capitalization of just under $5 billion compared to ethereum’s $45 billion. Chainlink, up 65% in the last week alone, has has been boosted in recent months by a surge of interest in decentralized finance (DeFi)—the idea that blockchain entrepreneurs can use bitcoin and crypto technology to recreate traditional financial instruments such as loans and insurance. “As it stands, blockchains are unable to speak in a trustless way with real world data, meaning they require some sort of blockchain abstraction layer that lies between the blockchain and the outside world,” said Anderson, adding Chainlink’s importance has “become more apparent as billions of dollars have been locked up in DeFi products reliant on smart contracts.” Since early June, the total value locked in DeFi protocols has risen from around $1 billion to almost $5 billion, according to data from DiFi Pulse. Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency token of a Chainlink competitor, band, the native token of Band Protocol, has also soared in recent weeks. Band, ranked 43rd on CoinMarketCap’s list of most valuable cryptocurrencies compared to link’s 6th, has added almost 5,000% since its rally began in early April. Over the weekend, trading of Chainlink’s link token surged, knocking bitcoin off the top spot on the largest U.S. bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, to become the most traded cryptocurrency on the popular platform over a 24-hour period. Link’s 24-hour trading volume on Coinbase Pro climbed to $163 million, some 70% higher than bitcoin’s trading volume of $96 million, according to data from bitcoin and crypto analysis firm Messari. However, around the world, link’s 24-hour trading volume of just over $3 billion is still just a fraction of bitcoin’s $17 billion. Despite link’s massive rally and suggestions link’s price could be a swelling bubble about to pop, Anderson is confident the link price will continue to climb, pointing to Chainlink’s ambitions to work with smart contracts “for any transaction that requires real world data, events and payment” and plans to for so-called staking, meaning “users will be able to stake their link as collateral with Chainlink nodes, allowing them to earn a passive income stream when said nodes complete jobs by providing useful data to smart contracts.” “A correction is possible in the short term, but even if the link price were to double tomorrow, we’d still think it’s wildly undervalued in light of the long term vision,” Anderson added. “If they achieve even a fraction of what they’ve set out to do, the implications for enterprise, banking, derivatives, insurance and more will be enormous.” Link’s surge over the last week has been put down to a massive short squeeze in the futures market, according to reports, leading some to warn its rally may not hold. “Chainlink can be a very bubbly asset and it looks very bubbly now,” cautioned chartered alternative investment analyst and manager at Cane Island Alternative Advisors, Timothy Peterson, via Twitter. [Read Full Newsletter Here]( The post [With All Eyes On Bitcoin, Another Crypto Is Up 500% In The Last Year—And It’s Still Soaring]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [Belarus Shows Peril Of Embracing Cryptocurrency-Friendly Dictatorships]( Throughout the years, crypto press and different organizations have picked up on Belarus and its seemingly positive attitude towards cryptocurrencies. Youtube videos were published about Belarus using state-powered nuclear power to mine bitcoin and contribute to the global hash rate securing it. News was made of the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukanhesko signing a decree that legalized cryptocurrencies and ICOs, and made cryptocurrencies tax-free for at least five years. Now, as he is cracking down on protestors after declaring himself the victor of an election seen “as riddled with irregularities” is a good of a time as any to reflect on what happens when bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general pick up unlikely and unhelpful allies who deserve scrutiny. Opposition candidate Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya is on track to lose to a margin of about 70% on 80% turnout, despite the fact that she has inspired large waves of protest and garnered support from across the political spectrum — a seemingly improbable figure. Alexander Lukanhesko has won every election since the independence of Belarus. He was the only politician in Belarus who voted against the dissolution of the Soviet Union — nonetheless, since its independence, he has been the sole person in power over the country. Svetlana Alexandrovna Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate who hailed from Belarus and ultimately ended up being named the director of the Belarusian PEN Center, warned Europe to beware of Belarus’s “soft dictatorship”. Belarus has switched back and forth between looking at Europe and Russia as allies. These different perspectives have either softened or hardened the political perspective, always led by Lukanhesko. As protests have ramped up during the leadup to the 2020 elections, the soft edges of Belarus have been hardened into waves of protest and repression. Opposition candidates who ran for office were detained. Thousands of mostly young protestors were beaten and set upon with tear gas after the election results were announced. Dozens were injured — and thousands were placed in detention. While there is something to be said for the support and awareness garnered by cryptocurrencies — it was somewhat unlikely from the start that a nation-state without many checks and balances would embrace the spirit and the ideology behind independent nodes making free choices. After all, a country where no election has been labelled as fair or free since its independence should struggle to be able to guarantee financial freedom and choices for its own citizens. All of this culminated in the censorship of the Internet in Belarus as election results started pouring in — the critical protocol upon which blockchains and cryptocurrencies that need to reach global consensus depend on. Belarus was a rare country that tried to use cryptocurrencies and a liberal attitude towards them to launder the country’s reputation for technological innovation through the cryptocurrency community. It was a refreshing change of pace for a community used to being called “criminal” and associated with anything as unsavory as terrorism and money laundering from most nation-states, and which faced nation-state based bans. Yet, even though Belarus seemed like a government that was more receptive to cryptocurrencies, the reality is that its inherent power structure lent itself to political and economic centralization. This was something that should have been under more scrutiny from the beginning. As cryptocurrency becomes more adopted and widespread, it’s possible other states will latch onto it for various different ideological reasons, or as a way to help promote their economy. Yet cryptocurrency adherents must be wary of temporary allies who may not share longer-term convictions about individual freedom and choice — and which therefore, cannot be relied upon for any long-term collaboration or growth. [Read Full Newsletter]( The post [Belarus Shows Peril Of Embracing Cryptocurrency-Friendly Dictatorships]( appeared first on [Feed Binary](. [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [fb](  [tw]( ------------------ You received this email because you operate or create content for a website/service and based on your website it seemed like this could be important information to you and your users. Want to change how you receive these emails? [Update your preferences]( or [Unsubscribe](