After remaining mostly steady over last week, the cryptocurrency market took a tumble on Friday, as Bitcoin fell below $9,000 for the first time in two weeks, dragging many other cryptos with it. Over the weekend, prices remained mostly lower, however, showed a slight uptick just before the new trading week started. Lower volatility was seen over the past 24 hours, and, as of the time of writing, price levels nearly returned to levels seen after Friday’s dip.
Today’s Highlights
- Bakkt Volumes at All-Time High
- The Stellar Burn
- Tokenizing USD
Futures on The Rise
While Bitcoin was on the decline over the past week, its derivatives have been on the rise. About two months ago, Bakkt launched the first-ever all-Bitcoin futures contract, enabling clients to speculate on future Bitcoin prices and settle the contracts using the crypto. While the launch did not have the positive effect many expected it to have on the market, there is a silver lining.
As the graph above shows, Bakkt trading volumes have been on the rise, and recently hit another all-time high, with trading volumes reaching $15 million. Whether or not the trend continues in the long run remains to be seen. However, there’s no denying the Bitcoin derivative has been rising in popularity.
The Stellar Burn
Last Monday, the Stellar Lumens Development Foundation (SDF) surprised the crypto community by announcing that they are taking more than half of Lumens’ circulating supply off the market, by putting it in a proverbial vault and throwing away the key. As a result, the overall number of XLM tokens dropped from about 105 billion to less than 50 billion. The chart below shows the breakdown of the token supply. Bold colors indicate remaining supply:
Following the announcement, Stellar prices spiked 26%, but later lost some of these gains.
Tokenizing The USD
On Wednesday an interesting piece of news emerged, showing that the Fed is increasing its interest in the crypto market. The US central banks announced that they are looking for someone to oversee the research of digital currencies and distributed ledgers. While this is still not a clear indication that the Fed will be tokenizing the American Dollar, it is still definitely a step towards the possibility of the US government introducing elements of digital currency to their operations.
The Week Ahead
The most significant event this week is Blockshow Asia 2019, to take place this Thursday and Friday in Singapore. Some of the biggest names in crypto and blockchain will be in attendance and news coming out of the event could potentially impact markets. On Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will begin the first of two sessions, testifying about the American economy before the Joint Economic Committee in Washington, DC. There is a chance Powell will address the digital currency world, and if he does, his words will likely impact markets.
eToro USA LLC; Virtual currencies are highly volatile. Your capital is at risk.