The past week brought with it a recovery in the cryptocurrency market, as the majority of cryptos showed gains, including Bitcoin, which finally broke the $10,000 resistance level. Mainstream markets took center stage this past week, with a flurry of market events and announcements impacting the global economy and the crypto market. What lies ahead for this week? Well, one man believes we will see Bitcoin hit a new high for 2019.
Today’s Highlights
- Mainstream influence
- New crypto on eToro
- Bitcoin supercomputer
- $15K Bitcoin?
First-rate connection
The most highly anticipated market event of last week was the rate decision made by the FOMC. The Fed’s first rate cut in more than a decade certainly impacted markets and eToro Senior Analyst Mati Greenspan predicted that Bitcoin would react to the much-anticipated decision, which took place last Wednesday. As you can see below, he was right.
BTC prices climbed ahead of the rate announcement, while during the announcement itself (purple square), trading was somewhat subdued.
Tezos joins eToro
On the eToro front, we just added another crypto to our offering: Tezos. Tezos (XTZ) was launched in September, 2018, following a successful ICO, in which it raised $232 million – a record-breaking sum at the time. It was founded by husband and wife, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, who had been developing the crypto since 2014. Tezos is ranked as the 20th largest crypto in the world by market cap. The unique aspect of the Tezos blockchain platform is that it is self-amending, enabling members to offer upgrades and improvements of their own.
Trump vs. the world
The ongoing trade war, which is basically Trump vs. the rest of the world, weighed heavily on US, Asian and European markets. Once again, Trump decided to slap more import tariffs on goods imported to the US from Asia, which might be one of the reasons for the crypto awakening over last week. Last May and June, when the trade war was in focus, cryptos were on the rise, hitting their highest levels of 2019. Will the effect be the same this time around? Of course, nothing is certain, but we can’t ignore the steady incline seen over the past few days.
As you can see, the total market cap for all cryptos rose by around $50 billion this week.
The Bitcoin supercomputer
Another interesting milestone for crypto was reached just this morning, as Bitcoin’s computing power set a new record. According to mining services operator BTC.com, the average bitcoin mining hash rate over the last two weeks has reached 71.43 quintillion hashes per second (EH/s), up from 64.49EH/s on July 23 (this is a direct quote from Coindesk). While some of the metrics may be a bit confusing, basically, this means that the cumulative processing power of the Bitcoin blockchain is higher than ever before. According to Coindesk, the recent spike in computing power is due to no less than 100,000 new miners joining the network, each contributing substantial processing power to the blockchain.
The Week Ahead
This week started with more green lines for the crypto market. The top 10 was led by Bitcoin, which climbed more than 8% over the past 24 hours, breaching both the $11,500 mark and an overall market cap of $200 billion. As impressive as this may be (and profitable for you HODLers), one crypto bull is certain it will reach much higher this week.
Max Keiser, a known crypto enthusiast, claims that the recent turmoil in mainstream markets has led confidence in central banks, governments and fiat currencies to a multi-decade low. Keiser says this will give Bitcoin a major boost and declared $15,000 as his price target for this week. Is Max right? Well, the only way to be sure is to sit back and wait.
eToro USA LLC; Virtual currencies are highly volatile. Your capital is at risk.