WEEKLY WRAP — 13th AUGUST

A high level overview of some of the news and moves in the market over the past week.

The total market fell 17% this week, which puts us back to around mid November levels last year. The market seemed to react aggressively to the delayed ETF news, we will discuss this later. The last two weeks has seen the market fall to the lowest levels this year. With most ICO’s coming to market being smashed lets hope this is the rationality of the market finally peeping through. This week we saw Bitcoin’s dominance crack the 50% mark and sentiment suggesting that BTC will continue to reign supreme for a long period of time.

Delayed ETF

On August 7, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it would be delaying their decision on a Bitcoin ETF. The repetitive nature of this story is growing tiring and the markets reaction certainly showed some form of immaturity, particularly if we consider that this result was somewhat expected. It is unlikely that the SEC will make an actual decision on an ETF until early next year. However, ignoring the dates for a second if we take a step back what is happening? Slowly but surely the conversation of Cryptocurrencies is becoming normalised. We believe it is inevitable that an ETF will occur at some point whether its next year or the year after, or the year after that. The fact is that Bitcoin is beginning to be accepted as a proportion of a portfolio, the question is focusing on how that occurs and that is more important then when an ETF decision will occur. This is a long term game — keep focused on that.

Turkish Lira drops as investor exodus ensures

It’s not often we talk about ‘regular news’ but given the fact that for many, Bitcoin is a hedge against the global debt infatuation that currently plagues the global financial system, we thought we would give our readers some perspective. The Turkish Lira has dropped 70% this year and fears have begun to spread beyond Turkey to European bank shares, that have been lending heavily to Turkey. This latest movement down in the Lira was fuelled by Trump who slapped higher tariffs on the country. Why is this important? Well, the currency dropped 20% on Friday after news broke and surprise surprise BTC traded at a premium, roughly $500 higher than around the globe. Essentially despite the bear market that Crypto is in people remain confident of it when financial crisis occur — i.e. it is becoming more of a flight to safety for investors.