Market overview, August 27 — September 2, 2018

In the previous overview, we mentioned Bitcoin’s attempt to finish with the continuous flat and to start growing. So that’s exactly what happened. On Tuesday, August 28, the price beat the resistance level of $6800, went above the $7000 markpoint and then tested the $6800 level from above. The level was resistant; and by the end of the week it became clear that bulls were getting stronger. On Sunday evening, Bitcoin is steadily trading above the $7200 level. Despite the weekend, daily trading volume stays above $4.5 billion. It’s very likely that the positive dynamics persists during the following week. It’s worth mentioning a spike in short positions on September, 2. At the Bitfinex exchange, bear stakes grew by 52% in 24 hours, which is very rare. Thus, some traders don’t believe in the development of a new upward trend or they have some insider’s information.
Altcoins market is demonstrating mixed dynamics. Growth leaders of the week are exceptionally transaction coins: Bitcoin Cash, Dogecoin, Dash, Monero, Verge. Market total cap has grown by almost 10% in a week and is now approaching $240 billion. By the way, on Saturday, September 1, Bitcoin Cash experienced a stress-test: miners managed to process over 2 million transactions in 24 hours which exceeds the number of transactions in XRP and Ethereum. Bitcoin Cash managed to deal with the load of 23,8 transactions per second. Herewith, Chainalysis had analyzed trading volumes of the biggest crypto payment services and revealed a considerable drop in payment volumes for BCH. So at the moment it’s not completely clear what kind of record Bitcoin Cash is getting ready to beat.
Media background is concentrated around Ethereum. We’ll pay special attention to it in this overview. On August 30, it was announced that Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is considering the futures launch on Ethereum. This is pretty contradictory in terms of price influence, but anyway, it proves that institutional investors are interested not only in Bitcoin, but in cryptomarket in general. On August 31, Ethereum developers community decided to lower the block reward from 3 ETH to 2 ETH. Presumably, it will be brought to life in October via EIP-1234 hardfork. We consider this event to be a bulls’ factor as the ETH supply in the market might temporarily decrease. The so called complexity bomb is put off for a year.
Ethereum’s weight in the market total cap has decreased by 12,6%. That’s close to the minimums of the beginning of January. In March 2017, Ethereum’s market share got over 10% for the first time; and afterwards, the values as low were only reached in December 2017 when Bitcoin was on its peak. For the rest of the year, Ethereum’s weight was mostly within 20%. ETH might start growing again soon, and since ETH is an altcoin, other altcoins should get more confident as well.
