Market Overview for October 22–28, 2018
“Bitcoin can be viewed as a form of property that citizens can own or manage, and which represents a certain economic value,” as the Chinese arbitration court put it. Probably most owners of cryptocurrency imagine Bitcoin to be just that — value that can really be owned and managed. It is pleasant to hear that in China they called things what they really are.
This week, the price of Bitcoin displayed record low volatility, which reached the levels of spring 2017. Over the past seven days, the price fluctuations do not exceed 2.5%. Unfortunately, trading volumes also declined. The cryptocurrency market froze, apparently waiting for revolutionary events. It is difficult to provide a prediction of what could become such a trigger, so a good recommendation may be this — “keep calm”.
On October 24, the S&P500 broad market index collapsed by more than 3%. The cryptocurrency market at this time absolutely did not react to such a serious upheaval in the stock market. It should be noted that a significant decrease was also observed in the Japanese Nikkei index. Some experts attributed the collapse of the Bitcoin price, which occurred on October 11 of this year, precisely to the fall of the stock market in the United States and Japan.
As we can see, this time there is no correlation. Investors and analysts once again have to reconsider their views on the relationship of the stock and cryptocurrency markets. Of course, there is no point in expecting a significant flow of liquidity from stock markets, since cryptocurrency is considered to be one of the riskiest assets traded. But approaches to assessing risk and cost are constantly changing. The availability of theoretical tools for such an assessment and regulated products will open up opportunities for investment companies to open positions in the cryptocurrency market. Bakkt with deliverable futures (as well as VanEck and SolidX with their Bitcoin-ETF project) want to satisfy this demand.
Blockchain platform Stratis announced that it is now a certified Microsoft software provider. This indicates that the demand for blockchain in the corporate sector remains because it is in this direction that Stratis works. Interaction with Microsoft, in turn, is of interest for other blockchain companies. Director of Bitcoin Advisory Pierre Roshard recently announced the launch of a plug-in for Microsoft Excel, with which it will be possible to carry out Lightning Network transactions directly from the application.
BitGo together with KyberNetwork and Republic Protocol announced the creation of an ERC-20 WBTC (Wrapped Bitcoin) token provided by Bitcoin. With the help of WBTC, it will be possible to trade Ethereum network tokens paired to Bitcoin on decentralized exchanges. A timely enough decision if you consider that the capitalization of ERC-20 tokens exceeded 60% of the capitalization of Ethereum itself.
Probably next year, especially with the advent of security tokens, the cost of Ethereum will no longer be enough to constitute the turnover of all these assets. Also, many market participants have yet to realize that the emergence of real tokenized assets (security tokens) will make Ethereum a network in which valuables are stored that everyone is used to, for example, stocks or bonds.
