GB Market Commentary 15/10/2021
by Will Morris
Bitcoin reached $60k for the first time since April, following a Bloomberg article issued at 3am, GMT, reporting the SEC was likely to approve several BTC futures ETFs which could potentially begin trading next week. Traders previously suggested that for Bitcoin to enter an extremely bullish phase and go parabolic it would need to break the $59-60k level. This heralds the last point of major volume on the VPVR - if BTC breaks to $61k there will be minimal upside pressure. All-time highs of nearly $65k will be the next resistance level before price discovery phase. While the BTC price has fiercely rallied over the past few weeks Bitcoin balance on exchanges remains at the lowest levels in nine months.
Ethereum has met strong resistance at the $3850 level, after strong growth since Wednesday this week. ETH is currently trading at just over $3800. MATIC, HNT and PERP are the top three performing altcoins - altcoins have largely remained stagnant as BTC and ETH have surged over the past week.
Australia's fifth largest pension fund, Queensland Investment Corporation, told the Financial Times that it is open to investing in cryptocurrencies in the future. Several Family Offices have already invested in the digital asset space in Australia. Increasingly, small portfolio allocation to crypto could be viewed as risk mitigation rather than a highly risky punt. In the past year alone the total crypto market cap has risen from $400m to over $2.4trn. Further establishing itself as an entirely new ecosystem akin to the internet, regarding potential scalability and everyday application.
The Bank of England deputy governor, Sir Jon Cunliffe, said yesterday that the collapse in the price of cryptocurrencies to as low as zero 'is certainly a plausible scenario' and said that there was a possibility of contagion across the financial sector – due to minimal regulatory oversight. Coinbase has proposed a potential solution to lack of regulatory clarity and enforcement. Advocating a new crypto regulator in the US - this would be a separate and independent regulator for the internet and digital assets. This would not fall within the scope of the SEC as it believes digital assets need to be treated differently to stocks. Coinbase argued that trying to adapt the current financial regulatory system, predicated on an old market structure would be require more effort than starting afresh.
Visa is launching its own NFT support program: "We believe that we are at the beginning of a digital renaissance in the world of art and content creation," Visa's head of crypto Cuy Sheffield wrote on Twitter. Lowering barriers to entry for digital creators across the world.