GB Market Commentary 20/01/2022
by Marcus Sotiriou
Whilst Bitcoin remains around $42,000, it is holding up very well considering the US stock market had another plunge yesterday – the S&P dropped by around 1%. Data from Coinshares shows that there were $73 million in outflows last week, which is the 5th consecutive week of outflows. Solana is an anomaly with $5.4 million in inflows last week, whilst Bitcoin funds have had outflows for 4 out of the past 5 weeks. Total outflows over this period for the whole crypto market totals to $532 million, which is the sharpest outflows since 2018. I think the main reason for this is the market being spooked by the federal reserve raising rates this year, but when the stock market sees some relief, I expect a strong squeeze to the upside for Bitcoin and the whole market.
Mastercard has partnered with Coinbase to make payments on Coinbase’s NFT marketplace more accessible. Mastercard said they see even greater potential for NFTs’ underlying tech to go beyond art and collectables into many more areas. NFT volumes have not dropped off, as Open Sea is on track for its biggest ever monthly volume. The fact that the NFT market is barely affected by Bitcoin’s price shows how Bitcoin is losing its role in leading the market. I think the crypto industry will become increasingly non-monolithic over the coming years, with actual use cases coming to fruition. Mastercard understands this concept and once NFTs are being used in everyday life I think we will see stability in the market, where Bitcoin’s price is even less important.
In addition to payments giant Mastercard partnering with Coinbase, Google is also rumoured to be working with them, to develop a digital payments functionality. According to Bloomberg, Google has hired a former PayPal executive to run its payments division which involves letting users store crypto in digital cards. Google said “Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to. As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we’ll evolve with it." One of the largest companies in the world integrating crypto into their service is a giant leap towards mass adoption for the crypto space.