Week 24 | 6/13/22 - 6/18/22
By Matthew BrienenNews Flash
Monday 6.13.22: Digital asset manager Nexo responded to the news of its rival Celsius pausing withdrawals by tabling a proposal for a buyout of certain of the firm’s liquid assets. The firm added that—subject to its risk management and collateral requirements—it could “readily acquire from Celsius part or all qualifying, outstanding collateralized loan receivables secured by their corresponding pledged cryptocurrency collateral.”
Tuesday 6.14.22: The leading U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase is cutting its workforce by 18% in preparation for the possibility of an "extended" crypto winter. In a blog post from CEO Brian Armstrong, the company revealed that it will shed 1,100 jobs, noting that economic conditions are "changing rapidly" and that the world appears to be entering a recession. That, Armstrong said, "could lead to another crypto winter, and could last for an extended period."
Wednesday 6.15.22: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has reportedly launched a probe into whether crypto exchanges are doing enough to prevent insider trading. It is not yet clear whether the inquiry is being led by the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, which frequently looks into areas of potential interest, or the SEC’s enforcement division. If it is being conducted by the latter, this would suggest the regulator is concerned about the possibility of serious violations.
Thursday 6.16.22: OpenSea has moved to the “Seaport Protocol,” a new smart contract that the NFT marketplace says will allow its 1.8 million users to save money on Ethereum gas fees. With the Seaport contract, users will be able to save roughly 35% on gas, the company said. And new accounts will no longer require that one-time “setup fee” OpenSea previously charged.
Friday 6.17.22: Shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) have continued to slide,trading at a discount of 33.75% to the spot price of Bitcoin—a new all-time low since its inception in 2017. Because GBTC has a six-month lockup period, holders are running at a loss, since they can only cash in by selling their GBTC shares.
Technical Recap
Bitcoin saw some serious selling over the weekend, ahead of today's Federal holiday. BTC dipped as low as $17.5k before seeing a small rally on Sunday closing just over $20k at $20.5k. Although we saw a push for a stronger weekly close, price was unable to reclaim the 200-week moving average as support. This is the first time since 2015 that we've seen this behavior. The previous high around $20k is providing minor support a the moment, but we can not close our eyes to other key levels supported by Fibonacci's in the $13.5-$16.2k range.
BTC/USD Weekly Chart
Turning our attention to Bitcoin Dominance (BTC.D) which measures the amount of market share that is allocated to Bitcoin, we continue to see odd behavior. After reaching the 48.5% level, we saw major rejection from this area akin to May, June, July and October of 2021. This was most obvious in the altcoin market as most alts held themselves up far better than BTC and ETH during the weekend sell off. So, the question remains... will alts simply not get hurt as badly as BTC if dominance continues to fall, or are the charts setting up for something different like a retracement if we got a major flip in the macro econ environment.
Bitcoin Dominance (BTC.D) Weekly Chart
Project Breakdowns & Daily Update Recaps
Didn't catch all the daily update streams? We've got you covered with highlights & links to the full episodes. Monday 6.13.22: Brian Decker summarizes the markets and explains why crypto will continue to advance even though risk-on assets have taken a significant hit in recent days. Matthew provides a detailed technical analysis of the markets, explaining why level-by-level analysis is important and what the worst-case scenario for Bitcoin is in this bear market.
Tuesday 6.14.22: Dan Habib forecasts the upcoming FOMC meeting and discusses the Fed's considerations. Brian introduces Flux as well as Zelcore, a non-custodial platform. Chase Tantalo provides a brief overview of the NFT market and the major players in the space.
Wednesday 6.15.22: Dan Habib summarizes the FOMC meeting on June 15th, the largest hike in 28 years, and a forecast for inflation in recessionary conditions. Matthew Brienen examines the SEC opening an investigation into insider trading on cryptocurrency exchanges, the SEC delaying document handover, and what is going on with Celsius. Dan and Matthew analyze the technicals of stocks, precious metals, oil, the US dollar currency index, and cryptocurrencies.
Thursday 6.16.22: The Graph Network is introduced by Brian Decker. Dan talks about how the Swiss central bank surprised the markets and breaks down the policy rates of the world's central banks. Additionally, Dan provides a technical analysis of Bitcoin across various timeframes.
Friday 6.17.22: Matt discusses some news articles and topics including GBTC discount hits all-time low as SEC Bitcoin ETF decision looms, Circle launching a euro-backed stablecoin, and a response to Benjamin Cowen's comments directed at Matthew. Brian Decker discusses Bitcoin's price, which is followed by Matthew's technical analysis of the Dow Jones, Bitcoin, and XRP. Brian provides an overview of The Graph Network as well as the features that make it a dependable project.
