This Week in Crypto
The total valuation for all cryptocurrencies is now $425 billion just a few points shy of the $450 billion at the beginning of March. It is projected that the total valuation could reach $0.5 trillion given that more financial institutions and banks continue to move to cryptocurrency hedge funds. This would push the demand higher. It is likely that price gains will continue in the coming days of the week and in the short term, although the previously sharp growth pace has slowed down for many cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin.
Moreover, some evidence of increasing adoption for cryptocurrencies was found through a recent survey by Thomson Reuters. It shows that 20 percent of 400 surveyed firms are considering trading cryptocurrencies in the next 3 to 12 months with 70 percent indicating they will do so in the next 3–6 months and 22 percent in the next 6-12 months.
The survey also said much more people are familiar with cryptocurrencies.
Weekly performance and analysis
Tron was the highest gainer over the last 7 days preceding this writing, with a + 74 percent gain in price and still continues with the push at + 13 percent in the last 24 hours. EOS gained +65 percent in the last seven days to an $18.92 but the gain has slowed to around under 1 percent in the last 24 hours.
EOS did a run to record a huge rise of above 10 percent in the last week and mostly in the last 48 hours to $22.86 but is now down 15 percent. The spike could have resulted by the upcoming launch of its mainnet scheduled to be executed on June 1. However, the price could rise if EOS does not continue to demonstrate significantly overbought conditions in the short-term towards the mainnet launch. Momentum oscillators found overbought conditions for the cryptocurrency but the situation seems contained so far although the RSI of EOS is still high.
Cardano has gained by more than 25 percent in the last seven days to a price of $0.356 and it looks strong, gaining by over 9 percent in the last 24 hours. Stellar has so far gained 17 percent, Ethereum 7 percent, and Bitcoin 4 percent.
Bitcoin is now trading at above $9,200. Its RSI has dropped to 58.7 points over the past few days, signaling that it could continue to rally in the short term. And according to analyses, for now, Bitcoin is in a large amount of supply and it is likely that there will be a new macro uptrend propelled by last week's major macro downtrend. Further short term gains are possible for as long as the price remains above the hourly interval of 200-SMA because there is no selling pressure at that point. Also, moving above the $9,500 will unleash a bullish potential, attract more buyers, and possibly take the price further towards the $9,700 level where there are more selling orders.
Having passed the $8,500 range, it is now less likely that the Bitcoin price could breakdown to retest the year low of $6,500 -- at least for a while in the short run. Further, given the current persistence, it is likely that the price could move to around $10,000 in the first week of May. If Bitcoin is able to break the strong resistance created by the 200-Day Market Average currently at $10,000 -- which is also a psychologically important level -- the price may spike to new multi-month highs.
For those following price analyses, Bitcoin trends are important to understand since they appear to be replicated in other cryptocurrencies as well, although this is not the case.
Litecoin, which was among the top gainers in the previous week, managed a gain of only 0.09 percent in the last seven days as of today, while Ripple fell by 2.4 percent. Litecoin had gained 4.62 percent for the week till Saturday when the intraday gain was more than 4 percent, before dropping to a 1.01 percent day gain on Sunday. However, Ripple has gained by more than one percent in the last 24 hours.
Bitcoin Cash, which was the largest gainer in the previous week, gained by less than 1 percent this last week. There hasn't been any relatively as bad news about the cryptocurrency in the last seven days, even as reports continue to indicate increasing adoption among merchants around the world.
By Sunday, IOTA was the top gainer in the week raising $0.39 or 41.8% to $1.32 at the close of the week. It is likely that the prices will push up if the prices will remain above the stiff resistance of $2.00 mark (which it has been facing) and the key hurdle of $2.07.
News wrap up for the week
In other developments, ConsenSys and the Saudi Telecom Company have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to build blockchain solutions for a range of government and private sectors including real estate, banking, and healthcare. This will help make Dubai the world’s first blockchain-powered city. Dubai is already implementing a number of blockchain projects to help build the smartest city in the world in the future.
Even after French regulator The Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) blacklisting 15 crypto and crypto-asset websites for advertising cryptoassets as 'providing huge profits' for investment against the current regulation, the Council of State (COS) has changed the rule to classify cryptocurrency profits as movable property and they profits will attract a tax flat rate of 19 percent, which is 50 percent lower than in the previous regime.
Meanwhile, Iran's experimental cryptocurrency is ready according to an announcement from last week's meeting. This is according to Mohammad Javad Azari-Jahromi, Iran’s information, and communications technology minister. The development comes in the wake of a possible return of U.S. economic sanctions against the country with the U.S. having until May 12, 2018, to decide if it will extend the nuclear deal. The country banned Bitcoin earlier this month. Additionally, Venezuela has okayed 15 cryptocurrency exchanges meant to trade and support the Petro cryptocurrency. Also, an Indian crypto exchange may list Petro, allowing people to trade it with other digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Rupee on the international market.
In other news, the Rockefeller’s venture capital arm, Venrock has entered into a partnership with investment firm CoinFund to expand investments. Rockefeller will be adding cryptocurrency to the assets they trade and invest in following the partnership.
