Weekly Market Update: Keep Calm

Well, we are in that rare time when people actually want to talk crypto. Funnily enough, even though prices are up ~30% for the week, Google search interest in BTC is still a little meh. For those of you who’ve stuck with it through the hard times, congratulations. Now let’s keep our heads, have a plan, and as Raoul Pal says, ‘ Don’t F*%K this up’. 

By any measure, things are a little exciting this week, prices are up, volumes are up. ETF inflows are way up, new users are up. All the good things. So are support tickets and onboarding queues. All the bad things. Crypto baby. 

As you will know, BTC continues to post some new ATH. We are officially in price discovery. There is a halo effect into other assets, but I don’t believe they have hit ATH yet. There are some indicators that suggest things could stay this way for a bit. Not financial advice. 

In wider crypto news, BlackRock’s BTC ETF is now bigger than its Gold ETF, Paxos is launching a new yield bearing stablecoin, Microstrategy’s BTC play continues to pay dividends and randomly, the FTX estate is suing Binance.

In macro market news, the Trump pump continues with many indexes getting close to All Time High values, while China’s future prospects have dragged down oil prices. 

Outside of the election in the US, the FOMC announced a 25 bps cut to the Fed Funds rate. Calls for more rate cuts are falling as inflation trends the wrong way there. Watch this space. 

In Europe; the Bank of England cut rates as expected while Germany’s coalition government has collapsed and a confidence vote is required. 

In APAC, China narrowly escaped deflation, but its prospects don’t look great. There has also been a surge of exports as they try to beat the Trump tariff machine. The recent stimulus package has failed to fire as well. India appears to have a growing problem with inflation. 

Regionally, Australia and New Zealand have both seen significant falls in volume to China, while a good month for the hospo sector meant electronic card spending was up in New Zealand. Finally the New Zealand migration party appears to be over. 

Market sentiment has moved upwards and now sits in extreme greed territory.

Highlights this week: 

• It’s been a week!!! Everything in the top 30 has posted very solid gains on the 7 day chart. 
• All metrics are up, volumes, transacting users, order sizes and new users mirroring the growth in asset prices. 
• Buy orders dominate by order count, but it is much more evenly distributed when we look at value. Some of you are taking profits.
• Bitcoin and SOL are proving very popular with volumes of both above their long term averages. 
• At the time of writing (Wednesday morning) BTC and SOL are both up 28%, while ETH and XRP did better, up 35%.
• DOGE led the way this week, up a whopping 125% this week.
• Monero (XMR) was the worst performing asset, down 3% this week. 

View all top gainers: Visit the top gainers page to find out more. 

Highlights from the crypto space

Kaiko reports Bitcoin ATH’s all over the place. We have to keep updating this chart. 

BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF saw $1.1B in trading volume in the first 20 minutes of trading once it was clear Trump had won. 

Empire is reporting that Bitcoin is now on the same trajectory as the 2021 bull run. 

Fun fact, the BlackRock iShares Bitcoin ETF is now bigger than the iShares Gold ETF. 

Sticking with ETFs. ETF inflows are back, way back. ETH ETFs had their highest inflow day ever at nearly $300m, and BTC blew through the billion barrier at $1.1bn.

Bitcoin’s Hodl waves indicate that most long term holders aren’t selling yet. 

The Bitcoin Futures premium is way up, indicating large bullish positions. Let’s go. 

The market cap of Bitcoin is now bigger than Silver…. A 5 thousand year old asset.

Inevitably, in all this excitement, people are starting to wonder when the Altcoins will start to moon. Keep calm people. What we know is that Altcoin volume is up per Kaiko. 

Paxos, in partnership with Robinhood, Kraken, Galaxy Digital, Bullish and other crypto heavies are launching a new US stablecoin, USDG.

Dydx, a layer 2 decentralised derivatives exchange, has shut down one of its platforms. This has left some $70m of trading assets needing to be withdrawn. 

Microstrategy’s Bitcoin portfolio is now worth over $20B and the return on investment is over 100%. Their average buy price is $39k US…in case you were wondering. They also announced they have bought a few billion more BTC. 

The FTX estate is suing Binance for $1.7B relating to the share buy back FTX undertook prior to its collapse. Apparently they were insolvent at the time so that means it was a fraudulent transaction. 

And for some perspective. Google search trends for BTC haven’t spiked yet. TLDR; the Fomo hasn’t started.

Polymarket, which accurately predicted the US election, has Bitcoin at a 44% chance of breaking 100k in November. 

🌎 Macro news TLDR: …China stumbles

Oil prices fell after the Chinese CPI data and a disappointing response to their stimulus package. Brent crude is a US$72 PB

U.S. economic news

The FOMC met this week and announced a 0.25% rate cut to the Fed Funds rate. The rationale was to support softening employment conditions. 

Rising inflation has led the market to back off on some of the expected Fed rate cuts with, at best, 1 more cut this year being called. Retail sales are up 4.8% on a year ago, let the good times roll. 

Over in Europe….

The BoE cut interest rates 0.25% to 4.75%, and will be following a gradual approach to more rate cuts. 

Germany’s coalition government has collapsed over a large budget hole. Europe’s largest economy is a little paralysed. 

And in Asia Pacific…

China’s export sector boomed in October as exporters effectively front run the expected tariffs from the Trump government. CPI for year to October came in at 0.3%, producer prices continue to be in deflation at -2.9%. 

They also announced a $1.4T bailout/ stimulus package for local government. The BoJ is taking a cautious approach to any more rate rises. India’s industrial production rose 3.1% in the year to September. 

Worryingly, India’s inflation continues to rise, up over a percentage point in October to 10.87%. CPI has been increasing since July and food is the worst affected element. A quick reminder, they have a lot of mouths to feed, social unrest anyone? 

Australian consumer and business confidence both rose with business confidence in positive territory. 

Exports and imports fell in Australia on the back of falling China demand. Year to date Chinese imports from Australia are down 8.7%. 

New Zealand is down even further at -11.1%. Staying with NZ, electronic card spending for October was up 0.6%, snapping a multi-month decline. Most of the upside was driven by a good bump in hospitality spend. 

Net migration continues to fall and is now under 50 000. We set a record for migrant departures in October. 

That’s a wrap for this week. 

Stay tuned for the next update.

Did you miss the last weekly update?

Catch-up on the previous market update.