Weekly Market Update: Up …

There is a lot of good news this week, confirmation bias is a thing. As are a bunch of researchers looking backwards now that prices are up and saying,”look, we told you so”.

Even so, it’s hard not to get a little bit giddy at what happened and what could yet still happen. Like we said last week, keep calm and stick to the plan. If you don’t have a plan, get one. 

Markets took something of a breather this week, however it really depends on the asset. Some are absolutely ripping, but in general the majors cooled their jets a little. In the relative calm, the story was largely the same. Volumes are up, assets that have lagged BTC are getting some love finally and whales and institutions are getting in. 

There have also been a couple of noticeable product announcements with BlackRock’s BTC ETF getting approval for options trading, Coinbase getting more into payments and Tether into asset tokenisation. 

In macro market news, the USD is up strongly. This affects almost all other nations and is normally a crypto headwind. Oil is forecast to continue its sluggish performance due to China’s lack of growth. 

In the US, people are getting a little nervous about inflation again, CPI is trending up and the plans from the incoming Trump administration are seen as being quite stimulatory to inflation. TLDR: rate cut expectations are declining. 

In Europe; the UK economy appears to be going backwards while on the continent the strong US dollar isn’t great news. It may force the ECB’s hand in trying to restart the economy. Germany’s political chaos isn’t helping. 

In APAC, there is more confirmation that India’s inflation is starting to bite. Japan’s GDP has moderated in Q3 while in China their property market challenges continue, however industrial output is holding up. 

Turning to Australia, their wage growth is still ahead of inflation. Aussie employment data came out ok, but it is worth noting the rapid growth in their part time workforce. 

Finally, in New Zealand food prices continue their fall and both PMI and PSI remain in contractionary territory. PMI actually declined indicating what we all feel. It’s tough times.

Market sentiment has inched upwards and remains in extreme greed territory.

Highlights this week: 

• After last week’s big moves, the price action has been relatively muted across the major assets. Most have been posting single figure gains, however there were some coins that went backwards and a few that absolutely ripped. 
• Despite the more muted price action, all the metrics we track continue to track at high levels. 
• In terms of the buy order count, we can see a significant swing towards buy orders. However, by value there is a clear trend towards profit taking by some segments. 
• Major altcoins, led by XRP, have been very popular. SOL, ETH and ADA all trading well above their long term averages
• At the time of writing (Wednesday morning) BTC was up 5% for the week. XRP up 58%, while SOL was up 14%. Meanwhile, ETH and BNB went backwards 5%. 
• Hadera (HBAR) was our best performing asset for the week, up a whopping 102%.
• AAVE was the worst performing asset, down 10% this week. 

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

Highlights from the crypto space

The XRP army is having a belter of a week. The perceived curtailment of the SEC vs crypto finally removing its price headwinds. XRP broke the US$1 mark for the first time in several years.

iBit (BlackRock) ETF was approved for Options trading on the Nasdaq. These options will allow traders to hedge against future price movements.

Barron’s report that there has been robust action in the first day of trading with 85% of the options being Calls (price go up)

So about those Bitcoin ETF’s

A Sygnum research report highlights that 57% of institutional investors plan to increase their crypto allocation.

Similarly, Cryptoquant is reporting that Bitcoin whales are still accumulating, even at these prices. 

The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) is going multichain. 

The US crypto industry, in something of a pay-up move, is pushing for the Trump administration to deliver on its (bought) promises of a sea-change in the regulatory landscape.

A Republican has since introduced a bill to make BTC a strategic reserve asset. 

Kaiko confirms what we are seeing, volumes are up.

More confirmation, if it was needed, that things are heating up. NFT volumes are up 94% this week. Even McDonald’s is launching an NFT. 

Memecoins have rallied strongly this week. Some are suggesting they act as a leveraged bet on the layer 1 chain they are launched on. 

Italy has reduced its planned crypto tax from 42% to 28%. 

The nation of Bhutan already holds BTC as a reserve asset, and those holdings are now worth over a Billion dollars. 

Coinbase Wallet is rolling out Tap-to-Pay. It’s pretty high level but it looks to be competing with Paypal and allows you to connect your bank accounts.

Tether has launched an asset Tokenisation platform called Hadron. It’s looking to accelerate RWA tokenisation.

A16 put out its regular state of the crypto market report. TLDR; things are looking goooooood! 

The FBI has seized the devices of Polymarket’s CEO. Apparently it’s related to banned US users using VPNs to access the platform. 

🌎 Macro news TLDR: …Dollar strength

Bulk shipping rates are starting to respond to the Chinese export frenzy, up sharply since the election.

The International Energy Agency is signalling an Oil supply glut in 2025 on sluggish Chinese growth and OPEC+ supply changes. 

The USD is on a real tear at the minute causing importer pain. Normally a strong dollar is a headwind for crypto. 

U.S. economic news

October’s CPI reading for the US came in right on expectations at 2.6%. Core was also on the number,increasing to 3.3%.

Most of the increases are being explained away by shelter costs. Looking to the future, there are worries that the Trump administration will be quite inflationary.

Wholesale producer prices (PPI) also ticked up in October. Depending on who you read this is a non-event or an early sign of inflationary trouble.

Fed Chairman Powell signalled that the economy was indicating there is no need to rush rate cuts. Retail sales rose, while industrial production fell in October. 

Over in Europe….

The Euro is taking a beating since the Trump victory and likely to make the ECB respond. Eurozone GDP is up 0.9% on last year, however industrial production contracted. 

In the UK their car finance industry is in disarray and banks might be liable for billions. GDP for September contracted 0.1%. 

And in Asia Pacific…

Following on from last week’s report on India’s growing inflation problem, there is evidence that the middle classes are already tightening their belts.

Japan’s PPI rose to 3.4% in October, however their Q3 GDP was a very modest 0.9%, down from 2.2% in the previous quarter. China’s industrial output slowed, but is still running at 5.3%. Prices of new Chinese homes fell ~6% year on year. 

In Australia, wage growth is running at 3.5%, ahead of inflation (2.8%). Employment data looks OK on the surface in Australia, but it’s worth noting their growing count of part time workers. 

New Zealand’s food prices are trending down and are now at an annual increase of 1.2%. BNZ reports our manufacturing PMI fell from 47 to 45.8 in October.

Services (PSI) rose to 46 from 45.7. Contracting less fast is the best that can be said. 

That’s a wrap for this week. 

Stay tuned for the next update.

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