Market Highlights
- Bitcoin almost reached US$100,000, with a new all-time high of US$99,334 on Friday.
- MicroStrategy is offering US$2.6 billion in convertible notes to fund more bitcoin purchases.
- A federal court ruled that LidoDAO should be treated as a general partnership under state law.
- Stellar (XLM) had another big week, gaining almost 150%.
Markets Overview
Macro Market Updates:
It was a week of purchasing managers index (PMI) updates around the globe, while Canada’s consumer price index (CPI) for the 12 months to 30 October 2024 came in at 2.6%, which was slightly higher than forecast. The small uptick in Canada’s CPI may mean that the Bank of Canada keeps rates on hold at 3.75% at its December meeting.
In other macro news:
- The core U.S. Consumer Prince Index (CPI) for October came in at 2.6% for the 12 months to 30 October 2024.
- CPI in the U.K. for the 12 months to 30 October 2024 came in slightly higher than forecast at 2.3%.
- The French and German Flash Manufacturing PMI figures each came in at 43.2, while the U.K.’s came in at 48.6 and the U.S. came in at 48.8. A result under 50 usually indicates a contraction in manufacturing.
Crypto Market Sector Performance
With an average of 14.2% growth across the crypto market sectors this week, data availability, staking services and gaming experienced the highest growth. In data availability, this is reflected in Celestia and Dymension, which grew by 42.9% and 45.1%, respectively, on the week. Lido DAO and Rocket Pool were the two big gainers in staking services, growing by 34% and 28.9%, respectively. The gains for Lido DAO this week are somewhat unexpected given the ruling by a federal court that the decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) should be governed as a general partnership under state law in the U.S. (more on that below).
Real-world assets (RWA) was the only sector to experience losses this week, declining by 3.3%. The RWA networks Ondo, MANTRA, Clearpool and Maple all declined over the last seven days, with Clearpool seeing the biggest decline, losing 17.3% on the week. These declines aren’t surprising, given the prevalence of digital assets and gaming platforms, which saw some of the biggest growth this week, indicating where investors and traders are focusing their capital.
Crypto Market Sector Performance (7D)
Bitcoin (BTC)
The upward momentum continued for bitcoin in the first half of this week, although price nearing the much-anticipated level of US$100,000 presented some resistance. The biggest cryptocurrency opened the week at US$89,844, continuing upward to reach a new all-time high of US$99,334 on Friday, 22 November. Price has since stagnated at this level and retraced by almost 4%. This most recent all-time high was presumably driven by an increase in trading volume due to the launch of options trading on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).
Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw near-record inflows this week, with a total of US$3.12 billion flowing into these products. On Tuesday, 21 November alone, Blackrock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) saw over US$608 million of inflows. Prices growing to new highs and almost reaching a key psychological level at US$100,000 saw US$10 million flow into short-bitcoin products.
MicroStrategy and its executive chairman and co-founder, Michael Saylor, made headlines again this week. Two days after announcing the company would sell US$1.75 billion of convertible notes to fund the purchase of more bitcoin, the offering was upped to US$2.6 billion. The notes will mature in 2029, and they’re redeemable for cash or MicroStrategy stock. Also this week, Saylor was asked to deliver a three-minute presentation showing Microsoft’s board how it can add bitcoin to its balance sheet and the potential impacts. Microsoft shareholders will vote on 10 December 2024 to decide if the company will formally assess investing in bitcoin.
Publicly-traded Cosmos Health (NASDAQ: COSM) announced that it’s going to add bitcoin and Ethereum to its balance sheet. The company’s stock price rose 17% on the news.
Grayscale has launched options trading on its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC). The crypto asset manager updated its prospectus for the Bitcoin Covered Call ETF after the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) approved options trading on bitcoin ETFs earlier in the year.
Bitcoin is currently trading at US$93,884, an increase of 2.35% on the week.
Ethereum (ETH)
Ethereum started the week with consolidation before significant upside on Thursday, 21 November saw price gain over 10%, moving back to the key level at US$3,385. Price is now stagnating around this level. Opening the week at US$3,076.20, the second-largest cryptocurrency struggled to break US$3,220 to the upside until Thursday’s run.
This week’s gains are presumably due to the uptick in taker buy volume, which reached almost US$1.7 billion in just one hour on 21 November. Growing taker buy volume indicates that futures traders expect Ethereum’s price to continue rising.
Ethereum asset investment products saw minor inflows of US$2.8 million this week, taking year-to-date inflows for these products to almost US$1.6 billion.
Ethereum is currently trading at US$3,415, an increase of 8% on the week.
Altcoins
Smart contract gains
- Kusama (KSM) grew by 83.2%, taking its market cap to US$619 million. Most of the gains occurred on Saturday, when price gained almost 130% before retracing. The scalable multi-chain network is presumably seeing an uptick in investor and trader interest due to its focus on early-stage Polkadot deployments and the strong performance of the wider crypto market this week.
- Harmony (ONE) gained 65.3%, which takes its market cap to US$296 million. This week’s gains are presumably due to Kings and Quests, a new non-fungible token (NFT) minting and marketplace platform, launching on the Harmony network this week. The launch of the Hearts & Brains campaign on the network’s discord, where users can interact with AI agents and earn credits, may also be driving upward momentum.
- Tezos (XTZ) gained 61%. This takes its market cap to US$1.4 billion. The team also hosted a town hall this week, which detailed new projects on the network and new gaming partnerships.
- Polkadot (DOT) grew by 54.8%, taking its market cap to US$12.9 billion. This week’s gains follow a strong start to November, where price gained 50% following the U.S. presidential election. The technical analysis shows that price is holding above the critical demand zone at US$5.70. Maintaining upward momentum from this area could lead to further gains.
Computing power
- aelf (ELF) gained 96.3%, taking its market cap to US$457 million. Following its first halving on 13 November, the AI-enhanced blockchain has gained over 60%. The majority of these gains occurred on Monday, 25 November, when price grew by over 85% before retracing. This week’s momentum was presumably driven by the announcement of new partnerships that the aelf team has secured to continue developing its AI capabilities.
Stellar week
- Stellar (XLM) had another strong week, growing by 148.5%. This takes its market cap to US$16.1 billion. This week, Stellar overtook Shiba Inu, with its market cap growing to US$17.3 billion. Before the most recent run, XLM was trading around US$0.085. Price has now reached almost US$0.48 at the time of writing.
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
In Other News
A record week of inflows saw US$3.13 billion go into digital asset investment products. This takes inflows for the year-to-date to a record US$37 billion. In the year that US Gold ETFs debuted, these products saw US$309 million of inflows in the first year, demonstrating the significant amounts of capital that continue pouring into the cryptocurrency market. Solana products were one of the big altcoin gainers, with US$16 million of inflows.
Other crypto news
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner (SEC) Gary Gensler will retire from his role on 20 January 2025 when Donald Trump is inaugurated as president. Gensler has been well-known for his tough stance on crypto, leading industry-wide crackdowns and investigations following FTX’s collapse in 2022. Under his leadership, the SEC brought legal action against major crypto companies, including Binance and Coinbase. Markets are expecting a more crypto-friendly successor.
- The Sui network experienced its first major outage this week. The layer-1 blockchain network halted for two hours on Thursday due to a “bug in transaction scheduling logic that caused validators to crash,” according to the network’s Twitter account. Total value locked (TVL) on Sui’s network currently stands at US$1.6 billion, growing over 55% in the last four weeks as price rallied following the U.S. presidential election. Sui has been named the “Solana killer” due to its fast transaction speeds. The Solana network experienced five major outages throughout 2022 and one earlier this year.
- The Sky ecosystem, formerly known as MakerDAO, has put its stablecoin on the Solana network. The token, USDS, is going to be the DeFi-native stablecoin on Solana. Running on Ethereum, Sky is one of the oldest DeFi projects, with the USDS replacing DAI, MakerDAO’s former stablecoin. DAI holders have been able to swap to USDS since September, allowing them to access more opportunities for lending, borrowing and trading on DeFi platforms.
Regulatory
- A federal court judge ruled that Lido DAO, the governing body for the liquid staking protocol, should be treated as a general partnership under state law. Rejecting Lido’s claims that it isn’t a legal entity, the court’s ruling sets a precedent for how profit-driven DAOs may be treated. Part of the ruling also stated that individuals managing Lido DAO’s operations aren’t immune from liability just because of its decentralised structure. This can even include activities such as posting to DAO members in a forum.
Disclaimer: This assessment does not consider your personal circumstances, and should not be construed as financial, legal or investment advice. These thoughts are ours only and should only be taken as educational by the reader. Under no circumstances do we make recommendation or assurance towards the views expressed in the blog-post. The Company disclaims all duties and liabilities, including liability for negligence, for any loss or damage which is suffered or incurred by any person acting on any information provided.
