Price Point: Bitcoin was lower along with European stocks and U.S. stock futures amid increasing anxiety over U.S. elections and coronavirus lockdowns.
Market Moves: Bitcoin's "digital gold" narrative looks promising as ever, but the cryptocurrency's dominance is waning as Ethereum rides DeFi fever.
Bitcoin Watch: Transfers increase from bitcoin miner wallets to exchanges.
Bitcoin was sliding in early trading, retreating after the cryptocurrency posted a 5.7% gain last week, the most on a percentage basis since July.
European shares and U.S. stock futures dropped early Monday, on souring sentiment stemming from delayed stimulus packages, increasingly contentious U.S. elections and concerns about new coronavirus-related lockdowns.
The dollar was gaining against major currencies in foreign currency markets, and yields on 10-year Treasury bonds were 0.03 percentage points lower at 0.66%.
MARKET MOVES
It's pretty much guaranteed at this point that higher inflation is coming.
"We're at a moment where you may see some inflation," Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said last week.
The trend could be good for bitcoin, which many crypto investors believe can serve as a hedge against inflation, a digital and perhaps more portable alternative to gold. As detailed last week by SeekingAlpha contributor Lyn Alden, the trend has been clear since roughly 1980, when the share of wealth held by the world's richest 0.1% of people began a decades-long rise from about 5% to more than 20%.
The decades-long economic trend toward the moment where high inflation occurs began around 1980, when the share of wealth held by the richest Americans started increasing. (Bridgewater Associates/Lyn Alden Investment Strategy)
But increasingly, it looks like bitcoin-as-inflation-hedge might be the cryptocurrency's most compelling investment narrative, and not necessarily as the dominant digital asset for perpetuity, as many so-called bitcoin maximalists have argued.
Last week, bitcoin's "dominance" — the market value of all bitcoins in existence, divided by the market value of all digital assets — fell to 57%, from 68% at the start of the year, according to CoinMarketCap.
The primary challenger, of course, is ether (ETH), the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, which has exploded with activity this year as the primary venue for the fast-growing realm of decentralized finance, or DeFi. Ether's market value has climbed to about 12% of the industry total, from about 6.8% at the start of the year.
"The rivalry between Bitcoin `maximalists' and Ethereum enthusiasts has become more polarized in recent months, with each side latching on to narratives that best support the asset to which they have pledged their allegiance," Kevin Kelly, co-founder of the market-analysis firm Delphi Digital, wrote this month in report. And recently, Ethereum has been "playing catch-up to its `digital gold' counterpart."
Bitcoin's market dominance has been sliding this year. (CryptoMarketCap.com)
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Bitcoin transfer volume from mines to cryptocurrency exchanges. (TradingView)
Bitcoin is again taking cues from traditional markets.
The leading cryptocurrency is dropping alongside stocks, with soaring coronavirus cases across Europe and other parts of the world threatening to snuff out the nascent global economic recovery.
Bitcoin is currently down over 2% at $10,650 and may suffer a more significant drop if the risk aversion worsens, boosting demand for the safe-haven U.S. dollar. The cryptocurrency tanked 40% on March 12 as the global stocks' coronavirus-induced crash triggered a global dash for cash.
The recent rise in the outflow of coins from miner wallets to exchanges could add to bearish pressures around bitcoin.
On Sunday, 784 BTC were transferred to exchange wallets from miner wallets – significantly higher than the 30-day average daily outflow of 265 BTC, according to data source Glassnode.
Enigma (ENG): Privacy-focused blockchain startup says its tokens "lack features" of securities, but registers them with regulators anyway in filing tied to February settlement with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
How to Value Bitcoin: Addresses
In the second episode of CoinDesk Research's webinar series on Bitcoin fundamentals, we unpack a novel accounting method used in Bitcoin and explore how entities are represented and transact on the network.
Philip Gradwell, chief economist at Chainalysis, and CoinDesk Research will walk through the structure of Bitcoin addresses and wallets, how exchanges operate and how ownership data and transaction data can be interpreted by investors.
The CoinDesk 20 has made its first change since launching in July: Orchid (OXT), issued by Orchid Labs Inc., developer of virtual private network (VPN) software designed to be decentralized and open source, has replaced the basic attention token (BAT) issued by Brave Software Inc., developer of the Brave browser.
Disclaimer: The information presented in this message is intended as a news item that provides a brief summary of various events and developments that affect, or that might in the future affect, the value of one or more of the cryptocurrencies described above. The information contained in this message, and any information liked through the items contained herein, is not intended to provide sufficient information to form the basis for an investment decision. The information presented herein is accurate only as of its date, and it was not prepared by a research analyst or other investment professional. You should seek additional information regarding the merits and risks of investing in any cryptocurrency before deciding to purchase or sell any such instruments.
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