Crypto market plays the Trump card

Hola folks!

The attempt on pro-crypto US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s life has breathed new life into the global crypto market, with Bitcoin back above $67k and Ethereum above $3.4k. The supply pressure on BTC exerted by Mt. Gox and the German government holding liquidation seems to be behind the market as investors digest the possibility of a pro-crypto president in the White House. 

Today’s newsletter highlights all major crypto developments of the past week and analyzes how these developments impacted crypto prices.

After being under pressure due to the supply overhang of Mt. Gox and the German government selling BTC, crypto markets have found a strong positive catalyst in the increasing probability of a Trump victory in the US elections, which led to a sharp recovery in the broader markets. 

Specifically for Bitcoin, post the exhaustion of the German government selling, several narratives are gaining steam which resulted in a 10% surge in prices over the week, reclaiming the $68k level. 

The strongest catalysts were US presidential candidate Trump's announcement of his full support for the growing crypto industry in the US and Joe Biden's dropping out of the race. Trump will be participating in the Bitcoin Conference soon, and rumors are afoot that he might even discuss plans to hold BTC as a strategic asset for the US government. 

While this may still be speculation, the consistent strong inflows in the spot ETF (above $400m last week) have topped $17 billion since January, suggesting ample demand for BTC as an investment. 

Ethereum, too, had positive triggers last week, with CBOE stating that 5 spot ETH ETFs will begin trading this week. However, the gain in prices was muted, at a modest 5%. Overall, the broader crypto markets continued to surge, as specific altcoins saw a massive upswing in prices, resulting in the total market cap bouncing back towards the $2.6trn mark. 

Two other major developments that need to be highlighted were the global cyber outage caused by CrowdStrike and Microsoft and a hacking attack on an Indian crypto exchange closer home. 

The global cyber outage showcased how centralization and single points of failure can put global networks at risk and was accompanied by a surge in crypto prices. The hacking attack on WazirX drained $230m of user funds and is still being investigated for possible resolutions.

In the broader altcoin universe, there were several outperforms that were surged in the green driven by specific triggers. But even overall, it was a sea of green as the markets recovered strongly from a period of weakness. 

Solana's SOL token jumped 15% due to increased meme coin activity following US election updates. 

As a pattern in this cycle, meme coins come back strongly as the broader markets recover and last week saw WIF surging by 50%, followed by a sharp increase in prices for PEPE, BONK, and DOGE. 

Ripple's XRP price was also rising in hopes of an upcoming legal victory. Avalnche's AVAX pumped 20% after breaking technical indicators on the charts. 

Polygon's MATIC traded flat even after the announcement date for its migration to POL token.

Narrative-specific champions were leading the charge across the board. The AI narrative was in focus again, with Bittensor's TAO back in the green, gaining 20%, and Arweave's AR up 25%, indicating the growing importance of distributed computing. 

The DePIN narrative further saw a surge in Helium's HNT token. On the RWA tokenization theme, Mantra's OM token continued to rise in price. Building on BTC's price strength BTCFi related tokens like ordinal's ORDI and CORE tokens also jumped higher sharply. 

On the flip side, Aave protocol's AAVE saw strong profit booking, taking down prices by 10%.

• BTC $67,265 ⏫ 6.96%

• SOL $178.67 ⏫ 16.29%

• TAO $337.83 ⏫ 19.92%

• AAVE $94.53 ⏬ 10.33%

(All data here is as of 1.33 p.m., 22 July 2024)

Before we conclude, here’s a quick look at some important news from around the crypto world.

• Bitcoin continued its rally over the weekend to break above the $68,000 resistance line during Sunday night trading in Eastern Standard Time. Read more here. 

• Cryptocurrency exchange WazirX has halted trading across its platform as it deals with the fallout from a recent exploit, which saw $230 million drained from its wallet as the result of a private key compromise on July 18. Read more here.

That’s it for now. Thanks for sticking around.

See you later, folks! 👋

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