Digital Assets up 8% this week on active trading. Overall turnover this week averaged just north of US$19B, +18% versus the previous week. Sentiment continued to improve with 85% of the top coins and tokens ending the week above their 20 day moving averages. EOS and LTC were 2 of the most actively traded with volume in both ~ +70% WoW. A big week in LTC trading this week puts it on pace to end the month at a daily average of US$1B, the best in 12 months. Trading in BTC and ETH also active with BTC on pace for a daily average of US$5.8B — a 9 month high and ETH tracking US$2.9B, the best since Feb of last year.
JPMorgan’s launch of the first US bank backed cryptocurrency punctuated a week of slightly thinner news flow. Institutionalization was the theme of the week with 1. JPM launching its JPMCoin, 2. US Pension funds gaining exposure to BTC, 3. NASDAQ announcing plans to launch BTC and LTC indexes and 4. And Chainalysis completing a US$30M led bu Accel.
Technical highlights this week included 1. LTC moving towards confidential transaction implementation, 2. A BTC transaction executed over a distance of 650km via HAM radio, 3. A popular IOS gaming app getting a reboot on EOS (winners get paid in crypto) and 4. Another week of record high Lightning Network channels, nodes and total BTC capacity.
Despite persistently bearish outlook from market commentators, sentiment continues to show signs of improvement this week with follow through in last week’s hotspots (LTC, BNB), gains in small cap and utility tokens, another week of generally positive news flow and one of the best weeks of trading in months. Volatility in BTC remained low with price spending most of the past 3 weeks stuck in a tight ~ 10% band. As mentioned last week, this should prime us for a significant price move. $4,000 is the first major line of resistance on the top end. One of big caveat, though, is a sharp surge in the leveraged Long:Short ratio with shorts coming down ~ 15% this week and Longs gaining by about 6%. Longs in particular are approaching a level that has shown a high degree of correlation with price inflection points.
https://maxdigitalasset.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/max-weekly-feb-15-2019.pdf
