Markets Bounce Around 200 Billion Mark

Bitcoin Continues To Go Sideways

The market played a tug of war today as it bounced between 200 and 210 Billion several times.

As we mentioned yesterday there wasn’t enough motivation in the markets to keep the bullish trend alive for more than a day, and even yesterday’s announcement of the Coinshares “soft ETF” in the Bitcoin ETN wasn’t enough to get the bulls to play along.

Coinshare’s Chief Strategy Officer discussed what’s behind the recent price movement and why the bear market has been good for crypto:

Coinbase finally revealed their plans to list Ethereum Classic today, giving the asset a huge boost compared to the rest of the pack.

Coinbase also revealed they will be reducing their management fees from 2% to 1% for the Coinbase Index Fund in an effort to attract more institutional investment.

Speaking of investment, Blockchain investment firm Pantera Capital recently launched its third cryptocurrency fund, known as Venture Fund III.  They completed all necessary filings with the SEC, and so far the fund has raised over $71 Million from roughly 90 different investors, with targets for 175 Million.

While that’s interesting in of itself, what really caught our eye is that Pantera representatives say they’re planning to use the money to invest in Bakkt, a new platform from the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).

As we’ve covered, Bakkt’s primary goal is to assist retailers in buying, trading and selling cryptocurrencies. Pantera’s work with Bakkt would make it a founding investor when Bakkt launches in November.

Meanwhile, Ripple (XRP) has partnered with Bittrex, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the US by volume. Bittrex will be using the XRP-powered platform xRapid for cross border transactions. Ripple also announced other partnerships:

“Today, we’re pleased to announce Bittrex will act as the preferred digital asset exchange for xRapid transactions that move through US Dollars. In addition, Bitso and Coins.ph will be preferred for Mexican Pesos and Philippine Pesos, respectively.”

“We’ve seen several successful xRapid pilots already, and as we move the product from beta to production later this year, these exchange partners will allow us to provide financial institutions with the comfort and assurance that their payments will move seamlessly between different currencies,” says Ripple chief marketing strategist Cory Johnson.

Ripple continues to show that it has intentions and motivations unique to their own brand of cryptocurrency, and they continue to help push the space forward.

On the regulatory front, the U.S. Senate is set to take another look at blockchain technology next week.

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will host a hearing on “Energy Efficiency of Blockchain and Similar Technologies” on August 21st. The stated goal is to better understand how blockchain technology might impact electricity prices and what benefits it can provide to the public.

“The purpose of the hearing is to consider the energy efficiency of blockchain and similar technologies and the cybersecurity possibilities of such technologies for energy industry applications,” the announcement said.

The event will ask the question, “should we expect electricity prices to increase from rising electricity demand in blockchain applications?”

This should be interesting to watch, especially given that blockchain’s energy usage has already started to be mitigated through alternate methods of consensus and more efficient networks.

Still, these are questions worth posing and discussing on such a national stage.

What’s interesting is that all of the forces discussed today are more or less positive.

As we can see on a logarithmic chart of Bitcoin’s price, Bitcoin’s price is very unlikely to go below $4,000 at this point, and in a few short months that price floor will be $6,000. Any movement to the downside at this point will be short-lived.

There’s simply too much that’s happening in the background to let prices sink much further. While late August and September may be some rough waters, once we’re into November and early 2019, there is definitely an interesting horizon before us.

If you were not able to join us for the recent webinar “Ten Steps to Building Your Portfolio” webinar, the replay is available here.

We’ve started to produce episodes for The ReadySetCrypto Podcast; all of our episodes are posted on our blog (and on iTunes) and episode eight is now available. Episode Eight is an interview with Andrei Polgar, the author of the book “Age of Anomaly” which speaks to anticipating negative market events. Look for more episodes shortly as we comb the crypto space for valuable interviews, and create valuable content to keep you in the loop!

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Defensive Actions for the next trading day: 

• None.