MARKETS week ahead: July 17 – 23
Last week in the news
Aside from general developments on financial markets, the previous week was the winning one for Ripple and altcoins. The court ruled that XRP is not a security, which significantly boosted the price of this coin. The US equity markets were further boosted by the market expectations of the soft landing in the US economy. At the same time, the same expectation pushed the value of USD and Treasury yields to the downside. Bitcoin is ending the week relatively flat and modestly above $30K, while Ether is holding above $1.9K.
Ripple Labs made a huge win in a lawsuit with SEC, as the court ruled out that in terms of the US Laws, XRP is not a security. Other rulings stress that sales on exchanges and sales by executives are not securities. However, there is a tricky part to a court decision. Namely, such outcome is based on a fact that during early 2020 investors were not able to fully understand the crypto, their price was just a little fraction of their current prices and regulators were only mildly interested in these digital assets. It was a huge win for XRP, but not for all investors in digital assets. Namely, the second part of the ruling suggests that institutional sales could not be treated as the offer and sale of investment contracts. This part of the court decision might have some impact on other SEC`s lawsuits against Binance, Coinbase or Gemini. Analysts are noting that the SEC might use these court conclusions against these companies, so it is still not time for a celebration.
Positive investors sentiment was supported by the latest published figures on inflation. The Producer Price Index for June showed that inflation is slowing down at a higher pace as anticipated by the market. PPI for June was 0.1% and lower from 0.2% market estimation. Core PPI also rose by 0.1%. At the same time, released figures for the consumer price index for June showed an increase of 3% compared to the year before, which is its lowest level since March 2021. Such development is supporting investor’s opinion that FED might be at the end of its quantitative tightening period.
The SEC filed a lawsuit against Coinbase for its staking products more than a month ago, while California, New Jersey, South Carolina and Wisconsin requested changes in Coinbase staking products. Coinbase strongly disapproves treatment of its staking products as securities, but will pause offering these products in mentioned states.
Larry Fink, a CEO of the world largest asset manager BlackRock, talked again about crypto, after his company filed for the first spot BTC ETF a month ago. This time he noted his observation that there is increasing demand for crypto assets from those investors who previously preferred to invest in gold. He was also mentioning the role of the ETF`s in allowing easy access to gold, where BTC ETF might do the same thing. He also noted that their ETF will be “safe, sound and protected”.
Luxury industry is just heating up for the NFT market. A famous fashion brand Gucci is preparing to release a digital NFT collection called “Future Frequencies: Explorations in Generative Art and Fashion”. The collection will be offered for a sale at auction house Christie's.
Crypto market cap
A week like the previous one is rarely seen on the crypto market. A lawsuit between SEC and Ripple Labs, which lasted since 2020 is finally resolved. There is a mixed sentiment as to who actually won the lawsuit, however, the most important part is that XRP is ruled not to be a security, as per current Securities Law in the US. This had a huge implication also for other altcoins on the market, for which the SEC recently claimed that they are securities. Market reaction was quite positive, where altcoins were leading the increase in total market capitalization during the previous week. BTC was left behind in this round. Total crypto market capitalization was increased by 4% during the week, adding
44B
to the market cap. Major coins on the market were participating with a modest 30% in this increase. Daily trading volumes remained elevated around $82B on a daily basis. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year is 56%, where it has added a total $422B to the market cap.
Bitcoin was not the one to lead the market during the previous week. The coin remained relatively flat, ending the week with a plus of only $2B or 0.36%. Absolute winner of the week was XRP who skyrocketed after the news about SEC dispute resolution with an additional $12B in value or 51% w/w. Other altcoins were following the XRP, but at lower levels. Among those coins were Solana, with an increase in market value of $2B or 26.7%, BNB added also more than $2B to its market cap, increasing it by more than 6%, DOGE, ADA and Polygon added more than $1B each to market cap, increasing it by 11%, 14% and 18.5% respectively. It should be mentioned that Stellar increased its value by 31% w/w, but in nominal terms this increase was below $1B. There were also coins which lost some of their value during the week, like Bitcoin Cash, which was down by 3%, Bitcoin Gold was down by 3.75%, Litecoin lost 3% in value, while Maker dropped by 5.5% w/w. As for coins in circulation, XRP increased its circulating coins by 0.6% w/w, Algorand continued with a strong push in circulating coins adding 1.8% during the previous week, while Tether gained 0.3% of new coins.
Crypto futures market
Previous week was a rare one where the crypto futures market was not fully aligned with the spot market, but certainly, there are quite positive developments. BTC short term futures were down by some 0.3% on average, however, long term futures gained significantly. In this sense, futures maturing in December this year were traded by more than 4% higher from the week before, ending the week at level of $33.105. At the same time, the price of futures maturing in December 2024 were traded almost 10% higher, with closing price at $35.840.
More important developments occurred with ETH futures. Short term ones were traded by 2.5% higher from the week before. Futures maturing in December 2023 reached level above $2K for the first time since April, and were 8.6% higher from the previous week. On a positive side is also that futures maturing in December 2024 skipped the $2K level, ending the week at price of $2.187 and 9.4% higher from the previous week`s close. Such developments imply increased market sentiment for both coins, especially ETH, suggesting that the price of coins will reach higher grounds in the coming period.
Aside from general developments on financial markets, the previous week was the winning one for Ripple and altcoins. The court ruled that XRP is not a security, which significantly boosted the price of this coin. The US equity markets were further boosted by the market expectations of the soft landing in the US economy. At the same time, the same expectation pushed the value of USD and Treasury yields to the downside. Bitcoin is ending the week relatively flat and modestly above $30K, while Ether is holding above $1.9K.
Ripple Labs made a huge win in a lawsuit with SEC, as the court ruled out that in terms of the US Laws, XRP is not a security. Other rulings stress that sales on exchanges and sales by executives are not securities. However, there is a tricky part to a court decision. Namely, such outcome is based on a fact that during early 2020 investors were not able to fully understand the crypto, their price was just a little fraction of their current prices and regulators were only mildly interested in these digital assets. It was a huge win for XRP, but not for all investors in digital assets. Namely, the second part of the ruling suggests that institutional sales could not be treated as the offer and sale of investment contracts. This part of the court decision might have some impact on other SEC`s lawsuits against Binance, Coinbase or Gemini. Analysts are noting that the SEC might use these court conclusions against these companies, so it is still not time for a celebration.
Positive investors sentiment was supported by the latest published figures on inflation. The Producer Price Index for June showed that inflation is slowing down at a higher pace as anticipated by the market. PPI for June was 0.1% and lower from 0.2% market estimation. Core PPI also rose by 0.1%. At the same time, released figures for the consumer price index for June showed an increase of 3% compared to the year before, which is its lowest level since March 2021. Such development is supporting investor’s opinion that FED might be at the end of its quantitative tightening period.
The SEC filed a lawsuit against Coinbase for its staking products more than a month ago, while California, New Jersey, South Carolina and Wisconsin requested changes in Coinbase staking products. Coinbase strongly disapproves treatment of its staking products as securities, but will pause offering these products in mentioned states.
Larry Fink, a CEO of the world largest asset manager BlackRock, talked again about crypto, after his company filed for the first spot BTC ETF a month ago. This time he noted his observation that there is increasing demand for crypto assets from those investors who previously preferred to invest in gold. He was also mentioning the role of the ETF`s in allowing easy access to gold, where BTC ETF might do the same thing. He also noted that their ETF will be “safe, sound and protected”.
Luxury industry is just heating up for the NFT market. A famous fashion brand Gucci is preparing to release a digital NFT collection called “Future Frequencies: Explorations in Generative Art and Fashion”. The collection will be offered for a sale at auction house Christie's.
Crypto market cap
A week like the previous one is rarely seen on the crypto market. A lawsuit between SEC and Ripple Labs, which lasted since 2020 is finally resolved. There is a mixed sentiment as to who actually won the lawsuit, however, the most important part is that XRP is ruled not to be a security, as per current Securities Law in the US. This had a huge implication also for other altcoins on the market, for which the SEC recently claimed that they are securities. Market reaction was quite positive, where altcoins were leading the increase in total market capitalization during the previous week. BTC was left behind in this round. Total crypto market capitalization was increased by 4% during the week, adding
44B
to the market cap. Major coins on the market were participating with a modest 30% in this increase. Daily trading volumes remained elevated around $82B on a daily basis. Total crypto market capitalization increase since the beginning of this year is 56%, where it has added a total $422B to the market cap. Bitcoin was not the one to lead the market during the previous week. The coin remained relatively flat, ending the week with a plus of only $2B or 0.36%. Absolute winner of the week was XRP who skyrocketed after the news about SEC dispute resolution with an additional $12B in value or 51% w/w. Other altcoins were following the XRP, but at lower levels. Among those coins were Solana, with an increase in market value of $2B or 26.7%, BNB added also more than $2B to its market cap, increasing it by more than 6%, DOGE, ADA and Polygon added more than $1B each to market cap, increasing it by 11%, 14% and 18.5% respectively. It should be mentioned that Stellar increased its value by 31% w/w, but in nominal terms this increase was below $1B. There were also coins which lost some of their value during the week, like Bitcoin Cash, which was down by 3%, Bitcoin Gold was down by 3.75%, Litecoin lost 3% in value, while Maker dropped by 5.5% w/w. As for coins in circulation, XRP increased its circulating coins by 0.6% w/w, Algorand continued with a strong push in circulating coins adding 1.8% during the previous week, while Tether gained 0.3% of new coins.
Crypto futures market
Previous week was a rare one where the crypto futures market was not fully aligned with the spot market, but certainly, there are quite positive developments. BTC short term futures were down by some 0.3% on average, however, long term futures gained significantly. In this sense, futures maturing in December this year were traded by more than 4% higher from the week before, ending the week at level of $33.105. At the same time, the price of futures maturing in December 2024 were traded almost 10% higher, with closing price at $35.840.
More important developments occurred with ETH futures. Short term ones were traded by 2.5% higher from the week before. Futures maturing in December 2023 reached level above $2K for the first time since April, and were 8.6% higher from the previous week. On a positive side is also that futures maturing in December 2024 skipped the $2K level, ending the week at price of $2.187 and 9.4% higher from the previous week`s close. Such developments imply increased market sentiment for both coins, especially ETH, suggesting that the price of coins will reach higher grounds in the coming period.
