Bitcoin keeps grinding higher
Cryptocurrencies got off to rocky start in February amid a broad sell-off that wiped out $550 billion from the crypto market. However, the market got through this bad patch and started to recover as the mood of investors improved progressively. On Tuesday, the price of Bitcoin rose around 5% and hit $11,646, the highest level since January 29th. The price is approaching a key resistance area at around $12,000 (previous highs), while the 50-day moving average currently lies at $12,260.
Investors have shown a lot of patience recently as they did not jumped back into Bitcoin after the sharp sell-off. However, they are slowly coming back into crypto and are carefully avoiding to giving way to panic buying.
Elsewhere, the entire alt-coins complex has seen significant inflow, although uneven. Indeed, the first quarter of 2018 looks very promising as many crypto-companies have of will release mainnet version of beta product. Kyber Network is finally done with testnet as they launched their platform on the Ethereum mainnet a few days ago – the pilot launch will run until April this year. OmiseGo is also expected to deliver in the first quarter (or second quarter at the latest).
Overall, we remain very positive on cryptocurrencies, 2018 will be a key year. However, investors have to keep in mind that many coins will not make it this year and that they should focus on the good projects that will deliver a working product.
Stealth USD in play
The greenback continues to gain, yet reasons are still vague. Is it shorts unwinding, reaction to renewed bond sell-off’s, risk aversion or catchup to wide yields spreads? There is no shortage of optimism around the US economic health (accelerated by massive fiscal spending) but balanced out by bearish commentary over equities and twin deficits. US 10yrs yields are now edging back up after US Presidents day but still below Valentine’s day high. Failure of EURUSD to break new highs at 1.2555 put the pair in corrective mode. Should German ZEW and EU PMI coming in weaker than expected plus ECB sounding less hawkish we should get continuation of pair bearish trend.
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