The News From Planet Ruby—Friday, November 17, 2023
- Signal: Bitcoin network health
- Noise: XRP ETF
Stonks Stronk
Despite the continued doom and gloom coming from various quarters, risk assets have performed well this week. Following Tuesday's CPI print, which came in marginally cooler than expected, the dollar has weakened significantly. Traders are now confident that there will be no more interest rate rises. UK inflation also dropped faster than expected, allowing the government to take credit for something they had nothing to do with.
The S&P has performed well in this new optimistic environment, and the NASDAQ is closing in on its all-time highs.
Geopolitical concerns remain, but the market tends to look past these—although the US's largest federal pension fund did just decide to exclude Chinese stocks.
Bitcoin Hits New Local High
Bitcoin took another leg up, with a daily close just below $38,000 on Wednesday: Its highest since May 22. It has since corrected, but found support at $36,000, a higher low.
The total crypto market cap topped $1.4 trillion, and currently stands around $1.36 trillion. While this is comfortably above the breakout line at $1.3 trillion, Bitcoin Dominance may have put in a local bottom following a recent pullback. If BTC takes another leg up, we would expects alts to correct, at least in BTC terms.
Major support for BTC is at the 50% line from the all-time high, $34,500. BTC came close to retesting this with a drop to $35,000 on Tuesday, before bouncing back strongly.
Crypto Just Getting Warmed Up
It has now been over a year since the bottom of the 2022 bear market, and two years since the last bubble peak. We have potentially another two years before the next macro top, assuming Bitcoin sticks to its four-year cycle.
Cathie Wood has expressed her confidence in the Bitcoin network, looking to on-chain factors to confirm the bull run, and describing bitcoin as a "flight to safety" due to its lack of counterparty risk.
She also voiced her opinion that Gary Gensler may be delaying spot BTC ETFs because he has designs on a job as the next US Treasury Secretary.
CEO of Ark Invest, Cathie Wood, explains that Gary Gensler understands the technology behind #Bitcoin extremely well.
— The ₿itcoin Therapist (@TheBTCTherapist) November 14, 2023
She believes he may be holding the spot Bitcoin ETF hostage due to his interest in becoming Treasury Secretary 🤯 pic.twitter.com/QB76t6Vmmd
Gensler would have had cause for frustration when fake news of a new XRP ETF from BlackRock spiked the market, echoing the earlier false announcement from Cointelegraph that a BTC ETF had been approved.
OKX joins Coinbase, Consensys, Kraken, and other major blockchain companies in launching its own L2 platform.
What's New In The SKALEVERSE?
Check out the new SKALE portal, which makes onboarding to the ecosystem super-easy thanks to a bunch of features including integrated bridge with Metaport, access chain endpoints and RPC!
That's all for this week!
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