Crypto roundup: Bitcoin still lagging while US-dollar inflation hits 40-year high
Coinhead
Coinhead
As US-dollar inflation reaches a 40-year-level high, Bitcoin is lagging under US$48k for the moment. Largely seen as a hedge against that narrative… shouldn’t BTC be pumping today?
Maybe, but not necessarily. Actually, after the greenback inflation figure (6.8%) did the news rounds earlier, Bitcoin (BTC) surged to a daily high just above US$50k.
Inflation is at 6.8%, which means that a very large portion of US pension funds have achieved a negative real rate of return on their investment portfolio over the last 12 months.
Do not count on your pension for retirement. Educate yourself on investing.
— Pomp 🌪 (@APompliano) December 10, 2021
Annnnd then it tanked again… well, back down to its current price of about US$47,500. This is a level BTC has dropped to, and held, a number of times in the past two days or so. Can it/will it hold there as support again? We’ll have an answer to that, most likely, by the time we hit “publish” on this quick roundup.
If the DXY (US dollar index) drops in any significant way off the back of the inflation-spike news, then perhaps Bitcoin will do its equal-and-opposite reactionary thing… to the upside.
At the time of writing, though, the entire crypto market cap continues its daily slide – down another 2.6 per cent since this time yesterday and sitting around US$2.34 trillion, give or take a few hundred million.
For crypto investors (especially overexposed ones), it might seem like a high-stakes game where everything’s in the balance right now.
Bitcoin and crypto investing is a bit like an Ashes cricket Test, though, and should probably be viewed as a game of extreme patience, amid bursts of narrative-shifting volatility. (Not a cricket fan? Swap the analogy for virtually any other non-sprint-based sport.)
Let’s get the latest thoughts on the OG crypto and market-mover in chief (BTC) from some of Crypto Twitter’s prominent analysts and traders…
Dutchman Michaël van de Poppe is sticking with his thesis of sideways chop for the rest of 2021, grinding up into early 2022 with some potential serious upside towards the middle of the year.
Still expecting this for #Bitcoin. pic.twitter.com/PjMulTTFLL
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) December 10, 2021
It’s the same “lengthening cycles, diminishing returns” kind of outlook that the data analyst and YouTuber Benjamin Cowen regularly propogates.
PlanB, the creator of the Bitcoin Stock to Flow chart (which models a target of at least US$100k by the end of 2021), meanwhile is largely sticking to his bullish guns and is certainly not entertaining the idea that US$69k was the top of this cycle.
https://twitter.com/naiiveclub/status/1469252432366477313
As for Dr. Jeff Ross, Bitcoin analyst and CEO of Vailshire Capital Management, it’s a zoom-out kinda day. And a BTC fit to something known as Metcalfe’s Law, which is a user-and-network-growth model. He explains it well in this tweet…
What I'm watching…
Metcalfe's Law in action?
The value of network is proportional to the square of the number of users in the network.
Constant growth in the #Bitcoin network since March 2018 low. The price of bitcoin has generally followed this trend, with fits and starts. pic.twitter.com/LwmJhIWIgS
— Dr. Jeff Ross (Pleb counselor) (@VailshireCap) December 10, 2021
Just quickly then before we wrap things up for the week, let’s scout up and down the crypto market-cap lists for strong movers in either direction… (And we’re not getting out of bed for anything less than double-digit gains or losses for this wrap-up.)
At press time, some notable daily gainers include: lending-platform Celsius Network (CEL) +11.4%; internet of things protocol IoTeX (IOTX) +10.7%; play-to-earn NFT trading-card game Gods Unchained (GODS) +40%; and in-game NFT-enabling smart-contract platform Altura (ALU) +14%.
gm, $GODS is now available on @coinbase ☀️https://t.co/e5gviCWttQ
— Gods Unchained (@GodsUnchained) December 10, 2021
No time for losers? There are plenty of those on a 24-hour timeframe right now, so yep, here are some that stand out, including: gaming projects Chain Games (CHAIN) -20%, and Exeedme (XED) -15.2%; as well as the highly promising, big-brained DeFi liquidity protocol Tokemak (TOKE) -15%, who we interviewed not so long ago.
Have a good weekend. Oh wait, one more thing to check. Is Bitcoin (BTC) holding that US$47.5k support level at press time? Hmm, it’s hanging on… by a thread.
The next level of BTC support to hope for below that looks to be around US$46.5k.