Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin Holds $9k, Ethereum DeFi Gains Traction, Trump Talked BTC in 2018

Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits.

It’s been a relatively mild week for the Bitcoin market, much unlike previous ones. The cryptocurrency started the week around $9,300 and ended the week right around that level, with BTC changing hands between $8,900 and $9,550 for the past seven days.

Each attempt at breaking out of the short-term range has failed, with each rejection bringing BTC back to $9,300. With the funding rates of Bitcoin futures markets also trending towards 0.00%, the indecision of this nascent market has been accentuated even further.

Bitcoin price chart over the past week by TradingView.com

Yet a confluence of indicators and fundamental trends is suggesting that bulls will eventually take the upper hand over bears.

As reported by NewsBTC previously, the Puell Multiple — “calculated by dividing the daily issuance value of bitcoins (in USD) by the 365-day moving average of daily issuance value” — has reached a macro buy zone.

“The Bitcoin Puell Multiple has dropped back into the green ‘buy’ zone after almost three weeks. For investors with long-term time horizons these levels below the 0.5 line have historically marked excellent entry points into BTC,” Glassnode explained.

Image Courtesy of Glassnode

This signal appeared at the start of the rally from the ~$200 range to $20,000 in 2015, suggesting that a Bitcoin bull run will arrive in the coming weeks and months.

Other positive factors include an underlying bid seen on exchanges like Bitfinex, along with growing institutional adoption, as observed by crypto-focused social media data firm The TIE.

Bitcoin’s range trading comes as the S&P 500 and other financial markets have been largely stagnant. While the S&P 500 index is up 3% on the week, it is still down a handful of percentage points from the local highs due to uncertainties in the underlying economy.

Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin Fails at $10k, Ethereum Coins Explode, Coinbase Looks to Add 18 Altcoins

Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits

• Kraken CEO Expects Bitcoin to “Surpass” Gold: Kraken co-founder and early Bitcoin adopter Jesse Powell on June 16th made an appearance on Bloomberg to discuss his latest thoughts on cryptocurrency. He told viewers that with BTC’s chart consistently being “up and to the right” over the past decade, he thinks the asset may eventually “surpass gold as a store of value.” Powell’s optimism was seemingly related to his sentiment about Bitcoin’s 21 million coin supply cap, which differentiates it from traditional fiat money and other crypto assets. BTC surpassing gold would imply a market capitalization of around $10 trillion, or ~$500,000 per coin.

in #CASE you missed it @jespow CEO @krakenfx dropping 🔥on @business #BTC @danheld thanks for the heads up! pic.twitter.com/WwANnWR8KZ

— Matt (@MatthewRyanCase) June 16, 2020

• Trump Wanted to Go After Bitcoin In 2018: According to the Washington Examiner, which obtained an excerpt from an upcoming book titled “The Room Where It Happened,” President Trump told Treasury Secretary Mnuchin in 2018 to “go after Bitcoin.” The author of the controversial book, former national security advisor John Bolton, dated the quote to a conversation in May 2018. That would be a year prior to Trump’s anti-crypto tirade on Twitter and while the cryptocurrency market was still near its peak. The book’s release has been delayed due to a lawsuit from the Department of Justice.
• Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Challenges Halving Narrative: Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin this week challenged the decisive statement made by many Bitcoin bulls that block reward halvings boost BTC:

“The ‘halvings cause BTC price rises” theory is unfalsifiable: Was the peak before the halving? Then it ‘rose in anticipation of the halving’ During? ‘Because of the halving’ After? ‘Because of…’

• Ethereum DeFi Gains Strength on Public Release of COMP Token: What is believed to be one of crypto’s most viable use cases, decentralized finance (DeFi), this week gained even more steam with the public launch of the COMP cryptocurrency by Compound, an Ethereum-based DeFi protocol. The cryptocurrency is so valuable it now has a market capitalization in excess of $500 million, despite just launching publicly just days ago. Analysts expect DeFi to be a massive catalyst for the growth of the cryptocurrency industry, especially in terms of the price of Ethereum and related tokens.

Featured Image from Shutterstock
Price tags: 
Charts from TradingView.com
Crypto Tidbits: Bitcoin Holds $9k, Ethereum DeFi Gains Traction, Trump Talked BTC in 2018