EQUOS — Morning Update — November 18th
While traditional markets stagnate, BTC and the crypto space are on a roll.
The S&P was flat yesterday, on the session. There is only so much drive good news can provide. Interestingly enough, the Nasdaq continued its slow descent — a rare sight in a year where tech has so far been the belle of the ball. The Russell 2000 rose along with treasuries, and the 10-year yield was pushed back below 0.9%. Gold has met us with with half-hearted attempts to get back up, but continues to fail.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is up another 6.3%. I say another because in the previous session we were already up over 5%. Since January 1st, we’re up about 155% — let that sink in. Furthermore, that rally shows no signs of slowing. We had an intraday high of $17,855 and are now closing at $17,660. There is virtually no resistance ahead on the short-term, with an expectation of the fatidic “20K”.
The move prompted a series of tweets from a personal idol, Ray Dalio. In a post where he advocates for thoughtful disagreement, someone raised the question of BTC, and Ray started with “I might be missing something about Bitcoin so I’d love to be corrected.” He then outlined his points as to why so far it had seemed BTC might not be the right fit for an effective currency.
Alts also joined the party. Although they weren’t on par with BTC, they still somewhat outperformed themselves. In USD terms, the move up was decisive and clear.
ETH is up about 4.3%, breaching slightly above $480. LINK followed. Other proof-of-stake coins did well, rising about 4%-6% — I’m thinking of ADA, XMR, XLM, and DOT. Other ones such as DASH, BCH, XTZ, and LTC rose, albeit around only 2%-4%. It’s interesting to see a concept that was discussed previously: Crypto traders seem to follow small cap companies (Russell) as an indicator of risk in more volatile coins (alts), so that, when the former outperforms, the latter rises.
For the moment, though, BTC Dominance is back at 66% and shows little sign of stopping. With this rally feeling a lot more institutional and with institutions definitely focusing on the more liquid BTC, it’s unsurprising that alts are struggling to catch up, unless maybe the rise generates the usual global FOMO and people begin buying affordable ‘crypto’ — whatever that is.
