Morning Update — January 26th — Macro and Crypto Markets
US-China relations seem to be hitting a low point as President Biden confirms his administration will hold a tough line on Beijing. On another negative note, we are approaching 100 million Coronavirus cases globally and many countries are still in full lockdown.
However, equities have not been affected, and rose today. The S&P and Nasdaq are also up. Treasuries were bought as well, but the dollar and gold stayed put.
In the crypto space, after BTC stayed in range for several days, bulls attempted to break through but, for now, failed. Yesterday’s intraday high is $34,880 (up a good 8%), but the session ended up closing flat at $32,440.
The quick move up spooked some of the altcoin holders. The BTC dominance seems to have retraced all of the previous session’s losses, meaning alts lost some footing.
After breaking past all-time highs, ETH is closing the day down 5% (versus USD and BTC), at $1,320. LINK, DOT and XTZ fell 4%. LTC and ADA closed 2% down. BCH and DASH followed BTC and ended up flat.
The fundamentals supporting BTC are as good as they have ever been, though.
One can look at the growing supply of stablecoins (understand ‘increasing dry powder to buy crypto’) as a bullish indicator.
Even more bullish, we received another wave of reports about institutions buying BTC:
- Rothschild Investment Corporation reported owning 30,454 shares of GBTC.
- Nasdaq-listed ‘Marathon Patent Group’ bought $150 million worth of Bitcoin as part of the company’s treasury reserves.
- The endowment funds of Harvard, Yale, Brown, and UMich are reported to have been investing in Bitcoin and blockchain projects throughout the past year.
In the long-run and in regards to further crypto adoption, this all looks very positive. Let’s see how it plays out in the short-term, though, as we are also seeing some large inflows to exchange, hinting at some selling pressure.
