EDITOR'S COMMENT.

It was an up and down week for crypto markets punctuated by sharp periods of sell-offs and eventual recoveries, with most of the market ending the trading period with marginal gains or losses.

Crypto benchmark BTC ended the week up ~1%, while No.2 and No.3 digital assets by market cap XRP and ETH, ended the week down ~1% and ~1% respectively. The overall market cap for crypto rose ~1.5% and there were strong gains for a few mid-cap, top 50 alts with REP and LINK rising 115% and 24% each.

News in the last week was dominated by stories of flawed infrastructure accenting the risks of interacting and operating still nascent blockchain technology.

On the 16th of January, core Ethereum devs announced that the much anticipated Constantinople hard fork would have to be delayed until late February after the discovery a security flaw that would have permitted malicious actors to steal individual user funds. The delay effectively killed the speculative momentum that had been building for ETH since late December.

New Zealand-based crypto exchange Cryptopia suffered a major hack on the 14th of January resulting in losses of over $3 million. The incident is now under local police investigation and Cryptopia remains offline a week later.

Following a period of decreased volatility in crypto markets between July and October of last year, volatility returned sharply to crypto markets towards November and despite leveling off a little, has remained high entering 2019.

(Bitcoin Volatility)BVOL Index = Standard deviation(Natural log(LN)(P1/P0), Ln(P2/P1), ..., Ln(P30/P29)) *Square Root(365).

P=30 day Moving Average of BTC Price.

THIS WEEK'S CRYPTO CALENDAR.

Important events to watch in the week ahead.

20th January- Ontology(ONG) AMA on Telegram

CEO of leading digital identity storage blockchain Ontology, Jun Li,  will host an ‘Ask Me Anything’ on Telegram along with the team from TOP network (a DAG based platform, designed to host cloud communication services such as messaging, voice and video). Ontology is one of the market’s leading NEO based tokens and has created speculative value based on a number of partnerships with high value enterprises to build private blockchain solutions.

21st-22nd January- Binance conference

On Monday and Tuesday the world's most voluminous exchange and one of crypto’s most profitable infrastructure projects, Binance, hosts its first annual conference. Speakers at the event include popular CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ), Kyle Samani of Multicoin Capital and Yonni Assia - CEO of Etoro. It promises to be a big year for Binance with new fiat onramp options now available and the beta for a decentralized exchange (DEX) solution due to launch later in 2019. The price of underlying token BNB has risen ~14% in anticipation of the event.

25th January- Bitcoin CME futures expiry

The current round of CME Bitcoin Futures trading has its final trading day on Friday. This will be the last chance for relevant futures contracts to be traded or closed out, and post this date outstanding contracts need to settled by cash as per original specifications. The days surrounding futures expiration are always prone to unusual price activity with scenarios like short squeezing, tending to exaggerate price movements.

MARCAP REPORT.

While the price of most large-cap crypto bounced around last week, Tronix (TRX) stood out, sustaining positive price momentum.

Buying pressure for TRX was buffered by announcements made at the recently concluded niTron summit, which focused on emerging tech built within the TRON blockchain. Announcements included an approximate release date for the hyped Bittorrent Speed Dapp, which leverages the existing and popular Bittorrent network.

INFOGRAPHIC.

BLX REPORT.

Bitcoin traders in recent weeks are getting used to trading around the ‘Bart Simpson’ pattern with profits available for traders shrewd enough to take advantage of the short, sharp periods of selling and buying that accent BTC markets.

Bitcoin’s hash rate continues to rise upwards indicating that recent downward difficulty adjustments have had their intended effects and there remains strong interest in mining the Bitcoin network.

PRICE ANALYSIS.

XRP Price Analysis - Technical indicators are bearish

Technicals on the XRP/USD pair are strongly bearish after a failed bullish reversal attempt throughout November. The Litmus tests for trend reversal include price position relative to both the 200EMA and the Cloud on the daily timeframe.

Disclaimer: This newsletter has been designed for informational and educational purposes only. Readers are advised to conduct their own independent research into individual assets before making a purchase decision.