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Price predictions 7/14: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 7/7: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 6/30: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 6/27: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, BCH, LINK — Price predictions 6/25: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, BCH, SUI — Price predictions 6/23: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 6/20: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, BCH, SUI — Price predictions 6/18: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, SUI, BCH — Price predictions 6/16: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 6/13: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, SUI, LINK — Price predictions 6/11: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, SUI, LINK — Price predictions 6/9: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 6/6: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE, SUI, LINK — Price predictions 6/4: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, HYPE, LINK — Price predictions 6/2: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 5/30: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, HYPE, LINK — Price predictions 5/28: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, HYPE, LINK — Price predictions 5/26: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, HYPE — Price predictions 5/23: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, HYPE, LINK — Price predictions 5/21: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, LINK, AVAX — Price predictions 5/19: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI — Price predictions 5/16: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, LINK, AVAX — Price predictions 5/14: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, LINK, AVAX — Price predictions 5/12: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI — Price predictions 5/9: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, LINK, AVAX — Price predictions 5/7: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, LINK, AVAX — Price predictions 5/5: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI — Price predictions 5/2: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, LINK, AVAX — Price predictions 4/30: BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI, LINK, AVAX — Price predictions 4/28: SPX, DXY, BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, ADA, SUI
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THE VULTURE IS A PATIENT BIRD
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BEQUANT Crypto&Coffee

As per the CFTC, virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, have been determined to be commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA). However, unlike many other commodity products that are traded on various exchanges, the futures curve and market expectations are not subject to the same factors. Specifically, the slope of the futures curve can change for one of three reasons: a change in interest rates; a change in physical storage costs; or a change in the market’s perception of short-term scarcity. For Bitcoin, the aforementioned factors are either not applicable or known and cannot be altered without resulting in a contentious hard fork.

This alone makes Bitcoin behave like no other commodity out there, thereby solidifying its growing appeal as a diversifier and non-correlated asset. In addition to that, unlike WTI, there is little in the way of carry or storage costs and as such, at least on paper, crypto may be the ideal commodity for proving Keynes’ long-standing theory that the natural state of commodity markets is backwardation. However, even that isn’t the case and instead, Bitcoin futures curve largely trades in contango.

Investor allocation towards alternative assets has grown since the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent monetary policy easing actions by global central banks, largely due to the hunt for yield trade. With Bitcoin, not only there is now an asset class that is non-correlated to traditional assets but one where performance can be extracted not only from trading it, but also from mining. On that note, it was recently reported that Greenidge Generation, an upstate New York power plant that's using proprietary facilities to mine bitcoin (BTC), has sold up to 30% of its computing power to institutional buyers, consisting of hedge funds and family offices. The more traditional route into the market is through trading on various exchanges and here, it was reported last week that the legendary Renaissance Technologies’ flagship hedge fund Medallion has dipped its toes into the world of crypto trading. 

As per the regulatory filing, the hedge fund group disclosed that Medallion — a highly successful fund only open to Renaissance’s own employees — was exploring the crypto market, with the trading limited to cash-settled bitcoin futures traded on the CME. The firm also noted that “the underlying commodity for these futures transactions, bitcoin, is a relatively new and highly speculative asset…extremely volatile, and investment results may vary substantially over time.” Supporting to growing interest in the market is the latest data from CME, which highlighted that its products reached all-time highs in terms of unique accounts last month.

Going back to the market price action and having spent much of the day in the doldrums, Bitcoin staged an impressive rebound and reclaimed the key $7,000 level. Alongside that, Ethereum (ETH) edged ever so closer to $200 level.  It is now less than 20 days before the much-anticipated Bitcoin (BTC) block reward halving and yet the price is yet to suggest that there is a big event coming up. In traditional markets, the price action heading into a risk event usually serves as a good barometer for general market expectations ie consensus estimate. However for Bitcoin, this does not seem to be the case, there is no consensus so to speak. The network remains in “good shape”, citing up trending hashrate and mining difficulty, even as the underlying valuation is yet to suggest this. Interestingly, year-to-date (YTD) returns are just as puzzling. For example, Ethereum is up 39% YTD and up 34% month-to-date (MTD), while Bitcoin is down 1.4% YTD. Looking at the top-10 assets by market capitalisation, only XRP fared worse, down 2.6% YTD.

Despite being the third largest asset by market capitalisation, XRP is no stranger to drama. However, the tide may be shifting. Recently, it was reported that Kava Labs has selected Chainlink as the official oracle provider powering USDX and as the official default provider serving all Defi projects built on KAVA. This integration allows all cosmos chains to use Chainlink price data. For those that are new to the project, Kava has built the first cross-blockchain and multi-asset collateralized debt position (CDP) product, wherein users can collateralize a multitude of crypto assets (including BTC, XRP, BNB and ATOM to name a few) in exchange for a loan in the form of Kava’s stablecoin USDX. Interestingly, Ripple’s venture initiative Xpring has also invested in Kava.

More recently, Ripple's development arm Xpring has come up with a new proposal to add an "opt-in" privacy feature to the XRP Ledger. It's now up to the community to review the proposal via GitHub. The head of the Xpring developer community, explains that XRP can be made anonymous with the help of 'blinded tags' that would obfuscate the source and destination tags from anyone apart from the originator and the source of a specific transaction. While Ethereum may have the first to market advantage when it comes to DeFi, together with various experimentations to add anonymity, but the aforementioned developments that have been recently achieved by Ripple are unlikely to sit well with Ethereum dev team.

For XRP, its biggest challenge is not the tech but its reputation and perception by the community. More than anything else it needs an image consultant or a reputational rehabilitator. Everybody is talking about Bitcoin topping its all time high in the wake of block reward halving, but it is not just Btc that has underperformed in the eyes of the market, for all its tech build out and global partnership announcements, XRP appears to be trading cheap.

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