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BEQUANT Crypto&Coffee

Having traded lower the previous day, Bitcoin and the rest of the market staged an impressive run yesterday, with Bitcoin climbing just shy of $14,000 level. The contango structure extended further, even in spite of the looming expiry this Friday and the open interest (OI) rose to $5.4bln. Yet again, Bitmex OI lagged and failed to make significant traction as market participants remain wary of the venue’s high profile spat with authorities. Interestingly, the latest wave of buying, notably by retail, comes in the wake of less than impressive performance by equity markets, so much so that Bitcoin’s short-term correlation with S&P 500 has now fallen to around 13% vs recent highs of 57%. In part, the bullish sentiment was driven by reports that JPMorgan’s JPM Coin went live. 

As per CNBC Tuesday, Takis Georgakopoulos, JPMorgan global head of wholesale payments, said a major tech firm will use the token to make global payments starting this week. It has also created a business unit with around 100 employees, Onyx to house related projects. In addition to that, The Block reported that JPMorgan is actively exploring digital asset custody, and is looking for help from crypto native firms. Furthermore, it was noted that the firm would enlist sub-custodians to offer the service, and has reached out to firms, including Fidelity Digital Assets and Paxos.

Elsewhere, CoinDesk reported citing a survey conducted by digital asset manager Grayscale Investments suggests investor interest in bitcoin is on the rise and the top cryptocurrency by market cap is well on its way toward mainstream adoption. Grayscale's "Bitcoin Investor Study" revealed more than half (55%) of U.S. investors who responded are interested in buying bitcoin (BTC) in 2020. Compared to the previous year, the results mark a "significant increase," the company said, with a rise of 19%. The data also showed the majority of bitcoin investors made allocations within the last 12 months, with 38% investing in the last four months, 26% five to six months prior, and 19% seven to 12 months ago. The strongest stated driver for bitcoin investments was the coronavirus pandemic, which spurred 63% of respondents into investing.

In other news, Ethereum development studio ConsenSys has been selected by Societe Generale's blockchain unit Forge to assist in digital euro experiments. Announcing the news on Wednesday, ConsenSys said it would provide technical expertise to Forge, mainly focusing on central bank digital currency (CBDC) "issuance and management, delivery versus payment, and cross-ledger interoperability."

Finally, despite the latest episode which rattled investor nerves in the DeFi ecosystem, the activity remained well supported and the total value locked recovered somewhat, with Uniswap total value locked rising further to $2.77bln. Of note, WBTC now sits comfortably in 3rd spot with total value locked at over $1.5bln. In total just over 147k Btc has now been locked on Ethereum, with the majority on wbtc.

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