Strengths
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the best performer for the week was Bera, rising 730.27%.
- Geoffrey Kendrick, Head of Digital Assets Research at Standard Chartered, on Wednesday predicted that Bitcoin could reach $500,000 before the end of Donald Trump’s presidential term. Kendrick attributes this forecast to two key factors: improved investor access to Bitcoin under the current administration and a gradual decline in volatility due to maturing market infrastructure, writes Bloomberg.
- Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said he’s supportive of stable coins because they are likely to propagate the dollar’s status as a reserve currency.
Weaknesses
- Of the cryptocurrencies tracked by CoinMarketCap, the worst performer for the week was WIF, down 42.09%.
- MicroStrategy said it didn’t buy any Bitcoin in the prior week, halting a string of 12 consecutive weekly purchases that began in late October. The company has raised funds through stock sales and debt offerings with hedge funds using convertible arbitrage strategies, according to Bloomberg.
- Bitcoin and other digital assets faced renewed selling pressure as trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies intensified, with the U.S. and China imposing fresh tariffs on each other. The renewed market turbulence erased gains from Monday’s relief rally, which came after a temporary agreement by the Trump administration to delay tariffs on Mexico and Canada by a month.
Opportunities
- Investors poured record sums into a leveraged ETF for Ether that had plummeted on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump’s initial tariff announcements, reports Bloomberg. The 2x Ether ETF, which uses futures contracts to deliver twice the token’s daily performance, recorded $246.5 million in net inflows on Tuesday, by far the largest single day since the funds’ inceptions.
- BlackRock is preparing to list an exchange traded product tied directly to Bitcoin in Europe, following on the success of its $58 billion U.S. ETF tracking the cryptocurrency. The fund will likely be domiciled in Switzerland according to people familiar with the plans who were not authorized to discuss the matter.
- Some members of a special unit of 50 lawyers and staff assigned to regulate cryptocurrency are being reassigned within the agency. The SEC is moving to scale back a unit of more than 50 lawyers and staff that had been dedicated to bringing crypto enforcement actions, according to Bloomberg
Threats
- Ethereum reached the consensus needed to increase the network’s gas limit with 50% of the validators signaling for this change to help improve the networks’ scalability, explains Bloomberg. The gas limit is a critical parameter that dictates the network’s transaction capacity.
- Donald Trump’s new cryptocurrency has sparked a flood of imitators leading to warnings that investors risk being duped. More than 700 copycat and spam coins have been sent to Trump digital wallet, according to Bloomberg.
- India’s federal budget seeks to tighten scrutiny of cryptocurrencies while denying any tax respite for trading the volatile asset class, writes Bloomberg. The increased scrutiny may impact investors who have not disclosed their crypto assets to tax authorities.
