21Shares, a major issuer of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products (ETP), is launching a new ETP tracking a mix of Bitcoin (BTC) and gold.
The Switzerland-based firm on Wednesday announced the launch of the 21Shares ByteTree BOLD ETP (BOLD), a new product aiming to provide inflation protection by tracking an index providing risk-adjusted exposure to both BTC and gold.
Listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange, the new hybrid ETP is subject to monthly rebalances according to the inverse historic volatility of each asset. At launch, BOLD comprises 18.5% of BTC and 81.5% of gold.
The new ETP was developed in collaboration with the United Kingdom-based alternative investment provider, ByteTree Asset Management. The product is positioned as the world’s first combined BTC and gold ETP.
“Gold has historically delivered portfolio protection in inflationary environments while Bitcoin is the digital equivalent of gold,” ByteTree CEO Charlie Erith said, adding:
“In a time of rising structural inflation and heightened geopolitical risk, we believe this can act as an important risk and return diversifier in a balanced portfolio.”
21Shares co-founder and CEO Hany Rashwan pointed out that many people in the crypto community view BTC as a digital alternative to gold, stating:
“This hybrid product combines the traditional value of gold with the promising return rates of bitcoin, which is considered by many as the new gold.”
With the new ETP, 21Shares has reached a major milestone as BOLD is the 30th digital asset ETP launched by the firm. Formerly known as Amun, 21Shares is one of the world’s largest crypto ETP providers, listing the world’s first multi crypto ETP on the SIX Swiss Exchange in November 2018.
Earlier in April, 21Shares launched a sandbox ETP to offer crypto investors exposure to the metaverse. The new metaverse-focused ETP tracks the performance of SAND, the native token of community-driven gaming platform The Sandbox.
21Shares is also among the companies that are expected to launch Australia’s first Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETF) soon. According to a recent update from Cboe Australia, the ETFs will not commence trading on Thursday as previously scheduled due to additional checks.
“Well, this price action on Bitcoin isn’t shouting too much for upside, at this point. Tricky as it’s giving back every upwards push again,” Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe added.
As throughout the week, the U.S. dollar showed no signs of aborting its bull run, adding pressure to crypto as U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) challenged multi-decade highs set in March 2020.
“The DXY is reaching higher than my base case, due to policymaker decisions outside of my base case,” Economist Lyn Alden wrote in a Twitter thread about the phenomenon.
“Therefore, we need to be aware of the market issues that occur when this happens. It’s no milkshake (eg US increases rates and gets equity buy-in) but rather, all assets suffer.”
U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) 1-week candle chart. Source: TradingView
TradFi and crypto feel the fear
Nerves among crypto and traditional traders alike were thus plain to see, reflected in plummeting market sentiment.
The Crypto Fear & Greed Index reached its lowest level since April 12, which at 21/100 represented “extreme fear” as the guiding market mood.
Crypto Fear & Greed Index (screenshot). Source: Alternative.me
Its traditional market counterpart, the Fear & Greed Index, until recently lagging crypto in “neutral” territory, also fell into line, recording 27/100 or “fear” on Wednesday.
Fear & Greed Index (screenshot). Source: CNN
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Jefferies is the largest independent full-service investment banking firm headquartered in the U.S. and is the seventh largest investment bank in the world by revenue, according to Dealogic.
The exchange will be led by co-founder and CEO Brandon Mulvihill, who previously manned the helm of Jefferies foreign exchange prime brokerage business. The other co-founder of the exchange is CCO Anthony Mazzarese, a long-time business partner of Mulvihill. They will also be joined by technologist Vlad Rysin, the former chief technology officer of Euronext FX, a trading services company.
The new exchange will focus on offering improved technology that speeds up cryptocurrency trading and reduces latency to the standards expected in traditional FX or equities by institutional investors. Mazzarese says this is often lacking in retail focused exchanges:
“There seems to be a notion that latency doesn’t matter when it comes to trading crypto. We disagree.”
“We polled our network of institutional relationships globally and one of the biggest and most common requirements was reliable 24/7 technology with the same service levels and customization features they are accustomed to in other markets such as FX or equities. This exactly what Crossover Markets will provide.”
Mulvihill said that while the vast majority of traditional institutional investors have not yet entered into the crypto space, this is rapidly changing, and he stressed the need for exchanges to advance technology in line with market maturity.
On Tuesday, global crypto exchange Bitstamp released a survey report which found that the majority of the 28,615 institutional and retail investors survey respondents believe crypto will overtake traditional investment vehicles within a decade. As much as 80% of institutional respondents answered in the affirmative.
Though the two executives left Jefferies in March to set up this new exchange, Jefferies itself has been expanding its crypto services business under the leadership of Alexander Yavorsky, the firm’s managing director of Financial Institutions Group (FIG) Investment Banking. Yavorsky said the company is exploring crypto services in trading, prime brokerage, and wealth management.
Analyzing Ether’s (ETH) current price chart paints a bearish picture, which is largely justified by the 11% drop over the past month, but other traditional finance assets faced more extreme price corrections in the same period. The Invesco China Technology ETF (CQQ) is down 31% and the Russell 2000 declined by 8%.
Ether price at FTX, in USD. Source: TradingView
Currently, traders fear that losing the descending channel support at $2,850 could lead to a stronger price downturn, but this largely depends on how derivatives traders are positioned along with the Ethereum network’s on-chain metrics.
According to Defi Llama, the Ethereum network’s total value locked (TVL) flattened in the last 30 days at 27 million Ether. TVL measures the number of coins deposited on smart contracts, including decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces, gaming and high-risk applications.
The Ethereum network’s average transaction fee increased to $13 after bottoming at $11.50 on April 20 but one should analyze whether this reflects decreased use of decentralized applications (DApps) or merely if it is users benefiting from layer-2 scaling solutions.
Ether’s futures premium tilts toward bears
Traders use Ether futures market data to understand how professional traders are positioned, but unlike the standard perpetual futures, the quarterly contracts are whales and market makers’ preferred instruments because they can avoid the fluctuating funding rate.
The basis indicator measures the difference between longer-term futures contracts and the current spot market levels. In neutral markets, the Ether futures annualized premium should run between 5% to 12% to compensate traders for “locking in” the money until the contract expiry.
The current 2% Ether futures basis clearly shows the lack of demand for leverage buyers. Although not precisely a backwardation (negative premium), an annualized futures premium below 5% is usually deemed bearish.
This data tells us that pro traders have been neutral-to-bearish in the past couple of months but to exclude externalities that might have influenced derivatives data, one should analyze the Ethereum network on-chain data. For example, monitoring the network use tells us whether actual use cases support the demand for Ether.
On-chain metrics are sluggish
Measuring the number of active addresses on the network provides a quick and reliable indicator of effective use. Of course, this metric could be misguided by the increasing adoption of layer-2 solutions, but it works as a starting point.
7-day average of active addresses on Ethereum. Source: CoinMetrics
The current 584,477 daily active addresses average is a 4% decrease from 30 days ago and nowhere near the 675,117 seen in November 2021. Thus, data shows that Ether token transactions are not showing signs of growth, at least on the primary layer.
Traders should rely on DApp usage indicators, but avoid exclusive focus on the TVL because that metric is heavily concentrated on DeFi applications. Gauging the number of active addresses provides a broader view.
Ethereum DApps active addresses have flatlined over the past 30 days. Overall, the data is slightly disappointing, considering competing chains such as Solana (SOL) saw a 34% active addresses increase.
Unless there’s decent growth in Ether transactions and DApp usage, the $2,850 descending support channel resistance might not hold, triggering a deeper short-term price correction.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Global crypto exchange Bitstamp released its Crypto Pulse survey on Tuesday and concluded that both institutional and retail investors believe that crypto will overtake many traditional investment vehicles within a decade — specifically 8 out of 10, or 80%, of institutional respondents and 54% of retail investors.
The survey also polled opinions on whether crypto will see mainstream adoption within the next 10 years. With slightly higher results, 88% of institutional respondents and 75% of retail investors responded affirmatively. This overall bullish attitude came from 28,563 respondents, including 5,450 senior institutional investment strategy decision makers and 23,113 retail investors, from 23 countries.
Crypto powers towards universal adoption. What’s next?
In the first edition of our Crypto Pulse report, you’ll find the answers from 28,615 institutional and retail consumer investors!
Julian Sawyer, CEO of Bitstamp, said in a statement that cryptocurrency is now at the forefront of mainstream investing. She added:
“We’ve seen interest propel in the years since the pandemic, and crypto is now part of the wider conversation in global macro-economic matters. Our survey shows something we have advocated over a long time: talking about survival of digital assets is firmly over — the question is now about evolution.”
When it came to trusting in crypto as an asset class, 71% of investment professionals and 65% of everyday investors stated that in crypto they trust. When compared to trust in property ownership, shares and stocks, however, crypto is trusted less. For retail respondents, 67% believe crypto is a trustworthy investment, while 11% said that crypto was untrustworthy. And as for decentralized finance, or DeFi, investment vehicles like stablecoins and NFTs, levels of trust went above 60% across retail and institutional investors.
Bitstamp suggested that any hesitation may stem from the lack of regulation around crypto. It added that trust at a global level in crypto is primarily driven by developing countries and unstable economies, where trust in the traditional financial system is low. In the U.S., President Joe Biden signed an executive order that addresses a regulatory framework for digital assets in March.
Recently, Bitstamp increased its compliance efforts by requesting its users to provide more data info like nationality, place of birth, tax residency and the source of wealth.
Cointelegraph Research fundamentally evaluates Terra in its 50-page report to provide an in-depth analysis of its recent updates, including Columbus-5, the Bitcoin (BTC) acquisition and others.
Decentralized algorithmic stablecoins, blockchain integration in real-world payments and 20% APYs on decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols — what is all of this, and is it really doing this? The team of experienced crypto analysts from the Big Four and the best universities worldwide dives deep into the blockchain’s ecosystem, community and underlying technology, assessing the potential regulatory, market and technological risks.
Terra is a proof-of-stake blockchain ecosystem that aims to introduce cryptocurrencies as a means of payment to a broad audience. The team has successfully integrated the dual token model, where the minting and burning of the LUNA token control the supply and price of Terra’s stablecoins, including Terra USD (UST), TerraGBP, TerraKRW, TerraEUR and the International Monetary Fund’s TerraSDR.
Moreover, the fluctuations in mining rewards are minimized through transaction fees and LUNA’s burn rate variations. Notably, the rewards are programmed to increase as the blockchain’s ecosystem grows.
Simultaneously, multiple developers are working on innovative decentralized applications (DApp) on top of the Terra blockchain, including Mars Protocol, Anchor and Chai. Numerous companies, such as Kado, have established the payment infrastructure. There are some nonfungible token (NFT) market participants, too, where Levana, Talis and Knowhere are aiming to create a thriving ecosystem. Simultaneously, TFM, a DeFi and NFT aggregator on Terra, aims to unite the whole Terra ecosystem and become the ultimate go-to place for newcomers.
Read the full report on Terra to find out how the blockchain network has developed over the past year.
However, the questions rarely raised by the crypto influencers are the decentralization and regulation issues. Will Terra sustain rapid development with only 130 validators? What would happen if UST, the most abundant Terra stablecoin, was subject to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory measures? Finally, if one of the most popular DApps, the Anchor lending protocol, had crashed at the end of January 2022, how would the continuing development of Terra have been perceived?
At the time of writing, volatility was in evidence as bulls and bears tussled for $40,000, a level which had been beaten with April 25’s uptick.
United States equities contributed to the return of sell-side pressure, with the Nasdaq 100 promptly losing 1.5% on the open and the S&P 500 trading down nearly 1%.
For popular trader Crypto Ed, the odds were on for a trip to $39,500 before another relief bounce took the market higher, potentially towards $42,800.
A similar angle came from fellow analyst and trader Rekt Capital, who spied underlying relative strength index (RSI) support as grounds to expect bullish continuation after a possible dip.
“BTC may be dipping now but the red diagonal on the RSI suggests that this current rally isn’t over,” he tweeted alongside a chart showing the setup.
“$BTC could dip to as low as the red area but should be able to enjoy trend continuation afterwards upon successful retest.”
BTC/USD annotated chart with RSI. Source: Rekt Capital/ Twitter
On altcoins, it was Dogecoin (DOGE) once again leading the pack, with its latest gains propelling it back into the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Famous as his pet crypto asset, DOGE had profited from Tesla CEO Elon Musk closing a deal to buy Twitter, and DOGE/USD was up 11% in 24 hours at the time of writing.
Also performing well was Terra’s LUNA token, while largest altcoin Ether (ETH) copied Bitcoin in failing to hold major support, this time at $3,000.
On monthly timeframes, however, ETH/USD was still holding up, Rekt Capital argued, despite the low-timeframe weakness.
$ETH is positioning itself for a bullish Monthly Close
Still holding the key black ~$3000 support well#ETH performed a downside wick to ~$2800 recently even though it could’ve wicked to as low as ~$2600 and still maintain its macro uptrend#Crypto#Ethereumpic.twitter.com/xf1Vhsu3L4
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
America’s housing market may soon be facing its next bubble as home prices across the country continue to be fueled by demand, speculation and lavish spending that could result in a collapse. Moreover, many homeowners are opting to stay put due to climbing mortgage rates, creating a housing shortage.
Data from the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, found that 92% of homeowners think their current home is affordable. Yet, findings further show that 69% of the general population, consisting of both homeowners and renters, believe it’s becoming too difficult to find affordable housing.
Web3 and the real-estate market
While the fate of the United States housing market remains unclear, the rise of Web3 business models based around nonfungible tokens (NFTs), blockchain technology and cryptocurrency aim to solve many of the problems currently plaguing America’s trillion-dollar real estate market.
Jerry Chu, CEO of tokenization platform Lofty AI, told Cointelegraph that although real estate is one of the best asset classes for wealth creation across the globe, most people can’t access it due to three main reasons:
“Real estate, especially today, is expensive. Even if someone could get a mortgage, many times a down payment requires too much cash. The real estate process is also frustrating, as mortgages need to be approved and a title escrow process could take up to 60 days. Finally, there isn’t much liquidity in real estate, therefore sellers will likely lose money if they wish to quickly liquidate.”
In order to make real estate attainable for the masses, Chu decided to create a platform that could fractionalize properties. Known as Lofty AI, Chu explained that the platform is built on the Algorand blockchain and consists of various turnkey rental properties that multiple investors can fractionally purchase for as little as $50. “You can think of every property as its own mini blockchain on the Algorand network. Assets, or unique tokens, are created for every property listed. The token supply is different depending on how expensive the properties are,” said Chu.
While the concept of tokenizing real estate has become rather common — for instance, Cointelegraph research recently found that thereal estate sector makes up 89% of all traded security tokens — Chu pointed out that Lofty is an active investing platform. “Similar platforms invest in real estate and flip properties to customers, but we allow investors to manage these properties and continually earn rewards and income.”
A property featured on Lofty AI. Source: Lofty AI
Elaborating on this, Chu explained that Lofty is based on a co-ownership model where the deeds for each property listed on the marketplace are held and owned by a limited liability company, or LLC. When investors purchase tokens, they immediately become a member of that entity, meaning they own a percentage of that business.
Like other decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, Lofty has a governance system that allows token holders to vote on how to manage the properties they own. “Token holders need to reach a supermajority vote of 60% for decisions to be acted upon. The winning vote is then sent to the property manager to carry out. These decisions could include maintenance, rent changes, eviction decisions and more.”
Chu added that investors can also earn portions of rental income generated from tenants, which can either be withdrawn to a bank account or donated to Mercy Housing, an affordable housing organization. “Most Lofty users care about the appreciation of their tokens on the properties they buy into, and, therefore, donate their earned income to affordable housing programs,” Chu mentioned.
While this may be, Chu emphasized that the goal behind Lofty is to make real estate investing more accessible simply. “This seems to be the case, as the platform launched last year and already has close to 4,000 users,” he said. Takahito Torimoto, a solutions architect and Lofty user, further told Cointelegraph that he has been a real estate investor for a few years, but Lofty has been an ideal solution due to the platform’s liquidity and returns. “There are no fees for users, and given the current real estate market, Lofty appears much better for a very big part of my ‘early retirement’ strategy,” he remarked.
In addition to Lofty, mortgage lender LoanSnap launched a mortgage-backed stablecoin on their Bacon Protocol at the end of last year. Karl Jacob, CEO of LoanSnap and co-founder of Bacon Protocol, told Cointelegraph that while a mortgage-backed token solves many issues associated with stablecoins, these digital assets also benefit current homeowners and buyers.
Technically speaking, LoanSnap has minted NFTs tied to individual mortgage liens, which are property ownership rights that collateralize mortgage loans. Those NFTs are then used to back LoanSnap’s stablecoin known as the “bHome token.” Jacob explained that this system is beneficial for a number of reasons:
“Mortgage-backed stablecoins are advantageous to homeowners and buyers because speed is everything in a real-estate transaction. This process works quickly since it leverages the Ethereum blockchain. You can see a loan getting closed and funded in a matter of 24-hours or less, depending on state compliance.”
In other words, wrapping an NFT around a mortgage lien and putting that asset on a blockchain network allows anyone access to those records. “We provide the minimal amount of data, so individuals can only see the address of a property, the lien size and property value,” said Jacob.
Jacob claimed that the bHome stablecoin also opens up access to the U.S. housing market. “Investors that buy into the bHome token are gaining exposure to the housing market without having to own a home. This is simply a pool of mortgages across the country that offers a great way to participate without the costs associated with homeownership.” While the platform is fairly new, Jacob shared that about 30 mortgages on LoanSnap are being used for its stablecoin pool, noting that the platform has lent out over $7 million against its $42 million home value on the platform.
Some U.S. real estate properties have also recently been sold as NFTs, a concept that seems to be attracting Generation-Z homebuyers. This is important, as data shows that Gen Z’s only made up 2% of all home sales in 2020. Natalia Karayaneva, CEO and co-founder of Propy — a blockchain-based real estate platform — told Cointelegraph that Proppy hasrecently sold three NFT properties: one in Kyiv and two in Florida. “We are the first platform to sell real estate as NFTs, which has resulted in a number of benefits for first-time buyers and sellers,” said Karayaneva.
Tampa home that recently sold as an NFT on Propy. Source: Propy
On a technical level, Karayaneva explained that Propy is able to do this by selling tokenized LLC properties. The purchase records for each property live on the Ethereum blockchain. Once a property sells, the ownership rights are transferred as an NFT to the homebuyer’s wallet address. Karayaneva elaborated:
“The most recent NFT property that sold in Tampa was purchased using the USD Coin stablecoin. Bidding happened in real-time and ownership was transferred in 15 minutes upon closing the sale, which simplifies and speeds up the entire traditional home buying process. This is important because the U.S. housing market is so competitive today that people don’t have time to wait. NFT properties are also fully transparent, so prospective buyers can make informed decisions by seeing any appraisals, contingencies and anything else up front.”
Given the transparency and fast-paced nature of NFT home sales, Karayaneva mentioned that the concept is particularly appealing to the younger generation. “The two properties we sold in Florida attracted many Gen Z’s since you can now buy a house with the click of a button,” she said. Karayaneva added that older clients have expressed interest regarding how secure this process is since everything is recorded on an immutable blockchain ledger.
Giving homeowners access to their data with NFTs
Blockchain Home Registry (BHR) is yet another Web3 project using NFTs to represent homeownership. BHR is a DeFi platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows homeowners to claim a verified NFT of their property, giving them access to a permanent, transferrable historical record of their home. James Rogers, CEO of Torii Homes — a real estate technology company that developed BHR — told Cointelegraph:
“While people today own their homes, they don’t own the data associated with it. For example, a title company often knows more about an owner’s home history than they do.There is an opportunity for the entire real estate industry to collaborate with homeowners to make sure individuals own the data associated with their homes.”
Rogers explained that BHR allows homeowners to claim their home as a verified NFT upon completion of a thorough Know Your Customer (KYC) process. Once verified, homeowners’ NFTs are placed on the BHR platform, which then allows for organizations across the real estate industry to build services by consuming data from the platform. This allows both organizations and homeowners the ability to monetize their data.
Blockchain Home Registry dashboard example. Source: Torri Homes
Zach Gorman, co-founder of Torri Homes, told Cointelegraph that homeowners are able to see all their home documents in a dashboard on the BHR platform. “Homeowners can add and maintain their records over time and can then choose to monetize that data by letting other organizations access it.” For example, Gorman explained that an insurance company could more efficiently quote policies using data about homes listed on BHR:
“At the same time, the data added would inform homeowners about risks such as fire or flood that they could face. And, when another insurance company builds an integration on top of the data added, they would compensate the first company for their data. Even if the homeowner chooses to work with the latter company, the former still wins, as well.”
Gorman added that although BHR just launched on April 26, a number of homeowners and service providers have expressed interest in using the platform. “The power of data has never been put on the table before for homeowners, so this is a huge opportunity to democratize that and put power back into homeowners’ hands.”
Challenges may hamper adoption
While Web3 solutions may help solve many of the challenges currently facing homeowners and buyers, it remains questionable as to how the mainstream will react to these innovations.
For instance, Karayaneva shared that properties sold as NFTs through Propy must be purchased using the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, yet this may be challenging for non-crypto natives. Even though Karayaneva mentioned that Propy helps facilitate the transfer of fiat to USDC, users who wish to buy an NFT home may also find it difficult due to the fact that loans cannot be taken out. “Currently, we are only accepting full cash offers, but we are working on incorporating a solution to get crypto enabled mortgages on the spot,” said Karayaneva.
From a technical perspective, it’s important to point out that most of the Web3 solutions mentioned are based on the Ethereum blockchain, which is infamous for high gas fees. Jacob shared that, while using the Ethereum network has been beneficial for Bacon Protocol, the team behind the project has worked hard to hide high gas fees from bHome purchasers. On the other hand, Chu said that he chose to build Lofty on the Algorand blockchain due to its low gas fees. “Lofty sends small transfers to user’s wallets regularly, so if this was built on another chain with high gas fees that would cost much more,” he said.
Finally, it’s important to point out that legal issues may arise when applying NFTs and DeFi standards to real estate transactions. With this in mind, Jacob shared that LoanSnap conducted massive amounts of research when considering the regulatory components associated with a mortgage-backed stablecoin. “LoanSnap is regulated and audited by the state, so we already have regulations in place. The question people ask is if this is a security, but the interesting thing about mortgages is that they are not securities.”
Challenges aside, Rogers said that homeowners and buyers using Web3 solutions like BHR don’t need to fully understand the components behind the platforms, they just need to know that they work. “When I explain BHR, people are interested even if they don’t know much about NFTs and blockchain. The idea here is to onboard new users to the Web3 space and transform the traditional real estate industry. That is what excites us.”
Crypto tax calculation platform Koinly added Terra (LUNA) wallet support to make tax calculation easier for LUNA holders as the Canadian tax report deadline draws near.
Tony Dhanjal, head of tax at Koinly, said that LUNA support has been requested by many Koinly users, and with the integration, LUNA users will have a “way to accurately track and record their transactions to meet their tax obligations.”
Calculating crypto tax is easy if a user’s crypto affairs are simple. However, Dhanjal told Cointelegraph that “the average crypto investor is connected to 3 to 5 exchanges, wallets or blockchains.” Because of this, working out the taxes using these sources is very difficult and the risks of errors are high. This is why Dhanjal recommends the use of a simple crypto tax calculation tool.
Apart from this, Dhanjal emphasizes the importance of paying crypto taxes. While the process varies, most countries require crypto tax to be reported. The tax expert encourages people to pay not only their crypto taxes but any other tax that they are liable for as an individual or a business. Dhanjal explained that:
“Ignorance is not a valid excuse, and there could be a fine line between this and tax evasion, which is illegal […] The penalties for tax evasion can be severe, not to mention the reputational and other damage to you or your business, this could cause.”
In a Cointelegraph interview, EY crypto tax executive Thomas Shea reminded people that buying crypto with fiat or any unrealized gains is not a taxable event. Shea also said that the same applies to nonfungible tokens.
Meanwhile, crypto projects based in India recently shared plans to move to more crypto-friendly jurisdictions because of India’s crypto tax law that imposes a 30% crypto tax on holding and transferring digital assets.
Both came at similar points in Bitcoin’s four-year halving cycles, and while slightly ahead of time, it has now been nearly as long since the 2018 dip, this bottoming out at $3,100.
“I think this chart draws valid parallels,” longtime commentator and macro investor Tuur Demeester commented on the findings.
“If bitcoin could not capitulate this time and hold above $35k, it would be an incredibly bullish sign. My base case scenario however, given how weak global markets look, is a downwards slide and 3-6 months of price recovery.”
BTC/USD 1-week candle chart (Bitstamp) with 20WMA and 50WMA. Source: TradingView
In mid-March, the 20WMA crossed under the 50WMA, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows, in what is commonly known as a “death cross” move among chartists. Despite its name, the phenomenon has not always resulted in significant losses.
Dollar strength sparks increasing suspicion
As Cointelegraph reported, consensus continues to form over a protracted period of price weakness for Bitcoin, which should come in line with a correction on heavily-correlated global stock markets.
The strength of the U.S. dollar in the face of anti-inflation maneuvers by the Federal Reserve is also in focus as a preemptive warning sign for those forecasting a shock event after two years of liquidity printing.
“DXY approaching multi-decade highs,” analyst Dylan LeClair continued in a fresh Twitter thread on the topic Monday.
“The USD continues to strengthen against foreign fiat currencies, tightening financial conditions. A breaking point for a historically over-leveraged economic system is approaching, by design.”
U.S. dollar currency index (DXY) 1-week candle chart. Source: TradingView
For LeClair, it is very much a case of short-term pain, long-term gain for BTC hodlers. The recovery will come via a “pivot” by the Fed, which will be unable to sustain inflation-busting monetary tightening for long.
“Fed will eventually be forced to switch back to easing, as a deep global recession will follow any sustained period of monetary tightening,” he forecast.
“Supply chain wreckage from Ukraine conflict & China lockdowns with this level of global indebtedness = sovereign defaults. BTC will fly.”
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
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