Digital Asset Weekly, Sep 21

Digital Assets ended the week modestly higher – gaining +0.9% – as another week of BTC price consolidation was offset by strength in 2^nd tier digital assets. XRP led gains amongst major coins/tokens, surging > +30% this week. ETH bucked a week of skinny trading with volume +12% WoW for the 3^rd consecutive week of volume gains. Amongst the top 200 coins/tokens, breadth was narrowly skewed to the positive with 52% of major coins/tokens ending the week higher

Headlines were largely exchange dominated. The top story of the week was a critical report on the exchange space by the New York Attorney General and subsequent rebuttals from Coinbase and Kraken. New York has long been a challenging regulatory regime for digital asset projects; while the story generated a lot of conversation it seemed to have little impact on this week’s trading and was largely negated by a number of positive headlines in the space, including: Binance expansion plans and reports of US$350M of profits in 1H1, more new hires at Coinbase, and ongoing maturation at Poloniex.

Negative headlines were led by a small hack at NewDex and a larger (US$60M) hack at Zaif (a Japanese exchange).

Continue to expect an uptick in BTC volatility in coming weeks given very slim volume, shorts plateauing, 4Q seasonality and ahead of a number of events (Mt Goxx creditor meeting on Sep 26, VanEck ETF decision on Sep 30^th and Bakkt’s physical BTC futures expected by Nov 5^th). Likewise, we remain cautiously constructive on ETH given improving volumes and signs of price stabilization.

Read the full report here: Digital Asset Weekly Sep 21 2018