Bitcoin (BTC) revisited weekly lows on Sep. 1 as the new month got underway with a fizzle rather than a bang.BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView
Bitcoin lingers in “price stability”
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD hitting lows of $46,530 on Bitstamp overnight, its lowest since Aug. 27.
With $50,000 out of reach, price action continued to diverge “remarkably” from strong on-chain metrics and fundamentals.
For analyst Willy Woo, who echoed similar findings from this week, a large pool of support at current levels is likely to hold Bitcoin where it is. Over 1.65 million BTC has a cost basis between $45,000 and $50,000.
“Bitcoin approaching another region of notable price stability,” he told Twitter followers Wednesday.
“Short term technicals are weak while on-chain, investors are in accumulation. All the makings of a volatility squeeze. Breaking 50 likely a fast track to 60.”
The area around $51,000, which this week remains active as a “final hurdle” resistance level for Bitcoin, is widely tipped to crumble in the mid-term, but the exact timing of such an impulse move is a mystery.
Investors seemed ready to go on the day, with reserves on major exchange Coinbase at their lowest levels since December 2017 — 700,000 BTC — and almost $20 billion in stablecoins sitting across centralized trading platforms ready for conversion.
“After a period of moderate BTC inflows following the May Sell-off, Coinbase has seen a large outflow of coins,” on-chain analytics firm Glassnode commented on the data.
Ethereum leads altcoin boost
For Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe, however, it was business as usual for a BTC consolidation.
Related: 3 reasons why Polkadot could be the next altcoin to hit a new all-time high
“Yep, Bitcoin is following this path,” he summarized.
“Overall; pretty normal consolidation resulting in altcoins breaking out heavily with Ethereum as the first one breaking to new highs.”
MeETH/USD passed $3,500 overnight, marking its highest in three months against the U.S. dollar and BTC. Its cryptocurrency market cap dominance rose to 20.4%, with Bitcoin’s steady at 44%.
I woke up on Monday morning, had a cup of coffee, and then nearly spit it out when an altcoin push notification came across the top of my phone. That notification read:
“Celo (CELO) is up 105%”
Now, for those who are unaware, our most exclusive altcoin research service – Ultimate Crypto – added the token Celo (CELO) to its portfolio of explosive altcoins on July 22. The price? Just $2.35.
About a month later, on Monday morning, it crossed above $10.50. That’s a 350% return in a month.
Now, I’m not saying this to brag. Rather, I’m saying this show you the veracity of the current cryptocurrency breakout!
About a dozen altcoins have more than doubled over the past 30 days. Five have more than tripled. One has risen by nearly 5X.
The whole cryptocurrency market is on fire… and naturally, you have to ask yourself: Why?
The answer is astonishingly simple: Because everyone is using cryptos these days, and because every investor wants a piece of the action, even the “big boys” on Wall Street.
On the first point, you have to remember that sometimes, in financial markets, asset prices go up and down for no good reason. So, while you might’ve looked at the Bitcoin chart this past summer and assumed cryptos were dying, the exact opposite was happening.
Altcoin usage was soaring!
According to Chainalysis, a leading blockchain data analytics firm, worldwide adoption of cryptos and altcoins is growing by 880% year-over-year in 2021. That’s based on the value and volume of all cryptos being exchanged in the world.
This data isn’t isolated. According to a report released last month by Crypto.com, the number of crypto and altcoin users in the world more than doubled from January (106 million users) to June (221 million users).
Get the point?
The Altcoin Arrival Is Here
While Bitcoin prices were plunging, the everyday consumer’s usage of cryptos – to either buy something, sell something, or trade something – was sharply rising.
The fundamentals of Bitcoin never changed. In fact, they only improved throughout the summer. The asset price decline, then, was nothing more than near-term noise in a long-term uptrend – and, ultimately, a great buying opportunity.
Of course, that is exactly what the smart money did: They bought the dip in cryptos this summer, and now, they’re profiting big-time.
Software analytics firm MicroStrategy bought a whole bunch of Bitcoin this summer. They now own about 4,000 coins for total market value of ~$180 million.
Morgan Stanley acquired about 6.5 million shares in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) this summer.
Billionaire investor Bill Miller picked up about 1.5 million shares of the same trust.
Coinbase is gearing up to add $500 million worth of crypto assets to its balance sheet.
Again, the point here is obvious. Big Tech companies… Big banks… Big investors… Big hedge funds… They’re all loading up on Bitcoin.
So… we come full circle to why the whole crypto and altcoin market is on fire right now… and the answer is so simple.
Everyone’s using crypto. Everyone’s buying crypto. Crypto prices are soaring. It’s really that simple.
Of course, the million-dollar question is whether this is sustainable. The answer there, too, is simple: it absolutely is sustainable.
Let’s go back to the core idea of cryptos. They serve to disintermediate inefficient, corrupt, and expensive economic systems, and replace them with faster, fairer, and freer versions.
The Bottom Line on the Altcoin Arrival
Of course, that means cryptocurrency projects have the most value where the incumbent economic systems are the most inefficient, the most corrupt, and most expensive. That would be in developing economies, like certain parts of Asia and South America, where the governments have a long history of utilizing centralized economic systems to oppress the masses.
It should be no surprise, then, that the aforementioned Chainalysis report found that the three highest countries with the most robust cryptocurrency adoption are all located in Asia and have a history of government oppression: Vietnam, India, and Pakistan.
That means cryptos are working. Not just as an asset class to make you rich. But as a technology platform to improve the lives of people around the globe.
Why else would the peoples of Vietnam, India, and Pakistan be using cryptos so much? They’re not in it for a quick buck to retire early. They’re in it to fundamentally reshape their societies to be better for everyone.
This reality gives us confidence that regardless of where the prices of Bitcoin and altcoins trend over the next few months, these projects will survive this volatility and proceed to change the world.
Long-term investors who can stomach the volatility and keep their focus on the big picture will score enormous returns.
Indeed, they already have. As I mentioned earlier, a dozen cryptos have already doubled over the past 30 days – and two of them were added to our Ultimate Crypto portfolio before they doubled.
I’ll stop there because I’m being redundant, and simply sum it up like this…
Want to make big money in the financial markets over the long run? Plug into cryptos – and don’t plug out.
Click here to get plugged in.
On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.
August ended up as another great month for crypto investors, with nearly all of the top 100 coins by market capitalization in the green.
The gains in August came despite the fact that bitcoin (BTC) and many altcoins had already seen a significant rally during the last ten days of July, pushing bitcoin from below USD 30,000 to well over USD 40,000.
Over the course of August, however, market participants have increasingly turned their focus away from BTC and over to the world of decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). As evidence of this, we can let price speak for itself, with Ethereum’s native token ETH rising by 39% – more than two times bitcoin’s 16% gain over the past 30 days.
Top 10 coins in August
Coin Race: Top Winners/Losers of August; DeFi Leads, Bitcoin Lags 102
Source: Omenics.com, September 1, 3:31 UTC
Looking at the top 10 coins by market capitalization, it’s safe to conclude that August was a good month for the crypto blue-chips. But despite the good overall performance among the top coins, there were still large differences in performance between them.
As discussed, the number one cryptocurrency, bitcoin, came in last in August with a monthly gain of 16%, as the network’s major Taproot upgrade inches closer to its expected November deployment.
At the opposite end of the spectrum was the Solana blockchain’s SOL token, which came in as the number one performer with a 248% gain for the month. The latest gains for the token have come after it entered the top 10 ranking by market capitalization and broke through the psychologically important USD 100 level for the first time ever last month.
As for the other coins in the top 10, cardano (ADA) and polkadot (DOT) both stood out with large monthly gains of 113% and 95%, respectively, amidst a wave of attention for smart contract platforms that aim to challenge Ethereum and its dominance in the space.
The focus on Ethereum contenders has to a large extent been fuelled by the high fees on the platform, which in August reached their highest level since May.
Perhaps more than anything, this has benefited Cardano, with ADA being one of the better performing major cryptoassets this year.
Best among the top 50 coins
Coin Race: Top Winners/Losers of August; DeFi Leads, Bitcoin Lags 103
Source: Omenics.com, September 1, 3:31 UTC
Expanding our scope to the top 50 coins by market capitalization, the leaderboard for May shows that SOL also came out on top of this group, followed by the smart contract platform Avalanche’s (AVAX), which was up 210% helped by its new “Avalanche Rush” liquidity mining incentive program.
Third in the pack was terra (LUNA) which rose by 186% for the month, followed by Cardano’s ADA.
Further down the list of the best performers on the top 50 list came the elrond egold (EGLD) token and Polkadot-affiliated kusama (KMT), which both more than doubled in price for the month. They were further followed by polkadot, cosmos (ATOM), and tezos (XTZ), which were up between 75% and 95%.
Worst among the top 50 coins
Coin Race: Top Winners/Losers of August; DeFi Leads, Bitcoin Lags 104
Source: Omenics.com, September 1, 3:31 UTC
Taking a look at the worst performers among the top 50 coins by market capitalization, it’s clear that August has indeed been a pretty good month. With only Bitfinex’s UNUS SED LEO token more or less unchanged when we exclude stablecoins, August seems to have lifted all boats.
Among the remaining cryptoassets on the ‘worst performer’ list, nearly all were up by more than 10% for the month of August. Notable among these were bitcoin cash (BCH) and bitcoin SV (BSV), which both fared slightly better than the original bitcoin.
Among the laggards for the past month was also monero (XMR), the most popular privacy-focused cryptocurrency, which gained close to 18%, and the MKR governance token for the MakerDAO stablecoin issuance protocol, which rose by 23%.
Winners & losers from the top 100
Zooming out further to cover all coins in the top 100 by market capitalization, we can see that solana and avalanche again stand out as the top performers, along with the lesser-known smart contract platform Fantom’s FTM. However, we also see some names from lower market capitalization coins, such as the decentralized application (dapp) platform Near Protocol’s NEAR and streaming protocol Audius’ AUDIO.
Interesting here is that despite being among the best coins for the month, the AUDIO token topped the list of the worst weekly performers last week, with a 7-day drop of 28%.
Among the weakest monthly performers in the top 100 were safemoon, which lost more than 9% of its value, and the lending and borrowing platform Celsius Network’s own CEL token, which dropped by also 9%.