Kategorie: Bitcoin News

• AltSignals (ASI) token sale continues as crypto is poised to react higher.
• This follows hints by the US Federal Reserve of pausing interest rate hikes.
• ASI token could also benefit from expected explosion in interest around artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

Artificial intelligence continues to make waves, with both consumers and businesses looking to tap into opportunities being presented by the technological leap. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that AI could be bigger than the internet revolution.

AltSignals, a trading signals platform looking to upgrade its algorithm by introducing an AI-powered layer, is among those attracting huge attention. The AltSignals presale is in progress, with the second stage nearly 70% sold out.

Fed pause could see crypto prices react higher

Bitcoin price currently hovers near $29,000 after investors reacted positively to the US Federal Reserve’s signal that it could pause its interest rate hike trajectory. 

The Fed’s hint towards taking a more cautious approach came after it raised rates by another 25 basis points on Wednesday. The US central bank’s interest rate rose to the 5.00%-5.25% range after the latest hike. It comes amid fresh uncertainties amid bank failures, warnings about the US debt ceiling and the continuing issue of inflation. 

Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted to this in his speech, with the next FOMC meeting now of key interest to investors. With an end to the rate hike cycle likely coming, it could be time for markets to find new momentum, which we highlight here.

The scenario in the crypto sector will likely be where interest in established assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and others, spills into projects in categories such as layer 2s, GameFi, play-to-earn and artificial intelligence.

Why would now be a good time to buy AltSignals?

Investors are likely to continue seeing Bitcoin as a safe haven asset amid ongoing bank failures and economic woes that impact traditional assets. Crypto as a whole is also proving quite attractive as a way for people to diversify their portfolios.

If the expected Bitcoin bull cycle sets in, soaring market could catapult ASI token higher – a scenario seen with other projects that launched during the last bull market. As crypto edges closer to the historically bullish period marked by BTC halving, taking positions with ASI at current presale prices could prove a great investment.

Even if crypto fails to take on a new bull run going into its 2024 halving, the utility that ASI offers and the growing adoption of AI-powered tools in the trading market could be enough to propel AltSignals higher when it launches.  But as always, it is advisable to remember that investing comes with risks, which is true of crypto, including presales of new tokens.

What’s unique about AltSignals?

AltSignals launched in 2017, offering a trading signals and market alerts for cryptocurrencies, stocks and forex. Now the platform has planned an upgrade to its trading algorithm, with artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing.

The upgrade is set to launch later this quarter via an AI layer dubbed ActualizeAI, and will see traders benefit from 24/7 trading signals with improved accuracy and risk management. The system will be powered by the ASI token, a native token that will offer holders access to all trading signals on the new AI-powered system.

Unlike many new projects, AltSignals (ASI) is a project that already boasts a growing community and ready market for its product. Trade calls can be traded on major exchanges and brokers, including those for all the top cryptocurrencies and major forex pairs.

Taking a working product and bumping its capacity with new advanced capabilities is a strategy that could see AltSignals take huge strides as a leading trading signals provider – with traders able to benefit across both bear and bull markets.

As for the ASI token, holding it will not only give the investor access to ActualizeAI, but also to a membership club, trading tournaments and an upcoming DAO. The AltSignals presale could therefore be an opportunity for interested investors to buy the tokens at potentially low prices.

The AltSignals presale is expected to end in the next few weeks, with the token’s price set to increase from $0.015 to $0.02274. The ASI token is issued on the Ethereum network and will trade on exchanges such as Uniswap when it goes live.

You can invest in AltSignals by buying the ASI token here.

The post AltSignals (ASI) outlook strengthens as Fed signals rate pause appeared first on CoinJournal.

• MicroStrategy Inc narrowed its bitcoin-related loss in the first quarter.
• Its executive chairman Michael Saylor remains bullish as ever on bitcoin.
• Bitcoin is currently up roughly 70% versus the start of the year 2023.

Bitcoin has lost about 7.0% in recent weeks but Michael Saylor – the Executive Chairman of MicroStrategy Inc remains convinced as ever in its long-term potential.

Michael Saylor on MicroStrategy’s Q1 results

Earlier this week, the Nasdaq-listed firm said impairment loss related to its bitcoin holdings narrowed more than 90% sequentially to $18.9 million in the first quarter. According to Saylor:

Bitcoin is the ultimate digital scarcity network. It’s moved up about 50% on average over the last three years. The key with bitcoin is to be able to hold on to it and stomach the volatility.

MicroStrategy now owns a total of about 140,000 bitcoins. Naturally, therefore, the recent surge in BTC that’s still up some 70% for the year has been a meaningful tailwind for the company.

“MSTR” has more than doubled since the start of 2023.

Why is bitcoin price on the rise this year?

Saylor attributes strength in the price of bitcoin this year partially to inflation that’s still running at an annualised rate of 5.0% in the United States – well above the Fed’s 2.0% target.

The recent bank failures, he added, have also hurt confidence in the fiat currencies. On CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime”, Saylor said:

Bitcoin is a bank in cyberspace run by incorruptible software. So, the phase be your own bank has emerged as an investment idea in the United States.

Interestingly, he dubbed the ongoing crypto crackdown a benefit for bitcoin as well since it has established a reputation as the safe-haven asset.

The post Michael Saylor on bitcoin: ‘hold on to it and stomach the volatility’ appeared first on CoinJournal.

Key Takeaways

• First Republic has become the latest bank to collapse in the US
• Bitcoin has bounced this week, as it did in March when SVB fell and the banking crisis was triggered
• Our Head of Research, Dan Ashmore, contends that Bitcoin remains a risk asset, despite claims from enthusiasts that a decoupling is occuring
• Correlation with stock market is still high, he writes, pointing to altered expectations around interest rate policy as the reason Bitcoin has moved upward

There has been chatter amid the market recently (again) that Bitcoin is decoupling from stocks. Something about Bitcoin offering an alternate store of value outside the realm of the fiat world, a proposition that has suddenly become a lot more valuable as the banking turmoil striking the US rages. 

Let me start by saying that I don’t think my opinion is very valid here. I can’t predict the future. But I want to look at the numbers because I believe they prove that this theory, that Bitcoin has decoupled, is objectively false. 

I wrote a deep dive on Bitcoin’s correlation with stocks in March, when this theory originally surfaced as Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, while Bitcoin raced upwards. The same logic applies now, so let me try summarise it by refreshing the same numbers. 

And a quick note – this article is nothing about my beliefs around Bitcoin’s trajectory in the long-term. Whether Bitcoin decouples in future and establishes itself as a store of value akin to gold, uncorrelated to other risk assets, is a debate for another time and not one I will delve into here. I’m purely looking at the price action today and saying that, as of May 2023, Bitcoin is trading like an extreme-risk asset, completely removed from this uncorrelated vision. 

Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq

The natural place to look is tech stocks, being one of the riskier subsectors of the equity universe. The Nasdaq, being a tech-heavy index, is often seen as the benchmark for this sector. So let us chart Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq over the past couple of years. 

Using a 60-Day Pearson measure, the chart shows that the correlation has bounced around a lot over the past couple of years. For the most part, however, it has shown a relatively strong relationship, frequently residing above 0.5. 

There were a couple of dips. The first is clearly May/June 2021, when Bitcoin cratered from $63,000 to $31,000 for no apparent reason, before climbing back up into the high sixties later that year. 

The second large dip in correlation is in November 2022. This was none other than the FTX collapse, the staggering implosion sending shockwaves through the crypto industry. At the same time, stocks actually advanced significantly as softer inflation data cropped up and optimism increased around the future path of interest rates. Cue the big dip in correlation. 

Therefore, there have been two periods of notable, and very large, decorrelations. Both of these occurred as crypto melted down, independently of the stock market. If you look closely over the last year – I have shown the correlation over the last year below – you will see another big deviation in the summer of 2022 when crypto “bank” Celsius shut withdrawals. 

And most importantly, the correlation has come back up swiftly every time. Including in March, when Bitcoin outperformed in the aftermath of the banking crisis. 

But, did it really outperform in March? The correlation above remained relatively high, certainly nowhere near previous episodes of decorrelation – and a lot more brief. Sure, Bitcoin raced upward further than the Nasdaq post-SVB, but it also fell further prior to the guarantee that deposits backing the second largest stablecoin, USD Coin, were safe. In reality, Bitcoin did what it has been doing – sold off more aggressively and then bounced back stronger. Because, well, it is riskier.  

Besides, the elephant in the room is the Federal Reserve. Markets have been moving off expectations of Fed policy all year long, and this was the true cause of the movement in March, as well as this week. 

With SVB’s collapse, the market reacted to the announcement of a large liquidity injection by the Fed, as well as the expectation that rates could not be hiked as much in future as a result of the creaking banking system. These are both good things for risk assets and so Bitcoin rose. Again, not because of any potential downfall of the fiat system. 

Not to mention, these banking problems were borne out of duration risk management, completely distinct to the banking issues of the GFC in 2008, which were a full-blown insolvency crisis built upon terrible underlying assets (subprime mortgages). Today, the banking crisis is still a crisis, but a regional one borne out of the most aggressive hiking cycle in recent memory, which has seen bank assets dropping in value and deposits pulled to take advantage of those higher rates elsewhere, leading to an unsustainable bank run as confidence evaporates. 

We have seen similar developments again this time around, as First Republic Bank fell last week after revealing it saw over $1 billion of withdrawal requests last quarter. 

Again, the market reacted to these things breaking by saying: “OK, the Fed cannot hike much more. This is good for risk assets”. Looking at Fed fund probabilities, there is the expectation of a 25 bps hike today (May 3rd) and then….nothing. The market is viewing this as the final hike. 

So, it is important to keep track of lurking variables (interest rate policy) when assessing correlations and trying to garner why Bitcoin is moving. For the time being, the numbers are pretty clear, and the conclusion is unequivocal: Bitcoin is trading like a risk asset. Perhaps we don’t even need to look at correlation. Take a glance at the below chart plotting Bitcoin’s returns since the start of 2022 against the Nasdaq. Do you really want to argue that these assets are uncorrelated?

The numbers speak for themselves. Again, this is not speculating about what will happen in future. Tomorrow, Bitcoin could go to $1 million and the Nasdaq could go to zero for all I care. Bitcoin may one day reach that uncorrelated store of value status. But for now, the numbers are clear: it is trading like a risk asset. 

The post Bitcoin still trading like a risk asset, despite claims of decoupling amid banking crisis appeared first on CoinJournal.

• Bitcoin’s dip below $30,000 and subsequent retest of resistance above$29k highlights the past week’s top coins outlook.
• Shiba Inu (SHIB) price is below its 50 and 200 MA but analysts are bullish on SHIB given overall sentiment and network growth.
• Aptos (APT) price has formed a massive bull flag pattern that could see APT explode to new highs in 2023.

The cryptocurrency market continues to see significant volatility as prices of various tokens fluctuate near key levels. Bitcoin (BTC) price fell to around $27,200 this past week and saw the global cryptocurrency market cap drop from above $1.34 trillion to $1.25 trillion amid broader sell-off pressure.

BTC price is however back above $29,000 and has retested resistance near the psychological $30k level this weekend.

At the same time, several altcoins that have recently seen dramatic declines look positioned for fresh moves, with cryptocurrency bulls buoyed by fresh turmoil in the banking sector with troubles for US bank First Republic.

Here’s the price prediction for Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Aptos (APT).

Shiba Inu (SHIB) price prediction

Shiba Inu price is down nearly 10% in the past two weeks, having traded lower from highs above $0.000011 recently.

SHIB currently trades below its 50 MA and 200 MA, while the daily RSI is below 40 to suggest bears might have a slight advantage.  

If an upside flip in the price amid new buy Shiba Inu pressure, the main short term target will be the $0.000035 level. The 2021 all-time high provides another key level and a move to $0.01 could be the Holy Grail of the upcoming bull cycle.

Aptos (APT) price prediction

Aptos (APT) is a new layer 1 blockchain network that’s benefitted from massive investment by venture capitals. The Aptos mainnet went live recently and the demand for the native APT token saw the price rally to the YTD peak of $19.92 in January.

Crypto analyst Captain Faibik recently highlighted Aptos bullish flag pattern. If a breakout follows, a move to $20 in the short term could be one of the main targets. 

Meanwhile, this Aptos price prediction for the medium term sees a potential burst to a new all-time high.

The post Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Aptos (APT) price outlook as Bitcoin (BTC) tests resistance near $30k appeared first on CoinJournal.