Daily News | BTC May Increase to $500K in the Next Halving Cycle, 7 Crypto Trends Worth Focusing on in the Second Half of 2023

Crypto Daily Digest: Bitcoin may increase to $500,000 in the next halving cycle. What are the trends worth focusing on in the second half of 2023

Recently, the bulls have come out to share their comments again.

Yesterday, crypto analyst PlanB stated on social media that based on the S2F model, Bitcoin may rise to $500,000 in the next halving cycle.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Cathie Wood, founder of ARK Invest, stated that the price of Bitcoin is expected to reach $1.5 million by 2030.

Cathie Wood stated that with the bankruptcy of regional banks and a comprehensive decline in stocks, the price of Bitcoin has risen from $19,000 to $30,000, indicating that investors are “turning to safe assets to avoid risks.”

In addition, Bitcoin can provide “insurance” against direct or indirect confiscation. Direct confiscation refers to the forced seizure of assets, while indirect confiscation refers to inflation and depreciation of the domestic currency.

Regarding the future market trend of BTC, Mark Yusko, Chief Investment Officer and Founder of Morgan Creek Capital, stated that Bitcoin prices may peak and decline in 2024.

Although BlackRock’s application for Bitcoin ETF triggered the start of a new crypto bull market, and Yusko believes that he is very confident that BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF will eventually be approved, thus becoming one of the catalysts for the next parabolic bull market, the bull market will encounter a “blow-off top” at a time when it is close to Bitcooin halving in April 2024.

Yusko also predicts that according to the Metcalfe’s law model, the fair value of Bitcoin is approximately $55,000. Speculators will flood the market next year, pushing Bitcoin prices to exceed their fair value and reach a new historical high; Then at some point in 2024, it will encounter a speculative blow, which will lead to the next economic downturn and the next encrypted winter.

Mark Yusko also reiterated his belief that Bitcoin’s most important use case is its potential to replace gold as the fundamental layer of currency.

In terms of regulation, the US SEC will begin reviewing Bitcoin spot ETF applications this week, with a maximum review period of 240 days; SG Forge, the cryptocurrency department of Société Générale, has obtained the cryptocurrency license issued by the French financial regulatory authority and can provide services such as digital asset trading, trading and custody; NASDAQ suspended its digital asset custody business due to regulatory risks.

The latest Glassnode research data shows that the 30 day supply change of Bitcoin miners’ addresses has been negative for 20 consecutive days. In contrast, from April 10 to June 27, the net position of BTC miners’ addresses was positive except for one day.

Analysts suggest that this change may indicate a change in market sentiment, or simply a need for cash-strapped miners to sell tokens to provide funding for operations.

In addition, the total balance of Bitcoin for miners’ addresses is currently 1.83 million, compared to 1.82 million on January 1 at the beginning of the year, which means that the recent changes may only be a rebalancing of the overall position of miners.

CMC released a review of the first half of 2023, which showed that as of the end of the second quarter, the total market value of the global encryption market reached $1.17 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 48%.

VR/AR (+704%) and AI and big data (323%) have been leading the development trend in the market, while blue chip DeFi projects and infrastructure are also returning strongly. In addition, according to CMC’s Coin Listing data, the “memes” track has added over 260 new coins since the beginning of the year, making it the most active industry for newly listed currencies.

According to the big data of CMC visits, the most popular sectors and currencies, as well as tokens with the highest growth rate this year, are gathered in memes, new public chains, DeFi and AI tracks.

The promising trends worth focusing on in the second half of 2023 include the entry of institutional investors led by Bitcoin ETFs, decentralized public infrastructure networks, on-chain launch of real assets, liquidity staking derivatives, re-staking, zkSync, modular blockchain, etc.

Today’s Main Token Trends

BTC

Today, BTC continues to cling below $30,203 and is currently pulling back towards the $30K level while holding the major support at $29,495. If it doesn’t break below this level, the next two target resistances are $32,235 and $33,085. The top targets are $36,500 and $41,550.

ETH

ETH has been repeatedly testing the upward trendline, holding the key support at $1,857. If it breaks below, there might be a larger pullback. Conservative traders can wait for a breakout above the key resistance at $2,036 to enter long positions. The mid-term target is $2,358, and a breakout above $2,036 signals a bullish trend.

XRP

XRP is showing a converging pattern on the four-hour chart, continuing its upward movement. Breaking above the previous high at $0.9380 could lead to further targets at $1.0105, $1.3705, and $1.9755. Pay attention to the key resistance at $0.8639.

GT

The daily support for GT is observed at $4.1882, and it has formed a short-term head and shoulders bearish pattern. The medium-term support is at $3.6040, while the major support is still holding at the quarterly trendline convergence, indicating a long-term bullish target at $28.56, $39.15, and $45.05.

Macro: A 25bp interest rate hike next week may have been confirmed, and US regulation of the crypto market is starting to strengthen

Federal Reserve officials are currently in a period of silence due to interest rate hikes next week, and we cannot gain any confidence.

However, recently Reuters conducted a survey, and nearly 100 economists surveyed unanimously believed that the rate hike on July 27 was the last. After this rate hike, the Federal Reserve had no reason to raise interest rates, which is currently the consensus expectation at the market level. If the Federal Reserve continues to be hawkish or even determines to continue raising interest rates after July 27, it would be another bearish scenario for the market.

According to CME Federal Reserve observation data, the probability of the Federal Reserve maintaining interest rates unchanged from 5.00% to 5.25% in July is 0.2%, and the probability of raising interest rates by 25 basis points to the range of 5.25% to 5.50% is 99.8%.

Despite the consensus in the market that the SEC lost the lawsuit against XRP, the SEC continued to increase its crackdown and began applying for a budget to recruit more people to sue or fine so-called illegal entities.

Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), proposed to provide the SEC with an additional budget of $72 million at the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He stated that the SEC must expand its scale, including protecting investors from the influence of the crypto industry, which is full of irregularities. In his speech, he said: “We have seen the western wilderness of the crypto market, which is full of irregularities.” Investors put their hard earned assets into the risk of highly speculative asset classes.

In 2023, the US SEC employed 4,685 employees, of which approximately half were focused on law enforcement inspections. The application for an additional budget will not only provide full year funding for employees hired in 2023, but also help the SEC add approximately 170 positions to its team, or bring the total number of full-time employees at the SEC to 5,139.

In addition to the SEC, the US Senate has also begun to regulate and intervene in the DeFi market.

The US Senate is going to pass a new bill to regulate the crypto industry, called the Crypto Asset National Security Enhancement Act of 2023, which will require the DeFi protocol to implement similar controls to banks on its user base. The US Senate emphasized that if no one controls the DeFi protocols, anyone investing more than $25 million to develop the protocols will bear these obligations.

These control entities need to review and collect information about their clients, maintain anti money laundering plans, report suspicious activities to the government, and prevent sanctioned individuals from using their protocols.