Market Update
At the time of writing, Bitcoin's price is $6454, with a daily volume of $3.4 billion.
Thursday's confirmation by the SEC that Ethereum is not a security in its current state, positive news for any present or future investor, caused a bounce from a low of almost $6100 to its current level. However, with volume dropping again today and the historically lower volume through the weekend, we fear a key retest of the $6000 levels may be in the cards. If we are unable to hold the 6k support and bulls retreat further, we will likely see extreme volatility below $6000.
It is important to keep in mind, though, that a straight move to $5000 would be huge as a $1000 move today represents over 15%. A move below $5800-6000 would likely see us test $5400 and $5000 as its first supports. If bulls put up a fight and Bitcoin can achieve defend the $6.5k level or retest $6000 and hold, we would expect to see a move up to our weekly open around $6800, but without volume this will act as strong resistance.
News has reached us that the Italian Court has seized BitGrail's Bitcoin Wallets. BitGrail is the exchange where RaiBlocks ($XRB, now rebranded to $NANO) trading pairs have resided before it was made available on larger, more reliable exchanges. In February all the XRB reserves on BitGrail went missing, and there was much speculation on who was to blame. This move by the Italian Court clearly shows how authorities are increasingly stepping in to protect investors in the space.
With the news from the SEC on Ethereum, CBOE has now mentioned that there are no further roadblocks to launch Ethereum futures. After discussing what the impact of Ethereum futures will be on the market we remain uncertain. One scenario is that once an official announcement has been made, we will see a similar run as Bitcoin towards its December's ATH with a subsequent drop.
A counter argument here is that because everyone witnessed that, the sentiment of retail investors will be to short Ethereum once the futures are live. If retail investors go short, there will be no liquidity for Market Makers to do the same, leaving them with the option to go long or not at all participate.
The SEC statement was carefully worded, as many ERC20 tokens do not presently fulfil the qualifying criteria that gave Etherium a pass. One thing is sure, we are only at the start of the road toward regulation.
