Bitcoin Price Faces Resistance as Analysts Now Weigh Pre-Election Consolidation
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) are approaching critical resistance levels, with experts indicating that both assets could attract significant attention if they break through.
The Bitcoin price has fallen 2% in the past day to $66,960, while Ethereum is down 3% at $2,630 during European trading hours, according to data from CoinGecko. Despite the short-term dip, market analysts are optimistic about a potential breakout.
Speaking with Decrypt, Maria Carola, CEO of Cayman Islands-based cryptocurrency exchange StealthEX, attributed Bitcoin’s price movement to geopolitical factors, particularly the strengthening position of Donald Trump in the U.S. election race.
"The recent strengthening of Donald Trump’s position just two weeks before the elections is positively impacting Bitcoin's price," Carola noted.
Polling site FiveThirtyEight, which derives its ranking of the candidates from many different national polls, currently shows that Trump has gained 0.5% since the start of October, but is still trailing behind Vice President Kamala Harris. At the time of writing, Harris is favored to win with 48.2% odds to Trump's 46.4%.
Despite the current price dip, Carola expects Bitcoin to surpass the psychological threshold of $70,000 by the end of the week.
But she remains cautious about the potential for a new all-time high in the immediate future. Carola also pointed to broader global factors, such as the Middle East conflict and evolving regulations surrounding stablecoins, as potential triggers for unexpected market shifts.
In a note issued Tuesday, Singapore-based crypto trading firm QCP Capital also highlighted Bitcoin and Ethereum’s proximity to key resistance levels.
Both assets are yet to clear their July highs but are closing in on $70,000 for Bitcoin and $2,800 for Ethereum. "A break above these levels is likely to attract massive retail attention," QCP Capital wrote. However, they noted that with no major catalysts expected this week, both cryptocurrencies are likely to trade within a narrow range while attempting to break higher.
The QCP analysts further said the election creates a zero-sum scenario for equities, with sector winners dependent on the outcome. “In contrast, both candidates are more crypto-friendly than the previous administration, so any weakness in equities may prompt capital to reallocate to crypto.”
Fairlead Strategies, a U.S.-based market research firm, meanwhile offered a more cautious outlook, maintaining a "neutral" rating on both Bitcoin and Ethereum for the short-, intermediate-, and long-term. In a note to Decrypt , the firm stated that Bitcoin is at a critical juncture as it tests trendline resistance near $67,700.
The analysts noted that Bitcoin triggered a counter-trend sell signal over the weekend, which could lead to a couple of weeks of consolidation around current price levels. "Bitcoin is at a proving ground as it tests trendline resistance near $67.7K," Fairlead stated, adding that support levels remain near $59,800, with resistance at $67,700 and $73,800.
Ethereum is also showing signs of upside exhaustion, according to Fairlead. The asset faces resistance around $2,807, with support near $2,486. Should Ethereum fail to break through these resistance levels, a short-term corrective phase could follow. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are likely to remain in a consolidation phase unless they can decisively clear these resistance barriers.
A Hero Falls: Bitcoin Community Blasts Michael Saylor’s ‘Paranoid Crypto-Anarchists’ and Self-Cus...
Michael Saylor, co-founder and Executive Chairman of Microstrategy, stirred the cryptocurrency community after taking a jab at who he called “paranoid crypto-anarchists” over the relevance of self-custody in a total bitcoin seizure event.
Read more: Self-Custody Is More Than a Feature – Dennis Jarvis, CEO of Bitcoin.com
At a recent interview, Saylor was asked about the risk of holding large amounts of bitcoin on centralized platforms and how this might incentivize and facilitate a bitcoin seizure scenario. Saylor rejected these claims, claiming that crypto-anarchists were the ones that could originate such an event due to their disregard for following proper compliance rules.
Saylor declared:
I think that when the bitcoin is held by a bunch of crypto-anarchists who aren’t regulated entities who don’t acknowledge government or don’t acknowledge taxes or don’t acknowledge reporting requirements that increases the risk of seizure.
Saylor reinforced that when custody is provided by Blackrock, Fidelity, or JPMorgan, which he called regulated public entities, this seizure risk is lower given that lawmakers and politicians are also invested in these platforms.
When asked about the chance of the government issuing an order to seize bitcoin like it did with gold in 1933, Saylor also belittled this possibility. He declared:
People say that but mostly it’s mostly it’s paranoid crypto anarchists that say that okay because it’s a myth and a trope that goes on over and over again.
These statements startled the crypto community, which blasted Saylor’s train of thought. Known bitcoin permabull Max Keiser took to social media to criticize these allegations, assessing that Saylor was “the type of guy who thinks the stripper really likes him (or, he has Stockholm Syndrome).”
Podcaster Vlad Costea also stated that Sayor rendered the crypto community that boosted his status irrelevant, criticizing his former allegiance to the paranoid people he now vilified. “It doesn’t matter what he said 3-4 years ago, he was only pulling strings to get bigger than any other voice in bitcoin,” he detailed.
Ray Youssef, CEO and Chief Advocate Of Noones, an Africa-focused P2P market, linked this to the current state of bitcoin markets. “We were all warned but we’re too smug and busy pooping on Roger ver to notice that bitcoin got p0wn3ed,” he concluded.
Writers’ take: While the change of heart in Saylor’s considerations about OG bitcoins and the importance of self-custody can be surprising for some, the reality is that his vision is only logical. Saylor is an investor first, and investors are forced to think inside the box, entrapped in a compliance and regulations ecosystem that institutions must follow, so his latest statements are part of his programming as an entrepreneur.
Messari Reports TRON’s Protocol Revenue Reached an All-Time High in Q3 2024
PRESS RELEASE. Geneva, Switzerland, October 22, 2024 – Messari, a leading provider of digital asset market intelligence products, released a research report highlighting TRON’s Q3 performance. The report details seven consecutive quarters of increasing on-chain activity, driving its protocol revenue to an all-time high, fueled by increased transaction volumes and a rapidly growing user base.
State of TRON Q3 2024
The TRON network experienced impressive protocol revenue growth in Q3 2024, reaching an all-time high of $151.2 million, reflecting a 29% increase quarter-over-quarter (QoQ).
During this period, TRON also achieved notable growth across several key metrics, including a 24% increase in market cap, a 4% rise in DeFi TVL, a 3% growth in stablecoin market cap, and a 150% increase in average daily DEX volume.
Other Highlights:
TRON passed a series of proposals aimed at lowering gas fees, further enhancing its appeal for cost-efficient transactions.
USDT on TRON reached $58.94 billion by the end of Q3, a 3% increase from $57.06 billion QoQ, with over half of all USDT in circulation now on the TRON network.
Ecosystem Growth
On July 25, TRON launched HackaTRON Season 7 to attract both experienced developers and newcomers to the TRON platform.
On September 10, 2024, TRON, in collaboration with Tether and TRM Labs, announced the launch of the T3 Financial Crime Unit (T3 FCU) to address cryptocurrency-related crimes.
TRON is developing a Bitcoin Layer-2 solution, aiming for a secure way for the Bitcoin ecosystem to access TRON’s pool of stablecoin capital.
Read the full research report from Messari here.
About TRON DAO
TRON DAO is a community-governed DAO dedicated to accelerating the decentralization of the internet via blockchain technology and dApps.
Founded in September 2017 by Justin Sun, the TRON network has continued to deliver impressive achievements since MainNet launch in May 2018. July 2018 also marked the integration of BitTorrent, a pioneer in decentralized Web3 services, boasting over 100 million monthly active users. The TRON network has gained incredible traction in recent years. As of October 2024, it has over 265 million total user accounts on the blockchain, more than 8.7 billion total transactions, and over $16 billion in total value locked (TVL), as reported on TRONSCAN.
In addition, TRON hosts the largest circulating supply of USD Tether (USDT) stablecoin across the globe, overtaking USDT on Ethereum since April 2021. The TRON network completed full decentralization in December 2021 and is now a community-governed DAO. Most recently in October 2022, TRON was designated as the national blockchain for the Commonwealth of Dominica, which marks the first time a major public blockchain partnered with a sovereign nation to develop its national blockchain infrastructure. On top of the government’s endorsement to issue Dominica Coin (“DMC”), a blockchain-based fan token to help promote Dominica’s global fanfare, seven existing TRON-based tokens – TRX, BTT, NFT, JST, USDD, USDT, TUSD, have been granted statutory status as authorized digital currency and medium of exchange in the country.
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Media Contact
Yeweon Park press@tron.network
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ANZ to Kickstart Chainlink Private Transactions Protocol in RWA Boost
Chainlink released its CCIP Private Transactions protocol, a privacy-preserving tool, on Tuesday. The tool will allow financial institutions to maintain confidentiality and regulatory compliance when transacting across blockchain networks.
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) will be among the first financial institutions to pilot the capability for cross-chain settlement of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) under the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Project Guardian initiative.
Cross-chain protocols allow token holders to transfer and interact with applications among different blockchains, which is otherwise not possible. RWAs refer to a tokenized version of a physical asset, such as artwork or real estate, that is tradeable on the open market.
Institutional requirements include the need for complete end-to-end privacy for private chain to private chain transactions and limiting data exposure for private chain to public chain transactions.
The private transactions allow institutional users to define privacy conditions in a way that keeps onchain data private from all third parties and adversaries, while enabling authorized parties in the transaction or the compliance industry to view that same data.
"Privacy is a critical requirement for most institutional transactions," said Sergey Nazarov, Chainlink co-founder, in a prepared statement. "So far the blockchain industry has not provided the level of privacy necessary for these institutional transactions to move forward successfully, limiting the entire industry's growth.
“Now that private transactions across chains are possible, we expect an even greater influx of institutional adoption of blockchains, CCIP, and the Chainlink standard in general,” Nazarov added.
Bitcoin’s $4.2B October Options Expiry May Increase Short-Term Volatility
The crypto market may be set up for some short-term volatility this week as monthly bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) options contracts are set to expire on Friday.
BTC and ETH options contracts worth $4.2 billion and $1 billion, respectively, will expire on Deribit at 08:00 UTC. An option allows the holder the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset at a specified price within a certain time period.
According to Deribit data, what’s worth noting is that BTC options worth over $682 million, equating to 16.3% of the tally of $4.2 billion are set to expire “in-the-money,” of which most are calls. A call with strike price below the going market rate is said to be ITM while ITM puts are those with strikes above the spot price.
The dynamic could breed market volatility as holders of in-profit ITM options look to close their bets or move positions in the next expiry. The last quarterly expiry dated end of September had a similar distribution of open interest.
Deribit data shows that the bitcoin put-to-call open interest ratio stands at 0.62 ahead of the expiry, indicating a relatively bullish sentiment. In other words, for every 100 call options active, 62 put options are open. The bias for calls is not surprising, considering BTC recently neared $70,000 for the first time since July.
BTC’s max pain level is $64,000, where most options - would - expire worthless, causing the most loss to option buyers and maximizing profit for the options writers.
At press time, BTC traded near $67,000, well above the max pain level while ether changed hands at around the max pain level of $2,600. So believers of the max pain theory might say bitcoin has room to fall ahead of the expiry while ether’s downside is capped.
Max pain theory states that the pre-expiry activities of traders with short options exposure often drives the underlying asset closer to its max pain level. However, the crypto community is divided on the max pain effect, with some saying the options market is still quite small to impact the spot price.
Crypto options market has grown multi-fold in the past four years, with contracts worth billions of dollars expiring every month and quarter. That said, its still relatively small compared to the spot market. According to Glassnode, as of Friday's data, the spot volume was approximately $8.2 billion, while options volume was roughly $1.8 billion. In addition, BTC's open interest of $4.2 billion due to expire this Friday is less than 1% of BTC's market cap of $1.36 trillion.
That said, it could get bigger and move beyond BTC and into crypto-linked products in future as more institutions participate in the market. On Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved options tied to spot bitcoin ETFs. This comes after the approval of trading options of BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).
Jeff Park, head of alpha strategies at Bitwise Invest, called the approval "game-changing" and believes exchanges with central guarantors, which LedgerX and Deribit don't provide, are necessary. Park goes on further to say that he believes the options will start available to start trading in Q1 2025.
As Japan Election Looms, Political Parties Emphasize Need to Reform Crypto Tax Regulations
Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of Japan’s Democratic Party for the People, is making an effort to woo voters by “proposing clear tax cuts and regulatory reforms regarding cryptocurrencies” ahead of national elections on Oct 27.
“If you think crypto assets should be taxed separately at 20% instead of treated as miscellaneous income, vote for the Democratic Party for the People. There will be no tax when exchanging crypto assets with other crypto assets,” he posted on X on Oct 20.
The DPFP - the sixth largest in the Diet’s House of Representatives, the lower house of Japan’s bicameral legislature, with seven seats - is also pushing for the launch of crypto exchange-traded funds and the conversion of the yen into an electronic currency, as well as the issuance of “digital regional currencies” by local governments to revitalize local economies.
The crypto tax regime in the country has long faced criticism from investors. Under the current system, crypto profits are taxed as income, meaning high earners can be taxed as high as 45% if their income is over 40,000,000 yen ($265,000). Meanwhile, capital gains from sales of securities such as shares face a flat rate of 20%.
But Tamaki isn’t the only politician advocating for changes in this policy. Crypto tax policies have been under review in Japan for the last two years. Last year, the country announced crypto holders would no longer face taxes on unrealized gains, while a policy document released by the Financial Services Agency in September recommended considering whether crypto assets should be treated as financial assets.
The Sunday general election comes as Shigeru Ishiba, the Liberal Democratic Party leader who became prime minister in September, seeks to solidify his position following a party campaign funding scandal. His predecessor, Fumio Kishida, was a strong advocate for web3, referring to it as a “new form of capitalism”.
In April, the Liberal Democratic Party released a white paper on its own approach to web3 and blockchain. Its then-web3 project team head, Masaaki Taira - who became Minister for Digital Transformation at the start of October - has also called for reforming the tax system for cryptocurrencies and the promotion of web3 and blockchain. He has also pointed out that Japan had an opportunity for growth through its gaming industry and the development of web3 games.
The country’s second largest party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan said it too would review the crypto tax system, which it sees as closely related to the development of web3 in the country. It wants to establish a legal framework for DAOs to clarify their status and the obligations of members and participants.
The party would also consider the use of CBDCs, including ongoing pilot projects such as that of the Bank of Japan, as a means of diversifying payment methods and reducing costs.
Northern Data Considers Selling Crypto Mining Unit to Fund AI Venture
On Oct. 21, Northern Data AG, a German data center provider, announced it is exploring the sale of its crypto mining business, Peak Mining Frankfurt. This potential divestment would allow the company to focus on its growing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions business.
However, Northern Data cautioned that the sale is not finalized and its completion depends on current cryptocurrency market conditions. According to a report, the announcement of the potential sale led to a 12% increase in Northern Data’s stock price.
Since the Bitcoin halving in April, many miners have faced reduced block rewards. For example, a Bitcoin.com News report identified August 2024 as the toughest month for Bitcoin miners due to lower fees and a reduced hashrate. To address these challenges, some miners have shifted to supporting AI platforms, which also require significant computing power.
As predicted by some observers, the transition of certain Bitcoin miners to AI has bolstered their financial performance. As JPMorgan noted in June, Core Scientific’s announcement of a deal to host 200 megawatts of GPUs for Coreweave alone led to a $4 billion increase in the combined market capitalization of approximately 14 Bitcoin mining companies.
Meanwhile, a Bloomberg report revealed that Northern Data plans to fund its AI solutions business using the proceeds from the sale of Peak Mining Frankfurt. The data center provider also stated its intention to invest in acquiring and developing more data centers.
Northern Data has already indicated that it expects its revenues to triple in 2024, driven by soaring demand for AI computing. The German-based company is also reportedly exploring the possibility of listing its AI and data center business on a U.S. stock exchange at a valuation of $16 billion.
Across proposes capping token supply after LayerZero founder flags contract concerns
Across Protocol co-founder Hart Lambur proposed permanently capping the supply of ACX tokens to one billion late Monday following criticism from LayerZero Labs CEO Bryan Pellegrino. The proposal, if approved by the Across community, would also renounce Across Governance’s ownership over the ACX token and set it to 0x0 — preventing any future changes to the token supply via minting or burning.
Earlier, Pellegrino had flagged what he described as a “critical issue” with the Across token contract. However, this was met with pushback from the community, which suggested it was more of a transparency issue than a security flaw.
“You mistakenly exposed what was meant to be an internal private function written by OpenZeppelin in their ERC-20 token implementation, meant for burning tokens, and gave it to your contract owner — allowing you to take [burn] tokens out of any wallet at any point in time, arbitrarily rugging any account to zero,” Pellegrino said.
The interoperability protocol founder also alleged the Across Protocol and UMA Protocol contracts could infinitely mint tokens, suggesting that to fix the issue ownership should be transferred to an immutable smart contract that prevents minting beyond the total supply, disallows burning and cannot transfer ownership.
Across Protocol is a decentralized cross-chain bridge enabling the transfer of assets between Ethereum and Layer 2 networks. UMA Protocol is a decentralized platform that allows users to create synthetic assets and financial contracts on Ethereum using self-enforcing smart contracts. Lambur is also a co-founder of UMA Protocol.
Lambur initially dismissed Pellegrino’s allegations as “disingenuous FUD and fear-mongering,” stating its contracts are secure and audited by OpenZeppelin. Jota Carpanelli, head of security at OpenZeppelin, also addressed the claim. Carpanelli explained that the mint and burn functions were controlled by a Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) multi-sig wallet and functioned as intended, adding that it didn’t see this as a critical issue.
“Are you joking? Do you not understand how to read code? An audit is not a defense against an issue,” Pellegrino replied to Lambur. “I'll tell you what, let's bet your highest bug bounty tier ($1,000,000). When you realize you're wrong, donate it back to the community. Or you can literally just run it and verify yourself.”
Lambur later acknowledged that while Pellegrino had inaccurately labeled its ERC-20 implementation as having a critical vulnerability in his opinion, the “design choice was wrong,” adding that the proposal had been put forward in the “spirit of decentralization and transparency.”
“If it was a critical vulnerability I would have never publicly posted it publicly/on Twitter and would have done proper disclosure privately,” Pellegrino responded to another community member on X. “It's a permissioned function controlled by their team, can argue semantics of 'critical issue' or not but I would guess 99% of their users are unaware that they can have their tokens deleted.”
The current non-binding temperature check vote on the proposal, allowing the community to gauge sentiment before making a formal decision, shows 99.5% favor the supply cap.
ACX is down around 4% following the accusations at $0.28, according to CoinGecko data.
The Block reached out to Lambur and Pellegrino for comment.
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Stripe's Acquisition of Bridge Validates the Usage of Stablecoins: Bernstein
Stripe's acquisition of Bridge validates the usage of stablecoins for public blockchains, broker Bernstein said in a research report Tuesday.
"With improvements in blockchain scalability, stablecoins have emerged as the leading use case for blockchains, particularly for cross-border payments," analysts led by Gautam Chhugani wrote.
U.S. dollar denominated stablecoins on crypto rails are now the cheapest method of cross-border payments, at a cost of only 1-2 basis points, the report said.
Payments processor Stripe finalized a deal to buy stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion, according to an X post from TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington on Sunday, later confirmed by both companies.
Bernstein noted that the Bridge deal is the largest crypto acquisition by a major payments company to date.
Companies such as Bridge "play an important role by building API software for businesses to integrate stablecoin payments within their regular payments experience," the authors wrote.
This deal highlights the "growing recognition of stablecoin-based payments and their compelling benefits," investment bank Architect Partners said in a report Monday, noting that these coins are increasingly being used by non-crypto firms.
It's hard to see a more disruptive challenge to the TradFi banking system, "payments at scale without the involvement of a bank," the report added.
Read more: Tether's USDT Has Uses Beyond Crypto Markets, Trading: CEO Paolo Ardoino
其中“canonical”是指在二进制域中元素的唯一且直接的表示方式。例如,在最基本的二进制域F2中,任意k位的字符串都可以直接映射到一个k位的二进制域元素。这与素数域不同,素数域无法在给定位数内提供这种规范的表示。尽管32位的素数域可以包含在32位中,但并非每个32位的字符串都能唯一地对应一个域元素,而二进制域则具备这种一对一映射的便利性。在素数域Fp中,常见的归约方法包括Barrett归约、Montgomery归约,以及针对Mersenne-31或Goldilocks-64等特定有限域的特殊归约方法。在二进制域F2k中,常用的归约方法包括特殊归约(如AES中使用)、Montgomery归约(如POLYVAL中使用)和递归归约(如Tower)。论文《Exploring the Design Space of Prime Field vs. Binary Field ECC-Hardware Implementations》指出,二进制域在加法和乘法运算中均无需引入进位,且二进制域的平方运算非常高效,因为它遵循(X + Y )2 = X2 + Y 2 的简化规则。
如图1所示,一个128位字符串:该字符串可以在二进制域的上下文中以多种方式进行解释。它可以被视为128位二进制域中的一个独特元素,或者被解析为两个64位塔域元素、四个32位塔域元素、16个8位塔域元素,或128个F2域元素。这种表示的灵活性不需要任何计算开销,只是对位字符串的类型转换(typecast),是一个非常有趣且有用的属性。同时,小域元素可以被打包为更大的域元素而不需要额外的计算开销。Binius协议利用了这一特性,以提高计算效率。此外,论文《On Efficient Inversion in Tower Fields of Characteristic Two》探讨了在n位塔式二进制域中(可分解为m位子域)进行乘法、平方和求逆运算的计算复杂度。