The native coin of Internet Computer, ICP ($ICP), recently saw a spike in value after it was announced that it would integrate with Bitcoin ($BTC). This helped ICP capitalise on the recent gold rush surrounding the BRC20 inscription. ICP's price dropped to an all-time low of $2.83 in September 2023 after the US Securities and Exchange Commission labelled it an unregistered security earlier this year. ICP saw a sharp increase in demand after the news of BTC integration, and it is now trading at $9.33, up 64% in just one week.The value of Worldcoin ($WLD) has increased by 56.2% over the past seven days, exhibiting an impressive surge. The announcement of a significant protocol update for Worldcoin and new platform integrations occurred at the same time as this spike.Following the announcement of the partnership with SingularityNET ($AGIX), the price of Fetch.ai ($FET) increased. It attracted interest from the AI blockchain community. This partnership is proof of the expanding fusion of blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), which many investors think has the potential to usher in a new wave of innovation in the cryptocurrency space.

Overall Market  

The above chart shows the BTC price in 2023.Our desk has repeatedly stated since the beginning of December that $45,000 will be a key resistance level for Bitcoin. We also forecasted that the price of Bitcoin would move sideways as it got closer to the resistance level.Our desk predicts that the price of bitcoin will continue its sideways trend during the holiday season and gain momentum to overcome the upper resistance level after the holidays.During the last two weeks, when Bitcoin fell to $41,000, the upper blue line served as support. By year-end, if the market witnesses significant profit-taking, the lower blue line will serve as the second level of support.

The above chart shows the ETH price in 2023.Ethereum demonstrated its strength in the market after the price of ETH broke the downward trend that lasted for more than six months. On December 9, it hit its annual high of $2,407, and a lot of profit-taking sales occurred on ETH as traders and investors shifted their capital in anticipation of other exciting projects, such as BRC20 projects.As of right now, the $2,130 high that was recorded following the Shanghai upgrade is serving as a support level. A price breakdown below this level of support for ETH will open the door for further downside.

Options Market

The above chart is the at-the-money implied volatility for BTC options. As was previously mentioned, our desk observes a sideways trend in the price of Bitcoin, which is also supported by the implied volatility of short-dated bitcoin options. The current implied volatility of BTC options with a 7-day expiration date is 45%, whereas the IVs of options with a longer duration are approximately 55%.The market's estimate of the likely movement in the price of Bitcoin is known as implied volatility. Our desk predicts that the price of Bitcoin will pick a direction at the beginning of 2024 as there is a divergence between the IVs of options of different tenors.

Macro at a glance 
Last Thursday (2023-12-14)The Bank of England kept its interest rate at 5.25% unchanged, as expected.The European Central Bank keeps its interest rate unchanged at 4.75%, as expected.Following the Federal Reserve's lead, most central banks halted their rate-hike cycle and kept their interest rates unchanged.In November, US retail sales grew 0.3% month over month, outpacing the forecast 0.1% decline.The number of initial jobless claims filed in the US decreased from 221k to 202k this week. It indicates that the US labour market is still stable.On Tuesday (2023-12-19)The Eurozone CPI increased 2.4% year on year in November, as expected, slowing from the 2.9% increase in October. In addition, the year-over-year growth rate of the core CPI decreased from 4.2% in October to 3.6% in November.The Canadian Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 3.1% year on year in November, matching the 3.1% increase in October.The Federal Reserve shifted its view in last week's FOMC meeting, after one of the most aggressive rate-hike cycles in history. As a result, risk assets saw gains, and the US dollar dropped:The Dow Jones index closed at 37,557.92 on Tuesday, having reached a new all-time high of 37,562.83. This represents a gain of +13.31% for the year.The S&P 500 index ended Tuesday at 4,768.37, up +24.19% in 2023The Nasdaq index ended Tuesday at 15,003.22, up +43.35% in 2023The gold price ended Tuesday at 2,039.56 USD/ounce, up +11.82% in 2023The US dollar (DXY) ended Tuesday at 102.139, down -1.26% in 2023The price of Bitcoin ended Tuesday at 42,266 USD, up +156.2% in 2023The price of Ethereum ended Tuesday at 2,177.27 USD, up +82.8% in 2023.
Convert Portal Volume Change
The above table shows the volume change on our Convert Portal by zone. Our desk has noticed a significant volume change in the above zones in the past seven days.The AI zone is where the volume change on Convert is most noticeable. The largest contributor to this volume change is Worldcoin ($WLD). Many traders and investors were able to trade WLD during last week's turbulent price movements through the Binance Convert platform.The main cause of last week's +166.80% increase in the Launchpool zone volume was the strong trading demand for Shentu ($CTK). Shentu Chain is a Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) blockchain built with the Cosmos SDK.The primary cause of the Meme zone volume increase is SATS, one of the most popular projects in the BRC20 area. Our desk witnessed a sharp rise in SATS trading volume following Binance's listing of the 1000SATS/USDT pair as traders and investors used the Convert platform to lower risks and get better prices. 

Why trade OTC?  

Binance offers our clients various ways to access OTC trading, including chat communication channels and the Binance OTC platform (https://www.binance.com/en/otc) for manual price quotations, Algo Orders, or automated price quotations via Binance Convert and Block Trade platform (https://www.binance.com/en/convert) and the Binance Convert OTC API. 

To access manual price quotations, you may visit our Binance OTC platform (https://www.binance.com/en/OTC-Trading/spot), where you can RFQ (request-for-quote) and trade directly with our OTC trading team via a live chat.

To utilise our Algo orders features, you may visit our BinanceAlgo Orders platform (https://www.binance.com/en/OTC-Trading/AlgoTrading). 

For any other inquiries on OTC trading, please reach out to us via our email at trading@binance.com for our trading desk to get in touch with you and get started. 

OTC trades may also be automatically quoted on Binance Convert and via API, offering users a quick and simple way to execute trades across 60,000+ pairs with one simple click. Binance Convert supports over 350 tokens listed on the exchange including fiat pairs. Begin trading from as little as 1 USD. To start, simply navigate to the Binance Convert & Block Trade platform (https://www.binance.com/en/convert), select the coins you wish to trade, preview and confirm the quote with settlement reflecting almost instantly in your wallet balance. For details and access to Binance Convert OTC API, please refer to our Convert Endpoints (https://binance-docs.github.io/apidocs/spot/en/#convert-endpoints) and reach out to us at trading@binance.com if you have any questions or require assistance.

Visit Binance OTC (https://www.binance.com/en/otc) for more information on our OTC products and solutions. 

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Fast & Competitive Pricing Instant settlement Widest availability of coins Bespoke service with unique market insights Zero fees and slippage 

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