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XRP Transactions Skyrocket In Australian Top Exchanges

Ripple has reached a new milestone in Australia with its native token, XRP, recording the highest trading volumes on exchanges. With this, Ripple now dominates Australian crypto exchanges as the XRP community anticipates a final court ruling in the lawsuit with the U.S. SEC (Securities And Exchange Commission).

The news came from Financial Review, an Australian media outlet shared on Twitter by Neil Smith, Ripple’s partner engineer, and Aussie firm, Blockchain Australia.

Reason For XRP Performance In Australia

According to the report, Ripple’s cross-border remittance payment (ODL) use case adoption gets the credit for this achievement. Ripple on-demand liquidity makes XRP suitable for cross-border payments as it helps customers access liquidity using this token.

 XRP itself serves as a bridge token between fiat currencies. It allows users to make payments in local currency at the payment destination within seconds, hence the name, on-demand liquidity.

Following the report’s details, Ripple’s native coin contributed to 62% of the trading volumes on the BTC Market, a Melbourne-based exchange. It also accounted for 82% of the Independent Reserve Exchange over the past day. 

CEO of BTC Markets Caroline Bowler said her crypto exchange is a Ripple on-demand (ODL) liquidity partner in Australia. That explains XRP’s dominance in the exchanges’ trading volume.

According to Bowler, Ripple ODL helps firms to run cross-border payments without incurring banking or pre-funding costs. It uses Ripple’s native coin to power part of the process, which explains the trading volumes on the BTC Market platform.

As Bowler further explained, Ripple’s native coin shares a higher percentage on their platform while the overall transaction volumes in the crypto market remain down.

Meanwhile, XRP transactions score a 24-hour volume of $10.2 million on the Sydney-based crypto exchange, Independent Reserve.

This number is more than other countries’ trading volumes put together. CEO of Independent Research, Adrian Prezelozny, said market makers and international remitters on the ODL network are part of their XRP trading clients.

Status Of Long-Standing Ripple/SEC Lawsuit

While XRP scores these wins in Australia, Ripple is still in a legal battle with the SEC over the token’s status as a security. According to Stuart Alderoty, chief attorney for Ripple in the lawsuit, the outcome will significantly impact the entire cryptocurrency market. 

Bloomberg also stated that the soon-to-come ruling would clarify who should handle crypto oversight. It would also define assets that qualify as securities or those that do not.

Both parties in the Ripple case have filed motions for summary judgment. According to Brad Garlinghouse, Ripple’s CEO, and Stuart Alderoty, the ruling is expected to come in the first half of 2023.

James K. Filan said the court ruling might go as early as March. Irrespective of the time, Alderoty believes it will impact the future of the crypto industry in the United States.

XRP Transactions Skyrocket In Australian Top Exchanges

Meanwhile, XRP is still on its way up and currently trading at $0.3933, with slight gains on the chart.

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Solana (SOL) Outperforms Top Coins With 28% Gains On Weekly Chart

Solana (SOL) recovered from the slight pullback yesterday, even when the general crypto market cap dropped today. SOL which has been on an uptrend in the past week saw a 28.44% increase during this time. This increase might be due to combined economic factors and Solana’s growing utility among crypto users.

What Is Driving The Price Of Solana?

The Solana network is enjoying more attention from the increased crypto awareness and adoption among individual and institutional investors. The network has rolled out plans for 2023, creating excitement among its online community.

Related Reading: XRP Vs. Cardano (ADA), Which Is The Better Investment In 2023?

The SOL network provides developers access and a framework to build DApps on its blockchain. For instance, Phantom, a crypto wallet, is hosted on the Solana blockchain. The wallet supports decentralized finance, staking, and NFT transactions for Solana users. 

Also, SolanaMobile, on Twitter, announced its intention to launch Solana Mobile Stack and Saga phones. The mobile phone will bring the Solana blockchain to the fingertips of users. Users are keen on the launch of the device, slated for this early this year. 

Additionally, as an altcoin, Solana correlates to bitcoin in price action. So, Bitcoin’s recent rally and other economic factors might be influencing SOL’s price.

The macroeconomic factors affecting SOL price include a low Consumer Price Index (CPI) value for December 2022. The CPI notes the overall change in consumer prices in a specific timeframe. These factors combined could be responsible for SOL’s price surge in the past few weeks.

SOLUSD
Solana Price Prediction: Will SOL Break Its Resistance?

SOL is recovering from yesterday’s slight pullback, trading at $21.28. The support levels are $19.60, $20.09, and $20.75, while the resistance levels are $21.90, $22.40, and $23.05. SOL is trading below its 50-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) and 200-day SMA on the weekly charts. These signs point to a bearish trend or slight reversal in the price of SOL ahead.

Related Reading: HNT Balloons As Token Gets 36% More Helium In Run-Up To Network Migration

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is close to the oversold region at 43.04 and might continue to descend if the bears sustain their charge.

The Moving Average Convergence/Divergence (MACD) is below its signal line and giving off negative values, indicating a bearish reversal despite the rally.

The price of SOL might dip further and touch the $19.69 support. The next rally will likely surpass the first resistance level of $21.90 in the coming days.

At press time, the price of SOL was trading at $21.42. Its trading volume is down over 50% in the last 24 hours to be sitting at $638.8 million.

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This Metric Suggests Bitcoin Could Be In Danger Of Another Selloff

A Bitcoin on-chain indicator is currently forming a pattern that has previously led to significant selloffs of the cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin 100-Day SMA Supply Adjusted Dormancy Has Rapidly Gone Up

As pointed out by an analyst in a CryptoQuant post, the selloff could potentially be even stronger than the one seen in November 2018. A relevant concept here is of a “coin day,” which is the amount of 1 BTC accumulated after sitting still on the chain for 1 day. Thus, when a token stays dormant for a certain number of days, it gains coin days of the same amount.

However, when this coin is finally moved, its coin days naturally reset back to zero, and the coin days it had previously accumulated are said to be destroyed. An indicator called the “Coin Days Destroyed” (CDD) measures the total amount of such coin days being destroyed through transfers on the entire Bitcoin network.

When the CDD is divided by the total number of coins being involved in transactions, a new metric called the “average dormancy” is obtained. This metric is so named because it tells us how dormant the average coin being transferred on the chain currently is (as dormancy is nothing but the number of coin days).

When the average dormancy is high, it means coins being moved right now are quite aged on average. On the other hand, low values imply investors are currently transferring coins that they only recently acquired.

Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the 100-day simple moving average (SMA) Bitcoin dormancy over the last few years:

Bitcoin Supply Adjusted Dormancy

Note that the version of the metric in the graph is actually the supply-adjusted dormancy, which is simply calculated by dividing the original indicator by the total amount of Bitcoin supply that’s currently in circulation.

The reason behind this change lies in the fact that the supply of the crypto isn’t constant, but rather moving up with time. So, accounting for this adjustment makes it so that comparisons with previous cycles are easier to do.

As you can see in the above chart, the Bitcoin supply-adjusted dormancy has been on a steady uptrend since the lows observed following the FTX crash. This means that the old supply has been observing rising activity recently, suggesting that the long-term holders might be exerting selling pressure on the market.

The quant notes that a similar trend in the indicator was also seen back in August 2018, where the metric started on an uptrend from the lows seen early in that month. Three months after this uptrend started, BTC observed its final leg down of the bear market, during the crash of November 2018.

If this previous trend is anything to go by, then Bitcoin could be at risk for another selloff soon. And since the uptrend in the metric this time around is even sharper, a potential plunge might be deeper as well.

BTC Price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $20,900, up 11% in the last week.

Bitcoin Price Chart

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Shiba Inu (SHIB) Is Up 4% As Lead Dev Teases Exact Beta Launch Date

The second most popular meme coin on the crypto market, Shiba Inu (SHIB), is about to launch its eagerly awaited layer 2 scaling solution Shibarium.

While lead developer Shytoshi Kusama has repeatedly said in recent weeks that the launch date is not yet set but will be “soon,” he may now have leaked the beta launch date himself wrapped in a word puzzle. He revealed the decisive hint in his Twitter bio, where he writes:

Tending the Pine Tree of Life. Quickly learning to play the flute before putting Shibarium in a heart shaped box with a bow.

For the Shiba Inu community, this is an unmistakable clue that the beta version of Shibarium will be released on Valentine’s Day, February 14.

Already on January 15, Kusama had posted a prelude to his announcement, where he mysteriously stated:

During fall the tree may have only a few leaves, but then spring appears.

Luckily, Shibarium, in this context, is a Pine Tree. Still, it needs water, sunlight and proper soil. But pines survive and thrive during the harshest winters. (I also hear the needle tea is good for you.)

Shiba Inu (SHIB) Price Reacts By Moving Up 4%

Shiba Inu (SHIB) has risen almost 4% in the last 24 hours and 21% within the last week, with the price currently standing at $0.00001249. Trading volume was around $305 million within the last 24 hours, representing a -55% decrease against the previous time period.

Year-to-date (YTD), SHIB is up about 43% at the current price, the highest level since early November 2022.

This rally has been mainly driven by two reasons: on the one hand, macroeconomic sentiment has improved substantially, giving the overall crypto market a strong boost, and on the other hand, Shibarium has provided some level of FOMO.

However, a look at the 1-week chart of SHIB reveals that the price should still be assessed as mostly bearish. In its third attempt since September 2022, SHIB’s price has failed to close above $0.000014 on a weekly basis.

The resistance zone between $0.000013 and $0.000014 has so far proved too stubborn to confirm a breakout from the bearish territory.

Shiba Inu price SHIB USD

The 1-day chart shows the massive drop from the lower end of the resistance zone at $0.000013 very clearly. Currently, however, SHIB is finding support from the 200-day exponential moving average (EMA).

As signaled by the daily RSI, Shiba Inu (SHIB) is in an overbought condition. On a daily basis, the RSI remained significantly in the overbought zone, 79 at press time.

Ideally, the RSI causes investors to reduce their positions and thus initiate a price correction on a price basis. Otherwise, there would have to be a correction on a time basis, which would mean a longer sideways trend below the resistance zone.

To trigger a sustained bullish breakout on the daily and weekly charts, Shiba Inu needs to break above the $0.000014 level within the next few weeks.

Shiba Inu price SHIB USD

Featured image from VOI, Charts from TradingView.com

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Bullish Indicator: Bitcoin Shakes Off Genesis Bankruptcy Filing

Bitcoin has not moved as expected despite the news of Genesis, one of the largest crypto lenders in the world, filing for bankruptcy. This lack of negative movement from bitcoin in response to the news could cement the digital asset’s path to the upside in the coming weeks.

Bitcoin Remains Unfazed By Genesis

Despite the dreaded news of a Genesis bankruptcy finally becoming a reality, the price of bitcoin has not reacted negatively. In fact, the digital asset has barely responded to the news at all and continues to trade around the $20,900 level.

What this shows is that the news of the Genesis bankruptcy was already priced into the price of the asset. It is understandable given that the crypto lender had been considering filing for bankruptcy for quite some time and has been exploring its options. So it makes sense that the bias and fear that such news would carry has already been digested by participants in the space.

For bitcoin, this suggests that the price of the digital asset is where it is supposed to be. Given that its current price level appears to be a fair price, then there is more support for the current bull rally. It also means that to trigger another downtrend for BTC, it would have to be a true market-disrupting event.

A deep pullback from a market correction becomes even more unlikely with this news. This means that a fall below $20,000 could be farther away than the bears would like, putting the cryptocurrency in a position for more upside rather than decline.

Bitcoin price chart from TradingView.com

BTC Investors Look To Expiring Options

On Friday, over $580 million in bitcoin options are expected to expire, and while this would normally be a cause for celebration for the bears, BTC’s continued strong performance would make this a win for the bulls who stand to gain more from the market.

Even though there are some who expect inflation to get worse, an example being JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, there is a slowdown for now, which has reduced the pressure on bitcoin and the general crypto market at this point. With the easing inflation, risk assets are seeing a better performance, increasing the chances of a price recovery rather than a decline from here.

Bitcoin’s price is also sitting comfortably above its 50-day and 100-day moving averages. This at the very least solidifies bullish momentum for the digital asset for the mid-term. Additionally, there is ample support for BTC just above $20,500 which serves as a deterrent to bears in the meantime. If BTC holds through the weekend, then a solid move above $21,000 can be expected next week.

The price of BTC is changing hands at $20,949 at the time of this writing. It is up 1% in the last 24 hours and seeing a significant upside of 10.34% in the last seven days, according to data from Coinmarketcap.

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Sell Pressure Mounts On Bitcoin As Miners Offload More BTC

CryptoQuant data on January 20 shows an unusually sharp spike in Bitcoin miners’ outflow, an unexpected development considering the solid performance of BTC prices in the past few trading days.

Miners’ Position Index (MPI) Rising

The Miners’ Position Index (MPI) is up from -0.85 registered on December 31, 2022, to +3.25 on January 19, 2023. The expansion could indicate that miners are moving their coins, at a faster pace, to centralized exchanges. 

Rising Miners' Position Index

The MPI is a moving ratio between the total miner outflows to the total one-year moving average of the total miner outflows. All denominations are in USD.

Per CryptoQuant’s interpretation, the higher the MPI ratio, the higher the odds that miners are sending mined coins to centralized exchanges, heightening the risks of a price plunge.

For a wholesome picture, it is recommended that the MPI be used with other metrics since there are assumptions that miners are expressly selling their coins in top exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, or even in over-the-counter (OTC) exchanges.

Nonetheless, when used with different technical indicators, MPI flows can provide a rough indicator of Bitcoin miners’ financial state. The actions of the miners may provide an indication of where the market might be headed next.

In proof-of-work networks like Bitcoin, miners are compensated with coins to secure the platform against external attacks and confirm transactions. Bitcoin distributes 6.25 BTC for every block they successfully mine. This translates to around $131,000 in BTC. A block is released roughly every 10 minutes.

Bitcoin Price Action

The price of Bitcoin explains the higher interest from miners compared to other proof-of-work networks like Litecoin. With a hash rate of 275 EH/s as of January 20, Bitcoin remains the most secure blockchain by this metric.

Bitcoin Miners Have to Sell

Miners have to expend energy and buy gear and this is why they are said to be mandatory sellers. Miners, therefore, have to move coins to crypto exchanges for cash to pay for services such as electricity or chipset manufacturers to remain competitive.

Since the Bitcoin network is transparent and all movements can be tracked, dedicated analytics’ platforms and traders often monitor their activities. Recent data points to these miners moving coins, possibly to exchanges for cash.

The spike from -0.85 to +3.25 coincides with the stalling of Bitcoin prices below $21,500. This retracement follows a sharp expansion that saw the coin power above $20,000 with increasing participation levels, as trading volumes show. 

Analysts said the revival is because of shifting macroeconomic factors, especially in the United States, and recent data shows that inflation is falling and labor conditions are firming after the effects of COVID-19.