Bitcoin's Worst Quarter Yet: Prices Sink Below $20K

Another week of losses and volatility has passed for the crypto market, which has lost around $50 billion in total capitalization. Bitcoin ended its worst quarter in a decade, while altcoins continue to bleed out. Let’s break down.

A week ago, Bitcoin was worth around $21K and spent most of the time since then at that level. It started to fall on June 28th and reached under $19,000 by Friday.

The end of the quarter is also significant because it's when this month's candle closed. As many expected, this led to serious volatility and BTC's price shot up to $21K but it failed to sustain and is once again below the critical level of $20,000 - the previous all-time high from last year’s bull cycle. At the end of Q1, Bitcoin closed below $20K and posted its worst quarterly performance in a decade.

Bitcoin was not the only coin that failed to see a recovery. In fact, its dominance - the measure of its share relative to the entire market - remained roughly the same. This means that altcoins failed to capitalize and also recorded similar declines compared to BTC. For instance, ETH is down 8.5% over the past seven days - just like BTC. Similar drops can be seen in BNB, XRP, ADA, LTC and others as well

As the market deleverages, major lenders are experiencing turmoil. In this regard, multiple reports suggested that FTX is getting close to a deal to buy BlockFi for $25 million. It's worth noting that BlockFi was previously raising capital at a whopping $5 billion valuation, implying major discounts for FTX if the deal is legitimate. Zac Prince - founder and CEO of BlockFi - denied the possibility of them selling for $25M, but speculations continue to run rampant and another bidder - Ledn - has also joined the acquisition race. 

The buyer with the highest apparent conviction - Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy - acquired BTC worth $10 million at an average price of $20.8K. Nayib Bukele, the President of El Salvador, also said that they bought some 80BTC at $19K.

That is for sure. We are in for quite the ride, and it's exciting to see what next week has in store.

Market Data

As of October 2018, the total market capitalization was $902B, the 24-hour volume was $99B and Bitcoin's dominance was 40.9%.

As of  Input

Ruja Ignatova, the founder of the infamous OneCoin Ponzi scheme that swindled investors out of some $4 billion, is now one of the FBI's top ten most wanted fugitives. The Bureau is willing to pay $100K for information leading to her arrest.

BITI, an inverse ETF for Bitcoin, is currently the second-largest BTC ETF in the US. It's a short instrument and its price increases as Bitcoin value decreases.

Jacobi Asset Management, an investment company, will launch Europe's first Bitcoin ETF on the Euronext Amsterdam Exchange in July. This is happening while the US continues to lag behind in terms of a spot Bitcoin ETF approval.

JPMorgan: Crypto Market De-leveraging May Soon End. One of the world’s largest international investment banks, JP Morgan Chase & Co, believes that the de-leveraging of the cryptocurrency industry might soon come to an end. According to Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou - MD of JPM’s Global Market Strategy - the de-leveraging is already at an advanced stage.

Polkadot's Inventor Reveals Governance Plan for Next Generation. After v2 has been tested on Polkadot’s Canary Network - Kusama, the proposal will be put up to vote. The creator of Polkadot - Gavin Wood - unveiled the next generation of governance for the ecosystem known as Gov2.

SEC Rejects Grayscale Spot Bitcoin ETF, Sparking Lawsuit. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has once again rejected a highly-anticipated exchange-traded fund. The proposal came from Grayscale, the world's largest digital asset manager.

Graphs are a way of displaying data.

This week, we have a price analysis of Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot and Polygon - click here for the full analysis.