Life Below $50K: Bitcoin Bottoms

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A short note on recent moves in Bitcoin and crypto-assets from Justin Chuh, Senior Trader at the regulated digital asset investment manager Wave Financial.

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Bitcoin Bottoms Out

Bitcoin bottomed out at $47k from all-time highs of $64.9k just within two weeks. Throughout this period volumes in spot, futures, and options have been increasing to levels we haven’t seen since February. We should note this is a lower low from the $51k low of late March. Additionally, as BTC climbed from $51k to $64k and fell back down, we’ve watched a slow erosion of BTC’s market dominance, now just hovering at 50%.

Ether has been looking less and less correlated, posting new highs of $2.6k during this past week as BTC was selling off.  Remember that while bitcoin is a store of value, ether is used for transactions on the Ethereum network. The smart contracts and decentralized apps built on Ethereum are becoming more popular, used more and some of the layer 2 blockchains are seeing more transactions than the layer 1 itself.  Even with the known problems and issues, such as scalability and fees, Ethereum continues to succeed at being the super computer it was meant to be.

DeFi is quite literally “interest”-ing, paying crypto enthusiasts and investors both for lending AND for borrowing assets, as Aave protocol launches liquidity farming.  DEXes (decentralised exchanges) are the only way to obtain some of those digital assets used in DeFi. Everyone and their Mum in the creative industry is looking to mint NFTs and self-monetize their products. This is all creating a multi-factor and long term use case for its cryptocurrency. However, Ethereum isn’t the only blockchain capable of supporting a smart contract ecosystem. DeFi and NFTs will be and are starting to exist on other platforms. And even when we see BTC price improvement, it may no longer be the controlling interest.


About Justin Chuh, Senior Trader at Wave Financial

Prior to joining Wave Financial Justin Chuh was at proprietary trading technology business HC Tech where he was a FX trader for 7 years. Justin is a CFA Charterholder, member of CFA Society Los Angeles and graduated from Arizona with a BS in Business Economics and Management. Justin is responsible for trading Bitcoin and other digital assets that make up Wave’s assets under management, ensuring that their trading strategies cover fund inflows and redemptions.

About Wave Financial LLC

Wave Financial LLC (Wave) is a Los Angeles and London based investment management company that provides institutional and private wealth digital asset solutions. Led by a team of highly experienced financial services professionals, Wave provides investable funds via their diverse investment strategies applied to digital assets and tokenized real assets. Wave also offers managed accounts for HNWIs and family offices seeking tailored digital asset exposure, bespoke treasury management services, and early-stage venture capital and strategic consultation to the digital asset ecosystem.

Wave is regulated as a California Registered Investment Advisor (CRD#: 305726).

W: https://www.wavegp.com/

T: https://twitter.com/wave_financial

L: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wave-financial/