Weekly Insights #26

April 6, 201916min876

April 5: April has started out as a green month for the crypto markets, with an average price return north of 15% for the top cryptocurrencies so far. Andreessen Horowitz is looking to ditch their venture capital status and transition into the role of financial advisor in order to be able to invest more deeply into crypto, central banks continue exploring how they might utilize blockchain, and the SEC has released long-awaited crypto token guidance. If you’re wondering what caused the recent upturn in the crypto markets, read below for the most likely reason.

 


NOTEWORTHY NEWS

Andreessen Horowitz Ditches VC Status in Favor of Crypto—Apr 2, Forbes

Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has filed to become a registered investment advisor to have more flexibility to put money in crypto and other assets. The shift comes as venture investing reaches record levels thanks to huge funds like SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund. According to Forbes, Andreessen is raising a growth fund that will pull in north of $2 billion.

44 Central Banks Are Considering Blockchain Applications—Apr 3, Coindesk

According to a new report by the World Economic Forum, 44 central banks are researching or exploring blockchain technology, with the potential to issue central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). According to the report, DLT could offer the greatest advantages in countries where the existing financial infrastructure is not yet highly efficient compared to infrastructure in more developed countries.

OUR OPINION: The situation has not changed much since the January survey on central bank digital currencies conducted by BIS, which we wrote about in Weekly Insights #14. Development in this segment related to CBDCs is more common to bank-issued stablecoins like JPM coin, which is exploring replacing the cash currently used in the economy and is not directly related to cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies are not just a potential cash substitute, but a potential substitute for the current global financial infrastructure and monetary system. 

SEC Just Released Its Long-Awaited Crypto Token Guidance—Apr 3, Coindesk

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has published fresh regulatory guidance for token issuers, which has been nearly half a year in the making. The guidance focuses on tokens and outlines how and when these cryptocurrencies may fall under a securities classification.

 


 DIGITAL ASSETS ON THE MOVE

A Possible Cause of April’s Rally

The crypto market experienced a large spike on April 2, initiated by bitcoin’s sudden price increase by approximately 20% against the USD. This simultaneously pulled the rest of the market upwards, increasing trading activity and general positive sentiment. According to some sources, the bitcoin price increased after a large market order from a single buyer across Bitstamp, Kraken, and Coinbase at the same time, amounting to about 20k BTC all together.

Bitstamp BTCUSD, daily chart. Source: TradingView

The sudden price increase of bitcoin had two effects on other crypto assets. The first is technical, as the majority of altcoins and tokens have a large share of trading volume denominated in BTC. This means that they will generally move in the same direction as BTC (in USD value), especially when looking at BTC’s shorter timeframes.

The second effect is behavioral, as many crypto traders and investors are currently anticipating a market reversal, the end of the crypto winter. A combination of great overall progress and advancements in the industry–such as DeFi, PoS, and governance–and the sudden price increase of bitcoin have certainly given out an important positive signal. The sudden price increase also caused a short squeeze in several markets. A short squeeze occurs when a sudden price increase liquidates a large number of short positions. Short positions are liquidated by buying back the leveraged asset with a market order, which, depending on the depth of the market, can also force other short positions to be liquidated. An example of a short squeeze in the Bitfinex BTCUSD market can be seen in the chart below. Short open interest declined drastically due to short positions being liquidated.

Bitfinex BTCUSD short open interest, hourly chart. Source: TradingView

 


THE WEEK AHEAD

What do High L1 Fees Mean for Lightning Network?

Lightning Network (LN) is a network of payment or state channels, a second-layer technology, that is being developed and implemented on several different blockchain networks, the largest currently being Bitcoin. The basic idea of a state channel is that two parties open a channel off-chain and can make transactions between each other by updating the state of the channel instead of paying transaction fees on-chain for every single transaction. The net outcome of the channel is later settled on-chain by both parties signing the final state of the channel. When Alice has an open channel with Bob and Bob has an open channel with Christine, Alice and Christine can also transact with each other—this is the Lightning Network. Of course, the system is a bit more complicated, but this is essentially how it works.

While there are several approaches to increase the capacity of a blockchain network, Bitcoin chose LN as its main approach, and as it turns out, custodial solutions are required in order for LN to function as intended, while L1 network is experiencing high transaction fees. Transacting in LN requires at least two on-chain transactions: one for opening a channel and one for closing it. For example, suppose an individual opens a channel with a large hub (someone who has many open channels with different parties) with $50 worth of bitcoin. He pays $2 for the transaction to open a channel and is left with the rest, which he can then spend inside the LN. Meanwhile, bitcoin increases in price, which leads to greater general interest in Bitcoin, increased on-chain activity, and, therefore, higher network fees. Now the network fee is $50 (the actual average Bitcoin transaction fee on 12/22/2017) and our individual is left in limbo, as his funds are unspendable.

Funds in a state channel always have a reservation for a network fee, which is required to close the channel, meaning that each state channel needs to be sufficiently funded, as L1 fees will probably increase dramatically if the block size remains restricted to 1MB. The solution to this problem is custodial services, which are already emerging in the form of wallet providers. A wallet provider has many channels open with larger hubs and other similar services, and their channels are well funded and provide sufficient capacity for regular transacting. A custodian takes users’ deposits on-chain and lends them funds on LN so they can make cheap transactions. The only problem with this solution is that it does not solve the first problem, the problem Bitcoin was trying to solve in the first place: having a trustless network for value and information exchange in which participants are not dependent on trusted third parties (banks). LN on its own does not solve the scalability issue of Bitcoin in a trustless way if L1 transaction output does not increase.

In the case of stale L1 capacity, there is another problem to tackle that is yet to emerge. Currently, Bitcoin is in the third reward era. Block rewards are halved approximately every four years. Rewards started with 50 bitcoin per block in 2009, and currently, each block reward yields 12.5 bitcoin. When the protocol issues a small amount of bitcoin per block, the only compensation miners will receive for securing the network is transaction fees. The network will need to host a large number of transactions for miners to keep using their computation power to secure Bitcoin, meaning L1 capacity has to be increased or limited supply has to be changed.

 


 MARKET OVERVIEW & METRICS

Weekly Market Overview, 29 Mar to 5 Apr 2019. Source: Coin360

Weekly Crypto Stats

  • Global network value reached $173.66B, with 20.96% weekly delta.
  • Global crypto market turnover was $62.3B, 13.44% from ATH.
  • *Real 10* market turnover was $2.59B.
  • Bitcoin dominance is 50.4%, with 0.26% weekly delta, and beta of 0.83.
  • Ethereum dominance is 9.89% with -4.54% weekly delta, and beta of 1.29.
  • Bitcoin hashrate is 44.39B TH/s, with -4.76% weekly delta.
  • Ethereum hashrate is 146.44K GH/s, with 3.14% weekly delta.

 


CHART OF THE WEEK

Visualization of the Ethereum ecosystem showing ample interactions and relationships between subcommunities.

Source: kauri.io

This content has been put together by Marko Štemberger and Tilen Držan. Feel free to contact us for any feedback or if you have questions.

Information provided above is not to be considered as an investment advice.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Block Analitica, the company behind Squared Capital, has just launched its digital asset metrics dashboard to the public. Though still in beta, if you are interested in a more in-depth analysis of blockchain fundamentals — everything that’s happening with stablecoins, development activity, exchange balances, and much more — we invite you to register for a free account.



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