Crypto wrap: Market participants coming out of bear phase, experts suggest

Last week, cryptocurrency investors received some respite from the fall in the value of digital tokens. Over the previous seven days, Bitcoin rose nearly 3 per cent, and Ethereum gained 13 per cent, according to coinmarketcap.com. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the largest and the second-largest digital tokens by market cap, respectively.

Market data suggests that the total crypto market cap rose from $1.03 trillion to $1.1 trillion in the last seven days. On Friday, the m-cap was at $1.14 trillion. “The traded volumes continued to witness double-digit gains for the third consecutive day for the cryptocurrency market. Combining this stat with the third consecutive day of gains suggests that market participants are finally coming out of the bear phase,” Edul Patel, CEO and co-founder of Mudrex, told Business Standard.

“Over the past week, Ether has been up by almost 20 per cent. And with Bitcoin dominance steadily falling, it could signal a bull phase for altcoins,” he added. Altcoins are digital tokens considered to be alternatives to Bitcoin. Since June 12, Bitcoin’s share in the market has fallen from 47 per cent to 40 per cent. Ethereum’s market cap, on the other hand, has risen from 16.27 per cent to 19 per cent.

However, the crypto market in India saw some big developments last week. WazirX, one of the largest crypto exchanges in India, was raided by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for allegedly laundering the money. Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world, announced that it was acquiring WazirX in 2019, but the deal could not go forward.

However, the heads of the two companies have been waging a war of words on Twitter regarding the ownership of WazirX.

Another development came as a report by the United Nations (UN). It said cryptocurrency rose at an ‘unprecedented rate’ during the Covid-19 pandemic. 7.3 per cent of Indians own these assets, the 7th highest in the world. The highest crypto investors came from the two countries at war, Ukraine and Russia.

The UN cautioned that due to the lack of regulations on cryptocurrency, emerging economies should be careful in dealing with these assets. It said, “If cryptocurrencies continue to grow as a means of payment, and even replace domestic currencies unofficially, the “monetary sovereignty” of countries could be jeopardized.”

However, Minal Thukral, executive vice-president of growth and strategy at CoinDCX, said that the fate of crypto and web3 looked ‘brilliant’ in India.

“As per the UN report, crypto shows a dramatic development in recent years which is a positive sign given that 65 crore Indians (~50%) have access to the internet now. Further more crypto innovations will continue to grow in India irrespective of the continuous fear around increasing rates, inflation, etc,” Thukral said.

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