November 30, 2020

Some highlights from this week:

• BTC closes 1st down week after 7 consecutive up weeks
• US Investment Firm launches employer-sponsored Bitcoin 401k plan
• SEC Chairman Jay Clayton explains US crypto regulation, calls BTC a store of value
• US feds forget to seize $400k in Bitcoin forks
• Gazprombank Switzerland executes first BTC trades, announces payment initiative
• Japanese finance giant SBI launches Bitcoin lending services
• VanEck Europe launches ETF-like Bitcoin product
• Fidelity executives says they will support Ethereum and launch crypto trading services for retail clients
• Chinese police seize 1% of Bitcoin’s total supply

Market Overview

The total cryptocurrency market cap has increased by 2.6% this week, from $540B to $554B. Bitcoin dominance has fallen slightly by -1%. Asset performance was mixed throughout all crypto sectors. Trade volumes were up across the board except for USDT. XLM and XRP had the biggest increases in Tweet volumes. Long term sentiment remains high for the majority, with XRP leading at 86.

Weekly Performance of Major Cryptocurrencies

XLM (87.6%) and XRP (36.6%) stood out as the two strongest majors this week, with both returning positive double digit increases. These two also held up during the crash on Thanksgiving day, while the others saw decent sized drawdowns.

Weekly Performance of DeFi Tokens

Decentralized finance took a hit this week, as the median token return this week was -4%. LUNA led the pack, with ZRX, LRC, and YFI following behind with positive single digit increases.

Bitcoin Remains Volatile

After 7 consecutive up weeks in a row, BTC finally had a pullback this week. Despite a small price decrease, volatility was very high. Bitcoin traded within a 20.4% range from the low of $16,188 to the high of $19,484. We saw price chop around early in the week, even attempting to push to new ATH before getting rejected a few hundred dollars shy. On Thanksgiving day the price of BTC dropped by -14%, around the time that OKEx re-enabled withdrawals. Investor sentiment plummeted around this time as well, decreasing from 59 to 42. This indicates a shift in conversation tone from positive to negative. BTC quietly climbed back up to $18,000 over the weekend.

People Are Searching to Buy Bitcoin

The chart below shows the relative search interest for this term vs the price of Bitcoin. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. The Google search term “Buy Bitcoin” has reached its highest point since Feb of 2018, but is nowhere near the search volume it had back in late 2017 when the price was at the same level. Are people already aware of where to buy BTC resulting in less searches, or is this a sign that we are still relatively early in this bull run and new retail hasn’t yet caught up?

The Number of Twitter Users Talking About ETH Has Doubled This Year

The 30 day average number of Twitter users talking about Ethereum has reached its highest amount since July of 2018. This number has increased by 100% YTD.

Big Price Increases Brings More Conversations

After many months of preparation and planning, the Stellar public network finally upgraded to Protocol 15. This, as well as the price of XLM surging, has caused the number of Twitter users talking about XLM to increase by over 1570% since the beginning of November.

Additionally, the number of Twitter users talking about XRP has increased by 725% since November. This rise in conversions caused XRP Tweet Dominance to surpass ETH for the first time in 2020. Tweet dominance is the percentage of overall cryptocurrency tweets that an individual cryptocurrency accounts for on a given day.

Tweet Volumes Soars

November was a great month for crypto in terms of price increases as well as an increase in conversations. Tweet volume for the majors increased by 38% in Nov, reaching its highest total this year. 

Binance Hits Record Volumes in November

The recent rise in cryptocurrency prices has benefited Binance greatly. With the vast selection of altcoins to trade, it's no surprise that they are one of the leading exchanges in terms of trading volume. Binance hit a record high of $168B in volume during November, an increase of 127% from last month.

Notable News

SEC Chairman Jay Clayton Explains US Crypto Regulations, Calls Bitcoin a Store of Value

Japanese Financial Giant SBI Launches Bitcoin Lending Services

VanEck Europe Launches ETF-Like Bitcoin Product

This Week's Podcast Episodes

Ep. 29 - Attracting Institutions with Chris Thomas (Swissquote Bank)
In our twenty-ninth episode Chris Thomas (Head of Digital Assets at Swissquote Bank) discusses custody, interest-bearing products, and attracting institutional capital to the cryptocurrency space. Listen here

Ep. 30 - Crypto Compliance and Growth with Chen Arad (Solidus Labs)
In our thirtieth episode Chen Arad (COO at Solidus Labs) discusses shared-surveillance as a fundamental infrastructure necessity for regulated crypto growth. Listen here

YouTube - Market Making for Digital Assets with Anton Golub (flovtec)
Anton Golub (CEO of flovtec) joins The TIE's podcast to chat STOs, colored coins, liquidity, making markets, and why the lightning network will never work. Anton is a crypto OG, and this episode is a can't miss. Watch here