Crypto Chronicle - 11/10/23

Welcome to the twelfth edition of the Crypto Chronicle, brought to you by Imperial Wealth.

You can listen to todays episode here.

Crypto News

Elon Musk Explores Video Game Streaming in Ongoing Development of the X ‘Everything App’

Elon Musk, during a recent live broadcast on X (formerly Twitter), discussed plans to integrate streaming services with Xbox and PS5.

However, X does not aim to compete with specialised streaming platforms. Musk’s 50-minute gameplay stream of Diablo 4 demonstrated the platform’s early-stage development, focusing on audio and video quality.

While Musk didn’t reveal cryptocurrency integration for payments or donations, there’s considerable interest in the initiative. 

The stream attracted 2.8 million viewers, and a tweet promoting it gained 9.3 million views and 5,300 retweets. 

X’s rebranding in July aimed to create an all-encompassing “everything app” with features like revenue sharing for X Premium subscribers, video hosting, and potential future cryptocurrency integration.

Read more here: https://imperialwealth.com/news/elon-musk-explores-video-game-streaming-in-ongoing-development-of-the-x-everything-app

Wang, Co-Founder of FTX, Testifies that Sam Bankman-Fried and Other FTX Executives Engaged in Financial Crimes

Gary Wang, the former FTX co-founder and chief technology officer, testified that he, along with Bankman-Fried, Ellison, and Singh, were involved in fraudulent activities. 

Wang’s testimony came during the criminal trial of ex-FTX CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, who is accused of fraud and conspiracy. 

Wang admitted they allowed Alameda Research to withdraw unlimited funds and lied about it. 

The trial also revealed allegations that SBF directed FTX user funds to cover Alameda losses. 

Wang’s testimony followed Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, who disclosed Paradigm’s $278 million investments in FTX and marked its current FTX equity value at zero. 

SBF remains incarcerated due to bail revocation over witness intimidation claims. It’s uncertain if SBF will testify, considering self-incrimination protections under the U.S. Constitution.

Read more here: https://imperialwealth.com/news/wang-co-founder-of-ftx-testifies-that-sam-bankman-fried-and-other-ftx-executives-engaged-in-financial-crimes

Judge Denies SEC’s Request to Pursue Appeal in Ripple Case

District Court Judge Analisa Torres has rejected the SEC’s request for an interlocutory appeal in the Ripple case, finding that the SEC failed to present substantial legal questions or grounds for disagreement. 

In her earlier July ruling, Judge Torres had determined that while Ripple violated securities laws when selling XRP to institutional investors directly, it didn’t do so with programmatic sales to exchanges for retail customers. 

This decision raised doubts about cryptocurrency regulation. The SEC sought an appeal and requested a stay after the July ruling, but Judge Torres denied these requests.

Read more here: https://imperialwealth.com/news/judge-denies-secs-request-to-pursue-appeal-in-ripple-case

Bitcoin Enthusiast Releases BitVM Whitepaper – Introducing Ethereum-Style Contracts on the Bitcoin Network

Robin Linus, a Bitcoin developer, has introduced BitVM, a novel system for enabling versatile off-chain smart contracts in Bitcoin without requiring a soft fork.

BitVM, outlined in the “BitVM: Compute Anything on Bitcoin” white paper, allows for Turing-complete Bitcoin contracts without altering Bitcoin’s consensus rules. This system processes contract logic off-chain, similar to Ethereum’s optimistic rollups, and employs fraud proofs and a challenge-response model for validation.

It holds potential for diverse applications, from games to bridging BTC to other chains. However, it’s limited to two-party scenarios and demands significant off-chain computation.

Implementation and a high-level language, Tree++, are the next milestones. BitVM’s activation relied on the Taproot soft fork, influenced by Ethereum’s optimistic rollups and Merkle Trees research.

Read more here: https://imperialwealth.com/news/bitcoin-enthusiast-releases-bitvm-whitepaper-introducing-ethereum-style-contracts-on-the-bitcoin-network

Technical Analysis

In a turn of events against prior Chronicle editions in which we had seen drastic PA occur from the prior chronicle, this week we are back at the same price of $27.5-$27.6k!

Whilst we have risen to as high as $28.4k, and as low as $27.25k, $BTC is currently consolidating around the mid $27k’s as uncertainty spreads in financial markets.

Please see the chart below:

The DXY has seemingly topped for now, with its first weekly candle close red in 12 weeks, after tapping the 0.50 major Fibonacci retracement and rejecting. It currently trades around 106.

Please see the chart below:

As a result, S&P500 and NASDAQ are both up to begin this week.

$BTC as mentioned remains steady, with price action either way.

The War in Israel/Palestine presents a situation. Whilst not a major war, I am unsure of how this will impact financial markets. 

Generally speaking, war has been good for financial markets.

The beginning of war has marked the bottom for several periods of economic decline as it stimulates the economy greatly. Think about the USD, fiat, and why these nations have to print so much cash. War. 

I’m not overly sure on how markets will fully react to this conflict, but thus far, it’s been positive. 

Data suggests that markets typically recover quickly from wars and other geopolitical shocks, despite experiencing initial volatility.

Please see the table below:

What investors in cryptocurrency right now should be weary of is alts.

BTC.D has been on an absolute tear, almost up 1% today alone, above 51% right now.

Please see the chart below:

As BTC sees any pullback, or consolidation, most alts continue to stagnate or bleed as opposed to flourishing. Take precautions when investing in current times until there is greater volatility, or we reach high time frame major levels in which a direction is more clearer.

Cryptocurrency Mining

Bitcoin mining has had a bit of a stalemate of late with very limited respite. Difficulty continues to climb as the conviction in Bitcoin mining continues to grow. 

Hashrate is now averaging between 420EH and 450EH which is a growth of 6% from this time last week. 

Block rewards have seen a big decline for an unknown reason. Average fees are now at $1.93 which is a 30% decline since last week. This has caused additional block rewards to fall to 0.15btc per block. 

Difficulty projections have shot up over the past 48 hrs due to the weekend and with lower transactions caused the projected rise for 5%+ which is in 7 days so still a lot of time to move around. 

Regarding other networks Dogecoin has had a 24% reduction in difficulty which has caused L7s to be very profitable at $12+ per day. 

Along with Litecoin having a 1.4% drop in difficulty as well which continued its relatively strong performance post halving in the terms of Mining. 

Kaspa has had a 25% rise in difficulty in the past week which is mainly due to continued hashrate growth which was expected when something is so profitable! 

Dash has also had a 24% drop in difficulty in the past week which has given D9s a great look into some more profitability. 

Thank you for reading this weeks edition of the Crypto Chronicle!

We look forward to next weeks.