Looking back on last Friday’s trading, in traditional markets, one can see a clear risk-on session. Equities rose and closed at record highs, the dollar fell, yields fell, gold steadied. On a broader time horizon and with the month of August closing, investors will probably now look at year-end sentiment, with four more months to go. The S&P is up 20%+ already but it’s worth noting that markets are absorbing a significant amount of stimulus.

On the crypto side, while BTC might be up 70% since January 1, investors are probably still looking for much higher returns. On the session, prices dropped since Sunday, despite prices holding up, just below the 50K mark. Are those whales teasing us or is this a fundamental inability to push through and back to higher grounds?

Looking at exchange data, the support and bullishness are there. A chart by CryptoQuant shows funding rates and open interests rising simultaneously; now, when those two are extended, it can be seen as a bearish sign but, at these levels and in that breadth, it feels positive.

Another CryptoQuant chart shows the stablecoin reserves and those are just powering through and higher. This is interesting, especially as prices are higher now than, say, a month ago. This suggests a ramping up of capital, ready to be deployed to buy more cryptocurrencies -and so is undeniably bullish.

Looking at other coins, the BTC Dominance index seems to be stabilising at 43. This is good and bad. It’s not a bad level to be at, for alts holders, but the stabilising suggests we’ve been unable to go lower, and might be for a while.

Currently, alts are following BTC down with a few notable exceptions: STX and SOL up 4%, ADA and XTZ up 1% and NANO just staying in the green.

Looking at recent news and probably the only narrative driving prices in the short-term, mainly for BTC, is the comment by the IMG that: “Making them equivalent to a national currency is an inadvisable shortcut.” The Bank of China then piled on saying that BTC has no value.

I’m guessing a good chunk of us disagree.

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