The Crypto Comms #55; the elephant in the room

Chris on Crypto
5 min readMay 30, 2023

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Excuse me sir, would you like some consolidation with your consolidation? Bitcoin is stuck below $30,000. But after having bounced from weekly support, the king crypto has set its sites on $35,000. But what of Litecoin? Is a radical repricing in the works for digital silver?

Bitcoin & Litecoin transactions: historical chart

In this issue

  • Bitcoin analysis
  • Bitcoin leaves exchanges
  • The elephant in the room
  • Radical repricing?
  • Latest happenings
  • Listening material

Bitcoin analysis

Bitcoin/Dollar is in consolidation mode, exchanging hands at $27,700 at press time. The pair has been stuck in a tight range since March 20th with little appetite for decisive swings.

Price revisited the 50-weekly exponential moving average ($25,700) last week before reversing to the upside. The failed breakdown out of the range and ascending channel reclaim could turn into rocket fuel for a move to $35,000.

On the flip side, losing $26,800 opens the door for a deeper correction ($22,000). This latter scenario is less likely in part due to the untapped resting liquidity of the May 6th weekend highs.

Bitcoin leaves exchanges

Interestingly, since May 5–6, the Bitcoin balance on exchanges has dropped vertically, from 2.183 million BTC, to 2.112 million BTC on hand.

The trend of buying bitcoin and taking it off exchanges was potentially accelerated recently due to the Ledger controversy which inferred that Ledger could have access to user’s private keys.

Following strong community backlash, the would-be ‘recovery’ feature has since been halted until further notice. Bitcoin continues to leave exchanges every day.

The elephant in the room

Litecoin/Dollar has also been trading in a range, albeit a more volatile one. Amidst a tightening range-bound price-trajectory, the $90 price-point has been a magnet for LTC/USD. For all of Q1 and Q2, Litecoin has repeatedly tested the upper $100 resistance bloc (14 weeks since January). The 200-weekly EMA has offered weekly resistance, with support resting at $75.

If price breaks through resistance, a $140, then $200 price-tag could happen in minutes once the crypto picks up a strong bid.

On a somewhat longer time horizon, if the discrepancy between Litecoin’s price and its network value model resolves, then a 4-figure price-point is on the cards.

Similar to Bitcoin development, Litecoin developers spend years building out infrastructure, the value of which tends to get realised all at once. Transactions on the L1 network skyrocketed since LTC-20 ordinals took off in early May following memory-pool congestion issues on Bitcoin.

As covered by market intelligence firm Santiment, anticipation for the Litecoin halving in August is also on the rise. Whether the actual event will be a ‘sell-the-news’ type of thing remains to be seen, but it’s not a stretch to say that tailwinds point in the same direction: Litecoin is sorely discounted, for now.

Radical repricing?

Potentially, Litecoin‘s looming radical upward repricing could come at the expense of so-called cryptocurrencies whose mission statement is antithetical to decentralisation (i.e. the entire point of public blockchains). This includes XRP, which is building CBDC’s for governments, and Solana, a company that was heavily backed and influenced by fraudster Sam Bankman Fried.

Arguably, proof-of-stake networks that support Sam Altman’s dystopian VC-backed Worldcoin project are all candidates for significant downward repricing against high integrity proof-of-work blockchains too.

Presently, as evidenced by the top 20 coins, there is no consensus on valuations for crypto projects whose mission statement might as well be ‘gaslighting the public’. If markets trend towards decentralisation again, another shuffle similar to previous Bitcoin epochs for the top 20 coins could be in the works.

Cheers.

p.s. while some write-ups can sound condescending at times that is not my intention. I am just slightly pissed off.

Latest happenings

Listening material

Dear readers,

The purpose of this newsletter analysis is to provide context to current events and cryptocurrency markets. It is released every Tuesday. I am not perfect and this is not a science — nor is this newsletter analysis a signals service or financial advice. While I cannot promise perfection I do my best to be honest and transparent.

Thank you for reading.

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Support

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LTC MWEB:

ltcmweb1qqt793qmlrvmj2ldu50ecxaud358fegsayls59wttgxc3f8cahdu7jq6np8le3g88q9p77w2dr2ennh2nuxzjg5ujkvq8x434pg74std0yg7kc4g6

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Chris on Crypto

Journalist-turned crypto-writer & analyst; forging the narrative, stacking sats.