AMBCrypto Epaper 15th June 2021

1. BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021 Tuesday, June 15, 2021 This 2020 factor could be the key to BTC reclaiming $60k level Will India classify Bitcoin as an asset class soon? Institutions made their presence known towards the end of 2020. B deemed responsible for its drop. From weak mar- ket sentiment to over-leveraged trades, every rea- soning is backed by an argument. Yet, there is a par- ticular influence, or simply the lack of it, which may have rolled the dice on BTC’s calamitous month. itcoin’s past week of decline has been ana- lyzed again and again: the why, the how and how long. Quite a few factors have been How is no one talking about Institutions? Say what you may, Institu- tions made their presence known towards the end of 2020. Whether it was Grayscale’s aggressive ac- cumulation or MicroStrat- egy’s massive BTC buy, its impact was evident. From 1 October 2020 to the 3rd week of February 2021, Grayscale’s BTC holdings increased from BTC to 655.47k. Then, the spending suddenly came to an abrupt halt, and a significant weekly correc- tion of 21% was observed. E believed that the country could be look- ing at classifying Bitcoin as an asset class. ven though India was still deliberat- ing regulations for cryptocurrencies, some top officials from the industry Sources linked with the in- dustry expressed that the government has moved away from its aggressive stance towards virtual currencies and was like to classify Bitcoin as an asset class in India soon. Meanwhile, the Securi- ties and Exchange Board of India [SEBI] could be the regulator for crypto. 449.8k tween Bitcoin bull-run and Institutional spend- ing. However, both have occurred in the same period, so an argument can be made based on influence. One of the positives that can be taken out of the current market is that Gray- scale could start accumulating at previous prices again, seen during the start of February. Coincidentally, the price action for Bitcoin hasn’t been great either. Bitcoin registered a high of $57,780 on 21 February, following which only an 11.14% rise was observed over a month. The momentum had visibly tapered down. Many analysts speculated that Gray- scale stopped adding to their BTC hold- ings as GBTC premium was exhibiting neg- ative rates. Now, Since 25 February, GBTC premium is yet to record a positive rate. On 14 May, it reached an all-time low of 21.23%. Therefore, it can be speculated that the decrease in Institutional spending may have halted BTC’s rally following Q1 2021. Re- tail traders haven’t been able to inject sub- stantial momentum to the rally, as lever- aged trades rekt the price’s value off late. Despite the leniency shown by the government regarding crypto, the RBI re- cently clarified that there was no change in its stance and that concerns still pre- vailed regarding cryptos. The RBI Gover- nor, Shaktikanta Das had earlier stated: Another inference that can be drawn is that Institutions are currently waiting for the price to drop deeper, before executing an- other major buy order. Whatever it may be, institutions’ intervention currently looks signif- icant for Bitcoin, if the asset wants to improve and progress higher on another bullish rally. The drop in GBTC discount suggest- ed that institutional demand has softened in the market considerably since February. What can be taken as positive for Bitcoin? There is no way of confirming a correlation be- “There is no change in RBI’s position (re- garding cryptocurrencies). And, with regards to RBI’s position, we have major concerns about cryptocurrencies, which we have conveyed to the government. And, with regard to investors, it is for each investor to do his own due dili- gence and take a very careful and prudent call.” WazirX gets show-cause notice over claims of ‘money laundering’ I lines for transactions involving cryptocurrencies worth Rs. 2,790.74 crore ($381,862,278 approx). This was a response to its latest circular that directed the banks to stop flagging cus- tomers over crypto transactions, citing a 2018 circular that was later quashed by the Supreme Court. While many mistook this circular as the central bank warming up to crypto, the RBI cleared the air with the above statement. ndia’s Directorate of Enforcement, on Friday, issued a show-cause notice to Indian cryp- to-exchange WazirX for violating FEMA guide- to wallets of other exchanges which could be held by foreigners in foreign locations. The ED has also alleged that WazirX did not collect the required documents and that in turn contravened the mandatory Anti-Mon- ey Laundering (ALM) and Combating Financ- ing Terrorism (CFT) rules and FEMA guidelines. The ED initiated the FEMA investiga- tion on the basis of an ongoing money laun- dering investigation illegal online betting Nevertheless, there have been discussions about the formation of a new committee with the finance ministry and crypto industry to oversee the regulations. It has been report- ed that an expert panel at the ministry was already studying the matter and the chances of a crypto bill making its way to the mon- soon session of the Parliament was likely. into Chinese-owned applications. “In the period under investigation, users of WazirX via its pool account, have received in- coming cryptocurrency worth Rs 880 crore from Binance accounts and transferred out cryptocur- rency worth Rs 1,400 crore to Binance accounts. None of these transactions are available on the blockchain for any audit or investigation.” The officially registered entity M/s Zanmai Labs Pvt Ltd was incorporated in 2017 as a native Indian crypto-startup and the directors - Nischal Shetty and Sameer Hanuman Mhatre have been called out in the ED’s notice. Here, it should be noted that global crypto-exchange Binance had acquired WazirX two years after incorporation in 2019. Ketan Surana, Director and chief finan- cial officer, Coinsbit, and Member, Inter- net and Mobile Association of India said: Curiously, according to CEO Nischal Shetty, WazirX is yet to receive any show-cause no- tice, with the exec stressing that the exchange is in compliance with all laws and regulations. He added, “We go beyond our legal obliga- tions by following Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) processes and have always provided information to law enforcement authorities whenever required.” Here, it’s worth noting that crypto-regula- tions in India are very foggy at the moment. The ED’s statement highlighted, “Dur- ing the course of investigation, it was seen that the accused Chinese nationals had laun- dered proceeds of crime worth Rs. 57 crore approximately by converting the INR depos- its into cryptocurrency Tether (USDT) and then transferring the same to Binance Wallets based on instructions received from abroad.” “We can definitely say that the new commit- tee which is working on cryptocurrencies is very optimistic on cryptocurrency regulation and legislation... A new draft proposal will soon be in the Cabinet, which will look into the overall scenario and take the best step forward. We are very hopeful that the government will embrace cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.” fers a wide range of crypto-related transac- tions, including exchange of CCs with INR and vice-versa; exchange of CCs; Person to Person (P2P) transactions; and even transfer/receipt of cryptocurrency held in its pool accounts According to the probe agency, WazirX of-

2. 02 BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021 Why you should look closely at BTC, Eth, other alts’ trading volumes T and Ethereum have dominated the proceedings before, volumes have been much more distrib- uted over the course of the last few months. BTC: hash rate drops after China warns Xinjiang against mining of only USDT pair assets have been considered). um. Here, it is important to note that ETH Futures were only recently introduced on the exchange. Now, there are a few things that can be in- ferred from the aforementioned trading volume differences on multiple exchanges, with respect to multiple coins. When it came to altcoin trad- ing, it has been limited to only Binance’s plat- form since it caters to the largest retail inves- tors’ group. So, a majority of trading for these assets usually comes from one particular end. May was a turbulent month for the ecosys- tem as both buying and selling volumes were taking over the industry. Now, according to Coinmetrics, Binance’s trading volume has been largely dominated by altcoin trading in 2021. One of the reasons being its heavy altcoin list with USDT pairs, but it took a noticeable leap over Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2021. And yet, in the month of May, Ethereum registered the highest trading volume, and it was followed up by Bit- coin. Dogecoin, Binance Coin, XRP, and Cardano. rading volume has been an important metric to gauge the amount of market activity in 2021. While assets like Bitcoin On the question of Bitcoin and Ethere- um, however, unsurprisingly, the interest was widespread and cohesive. It can be stated that both East UTC and WEST UTC time traders were involved with Ethereum, Bitcoin trading, On Coinbase, the spread coverage by Ethere- um was more dominant than on Binance, where BTC, ETH volumes were almost neck and neck. Altcoin volumes lagged strongly on this platform. On FTX, the trading volume was more compara- ble again for Bitcoin, Ethereum, with other assets hardly accruing relatively high trading activity. Finally, the CME was the only platform where Bit- coin outperformed Ethereum in terms of Future volumes, a finding that meant that institutional investors were still favoring Bitcoin over Ethere- Hence, it can be speculated that there is a high- er chance that altcoin trading concentrated only on one platform might have been prey to some form of wash trading over time. Bitcoin, Ethereum have maintained relatively active trading activ- ity (not quantifiable) across multiple platforms. While an argument can be made that the listing of different altcoins makes a difference, major alt- coins are still pretty popular across all exchanges. While Ethereum’s trading volume has caught up with Bitcoin on Binance, Bitcoin led the charge for a significant period of time before the month of May. In this article, we will be looking at the differ- ent levels of trading volumes across different ex- changes and what they may indicate in terms of identifying the general investor (Trading volumes B all kinds of developments. Previously, the rehashing of China’s crypto-ban had contrib- uted to the price dropping massively. How- ever, now that the country is cracking down on mining, we may be in for another dump. itcoin’s price has been going through a volatile phase lately, making the crypto-asset extremely sensitive to China recently announced a ban on the mining of cryptocurrencies in the Xinjiang zone citing “energy-saving tal protection.” Xinjiang, along with Inner Mongolia and Sichuan, made up three im- portant places in China contributing highly to the mining pool. There have been strict actions taken in all three areas by the au- thorities to prevent the mining of cryptos. environmen- With China being a major player in terms of Bitcoin mining, the hash rate has been already impacted. According to Chinese re- porter Colin Wu, the total BTC hash rate fell on 11 June by 20E. The reporter added, Although many Bitcoin enthusiasts believe that this is FUD meant to hurt the already tumbling val- ue of the world’s largest crypto, mining pools like AntPool, F2Pool, Poolin have been seeing their hash rate fall over the past couple of days. Why this BTC cycle is ‘going to be some- what different’ W After noting an intermediate peak recently, popular analyst Benjamin Cowen had assert- ed that Bitcoin’s market cycle top was still well away. Nevertheless, as circled and highlighted in the attached chart, Bitcoin has been ahead of both cycle two and cycle three during dif- ferent stages. That being said, it has failed to persist and keep pace with either of them. and ith a market cap of almost $700 bil- lion, Bitcoin was trading within the $36k price bracket at press time. When the news first broke about Xinjiang, the hash rate across Chinese mining pools fell by between 11% to 30% within 24 hours. Similarly, prominent and Binance also noted a 10% decline. other mining pools like run by exchanges Huobi Here, it’s worth adding that the drop in the hash rate also followed a difficulty ad- justment that took place nearly a week ago. The hash rate often falls if the difficulty is adjusted higher, but this time the difficul- ty was adjusted lower to 21.05 trillion at a block height of 685,440, which was a 16% drop compared to its ATH reported in May. Here, it is essential to note that the above Bit- coin market cycle ROI chart is measured from the market cycle bottom. Drawing parallels with the previous cycle, Cowen now highlighted, “For us to continue to follow the last market cycle, Bitcoin will have to go up by $300,000 by the end of the year.” nitely looks too “far-fetched” for now. Highlighting other obstacles in Bitcoin’s path, Cowen added, ever, an earlier analysis had pointed out that the same could act as a hindrance and surprise people later. Further elaborating on the same, Cowen said, “Basically, higher the market capitalisation, the harder it is to move the price. For Bitcoin it’ll take a lot of more volume and with each cycle it’s going to get harder and harder to push it up the curve.” “This is the cycle of institutions and I’ve always been skeptical that every institution owned by man is going to FOMO into Bitcoin in 2021… I think a lot of institutions will continue to pour in and this cycle is going to be some- what different than any other cycle we’ve seen.” Over the past 6 months, Bitcoin has registered a 100.15% surge. If the same 100% is applied to the current $36k market price, Bitcoin would just cross the $72k range. What’s more, according to the ana- lyst, the journey from $30k to the $300k band defi- Bitcoin holders may want to pay attention to Bitcoin’s price as the dropping hash rate could invite selling pressure. At the time of press, BTC was trading at $37,425, with the dominant sentiment remaining one of ‘Extreme Fear.’ The analyst also suggested that it would be- come essential for institutions to step up to take Bitcoin’s price to the aforementioned level. How-

3. 03 BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021 Is the worst finally over for BTC? what’s in store for for 2021? M moment could completely demoralize potential investors. However, the 1-day or 12-hour chart would not seem drastically bad as the asset is still accruing capital gains for 2021. Therefore, it is essential that we analyze Bitcoin and its recent sell-off from a fundamental point of view, and figure out if we are heading towards a long-term bearish period or if it is just a bump in the road. What might a set- tlement in the XRP lawsuit look like? arket perspective is vital while analyzing the trend of an asset. Consider this - Observing Bitcoin’s 1-hour chart at the D its execs, and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission are never far away. In fact, the same was referred to recently by at- torney John Deaton when he claimed that, espite a wave of motions and replies over the last few weeks, talks of a settlement between Ripple Labs, Over the past few months, we have discussed several on-chain metrics that seemed over-bull- ish at times and suggesting an impending cor- rection. However, we continued to ignore and invalidate these signs as the market rallied for- ward, until the recent crash. Now, according to data, certain indicators have undergone a reboot, and these signs may allow panic to settle down. “While the trial lawyers are fighting it out and arguing over almost everything, the settlement lawyers are kicked back trying to find a path of least resistance.” Now, let us assume that these lawyers have successfully been able to keep the intensity of the lawsuit behind them to push out a settle- ment. What will such a settlement look like? At- torney Jeremy Hogan is the latest to take a crack at this question, with Hogan asserting that such a likelihood can only be entertained if the settle- ment involves clauses that satisfy both parties. Before analyzing the reversals, it is signifi- cant to acknowledge the gravity of this capit- ulation event. 19 May registered the largest realized losses for Bitcoin on the daily scale at $4.5 billion. It was larger than the losses witnessed in Jan-Feb 2018 and March 2020. And yet, only 9-9.5% of the value were unre- alized losses, a figure that was relatively small. Both parties, the attorney argued, will want different results from such a settlement. According to Hogan, the SEC, for instance, will want to put an end to this lawsuit with- out any damage to their “street cred” with other crypto-companies. This will include not only language enjoining Ripple from any ille- gal sales in the future, but also a civil penalty to show that “Ripple did something wrong.” In March 2020, 44% was unrealized, where- as the magnitude was 114% back in 20218 (Unrealized losses determine the percent- age that may still panic-sell in the market). Now, one major positive that can be taken from the Net Unrealized Profit/Losses or NUPL is the re- test at the support of 0.5. According to the chart above, this particular support kickstarted multiple bullish cycles in 2013 and 2017 and presently, it is reaching the 0.5-level for the first time in 2021. Right now, the funding rates across exchanges are cooling off as well, with the selling pressure subsiding in the market. The worst could be over for now, and with the fundamentals relatively bullish, the market remains on course for a strong 2021. a bull cycle, there are two particular ranges where most institutions like to trade around - the Demand Zone and the Supply Zone. Then, there’s the question of disgorge- ment. Now, this was something very specif- ic the agency sought when it first charged the San Francisco-based blockchain firm. In fact, Hogan himself had alluded to the same being a key part of the SEC’s prosecu- tion during an interview a few months ago. The Demand Zone represents a range dur- ing a period of correction, one which ena- bles a sharp surge upwards within a few price candles. Similarly, the Supply Zone is a range where the asset may witness a sharp correc- tion after a bullish rally. Both of these zones represent key windows of buying and sell- ing and are currently evident on BTC’s chart. In the next article, we will discuss the price market structure, with potential buy- ing and selling zones for Bitcoin, and estimate the long-term movement for the digital asset. Additionally, miners did not have any- thing to do with the sell-off this time. Dur- ing major bearish cycles in the past, miners have been responsible for strong sell-offs. However, in the present day, “There’s just no way to fairly “disgorge” profits to inves- tors because there’s no way of fairly knowing who to “disgorge” to. How would you even come up with a plan to disgorge say a bil- lion dollars that Ripple pays – to who? Plus, there’s that small problem that it was literally your lawsuit that caused the most damage.” Now that we have a proper understand- ing of the key factors that have undergone a reset, we will identify how it affects Bitcoin’s market structure. It is important to note that Bitcoin exhibited an aggressive market rally in 2021. It lasted more than 4 months, from the beginning of January until the market sell-off in May. A cooldown period is essential for such price surges, otherwise, the structure would only be looking for a deeper drop from the top. This time, however, short-term holders were more responsible for extended corrections. Bit- coin Token holders between 1 month-6 month possibly chased the retail price throughout the cycle, and once the price collapsed, pan- ic selling ensured the higher realized losses for BTC bought between $50,000-$60,000. As observed, the Demand Zone was re-tested during the price correction, following which BTC surged immediately. One of the main reasons why the Demand Zone facilitates a quick recovery is that institutions largely trade from these ranges. Here, it is important to note that institutions do not chase the market price, only retail traders do. Accredited investors wait for a correction be- fore getting their orders through, and that is ex- actly what probably happened during the sell-off. Higher liquidations for leverage trades also led to a short-squeeze which dragged BTC down to $30,000 for a brief moment. What about the defendants then? Accord- ing to Hogan, first and foremost, Ripple would want assurances that it will be able to maintain its business and ODL, with the civil penalty not being significant enough to induce bankruptcy. Coming to the important schematics of The first is a particularly significant assurance, especially since in the past both Garlinghouse and Larsen have be- moaned the lack of regulatory clarity in the United States to hint at a move abroad. It’s worth noting, however, that in a lat- er interview, when the narrative took an “us v. them” turn, the Ripple exec was quick to say that he is “committed to San Francisco.” What’s more, the firm would want much-needed clarity going forward, clar- ity on the status of XRP, a development that will tell the secondary market that the “SEC thing” is well and truly over. Such clarity, ideally, should be enough to give exchanges the confidence to re-list XRP. Here, it’s worth noting that Hogan also entertained two other possibilities, each of which wouldn’t exactly be in the best-case scenarios for XRP or Ripple. These included possible limitations on the sale of escrowed XRP and Ripple being restricted to private sales to only companies and clients, the lat- ter of which can be expected to “bottleneck the flow of XRP into the market for years.”

4. 04 BI-MONTHLY DIGITAL NEWSPAPER Tuesday, June 15, 2021 This time, have things changed between Bitcoin, Eth, and USDT? Bitcoin still not out of the woods: 4 obstacles it needs to overcome A The king coin slipped down as far as $31k, a level the market had not seen in a long time. While May’s crash was colossal too, the price did not kneel down to the aforementioned level. What’s more, with every drop on the charts, the death cross narrative is becoming even more prevalent. fter 19 May’s crash, the crypto-market witnessed another mini-crash on 8 June, and yet again, all eyes were on Bitcoin. It’s worth noting, however, that the asset bounced back and was trading around the $36,800-range, at press time. Since the price has already started moving up, is it safe to as- sume that Bitcoin has already bottomed out? B dropped at the end of May. While the industry has had its fair share of positive changes and signs of reversals, substantial results haven’t really panned out since the May 19th crash. was more reactive. The market dynamics have completely changed now, as most crypto as- sets have a USDT pairing on platforms. Hence it can be inferred that the SSR ratio cannot be considered as a ‘buying power’ for only BTC. such as USDT, USDC, etc have injected more liquidity into space, and have often acted as crypto reserves during choppy markets. At the moment, we are amid a choppy trading ses- sion and recovery has been expected to arrive when big USDT holders start buying back in. itcoin and the Altcoins are currently in a market rut. The bullish recovery hasn’t been smooth sailing after the prices Have we stepped into the early stages of an upward trend or is it merely a price swing? And most importantly, is this the right time for traders to step into the market? The introduction of DeFi further complicates matters, as the desire for stablecoin yields became extremely popular. Demand increases for stable assets and now, the industry is possibly at a point where USDT has less impact on Bitcoin’s movement. Stablecoin Supply Ratio or SSR has been iden- tified as a bullish bias for the market. Whenever the SSR ratio is low, it is considered that the stable- coin supply has more “buying power” to purchase Bitcoin, hence driving the market up. Historically it has been observed back in the early half of 2018. High Tether reserves on exchanges have kept the bullish narrative somewhat alive. However, it might be time to incorporate another point of view; to understand that things might not follow previous factors, which were fundamentally bullish before. After the May crash, Bitcoin had to cling on to the $34k-level for a long time, and then continue moving upwards from there. However, that did not happen, and as a re- sult, the market witnessed the 8 June crash. With a growing number of investors, institutions, and interest, the cryp- tocurrency market isn’t straightforward more, let alone the factors determining a bull-run. However, changed now. Back in 2017-2018, only a few major assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin had stablecoin pairs on exchanges. the landscape might have 1. Criteria one and two: According to tech- nical analyst Michaël van de Poppe, a reversal looks like the most likely scenario at this point and the market ‘might’ get to witness a bullish divergence soon. “First step is that we get into the liquidity zone and the second step is to break back or bounce back and that’s what we’re do- ing. But we’re still not out of the woods yet.” Is USDT going to pull Bitcoin down, and push Ethereum and other altcoins up? Stablecoins have become an integral part of the industry over the past 3 years. Assets any- The supply was still low and its movement 2. 2 more obstacles: Another popular analyst with the pseudonym Don Alt re- cently highlighted, “BTC needs to punch through this red resistance ($34k) and then it’s home free to do another crab run to $40k. Not out of the woods yet, but decent first signs of the range boundary holding.” USDT and other stable- coins will continue to have a say on Bitcoin, Altcoins movement, but it is not as definitive as it was before. Post that, according to Poppe, Bitcoin’s price has to sustain a breach of another crucial level at $35.3k. Even though the daily chart projected a favorable picture, the two-hourly chart painted a completely different scenario. Bitcoin was still making lower highs and lower lows there, and that according to the analyst did not give a concrete reversal confirmation. Tether reserves on exchanges dropped recently as well but the impact on BTC’s price hasn’t been outrightly positive. The digital asset class is evolving and USDT is currently embedded with that narrative. Nevertheless, if Bitcoin clears all the obstacles on its path and bounces back, EtC announces Magneto upgrade; Will the price react? E upgrade dubbed Magneto will take place at block 13,189,133 and will implement ECIP- 1103. It will also include Ethereum Berlin upgrade features, as per the announcement. “Then you are actually destroying the structure of making lower highs and low- er lows and the next step is that you’re going to attack these highs once again.” While the team is working on the blockchain, ETC has been among the highest returning tokens this year. The digital asset, at press time, was re- turning 850% year-to-date and hit an all-time high at $184 recently. The growth of ETC has puzzled many chartists who expected the price to hit half of its current ATH by the end of the year. Howev- er, it looks like the ETC market managed to ap- preciate on the back of Ethereum and Bitcoin’s volatility before corrections eventually set in. thereum Classic is in the news today after it announced the next network upgrade scheduled for 21st July. The Pointing out the ongoing scenario, he add- ed, “It’s a good bounce that we’re seeing on Bitcoin right now, but most likely we’re going to see resistance. The emergence of a bullish divergence will make the market refuse to drop even further because of the bias pressure coming into the market and then you slow- ly start to adapt towards and upward trend.” ECIP-1103 will allow the addition of all the protocol upgrades which were a part of the Berlin update that took place in April. The protocols include various EIPs optimizing gas and transactions which pertain to security enhancements important to the network. The implementation of ECIP-1103 will ensure max- imum compatibility across the two networks. In fact, Etherplan’s Donald McIntyre had asserted that it may continue to benefit from the volatility from ETH and BTC markets. Ac- cording to him, the price of BTC will hit close to $125,693 by the end of this cycle while ETC’s value would be 5% of BTC’s valuation. This would place ETC at a value between $900 and $1,000. Hence, this seems to be the right stage for participants to enter the market before the flagship crypto’s price steams even further. Projecting the upcoming “higher high,” when compared to the current market lev- el, another analyst tweeted, “A fakeout to the downside that failed to make a lower low and completed in 3 waves- implying this was a corrective move down and keeping the “completed ABC” count in-tact. I think we continue to push higher from here.” According to the schedule shared by the ETC team, changes must have been al- ready deployed on the Mordor Classic PoW testnet on 2nd June and the Kotti Classic PoA testnet on 9 June. The team added, consumers to upgrade their node software to update their clients to a Magneto compatible ver- sion if they have not done so already. If you’re not operating nodes or services, but use ETC through other services, then check with that service to en- sure they’re supporting the Magneto hard fork.” With the crypto-asset slipping by almost 70% from its all-time high on the back of the aforementioned corrections, the upgrade sched- uled in July can help the crypto’s price and might bring it closer to McIntyre’s estimate. “To ensure a successful fork, we ask ETC