Dunking on Korean Crypto Retail Traders

1) Bitcoin price is 26,530 below the 50d MA 27,285 -> this is bearish, price WoW increased by 2.0%; Ethereum price is 1,623 below the 50d MA 1,716 -> this is bearish, price WoW increased by 0.1%; overall the trend is down -> bearish.

2) Ethereum currently underperforms Bitcoin as the trend (20d) MA shows the ETH / BTC ratio is going down, and beta factors drive crypto; this is negative, so stay cautious. Macro liquidity is tightening with the US 10yr Yield AND the USD trading higher.

3) Also, some tech themes like (NVIDIA, Apple) are suffering from profit-taking. It appears unlikely that crypto can trade higher (short-term) in this environment as the market is waiting for this week’s FOMC meeting.

4) With last week’s higher-than-expected inflation data and the ongoing rise in oil prices, Fed Chair Powell could communicate a relatively hawkish message. However, based on our analysis, we would not expect the market to buy into this for much longer as the inflation trend is still lower.

5) HIFI has been the crypto token with the most volume on the Korean-focused cryptocurrency exchange UpBit. $2.2bn were traded of this $250m market cap coin within a few days.

6) HIFI Finance is a blockchain project based in the Polygon ecosystem and aims to lead the fast-growing tokenization industry; it partnered with Crown Ribbon to take on the performance horse industry ($300bn), and their developers partnered with Pooled NFT, a straightforward approach to turn any NFT into passive income.

7) Binance listed the USD-M HIFI perpetual futures contract at 2023-09-16 14:30 (UTC), and the token price ramped up by +400% into the listing. Once the futures traded (up to 20x leverage), open interest doubled as prices jumped another +25% when it was listed - only to crash by -65%. HIFI’s latest market cap is just $95m. Tokens tend to rally into the listing on major exchanges and then sell off on heavy profit-taking (see empirical analysis in the book ‘Crypto Titans’ page 216).

8) As previously pointed out, the ApeCoin unlock happened over the weekend and prices declined by -30% over the last 1 month. The next sizeable token unlock will be Axie Infinity, with $66m (11%) will become tradeable (32 days from now). If the ApeCoin, and so many other, examples, are any guide, then Axie Infinity tokens will continue to see downside pressure over the next month.

9) The futures funding rate trades negative for Bitcoin (-0.7%) and the funding rate is positive for Ethereum (3.3%); this is bullish. Our Greed & Fear Index prints 63%, while the Ethereum Greed & Fear Index prints 39%. The RSI for Bitcoin is 52% while the Ethereum RSI is 44%.

10) TVL has rebounded as $800m was added through a Justin Sun-related address to JustLend, which now has a TVL of $4.5bn. Justin has said these were personal transactions unrelated to Huobi Global, which some have claimed. JustLend is a Tron-related protocol intended to establish funding pools with interest rates calculated using an algorithm controlled by the supply and demand of Tron assets.

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