Silicon Valley giants Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) continue to drive the S&P 500 up to the extent that without them, the index would actually be down year-to-date.

Normally I would begin by bemoaning a lack of price action from bitcoin (BITCOMP). Not so today, with bitcoin soaring through the $10,000 resistance level, hitting a high of $10,314 in the early hours of the morning. In addition to this important move upwards, it is also pleasing to see that a respectable bottom of $9,000 is in place. 

Furthermore, Glassnode recently highlighted that bitcoin’s reserve risk, a metric used to assess the confidence of long-term holders comparative to bitcoin’s price, is growing favourably. Indeed, this confidence has been growing since September 2019, which indicates that the risk of investing in the cryptoasset versus the potential reward is low.

Cardano catches breath before next Shelley upgrades

Cardano (ADA-X) has been a standout performer and I’ve regularly eulogised about the consistency within which the IOHK team are sticking to their Shelley roadmap. Wednesday sees the next stage of said upgrades, with the launch of the mainnet and staking will hopefully go live in the middle of August (the IOHK roadmap estimates 19th August). Given the uptick we have seen previously in ADA’s price as the Shelley upgrades have come through, we could see another run on price, following these events.

eToro investors are clearly following Cardano’s upgrades, with our data showing the cryptoasset was the 3rd most traded asset last week. For more information on where investors are seeing opportunities, look out for our next monthly top crypto report.

Institutional and professional traders are further serviced in the sector

I’ve spoken many times about the importance of institutional and professional investors to the cryptoasset sector. In recognition of this importance, and to satisfy demand from some of our exchange’s professional clients, we recently added several risk management and enhanced trading tools to the platform, as well as launching an inverted fee model. 

DeFiFoFum, will Chainlink become the magic beans of the alt world?

DeFi alts continue to perform well, while Chainlink (LINK-X) has resumed its exceptional run of form, currently sitting at $7.25. In positive news for the cryptoasset, it announced that a subsidiary of German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom has become a node operator. It’s positive to see that such a large company is clearly appreciating and recognising the significance and benefit that smart contracts can offer to businesses, and Chainlink continues to be the one to secure these positive new partnerships.

Should Ethereum fear the rise of Tezos and Cardano?

Despite Ethereum’s (ETH-X) price also rising last week, there remain some serious questions about Ethereum’s scalability. One aspect of the network that has been gaining attention recently is the rising transaction fees. Whilst it’s intending to move from proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, the amount of time taken to make this switch is giving other protocols , such as Cardano or Tezos (XTZ-X), to scoop up projects. It is thus vital that Vitalik Buterin and team get the 2.0 upgrades right in order to maintain their dominance in the dapp platform sector.

China’s mining dominance could begin to dwindle 

CoinDesk reported that there will be $1bn of mining equipment purchased for North America in the next two years. The centralisation of mining operations in China has been an ongoing trend, and it’s good to see firms in other regions looking to get in on the act. The uncertainty around bitcoin mining in China has no doubt been bothering mining operations, and the equally low energy costs and various ways to decrease overheads in other countries must also be appealing. I am expecting this trend to continue, signalling an exciting time for bitcoin and cryptoassets in general.