It's day two of the Blockchain Expo and it's been a lot of fun meeting so many of our clients and everyone else at the conference. Today I will be going from booth to booth to understand all the different projects and brands presented here.

One thing that I found quite useful was a Blockchain Scorecard print out from Blockchain Market Journal that helps people assess any ICO they may be considering.

We've heard many regulators around the world advocate that the crypto industry impose some sort of self-regulation. So it's good to see these types of materials popping up, that help people asses the risks of various digital assets for themselves.

Today's Highlights

• USD Strength Continues
• Copper's Range
• Is Wall Street Going Crypto?

Traditional Markets

The Dollar continues to dominate the markets gaining value against all the other major currencies, stocks, commodities, and even cryptocurrencies.

With everything that's happening, it seems that people are searching for some sort of safe haven and many are finding it in the buck at the moment.

Here we can see the US Dollar index's rise from the lows in late April. The overlays are Gold (in green) and Dow Jones (in blue)

The precious metals are performing particularly poorly as gold and silver have declined quite steadily over the last few days. Many metals are now at their lowest points of the year.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Nice Range

One chart that I found interesting this morning is that of Copper, which is now trading in a perfect range (yellow lines). Also note on the chart the purple circle, which is showing the surge in copper immediately following Trump's election at the end of 2016.

(Click on image to enlarge)

For those trading copper, also note that the contracts traded on eToro expired yesterday. So any position that you open today can be held for up to two months.

What Else?

Today we should get some nice volatility surrounding the release of the U.S. GDP data at 8:30 AM in New York. 

Today is also day one of the European Economic Summit, which could be interesting depending on what is discussed.

Watch the Crypto Volumes

Over the last week, the losses in the stock markets were actually comparable to those of the major cryptocurrencies. So it might be a good time for some on Wall Street to start experimenting with this new market.

One Wall Street exchange that is backed by Goldman Sachs has reported that...

According to the report, volumes at Circle are about $2 Billion per month, which isn't a whole lot compared to the $10 Billion that is being traded across global crypto exchanges.

In Bitcoin, the volumes have certainly relaxed over the last few months and the average amount being traded on the blockchain per day has recently fallen to less than $1 billion.

(Click on image to enlarge)

On the crypto exchanges however, the volumes are slightly higher and we're seeing about $3.5 billion per day lately. Notice the number is higher because many transactions that happen on the crypto exchanges never actually make it to the blockchain.

On Wall Street, even though things have been pretty stagnant, there was an uptick on the CME bitcoin futures on Monday, where we saw a total of 4,740 contracts traded. Since each contract is worth 5 BTC, roughly 23,700 BTC was traded that day, which at the price of $6,000 per coin comes out to $142 million.

All in all, it seems that on a busy day the CME Group actually handled 4% of the global volumes. It's still not all that much but this is the highest "percentage of the total market" that I've noticed so far.

As always, let me know if you have any questions, comments, or further insight. I'm always glad to hear it.