Traditional Markets

As the Fed is now in blackout mode ahead of their July 31st meeting and the markets quite certain that they will cut their interest rates on that date, there’s little in the way of market drivers at the moment.

There’s also a lull in earnings announcements today with very few major companies reporting. So it may be a good day to hit the beach really.

Global stock indexes are pretty flat at the moment, as are commodities and currencies across the board. Even crude oil has barely reacted to the news that a British Oil Tanker was hijacked in the Persian Gulf.

One catalyst that has been moving the markets for a few weeks is set to come to a head tomorrow morning when the new Prime Minister of the UK is announced.

The British Pound has been struggling to hold the lows on the anticipation that Boris Johnson, a hard-line Brexiteer who has vowed to leave the EU by the end of October with or without a deal, is set to win the top spot. However, Parliament has already taken measures to deter him from taking such a drastic step once he’s in power. So we can see the GBPUSD is holding for now.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Libra Sentiment

It seems like everyone is weighing in on project Libra and there are so many opinions floating around out there. So, in true eToro fashion, we decided to crowdsource it. Last week we ran a poll of 600 internet users that was designed to be a rough representation of the population of the United States and asked them what they think about project Libra.

Even just finding out how many Americans are familiar with the project is quite interesting and made for some splashing headlines.

Yup, that’s right. In just one month since being announced already 16% of Americans have heard of Libra, which is more than the 12% who know what Ethereum is. Bitcoin is still king of course, with 58% brand name recognition, which still seems pretty low if you ask me.

Things get even more interesting when you break it down into demographics. Here we can see the various responses to the question “How likely are you to try a secure payment service from Facebook”?

As you can see the responses are broken down by gender, age, familiarity with crypto, and if they’re active on Facebook. From this, it’s quite clear that people who have already used crypto and people who already use Facebook are much more likely to try it.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Bitcoin Volumes Lagging

There’s been some very positive news regarding the coming institutional adoption of bitcoin recently, but it doesn’t seem to be inspiring much excitement among crypto-traders today.

Number one is an application from the global asset management firm Fidelity, which if approved will give them a far greater reach into the digital assets market.

The second is from Wall Street’s newest crypto service Bakkt…

Still, volumes and price action today is lackluster to say the least. Messari’s real 10 bitcoin volume is giving a sluggish reading of less than $1 billion. Volumes on the CME Group’s bitcoin futures have been in steady decline lately as well. But the kicker is coming from the blockchain itself where the transaction rate has plunged to 3.65 TPS and the estimated volume at $1.4 billion is the lowest it’s been in more than a month.

(Click on image to enlarge)

So, the crypto table is set, we’re just waiting for the main guests to arrive shortly.

Please note: All data, figures & graphs are valid as of July 22nd. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital you can afford to lose.