Crypto Weekly Outlook: October 18, 2021

The crypto market has continued its bullish bent, marching slightly higher since last week, aided by Bitcoin's strength. As of this writing, the total crypto market cap is sitting at $2.46 trillion, having pulled back slightly from the $2.6 trillion level. Bitcoin's dominance has increased further to sit at 47%. Altcoins continue to underperform compared to the original cryptocurrency.

As of this writing Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is trading at just under $62K with the next stop being its previous all-time high. Tomorrow, October 19th, the ProShares Bitcoin ETF will debut on the NYSE. This is the first Bitcoin ETF to be listed in the U.S. after more than eight years of waiting from the Bitcoin community. This major news earlier helped propel BTC (and the overall market) higher, but some traders are wondering whether it will be a “buy the rumor, sell the news” style event when the ETF starts trading. There are also those who wonder just how helpful the ETF will be to BTC’s price in general as it is a futures-based ETF and not a spot-based ETF, so the ETF investor would be betting on the future price of Bitcoin via a vehicle that doesn’t hold the underlying asset. This means there would be less impact on the actual supply-demand dynamics of the coin although the event is still helpful for the Bitcoin narrative. Other things to be aware of include the open interest in Bitcoin futures on the CME - it recently hit an all-time high of $3.56B indicating that new money (and leverage) is entering the market.

Source: Bybt