Regulations
Ukraine
July 20th, 2018
The Financial Stability Council of Ukraine supported the concept of regulating cryptocurrency transactions and according to T. Khromaev this will lead to recognizing cryptocurrencies and tokens as financial instruments.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/timur.khromaev/posts/10211791910141108
United States
18th July, 2018
The Future of Money: Digital Currency. Positive tone on cryptocurrencies and pushed SEC and CFTC to clear the regulations in the crypto market.
Watch the full hearing:
India
Inter-Governmental committee is late with delivering the final draft of regulations on crypto sector. It is said that they will release it by September.
The final day of hearing at Supreme Court will be on the 11th of September.
Source: https://www.ccn.com/india-may-avoid-cryptocurrency-ban-classify-them-as-commodities-report/
Thailand
July 4th, 2018
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) release a statement on issuing and selling digital tokens through ICOs. The requirements for ICOs to get approved are:
1) Clear business plan;
2) Clear right for tokens;
3) Company has to be established under Thai legal jurisdiction and have a capital of minimum five million Baht (approx. 150 000 USD);
4) The maximum amount that a retail investor can invest is 300 000 Baht (approx. 9000 USD)
5) Investors can invest in Baht or 7 other cryptocurrencies (BTC, LTC, ETH, BCH, XLM, XRP, ETC).
This framework should reduce the number of scams, however, there is still no guaranteed protection from fraud.
Source: https://www.sec.or.th/th/Pages/News/Detail_News.aspx?tg=NEWS&lg=th&news_no=73&news_yy=2561
South Korea
South Korea’s Financial Services Commission is creating a new cryptocurrency division which will be responsible for protecting investors and adapting to changing financial innovations.
Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/biz/2018/07/602_252534.html
Market capitalization
On the 1st of July the was 254 501 000 000 USD in the crypto market (according to coinmarketcap data).
On the 31st of July the market cap was 288 045 000 000 USD.
The injection of new money in the market was around 17%.
Hacks
July 21st, 2018 Bancor was hacked. 13.5M USD were lost (12.5M in ETH, 1M USD in NPXS and 10M in BNT).
Perhaps Quantstamp’s finding back in April was not a false positive?
Crypto market performance comparison to other assets
| July | |
|---|---|
| Bitcoin | 16.77% |
| S&P 500 | 3.29% |
| Crude Oil WTI | -7.48% |
| Gold Futures | -1.32% |
| US 10Y Bond | 3.17% |
| Crypto Market | 13.36% |
Source: investing.com. Calculations do not include data on weekends.
Correlation
| Bitcoin | S&P 500 | Crude Oil WTI | Gold Futures | US 10Y Bond | Crypto Market | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | 1 | |||||
| S&P 500 | 0.65 | 1 | ||||
| Crude Oil WTI | -0.66 | -0.79 | 1 | |||
| Gold Futures | -0.81 | -0.72 | 0.85 | 1 | ||
| US 10Y Bond | 0.86 | 0.65 | -0.51 | -0.67 | 1 | |
| Crypto Market | 0.85 | 0.50 | -0.37 | -0.57 | 0.77 | 1 |
Source: investing.com. Calculations do not include data on weekends.
ICOs
The total number of ICOs completed in July was 249 (63.45% of the have not published the results). The total amount raised is equivalent to 709 085 725 USD.
This graph does not include ICOs that raised less than 100 000 USD.
Sources: https://www.icodata.io/, https://icobench.com/, https://icodrops.com/.
In comparison to June ICOs raised approx. 88% less even though there were 154 ICOs more (according to data gathered by https://www.icodata.io/ in June).
Summary
Past month was the recovery phase for crypto assets. There were no strict policies implemented, therefore, investors were regaining their confidence in the market. The total market capitalization increased by 13.36% while Bitcoin outperformed S&P 500 by 13.48%. New funding raised through ICOs was equivalent to 709 085 725 USD, which based on data collected by icodata is 88% lower than in June.