As a career investor in traditional asset classes prior to jumping into crypto and founding Ikigai, I have plenty of experience with catalysts and market movements. Nothing moves like crypto. I can’t imagine a technology or asset class that could so quickly become so firmly entrenched in the global macro landscape while remaining still in a state of relative infancy. Said differently, we have SO much further to go and crypto/DLT are ALREADY front and center of global stage. This. Thing. Is. Never. Going. Away.

Make no mistake, Bitcoin is deeply antifragile – perhaps its single most attractive characteristic. I liken Bitcoin to an X-Man toddler. Yeah you can push on it right now and it will tump over. And you can even kick it in the head while its tumped over. But it will be fine. It will get back up, no worse for wear. And when it grows up, it is going to kick your ass.

We believe a higher likelihood outcome could be a short-term, further correction down to the $7.5-$8.5k range. This would still be within the range of historical pullbacks in an overall cyclical uptrend for BTC when looking at past cycles.

July was nothing short of historic for Bitcoin and crypto as a whole. In a single seven day stretch, 1) The Chairman of the Fed testified to Congress about it; 2) The President tweeted about it; 3) The Treasury Secretary gave a formal press conference about it; and 4) Congress questioned a Facebook executive and other crypto ecosystem participants for two days about it…

To that end, we are well on our way to new ATHs for BTC after a truly spectacular Q2-19 - the fourth best quarterly performance since 2012. In our Monthly Update letter that went out June 1st we said, “last month we stated that new all-time highs were well within reach for 2020. We now believe that may have proven too conservative, and there is a meaningful chance new ATHs are possible in 2019, and likely in 2020”.

The meme “the herd is coming” is actually beginning to play out. The meme of “get off zero” is gaining real traction. Many new projects are set to launch through year-end. Human and financial capital are pouring into the space to provide the necessary products and services to scale crypto to a multi-trillion-dollar asset class. It’s happening, and it’s happening quickly. 

BTC volumes on reputable exchanges, likely the most accurate measurement of volumes in the space as whole, increased M/M. The trailing 7-day avg volume at the end of February was ~23% higher than the end of January. This is encouraging, and a continuation of these increased volumes with flat-to-up prices would be a sign we may have seen the bottom.

With a few months of hindsight, it may make complete sense that the U-turn on central banks’ monetary policy put the bottom in for crypto. Look around at the world – politicians, Wall Street, big tech companies. The world needs Distributed Ledger Technology and crypto assets and the potential they bring now more than ever. We are in the midst of a Trust Revolution.

In February, BTC generated its first monthly positive price performance since July. The relief felt by market participants was palpable. That positive price performance occurred on elevated volumes in large cap tokens and thus far those gains have largely held.