Market Overview - July 2020

Relative Returns

July was a really STELLAR month! In the report from last month there was hope for a new Bull run as well as a potential Alt Season, and the markets delivered - at least on the Bull Run.

All projects finished the month of July in the positive - by quite a large margin. Ethereum (ETH) and Stellar (XLM) finished the month with gains larger than 50%. Tron (TRX) had positive news last month about their JUST airdrop to TRX holders, however the euphoria on TRX slowed down a bit. It was still able to finish in the positive at the end of month, it is however the asset that gained the least in the month, just less than Bitcoin (BTC).

Stellar (XLM) had an especially impressive bullish beginning of the month, towering above the other projects by 2x - at times even 3x. XLM was climbing steadily until around the 17th of July. After the “breakout” of the continued trading range that held until July 6th, all projects were grabbed by Bull euphoria and ran up to 20% in the next week. Stellar on the other hand rose almost 40% in the same time, doubling the other projects returns; and it did not stop there. Stellar continued rising to a high of just above 60% in relative returns until July 17th, the rest of the pack got caught in a trading range at the same time with a slight downwards trend. The final push towards the 60% region from XLM came just after news about Samsung onboarding the Stellar Blockchain around July 15th.

Around the same time, the rest of the assets fell and recorded a decently sharp intraday drop. News from Facebook's Libra might be able to explain parts of that drop. In the same week, representatives from Facebook were required to testify before the House Financial Service Committee in Washington, DC. The general consensus was rather negative, with most of the members not optimistic about the place of Digital Currencies in the Global Economy.

The exciting part of the month was definitely the second half, where the Bulls grabbed the market by force, steadily pushing up returns on all assets until the end of the month. This resulted in percent returns that we have not seen since April of this year.

Last month there were mixed signals of an Altcoin season starting. This month, the picture is much clearer. Bitcoin (BTC) sits in the second last position of returns this month, even after cracking the crucial $10,000 level in the last week of the month and then even breaking the $11,000 mark right before the end. The other projects (besides LTC) didn’t just beat the returns of BTC, in most cases they more than doubled them! Often in these reports there is a sharp pull back somewhere in the last week of the month. Not this time, at the end of the month most projects picked up another sharp increase and are looking to continue this trend for now.

In the end, the month of July would have been one of the easier months to generate sizable returns in the Digital Asset markets by simply HODLing. With Bitcoin sitting well above the $10,000 region, there are promising signs that this euphoria might extend for a bit more. However, the current run did come a bit out the blue, and Bears might have something up their sleeves for August after all.

July 2020, Biggest Changes

10-Hour Rolling Volatility