First Player: Bitcoin Break, Ethereum Snafu, 1000% Returns Focus on Exchange Tokens

Bitcoin was higher, pushing towards the upper edge of its recent range between around $ 14,700 and $ 15,600.

“The positive sentiment towards bitcoin has not gone away,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Crypto Prime Broker Bequant.

In traditional markets, Asian stocks fell, led by Alibaba and Tencent, as the Chinese government passed regulations intended to curb the growing influence of big tech companies. European stocks were higher and US equity futures were pointing to a higher open. Gold fell 0.1% to $ 1,875 an ounce.

Crypto-exchange tokens like FTX’s Binance Coin (BNB) and FTX (FTT) started out as a kind of internal currency: traders could use them in a closed environment to purchase digital assets, getting discounts on transaction fees.

But recently, some digital asset traders are seeing them a bit more like traditional stocks – like a bet on the stock exchange itself. It is also increasingly possible to park tokens in various systems and protocols for a return, not too different from a dividend.

And some of them are registering disproportionate gains. Binance’s BNB tokens have gained around 30% this year, while the FTX token has risen 157% and the Hxro token has risen 10 times its price.

Exchange management teams increasingly see tokens as a way to retain customers. The rationale, according to Jack Purdy, senior research analyst at cryptocurrency research firm Messari, could be that exchanges now view token holders as an important part of their long-term business success.

The specter of an unexpected move by authorities to crack down on tokens – precisely because of their resemblance to stocks – remains a threat.

Trading tokens “are a gray area with similar characteristics to equity,” Purdy said. “Regulatory concerns are definitely an issue because they definitely look like securities under US law.”

Learn More: Exchange Tokens Soar As They Act More Like Equity; It could be a problem

After the recent rapid rally, the bitcoin market is expected to take a break before continuing its ascent towards the end of the year, analysts told CoinDesk.

“Cryptocurrency may consolidate for a short time before rising again” towards the end of the year, said Chris Thomas, head of digital assets at Swissquote Bank.

Indeed, further notable gains seem unlikely in the near term, as the cryptocurrency’s 60% rally from $ 9,800 to $ 15,900 over the past two months appears to be overloaded, according to technical charts. The 14-day and 14-week relative strength indices are hovering well above 70, indicating overbought conditions and margin for consolidation or a slight pullback.

Patrick Heusser, senior cryptocurrency trader at Zurich-based Crypto Broker AG, expects bitcoin to consolidate in a range of $ 14,000 to $ 16,000 over the coming weeks.

He expects the hiatus to allow a rally in alternative cryptocurrencies, most of which have lagged behind bitcoin in the past two months.

Read More: Bitcoin Likely to Consolidate Before December Hike Towards $ 20K, Analysts Say

Ether (ETH): Prices remain firm as service provider Ethereum Infura suffers outage due to the reported blockchain split.

Bitcoin (BTC): Almost $ 360 million worth of bitcoin was thrown onto the Ethereum blockchain in October despite the cooling in the burgeoning cryptocurrency sub-sector of decentralized finance known as DeFi.

Filecoin (FIL): Winklevosses’ Gemini crypto exchange is developing a wrapped version of the decentralized data storage provider tokens.

Balance (BAL): Cryptocurrency funds Pantera Capital and Alameda Research invest in liquidity provider through direct purchase from Balancer Labs treasury.

Algorand (SOMETHING), cosmos (ATOM), cardano (THERE IS), kyber network (KNC), omg network (OMG): Growth in transaction volume means tokens are added to CoinDesk 20 for bitcoin sv (BSV), dai (DAI), zcash (ZEC), motto (XMR) and hyphen (DASH) came out.