First engine: Bitcoin Pause, Ethereum Snafu, 1,000% returns focused on exchange tokens

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

“The positive sentiment towards bitcoin has not faded,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at crypto prime broker Bequant.

In traditional markets, Asian equities tumbled, led by Alibaba and Tencent, as the Chinese government enacted regulations aimed at curbing the growing influence of big tech companies. European equities were up and US stock futures indicated an upward opening. Gold weakened 0.1% to $ 1,875 an ounce.

Cryptocurrency tokens like FTX’s Binance Coin (BNB) and FTX (FTT) began as a kind of internal currency: traders could use them within the closed environment to buy digital assets, obtaining discounts on transaction fees.

But recently some digital asset traders are looking at them a little more like traditional stocks, like a bet on the exchange itself. It is also increasingly possible to park tokens in various systems and protocols for yield, not too dissimilar to a dividend.

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

Exchange management teams are increasingly seeing tokens as a way to bond loyalty between customers. The rationale, according to Jack Purdy, a senior research analyst at cryptocurrency research firm Messari, may be that exchanges now view token holders as an important component of their long-term business success.

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

Exchange tokens “are a gray area with stock-like characteristics,” Purdy said. “Regulatory concerns are definitely a problem because they definitely look like securities under US law.”

Read more: Exchange tokens are skyrocketing because they act more like equity; It could be a problem

After the recent rapid rally, the bitcoin market is likely to take a pause before continuing its rise towards the end of the year, analysts told CoinDesk.

“The cryptocurrency could consolidate for a short time before climbing to the upside” 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 couple of months seems excessive, according to technical charts. Both the 14-day and 14-week relative strength indices are well above 70, indicating overbought conditions and the possibility of minor consolidation or withdrawal.

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

The pause is expected to allow for a rally in alternative cryptocurrencies, most of which have slowed bitcoin over the past couple of months.

Read more: Bitcoin could consolidate before December goes up towards $ 20K, analysts say

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

Bitcoin (BTC): Nearly $ 360 million worth of bitcoin tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain in October despite cooling off in the burgeoning cryptocurrency subsector of decentralized finance, known as DeFi.

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

Balancer (BAL): Pantera Capital and Alameda Research cryptocurrency funds invest in a liquidity provider via direct purchase from Balancer Labs treasury.

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

Bitcoin (BTC): Nearly $ 360 million worth of bitcoin tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain in October despite cooling off in the burgeoning cryptocurrency subsector of decentralized finance, known as DeFi.

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

Balancer (BAL): Pantera Capital and Alameda Research cryptocurrency funds invest in a liquidity provider via direct purchase from Balancer Labs treasury.

Algorand (SOMETHING), Cosmos (ATOM), Cardano (THERE IS), Kyber Network (KNC), OMG network (OMG): Growth in trading volume means tokens are added to CoinDesk 20 while Bitcoin SV (BSV), Come on (COME ON), Zcash (ZEC), Currency (XMR) e Dash (DASH) I’m out.