First mover Asia: Bitcoin is stuck between Silvergate and China

Prices

Silvergate woes and likely China improvement

Good morning Asia, here’s what’s driving markets today.

Both Bitcoin and ether are starting the week off flat, with the world’s largest digital asset at $22,463, up 0.6% on-day, and ether at $1,569, up 0.1%.

Observers say that the market is at something of a precipice right now. While it’s no longer the depths of crypto winter, the market has to decide how much it will continue to price in Silvergate’s crypto failure while also accounting for positive economic data from China.

“It doesn't look like the Silvergate issue is leading to broad contagion. And we may have seen most of the drop associated with that news already,” Matt Weller, Forex.com’s global head of research, told CoinDesk TV on Friday. “I wouldn't be surprised to see bitcoin retrace back down to $20,000, maybe even $18,000, to sort of retest those lows. But…it does look like the depths of the winter are behind us.”

At the same time, economic data from a re-opened China, which rapidly dropped all Covid restrictions at the start of the year, might bolster the “China narrative” that fueled late February’s mini price rally. This coming week is set to be a busy one with economic data releases from the country, with Balance of Trade, foreign exchange reserves, and inflation-rate data expected.

“China’s opening is a positive factor for the world’s economy, which infers that certain Animal spirits are back in Asia,” said March Zheng, the co-founder and managing partner of Bizantine Capital, in a note to CoinDesk.

These so-called animal spirits, Zheng said, could lead to an increase in appetite for assets like crypto.

“We are of the view that it will counterbalance the continued, persistent fears in the U.S. equity markets as well as rising rates,” he said.

Insights

EthDenver shows that Ethereum has an actual community

This weekend marks the culmination of ETHDenver, probably the most important annual gathering for smart contract and decentralized finance (DeFi) developers right now, on Ethereum and beyond. I wish I could be there this year, but I’m still recovering from a pretty intense four months of making cool things and exposing bad guys.

Fortunately, plenty of people are sharing clips from the event, so I can enjoy it vicariously. Unfortunately, many of these posts express something between innocent confusion and sneering takedowns of the supposedly lame ETHDenver goings-on.

But that attitude, to paraphrase the fugitive philosopher-thief Do Kwon, is a great formula for getting rekt. It may look like silliness and disorganization to you, but ETHDenver’s rough edges are actually strong signals that a real community has been drawn together by shared interests to build something together from the ground up. That’s the kind of community that has and will weather slow periods of crypto growth like what we’re going through right now.

It’s hip to be cringe

It’s true that compared to a lot of crypto conferences ETHDenver and certain related events can seem just the slightest bit slapdash, and more than the slightest bit bizarre. Take, for instance, the annual contributions from Jonathan Mann, aka “The Song a Day Guy.” He has created and performed goofy, slightly amateurish tunes for the event for a while now – and every year people on Twitter take the opportunity to dunk on him.

But let me tell you, a goofy song is barely the only thing at ETHDenver that might make you uncomfortable!

When I attended last year, ETHDenver was held in a refurbished parking garage, where the bathrooms were partly or entirely broken for much of the event. You couldn’t see the main stage from roughly a third of the ground floor seating, and people talking at the back of the room halfway drowned out the speakers. Every once in a while, someone would drop 500 pizzas on an upstairs table, resulting in massive queues that made it nearly impossible to move.