bull market

Celeb NFTs and cringy ads — Analysts share their signs of a Bitcoin peak

With a major rally expected sometime in 2024, industry watchers have shared the top signals they look for to indicate when crypto has reached peak euphoria.

Celebrities hocking nonfungible tokens (NFTs), big-budget crypto ads and mainstream brands adopting crypto slang are the signs to watch for during the next bull market that could indicate a peak, according to crypto analysts.

The crypto industry is expected to see a major rally in 2024. In the past 90 days alone, Bitcoin (BTC) has surged to clock in a 74% price increase. Some analysts expect the next Bitcoin all-time high to come in late 2024.

But are there ways to indicate when the next bull market peak will come? Analysts think there is.

25% of NFT owners have a collection of 51 or more: CoinGecko Report

Despite the crypto bear market in 2022, there wasn’t a significant decline in NFT adoption, according to the report.

Crypto data website CoinGecko has released survey findings indicating that most nonfungible token (NFT) holders own 51 or more NFTs. Those who only hold a single NFT comprised the smallest group among the respondents.

Published on April 6, the CoinGecko report examined 438 responses from Dec. 2022 to Jan. 2023 in conjunction with Blockchain Research Labs.

At least one in four NFT holders (26.5%) said they were “avid collectors” with 51 or more NFTs at the time of the survey. The report states this group likely represents people who are the most enthusiastic about NFTs. It noted:

“This suggests that people rarely stop participating in NFTs after their first one.”

It was closely followed by holders holding between two and five NFTs (17.6%), with those who hold just one NFT accounted for a mere 4.8%.

Almost four out of every 10 people surveyed (38.8%) acquired their first NFT during the first bull market of 2021.

Despite 2022 seeing crypto enter a bear market, it still recorded the second-highest influx of new NFT collectors over the past five years, with just over 25% acquiring their first NFT during the year.

Meanwhile, only 2.9% acquired their first NFT in 2017, the same year Crypto Kitties and CryptoPunks were launched.

The report went on to state that NFT development might accelerate adoption in 2023, citing Bitcoin Ordinals and Stamps NFTs, as well as Blur overtaking OpenSea to become the top NFT marketplace.

In recent news, OpenSea launched OpenSea Pro on April 5, an NFT marketplace aggregator aimed at serving the needs of professional users, which is a refined version of an NFT aggregator acquired by OpenSea in April 2022.

Magazine: NFT Creator, The Sarah Show: Analog childhood meets dizzying digital future

Customer support staff swamped during market swings — exchange execs

Binance Australia’s CEO says it is imperative that customer support is ready for a large influx of customer inquiries at any moment.

Crypto market turbulence can be an immensely stressful time for customer support staff at crypto exchanges, with companies vastly bolstering headcounts just to meet demand during surges.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Alex Harper, co-founder and CEO of Australian crypto exchange SwyftX said that “no matter what your role title is […] no one was above customer support at Swyft.”

He said that he, along with staff members from human resources and the CFO have had to work late into the night on occasion to assist their customer support teams when markets go crazy, explaining:

“Elon Musk quotes posts about Dogecoin, you get seven times daily signups”.

Harper explained that SwyftX strives for a two-minute response time, “given customers need to have questions answered and understand things.”

He also noted that their customer staff team now makes up over a third of their headcount, offering the ability to provide 24/7 support.

Leigh Travers, CEO of Binance Australia, told Cointelegraph that Binance’s customer support team has “expanded” to keep up with customer demand, and given how new cryptocurrency is for even those working in customer support, investing in their training and development is a priority.

Travers suggested that customer support departments are prioritized in the company, describing them as “the window to the entire Binance platform,” recognizing their work as vital to the success of the company.

“Team leaders and country managers participate in a user centric training program to understand the role of customer support and protect users and receive first hand customer experiences.”

Travers explained that due to unpredictable events in the crypto market such as the Terra Luna and UST “unwind” causing a dramatic “spike” in demand for customer support; it’s imperative that the customer support team are ready for a large influx of customer inquiries at any moment.

Travers said he has also jumped behind the deck of the Binance chat support and directly “responding to user inquiries,” in order to better understand how it works behind the scenes, adding this was a vital part of ensuring customer support can match the demand.

Travers explained that when markets stabilize customer support staff take advantage of the down period to utilize the “quieter time” creating “explainer blogs and FAQs to give users better easily accessible information.”

He added that the onboarding process can be the most demanding for customer support workers “regardless of the market conditions, including whether it’s a bull or bear market” their customers always “want to be onboarded quickly and efficiently.”

Customer support gets swamped during market swings — Exchange execs

Binance Australia’s CEO says it is imperative that customer support is ready for a large influx of customer inquiries at any moment.

Crypto market turbulence can be an immensely stressful time for customer support staff at crypto exchanges, with companies vastly bolstering headcounts just to meet demand during surges.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, Alex Harper, co-founder and CEO of Australian crypto exchange SwyftX, said that “no matter what your role title is […] no one was above customer support at Swyft.”

He said that he, along with staff members from human resources and the chief finance officer have had to work late into the night on occasion to assist their customer support teams when markets go crazy, explaining:

“Elon Musk quotes posts about Dogecoin, you get seven times daily signups”.

Harper explained that SwyftX strives for a two-minute response time, “given customers need to have questions answered and understand things.”

He also noted that their customer staff team now makes up over a third of their headcount, offering the ability to provide 24/7 support.

“Team leaders and country managers participate in a user centric training program to understand the role of customer support and protect users and receive first hand customer experiences.”

Travers explained that due to unpredictable events in the crypto market such as the Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) and TerraUSD Classic (UST) “unwind” causing a dramatic “spike” in demand for customer support; it’s imperative that the customer support team are ready for a large influx of customer inquiries at any moment.

Regulatory clarity will drive the next bull run — Hedge fund co-founder

As long as the regulation gives an institutional investor a very clear path to crypto, they’ll jump into the space, hedge fund co-founder CK Cheng told Cointelegraph.

A former head of risk at Credit Suisse believes the next crypto bull market will stem from “regulatory clarity” in the United States, which he expects to happen in early 2023.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, the former head of valuation risk at Credit Suisse, CK Cheng, said some of the regulatory efforts underway in the United States will soon “open the doors” of traditional finance to crypto.

Cheng is a former executive at investment bank Credit Suisse who left his role in July 2021 to co-found ZX Squared Capital, a crypto hedge fund targeting family offices and high-net-worth individual clients.

Cheng said there has been a recent sea change in traditional institutions’ stance toward crypto, with many dipping their toes into the crypto waters for the first time.

In August, one of the world’s largest asset managers, BlackRock, partnered with crypto exchange Coinbase to provide its institutional clients access to Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto through Coinbase Prime.

More recently, several major names in finance teamed up to create a digital assets exchange serving institutional and retail investors, which is being backed by financial giants including Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities and Fidelity Digital Assets.

“Nowadays, you see a lot more traditional finance institutions getting involved in the crypto space […] You can see tremendous interest,” said the hedge fund manager.

Cheng also emphasized that there are many more “waiting for regulation in the U.S. to be further clarified,” before jumping in:

“That will really open the door for traditional financial institutions, you know, bring a lot more institutions, investors into the space. So I would say that’s gonna be how the next bull market will start.”

He also believes the Executive Order from U.S. president Joe Biden earlier this year has been a major signal for traditional investors, though he admitted that the “devil is in the details” when it comes to how crypto trading will be regulated and whether a cryptocurrency will be considered a commodity or a security.

“From an institutional perspective, as long as the regulation is clear, that gives an institutional investor a very clear path to see they don’t trip themselves into regulatory issues […] that will bring institutional investors into the space,” he added.

Asked when the tipping point will occur, Cheng said he expects regulatory clarity to be “fleshed out” sometime early next year:

“So hopefully, by early next year, there’s something much more concrete. And that will help, you know, the market in terms of sentiment in terms of people’s perception [of crypto]. I think regulation will help with that.”

Asked about how BTC prices will move over the near term, Cheng says he expects October to be a “very volatile” month for BTC.

“October is a pretty volatile period of time, especially when combined with high inflation, with a lot of debate in terms of the Fed and policy change. The concern is that if the Fed tightens too much, the U.S. economy may actually go into a severe recession.”

Cheng believes this uncertainty will drive a lot of volatility in both the stock and crypto markets but will stabilize by next year. At the same time, the months ahead of the next Bitcoin “halving” in 2024 could start “another bull market.”