October was a dynamic month across financial and cryptocurrency markets, shaped by a series of global economic updates, regulatory actions, and notable investments. However, what is almost a tangible feeling is an “uncertainty around the results of US elections”.

While the U.S. economy showed signs of strength, developments in China and regulatory pressures on crypto platforms left investors navigating mixed signals. Add to it the US elections and you have a mixture that is really hard to navigate both for retail as well as for professional traders. 

U.S. Job Market Boosts Confidence in Economy 

At the beginning of the month, we have received results about The U.S. job market. And it actually reported a solid gain of 254,000 new jobs in September, pointing to a resilient economy. This momentum fed into October as markets remained optimistic about economic growth, which has generally supported risk assets like cryptocurrency. 
 
However, the positive job data also hinted that potential rate cuts by the Federal Reserve will be probably more in moderation in comparison to the previous expectations. This lead to concerns that higher interest rates could drain liquidity from riskier assets, including crypto. 

AI Tokens Lead Crypto Rebound

Artificial intelligence (AI) tokens emerged as a frontrunner in October’s crypto rebound. With robust demand in the tech sector and increased interest from institutional investors, AI-related cryptocurrencies saw a surge in capital inflows. This trend underscored growing confidence in AI’s role within digital assets, particularly as companies and investors look for tech-forward innovations within the blockchain space. 
 
If you want to read something extremely complicated, fascinating, funny and scary at the same time, read about the truth terminal, first AI multimillionaire and its favorite token GOAT.  
 
In short it is story of an experiment of launching an AI agent on Twitter and this AI agent starts to like random token GOAT. This results in all sorts of crazy side-plots such as donation from owner of A16z fund, one of the biggest crypto investment funds and ends with this AI agent being technically first AI multimillionaire. 

Bitcoin Tests $63.5K Amid China’s Economic Adjustments

Bitcoin approached the $63,500 mark in mid-October. However, China’s ambiguous fiscal stimulus measures introduced uncertainty, limiting capital inflow from Chinese markets into global cryptocurrencies. Investors and analysts kept a close eye on Beijing’s moves, with some speculating that more aggressive Chinese fiscal policies could influence global asset allocations, including in crypto. 

Regulatory Scrutiny and Allegations of Market Manipulation

Crypto markets faced regulatory headwinds as October saw fresh charges related to market manipulation. Several firms were accused of artificially influencing asset prices, raising investor caution and spurring calls for tighter regulatory oversight. This is also quite interesting story including FBI releasing a fake crypto token, multiple top tier crypto infrastrucutre companies indiced as well as arrests of multiple prominent crypto figures. 
 
The situation highlighted vulnerabilities in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, emphasizing the need for regulatory clarity to protect investors and foster market stability.Probinex agrees with this narative that in order to attract more people in crypto we need more clarity within regulatory system. If you want to know more about what awaits us from this standpoint, feel free to check out our article about recent conference about the MiCA regulation in EU. 

MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin Endgame: A $100 Trillion Vision

In a bold move, Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy, outlined an ambitious vision for bitcoin, projecting a $100 trillion market cap as the “endgame” for his company's bitcoin strategy. Saylor’s unwavering support and the impressive October rally added weight to his forecast, with bitcoin’s price showing considerable resilience amid economic and regulatory uncertainties. His projection captured both the potential and speculative allure of bitcoin, resonating with long-term investors and cementing MicroStrategy’s place as a leading institutional advocate for digital assets. 

Waiting for the US elections

Many articles were written already about the US presidential elections that will take place on 5th of November 2024 (day this article is published). Incuding this one, where voting through mail is discussed.  
 
General consensus is, that if Donald Trump wins, from the short timeframe it might help cryptocurrencies and if Kamala Harris win it might not. From the longer term I strongly believe that the final clarity this brings will help bitcoin on its upward trajectory. E.g. investors will finally know where the regulators stand and how to behave.

Our portfolio:

Trading in such a volatile environment is always very risky. On the one hand, you can make a nice profit if you can catch the right move.  

But on the other hand, if the movement goes against you, it tends to be very fast and positions are quickly closed on stop-loss protection order. Inexperienced traders don't even have these protective orders set up and go in blind, just believing that maybe it will work out somehow. 

In such a volatile environment, we did not want to hold positions in active futures trading for long time, so bionic discretionary trading focused on intraday.  

The previous sentence sounds complicated, but in translation it means that a trader was manually trading cryptocurrency derivatives. Cryptocurrency derivatives are trading instruments created just for the purpose of efficient trading. Intraday means that it is trading where positions are opened and closed within the same day.  

Intraday trading is a relatively aggressive environment where you need to work very effectively with risk and stop-loss and not be afraid to close a position if it does not perform as expected, which can happen very quickly, even within minutes. 

However, we did not do very well on intraday futures trading this month. Volatile swings occurred at the exact moments when the price was moving around protective stop-loss orders, and thus trades were gradually closing at minor losses. Thus, six of these trades ended in loss and one in profit. We do not attach any extraordinary importance to this; losses are a natural variation in trading strategy. Sometimes your trades work out better, sometimes worse. What is important is the total sum in the long run. 

Our altcoin portfolio, that is the one that accumulates quality altcoins, i.e. cryptocurrencies other than BTC, ETH and SOL, has not seen a significant change, we continue to sit more on previously bought cryptocurrencies trying to hold blue-chips from all the bigger areas of the crypto world such as blockchain first layers, decentralized finance applications, artificial intelligence and others.  

We also keep the spot portfolio of major cryptocurrencies tight to a minimum, and are rather cautious ahead of the election. 

Our own trading ended this month at a negative of about 1%, but thanks to Earnio also contributing to StayKing, we are distributing 98732 PBX tokens worth 9424 USD this month.