The % of ETH locked in the credit ecosystem of MakerDAO has risen to 2.10% from 2.06%, where it was at the time of the recent stability fee hike. However, the ability to execute cryptocurrency trades at the “peg” level has proven difficult and as a result, the company has confirmed that it is exploring yet another fee increase, this time to 7.5%. As reported by Cointelegraph, developers had previously stated that earlier increases had not had a negative impact on the Maker ecosystem. Also, speaking to tech news publication BreakerMag, CEO Rune Christensen seemed unperturbed by the future of Dai, admitting its inexact dollar peg would likely continue.

Still, the fact that the amount of ETH coins has not fallen since the last increase should be seen as a positive for the cryptocurrency market as it indicates that, despite the risks, there is plenty of appetite to enter and create leverage structures using the aforementioned credit ecosystem. Technically, $147 and $160 are resistance levels to note, while support levels are seen at the $135/33 and then the $128 area.

In other news, Citigroup, one of the largest banks in the US, has given up the idea of launching its own cryptocurrency (code-named "Citicoin"). However, the bank is not giving up on blockchain technology and is continuing to explore its use in trade finance and trade letters of credit, where there are a lot of inefficiencies due to the manual nature of the processes involved.

Note:

CME Bitcoin futures will expire on 29.03.19

Thank you for reading,

The BeQuant’s Analytics team