Huobi Cryptocurrency Market Sentiment Report (August 2018)

8 min readSep 23, 2018

All data in this report is captured and analyzed by Huobi Research; please cite the source “Huobi Cryptocurrency Market Sentiment Report” for reference.

Summary

The monthly market sentiment index in August came to 69.6 points, decreased 12.6% from the previous month; the short-term sentiment index was 60.3 points, decreased 10.5% from the previous month; the medium-term sentiment index was 68.8 points, decreased 12.6% from the previous month; the long-term sentiment index was 92.0 points, increased 3.6% from the previous month.

Huobi’s Market Sentiment Index score ranges from 0–100, with 50 points representing neutral sentiment.

A total of 509 valid questionnaires were collected this month, The respondent includes institutional investors and individual investors. The questionnaires were distributed from August 25th to August 31st through domestic and overseas channels such as WeChat public account, twitter, and telegram communities. Cryptocurrency investors from 23 Countries participated in this survey, including China, United States, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore.

Disclaimer:

This result of this survey does not constitute any investment advice from Huobi Research. Nor does this article contain any tips, hints or guarantees to investing. Investors should make their own independent research before reaching the final investment decision, and Huobi Research shall not be liable in any manners for any consequences of any reliance thereon or usage thereof.

Currently, all surveys are distributed through the Internet with participants remain unidentified. As a result, although we try to expand the scope and diversity of the survey respondents as much as we can, we cannot rule out selection bias during the survey process. Thus, the result of this survey does not represent the view of all cryptocurrency investors.

Responds and Analysis

（1）Survey Result

Question 1:How do you expect the total cryptocurrency market capitalization to change in the coming month?

A. Increase Substantially (>30%);
B. Increase Slightly (10~30%);
C. Remain the same (Within±10%);
D. Decrease Slightly (-30~-10%);
E. Decrease Substantially (<-30%).

Figure 1: Short-Term (1 month) Investor Expectations

The short-term market expectations of digital asset among investors are optimistic. Compared with last month, the proportion of investors who believe that the short-term market will rise is 8.41% down to 58.48%, and the proportion of investors who believe that the short-term market will remain flat is 8.94% up to 25.55% in this month. 33.53% of the voters believed that the total Cryptocurrency market capitalization will increase slightly in the next month, 7.32% less than that in last month. The percentage of the investors who believe that the short-term market will remain constant achieves 25.55% in this month, 8.94 points higher than that in last month. 15.97% of the voters were bearish toward the market performance in the next month.

Question 2: How do you expect the total cryptocurrency market cap to change in the next 6 months?

A. Increase Substantially (>30%);
B. Increase Slightly (10~30%);
C. Remain the same (Within±10%);
D. Decrease Slightly (-30~-10%);
E. Decrease Substantially (<-30%).

Figure 2: Mid-Term (6 months) investor Expectations

Most of the cryptocurrency investors were bullish toward the Cryptocurrency market in the coming six months, with 40.12% of investors believed that the Cryptocurrency market capitalization will increase substantially. Comparing to the previous month, more investors believed the market will increase slightly in the coming six months. 77.05% of the voters believed that the total Cryptocurrency market capitalization will increase in the next six months. 40.12% investors believed that the total Cryptocurrency market capitalization will increase substantially, 9.49% less than that of the previous month; 13.77% of voters were pessimistic toward the cryptocurrency market performance in the coming six months. Compared with last month, 36.93% of investors believed that there would be a slight increase of market capitalization, which of that is 5.28% up than that in last month.

Question 3: How do you expect the total cryptocurrency market cap to change in the next three years?

A. Increase Substantially (>30%);
B. Increase Slightly (10~30%);
C. Remain the same (Within±10%);
D. Decrease Slightly (-30~-10%);
E. Decrease Substantially (<-30%).

Figure 3: Long-Term (3 years) investor Expectations

Most of the surveyed investors were bullish toward the long term performance of the Cryptocurrency market. Compared to the previous month, 1.49% less investors thought the total Cryptocurrency market capitalization to decrease over the next three years. 75.05% investors expected the total Cryptocurrency market capitalization to significantly increase over 30%, and 93.01% investors expected the total Cryptocurrency market capitalization to increase over the next three years. In addition, the percentage of investors who hold the faith that the cryptocurrency market would goes down in three years accounts for 4.79%, which is 1.49% lower than that in last month.

（2）Result Based on Geographical Locations

In general, more cryptocurrency investors overseas were optimistic toward a slight increase in the overall cryptocurrency market capitalization, while more Chinese cryptocurrency investors expected the market cap to slightly decrease in the short term. In terms of all short-, mid-, and long-term, equal percentage of investors in China and overseas expected the market cap to increase. In the short-term, medium-term and long-term, more Cryptocurrency investors overseas expected the total market cap to increase slightly. In the short term, 28.0% and 34.8% of investors overseas thought the market cap to remain the same and increase slightly, respectively, 8.4% and 4.4% more than investors in China, respectively. The percentage of investors in China who believe the market would goes down achieves 23.0%, which is 10.0% higher than that overseas. 57.4%, 75.0%, and 95.9% investors in China expected the market cap to increase in the short-, mid-, and long-term, respectively, similar to the overseas investors, of which 58.9%, 77.9% and 91.8% investors expected the market cap to increase in the short-. mid-, and long-term, respectively.

Figure 4: Short-Term Investor Expectations by Geographic Locations

Figure 5: Mid-Term Investor Expectations by Geographic Locations

Figure 6: Long-Term Investor Expectations by Geographic Locations

3) Result Analysis — Institutional Investors

In terms of short- and mid-term, 50% of the surveyed institutional investors expected the overall cryptocurrency market cap to slightly decrease. In the long term, however, all surveyed investors were bullish toward the cryptocurrency market cap performance. In the short-term, institutional investors tend to be slightly bullish toward the cryptocurrency market performance, with 50% surveyed investors expected a slight decrease in the overall cryptocurrency market cap. In the mid-term, 38% surveyed institutional investors expected a slight increase in the overall cryptocurrency market cap, while 50% expected a slight decrease. In the long term, all surveyed institutional investors expected a drastic increase in the cryptocurrency market cap.

Figure 7: Short-Term (1 month) Investor Expectations

Figure 8: Mid-Term (6 months) investor Expectations

Figure 9: Long-Term (3 years) investor Expectations

Rule Explanation

Huobi Market Sentiment Index Report is released once a month and the result is a weighted calculation of all questionnaires collected at the end of the month. Within the range of 0–100, the higher the score, the more optimistic the cryptocurrency investors are in the future market. This report will also disclose the weighted calculation results of each of the three questions in the questionnaire, representing the short-, medium-, and long-term sentiment indices of cryptocurrency investors.

Weighting Rules

1. The calculated weighted score of each of the questions represents investors sentiments toward Cryptocurrency market’s short-term, medium-term, and long-term performance. There are 5 options for each question. The scores for the A, B, C, D, and E options are 100, 75, 50, 25, and 0, respectively.

2. The calculated weighted scores of the three questions represents the comprehensive investor’s sentiment index of the month. The questionnaire has a total of 3 questions, representing short, medium and long-term sentiment index, and the score weighs 45%, 35% and 20% respectively. The shorter the time frame, the higher the weight, leading to the comprehensive sentiment index.

Table 3: Weighting Rules of Short-, Mid-, Long-term Market Sentiment Index
Questions Weight

3. The calculated weighted scores of the individual and institutional investors represents the final comprehensive sentiment index of the month. Institutional investors are represented by Huobi super nodes. The score of individual and institutional investors each weights 80% and 20%, based on which the final comprehensive sentiment index of the month is calculated.

Table 4: Individual/Institutional Investors Weighting Rules

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1. Huobi Research does not have any form of association with blockchain projects or other third-parties mentioned in this report that could jeopardize the objectivity, independence and fairness of this report.
2. All outside information, data referenced in this report is from compliant and legitimate sources that we deem as reliable, and Huobi Research have conducted the due diligence concerning its authenticity, accuracy and completeness, but such due diligence does not provide any guarantee.
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6.Currently, all surveys are distributed through the Internet with participants remain unidentified. As a result, although we try our best to expand the scope and reach of this survey, we cannot rule out selection bias during the surveying process. Thus, the result of this survey does not represent the view of all cryptocurrency investors.