Proactive Investors - Friday is upon us but bitcoin (BTC) appears to be spoiling the atmosphere, with what is looking like a fourth straight day of losses on the BTC/USDT pair.
It was a highly contested fight between buyers and sellers yesterday with around 4% of amplitude between intraday highs and lows, but the pair ended up losing a straight 1% to close at US$23,940.
Today has seen bitcoin shed a further 0.6% to US$23,800, but looking across the weekly session, the benchmark cryptoasset remains in the green, if only slightly.
Bitcoin’s tepid performance has a lot to do with a resurgent greenback, which has shown surprising strength due to the possibility of restrictive monetary policy continuing for longer than anticipated.
That makes sense, given that ING analysts threw some cold water on the US disinflation narrative this morning.
One wonders if the recent plea from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to countries to not give bitcoin legal tender status, as is the case in no more than two countries - El Salvador and the Central Africa Republic - has had a bearish impact too.
But the IMF is not a policy maker and its influence on the crypto markets has never really been considered.
Where will the next BTC/USDT range form? – Source: currency.com
It could all be a momentary pullback in what has ostensibly been a bull market - let’s not ignore the fact that bitcoin is still around 50% higher in the year-to-date, far outstripping most risk-on asset classes.
More likely bitcoin will find a range and sit there, optimistically around the 24k to 25k channel.
Stiff selling resistance at the US$24,700 price point per the Binance order book will likely stave off a rally beyond that for the time being.
Ethereum actually had a stronger session than bitcoin yesterday, adding 0.5% to close at US$1,650 on the ETH/USDT pair, where it has remained this morning.
As a result, ETH/BTC has has a good showing, adding around 2% in the past 48 hours following a prolonged two-week bear run.
In the altcoin space
Optimism (OP) was one of the top overnight movers in the top-100 set, adding 10% to bring its market capitalisation close to US$730mln.
Perhaps Optimism has its large-cap Layer-2 competitor Polygon (MATIC) to thank. Polygon’s founder Sandeep Nailwal had a hot take on Crypto Banter yesterday, stating that he only sees a single-chain future, with Ethereum and its respective Layer-2 modules, of which Optimism and Polygon are, laying all competitors to waste.
Apparently Polygon investors didn’t get the memo though; native token MATIC fell 3.5% overnight.
Most other large caps, including Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP) and Dogecoin (DOGE) also dipped in similar amounts.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation dipped below US$1.1tn after shedding 1.8% overnight, while total value locked across all decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols fell 0.2% to US$49.8bn.