Resilience has been the common adjective for bitcoin (BTC) lately, and overnight price action has provided justification for that.
Despite yet more regulatory crackdowns against Binance, the largest of the fiat-to-crypto on-ramps, BTC managed to move above US$29,000 during this morning’s Asia trading hours, marking a fresh return to nine-month highs.
We saw some retraction as the trading window progressed, but the BTC/USDT pair remains at a bullish US$28,585.
Trading volumes have ticked higher- from as low as US$17bn yesterday to as high as US$24bn today, while open interest on bitcoin futures added 4.5% in the past 24 hours.
30k remains the bulls’ long-term, hard-fought target, but significant selling pressure at the price point is evident on the Binance order book; it is a logical take-profit zone after all.
Bitcoin dominance – i.e. bitcoin percentage of market capitalisation in the entire cryptocurrency space – has moved even higher, having briefly touched 48% for the first time since June 2022.
This suggests that investors in the cryptocurrency space remain wary of altcoins, at least in comparison to the benchmark cryptoasset that is bitcoin.
Is bitcoin 30k on the way? – Source: currency.com
This is not to say Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, hasn’t shown strong price action too.
ETH/USDT is changing hands above US$1,810, having added over one percent yesterday and once again in this morning’s Asia trading window.
Week on week, both bitcoin and ether remain more than 3% in the green.
Ripple tsunami peaks
Ripple (XRP) has been the most closely watched altcoin lately due to its relentless bull run that has seen the payment token soar over 50% since the start of March.
XRP’s rally has coincided with hype over the pending outcome in the long-running unregistered securities litigation with US regulators, with market sentiment leaning toward a favourable outcome for Ripple Labs.
The crest of Ripple’s wake peaked at US$0.585 this morning, marking a 10-month high.
Since this morning’s peak, XRP/USDT has cut back to US$0.54, perhaps due to fatigue among the ‘Ripple Army’ for a lack of further updates on the lawsuit.
Further gains shouldn’t be ruled out, but profit taking and ‘selling the news’ pressure are unavoidable headwinds to keep under consideration.
Price action in the broader top-20 altcoin set has been relatively muted. Litecoin (LTC), Tron (TRX) and Cardano (ADA) remain in the green week on week, while Solana (SOL) and Binance’s BNB token have entered the red zone.
Global cryptocurrency market cap added 1.1% to US$1.19tn overnight, while total value locked in the decentralised finance (DeFi) space added 1.5% to US$49.74bn.
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