At least we know where the latest floor price is for bitcoin.
After getting dragged as low as US$24,800 last Thursday, bulls appeared to galvanise support to bring the BTC/USDT pair back above a semi-respectable 26k.
Weekend trades largely served as a correction for Thursday’s three-month low, with bitcoin heading as high as US$26,800 on Saturday.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation has fallen back a bit since then, with a going rate of US$26,400 at the time of writing.
Will BTC/USDT stabilise above 26k? – Source: currency.com
As for Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency rebounded from a low of US$1,626 on Thursday to a weekend high of US$1,770, before settling to US$1,726 this Monday morning.
This week should prove less volatile for the benchmark cryptocurrencies given the quieter macro calendar and trading holiday in the US today.
Wednesday’s UK inflation data will be worth keeping an eye on, with any upside surprise (which is likely, given forecasters’ propensity for consistently underestimating the situation) potentially acting as a drag on crypto and other risk assets.
Bitcoin nears 50% dominance
Altcoins are looking increasingly out of favour among the cryptocurrency investment scene, if bitcoin’s surging market dominance is anything to go by.
At 49.7% of global cryptocurrency market capitalisation, bitcoin’s dominance of the sector is at 26-month highs.
None of the blue-chip altcoins appears to sparking interest at the moment, with Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC) and Ripple (XRP) posting mid to high-single-digit losses over the past seven days.
Binance’s BNB token is one of the few in the green week-on-week, despite facing an existential regulatory threat to its US operations.
But all altcoins, with the possible exception of ether, face a tough challenge ahead should US regulators continue their warpath; investors are wise to take heed of these headwinds.
For the meantime, global cryptocurrency market capitalisation stands at US$1.06tn, with total value locked across the decentralised finance (DeFi) space clocking in at US$42.1bn.