Bitcoin (BTC) is showing signs of consolidation following the recent two-week bull frenzy.
The benchmark cryptocurrency’s extraordinary performance – roughly 40% higher in the past 14 days amid a large-scale rush to safe-haven assets – appears to be tapering off in the upper 20k region, having closed close to US$28,000 for the past five days.
BTC/USDT managed to regain Wednesday's losses by adding nearly 4% to close at US$28,300 yesterday, where the pair has remained throughout the early-Friday session.
Thursday’s short bitcoin futures liquidations were around 25% higher than longs liquidations, considerably more imbalanced than the 70%-plus short-to-long liquidations seen in recent times.
Will bitcoin (BTC) stay above 28k? – Source: currency.com
This week’s interest rate decisions from the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve didn’t appear to have an impact on crypto prices, likely due to the largely expected 25 basis point rate decisions from both central banks.
Bitcoin’s year-to-date performance currently stands at 70%, outperforming all other major asset classes - the key now will be maintaining those gains.
As for Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation is trading slightly above US$1,800, having added 4.5% yesterday.
ETH has largest underperformed against bitcoin, though has still managed to benefit from the safe-haven rally of late.
The ETH/USDT pair is showing signs of consolidation between 1.7k and 1.8k.
Week on week, bitcoin added 7.8% while ether added 5%.
In the altcoin space
Ethereum Layer-2 protocol Arbitrum executed its long-awaited airdrop of the ARB token to 3.4 million users.
Following the inevitable bout of volatility, ARB has settled around the US$1.5 price point with a market capitalisation of US$1.9bn.
Ripple (XRP) was the top week-on-week performer among the top-20 set; despite dipping 4% overnight, the payment token remains 16% up across the past seven days.
XRP surged to a four-month high earlier this week as investors renewed their hopes of a successful outcome in the long-running SEC v Ripple Labs securities litigation.
Ripple president Monica Long told CNBC she is “very hopeful” about achieving a win, with an outcome expected “sometime this year.”
Other strong week-on-week performers included Solana (SOL) adding 8% and Litecoin (LTC) adding 14%.