Bitcoin (BTC) displayed some concerningly bearish signals overnight, with the BTC/USDT pair heading below US$23,000 following the biggest daily dip in six weeks.
Nearly US$40mln in long-bitcoin liquidations were chalked up in the past 24 hours due to the volatility impacting the market in anticipation of the trio of interest rate announcements from the US, UK and EU in the following two days.
Binance’s order book shows strong resistance walls pitched at US$23,500 and US$24,000 and support at US$22,700, or roughly 0.65% below the going market price of US$22,850.
Bitcoin (BTC) stumbles – Source: currency.com
If the Federal Reserve does as the markets expect and signals a cooling off of interest rate hikes, it should theoretically encourage a rally on risk assets, but there appear to be other catalysts at play right now.
A contentious new protocol called Ordinals has just been released, allowing users to store NFTs on the bitcoin blockchain by exploiting a recent protocol upgrade to the ledger.
Bitcoin maximalists don’t just worry that this will drive up transaction fees on the network; they also reckon it goes against the very fundamental principles of bitcoin itself.
Ethereum (ETH) joined bitcoin with a 5% dip to US$1,570 against the US dollar overnight, with Binance’s order book showing support for the ETH/USDT pair at US$1,500.
In the altcoin space
CoinDesk’s market-weighted Market Index (CMI) saw a -1.48% return overnight, with some of the heaviest losses among the premier altcoins coming from Solana (SOL), Polkadot (DOT) and Avalanche (AMAX).
Privacy coin Monero (XMR) saw over 5% in losses.
As for the day’s top risers, the Threshold (T) blockchain surged nearly 20% following an upgrade to its bitcoin-ether bridge. T’s market capitalisation now stands at US$426mln, making it the 85th largest cryptocurrency globally.
Dogecoin (DOGE) is also beating the market with a 6.5% overnight gain. The meme coin is enjoying renewed speculation of an integration with Elon Muck-helmed social media platform Twitter.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at US$1.04tn, while total value locked across all decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols is US$47.3bn.
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