$26,000 has emerged as the battleline for the bitcoin-dollar pair following the previous week's dramatic swings in spot prices.
Bitcoin (BTC) initially surged 6% higher last Tuesday to smash above 28k following a high-profile court victory for Grayscale, the world’s largest bitcoin fund.
In a disappointing turn for the bitcoin bulls, the world’s largest cryptocurrency ended up sacrificing all of these gains and more as the week ended.
However, after closing Friday closer to $25,800, bitcoin made gains over the weekend trading session, with the BTC/USDT pair inching over $26,000 in this morning’s Asia trading window.
At the time of writing, bitcoin’s spot price was oscillating above and below this resistance point, with a support line forming at $25,900 per Binance’s order book.
Historical factors weigh on bitcoin as the month’s trades get underway- September is historically the worst month on record for the benchmark cryptoasset.
This fact was traced in a Twitter/X post from popular bitcoin analyst Will Clemente, whose data shows just two positive September on record and a six-year losing streak between 2017 and 2022.
Bitcoin's returns broken down by monthsThere is little to suggest a reversal of this trend, given the lack of substantial trading volumes and the abundance of risk-off attitude in the market right now.September has had the least number of positive-returning months at just two and is on a 6-year negative-returning streak. pic.twitter.com/4VqZkMubm3
— Will Clemente (@WClementeIII) August 31, 2023
That is, unless the US regulators come good and finally capitulate to a spot-bitcoin ETF, which at the very least, would instigate a strong sentiment rally on the spot market.
Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, had a fairly uneventful weekend, adding 0.5% to $1,637 on Saturday and remaining there since.
Ether is outperforming bitcoin on a week-on-week basis though, having added 0.25% while bitcoin remains essentially flat.
In the altcoin space, Binance’s BNB coin, Ripple (XRP), Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL) remain in the low-single-digit red week on week, while Dogecoin (DOGE) has pulled ahead of its blue-chip altcoin competitors by adding 1.5%.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation currently stands at $1.04 trillion, with bitcoin dominance hovering around 49.25%.