Despite a volatile past few trading sessions that saw bitcoin fall below US$30,000, the BTC/USDT pair has managed to garner bullish support in this morning’s Asia trading window.
Bitcoin closed the midnight bell close to US$29,900, but the benchmark cryptocurrency proceeded to add a percentage point to bring it just shy of US$30,200 at the time of writing.
Barring intraday fluctuations, bitcoin has predominantly traded within the 30k to 31k channel for nearly a month now, with onlookers mulling over the prospect of a breakout.
Barring a significant catalyst, resistance is likely to take place around US$30,500, where a large quality of sell orders are placed on the Binance order book.
Bitcoin ticks above 30k after brief spell lower – Source: currency.com
What might those catalysts be? Good news emerging from BlackRock’s spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund is the most obvious one.
BlackRock’s plan, which would open bitcoin to trillions of dollars of the world’s largest asset manager’s wealth under management, has suffered a few setbacks, but the process is still ongoing.
In a more macroeconomic sense, a marked turnaround of the risk appetite among global investors would feed into bitcoin, though sluggish Chinese recovery and the ongoing fight against Western inflation remain bottlenecks.
For the time being, bitcoin appears comfortable in its sideways trading channel.
Over to Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency closed half a percent lower yesterday, marking the sith consecutive day of losses.
ETH/USDT staged a healthy recovery this morning though, adding 1.2%. The pair was changing hands for US$1,911 at the time of writing,
Ripple (XRP) bolsters altcoins
In the altcoin space, Ripple (XRP) continues to be by far the strongest of the blue chips, remaining 73% higher week on week following the partial victory in developer Ripple Labs’ long-running tussle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
XRP’s strong performance has bolstered other blue-chip altcoins Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA), both of which have added double digits in the past week.
In the mid-cap range, Stellar (XLM), a similar protocol to Ripple (XRP) has ratcheted up 73% too.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation added 0.75% to US$2.21tn overnight, with bitcoin dominance at 49.9%.