The past seven days have not been kind to bitcoin (BTC), with the world’s largest cryptocurrency seeing its worst weekly performance since FTX collapsed in November 2022.
Due largely to the savage 7.3% plummet last Thursday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency is now approximately 11.5% lower against the US dollar on a week-on-week basis.
Cited reasons have been plentiful- Chinese economic turmoil, Elon Musk’s SpaceX capitulating all of its bitcoin holdings, low trading volumes and general risk-on anxieties in an inflationary economy.
It was likely a mix of all of the above for BTC/USDT’s bearish turn, though signs of stability are emerging.
Following the crushing end-of-week play, bitcoin bounced off lows close to US$25,000 to regain US$26,000 by Sunday evening.
At the time of writing, the BTC/USDT pair was swapping for US$26,020.
Can bitcoin steady the boat? Source: currency.com
Liquidations on the futures market piled up following Thursday’s rout, but have since cooled down.
Compared to the US$400 million in bitcoin longs wiped out at the end of last week, there was a comparatively small US$8.5 million wiped out on Saturday and Sunday.
Bitcoin dominance has taken a hit, tumbling below 49% for the first time since late-July.
Seen as a metric for confidence in bitcoin as a digital asset, dominance compares its market capitalisation against the entire cryptocurrency market cap.
As a result, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index has been pulled down to 38, the world in five months and firmly on the sell-side fear region.
The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has performed slightly better than bitcoin across the week, dipping 9.5%, or 200 basis points less than bitcoin.
In the wider altcoin space, Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE), Polygon (MATIC) and Litecoin (LTC) have all racked up losses greater than 15% over the past seven days.
Shiba Inu (SHIB) has performed even worse, penning over 22% of losses after the Shibarium blockchain encountered network challenges.
Global cryptocurrency market cap currently stands at US$1.06 trillion, down from US$1.17 trillion last Monday.
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