Friday is upon us, but bitcoin (BTC) seems to be destroying the atmosphere, with what looks like a fourth straight day of losses on the BTC/USDT pair.
It was a highly contested battle between buyers and sellers yesterday with around 4% of the amplitude between highs and lows during the day, but the pair ended up losing a straight 1% to close at $23,940.
Today, bitcoin has lost another 0.6% to $23,800, but across the weekly session, the benchmark crypto-asset remains in the green, if only slightly.
Bitcoin’s tepid performance has a lot to do with a resurgent dollar, which has shown surprising strength amid the possibility of tighter monetary policy continuing longer than expected.
That makes sense, given that ING analysts threw some cold water on the US disinflation narrative this morning.
One wonders if the recent plea by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to countries not to grant bitcoin legal tender status, as is the case in no more than two countries – El Salvador and the Central African Republic – has also had a bearish effect.
But the IMF is not a decision maker and its influence on the crypto markets has never really been considered.
Where will the next BTC/USDT area form? – Source: currency.com
It could all be a short-lived setback in what has apparently been a bull market – let’s not ignore the fact that bitcoin is still around 50% higher year-to-date, far outperforming most risk asset classes.
More likely bitcoin will find a range and sit there, optimistically around the 24k to 25k channel.
Stiff selling resistance at the USD 24,700 price point per Binance order book is likely to avert a move beyond that for now.
Ethereum actually had a stronger session than bitcoin yesterday, adding 0.5% to close at US$1,650 on the ETH/USDT pair, where it has remained this morning.
As a result, ETH/BTC has performed well, adding around 2% in the last 48 hours after a prolonged two-week bear run.
In the altcoin space
Optimism ( OP ) was one of the overnight performers in the top-100 set, adding 10% to bring its market cap close to $730 million.
Perhaps Optimism has its big Layer-2 competitor Polygon (MATIC) to thank. Polygon’s founder Sandeep Nailwal had a hot take on Crypto Banter yesterday, stating that he only sees a single-chain future, with Ethereum and its respective Layer-2 modules, of which Optimism and Polygon are, putting all competitors to the test.
Apparently, Polygon investors didn’t get the memo; native token MATIC fell 3.5% overnight.
Most other large caps including Solana (SOL), Ripple (XRP) and Dogecoin (DOGE) have also dipped by similar amounts.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalization fell below $1.1 billion after losing 1.8% overnight, while the total value of all decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols fell 0.2% to $49.8 billion.
