Bitcoin traders will be well advised to consider the macroeconomic calendar today, with the latest round of minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting due to be released this afternoon.
The reality is that bitcoin is an emotional asset class that tends to react strongly to short-term macro events; After all, crypto volatility is one of the drawcards.
There’s no telling what the contents of the FOMC minutes are, but in the most rudimentary of explanations: Hawkish Fed policy makes cash appreciate, bitcoin goes down. Dovish Fed Policy Makes Cash Fall, Bitcoin Rises.
At least traditionally, although it should also be noted that the FOMC minutes may be past their expiration date before they hit the shelf, given the burden of tight labor statistics and CPI numbers that have emerged since.
For now, the market seems generally upbeat.
BTC/USDT Tests 25k – Source: binance.com
BTC/USDT added 2.3% on Monday, ending the day above US$24,800, and the pair has continued to move in the right direction, currently hovering just below the psychological US$25k line.
It is no coincidence that BTC has seen some rejection on the one-hour chart at this point, given that day traders have likely cashed out their gains at this point.
If momentum manages to push BTC past 25,000, expect traders to shell out USD 5,100 and USD 25,200, with the Binance order book showing large walls of selling pressure.
Ethereum (ETH) added 1.4% to close a few dollars above US$1,700 yesterday and has remained there this morning.
Ether rotates on the same macro conditions as bitcoin, but the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has some other keys at work right now.
US regulators have come down hard on betting services; this has no effect on bitcoin, but a potentially huge effect on ether.
On the bright side, since The Merge, Ether has turned into a deflationary currency, i.e. less Ether is minted than burned, which can only be a good thing for the price.
However, the ETH/BTC pair has been in a steady decline for the past two weeks; investors seem more inclined to bet on the benchmark over the alternatives at the moment.
This is exemplified by the increase in bitcoin dominance from 43.22% on February 8th to 44.4% today.
In the altcoin space
Polygon (MATIC), Solana (SOL) and Polkadot (DOT) remain the best week-to-week performers in the majors space, all of which remain over 20% higher despite losing some ground overnight.
Neo, Stacks (STX) and Huobi Token (HT) were among the overnight performers in the top-100 set.
The global cryptocurrency market capitalization is currently $1.13 billion, while the total value locked across all decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols is at a three-month high of $51 billion.
