The cryptocurrency markets have yielded few surprises heading into the new week.
Although bitcoin (BTC) spent the better part of the weekend above US$17,000, a dip of nearly 1% this morning forced the BTC/USD pair back down, and it is currently trading at US$16,900.
In further proof of depressed investor sentiment, trading volumes have tanked to lows of US$12bn; levels typically seen back in early 2019.
Bitcoin (BTC) looks bearish, with trading volumes at yearly lows – Source: currency.com
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), the market’s largest bitcoin investment vehicle, is now dangerously close to a 50% discount on the price of bitcoin.
Ethereum dipped 1.2% to US$1,240 this morning following a mixed weekend trading session.
Buyers seem willing to support Ethereum at the US$1,230 price point, which will hopefully act as a support line for the ETH/USD pair.
Unfortunately, all major altcoins opened in the red too, none more so than the Dogecoin (DOGE) meme coin, which fell over 9%.
Most other large caps, including Cardano (ADA), Polygon (MATIC), Polkadot (DOT) and Ripple (XRP) managed to keep losses closer to 3%.
Despite the general bearish attitude of the market, a number of mid-cap cryptocurrencies have managed to post gains.
Toncoin (TON), the Layer-1 blockchain initially developed by the Telegram messaging platform, gained around 9% to bring its market value to US$2.5bn.
Bitcoin SV (BSV), a hard fork of the original bitcoin code, is also up a few percentage points, as is Trust Wallet Token (TWT) and Bored Ape Yacht Club’s APE token.
Global market capitalisation across the whole crypto market is currently US$841bn, while total value locked across all decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols is slightly above US$42bn.