Roses are red, and so are the crypto markets this Valentine’s day morning, albeit things aren’t as heartbreaking as they could be.
Bitcoin is hovering around US$21,750 for the third day in a row, as the bulls continue to tease a breakout following an extended sideways trade.
BTC bulls have been anticipating a breakout ever since February 6’s golden cross, when the 50-day moving average shot above the 200-day moving average; alas a rally has yet to materialise.
The BTC/USDT pair shrugged off yesterday’s potentially calamitous news that Binance/Paxos’ BUSD stablecoin – the third largest of its kind – must stop minting to US customers due to securities law violations.
At face value, that may seem irrelevant to the price of bitcoin, but as we all know, the markets never react kindly to negative news, especially of the regulatory persuasion; just look at last Thursday’s 5% BTC/USDT dip on news of Kraken’s staking fine as a recent example.
Plus, stablecoins are something of an on-ramp, a gateway drug if you will, to the wider crypto markets, so their existential threat is not something to take lightly.
For better or for worse, the launch of Ordinals, i.e. NFTs on the bitcoin ledger for the first time in history, has been a boon to bitcoin usage.
Active bitcoin addresses just reached an all-time high of 44.06 million, and “the primary source of this activity is due to Ordinals”, said blockchain analysts at Glassnode.
When will bitcoin (BTC) rally? – Source: currency.com
Ethereum bounced back from a Monday low of US$1,460 to return above US$1,500 overnight.
ETH/USDT’s order book on Binance shows strong support at this price point, while selling pressure should be expected at around US$1,550.
BNB dips
Unsurprisingly, Binance’s BNB coin didn’t take kindly to the SEC suing its stablecoin issuer, sinking nearly 6% on the BNB/USDT pair yesterday.
Today has been a bit more forgiving for the pair, seemingly stabilising somewhere between US$290 and US$300, although more short-term volatility shouldn’t come as a surprise.
BUSD’s market capitalisation has already shrunk around by 2%, and will continue to decline now that the coin is deflationary.
Elsewhere in the altcoin space
The top-20 looks generally bearish today, with Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Dogecoin (DOGE), Ripple (XRP), Polygon (MATIC) and Litecoin (LTC) all shedding low single figures overnight.
Tron (TRX) is the one outlier. The blockchain launched in 2017 by Justin Sun added 2% overnight to bring its market capitalisation above US$6.06bn.
Recent news from the Tron Foundation, including a US$100mln AI development fund and reduced trading fees on Binance, has supported TRX’s bullish performance.
Oasis Network (ROSE), Zilliqa (ZIL), Rocket pool (RPL) and Mina (MINA) were among the poorest overnight performers.
Global cryptocurrency market cap is currently straddling US$1tn, while total value locked across all decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols is US$46.9bn.