It was destined to be a bit of a quieter week on the bitcoin (BTC) volatility front, and it appears to be that way … so far.
In fact, the Bitcoin Volatility Index is sitting below 60 points, the lowest it’s been in 12 months.
BTC/USDT closed Monday a tad lower at US$23,490, albeit the bottom-to-crest intraday amplitude of 3.4% indicated a bit of tussle between the bulls and bears as day traders bought in and out, accordingly.
This morning has seen around 1% of further losses to US$23,260; still within the lower end of the 23k to 24k range where BTC is likely to consolidate.
Binance’s order book shows some buyers’ support around the US$23,200 price point which could stem any further losses below here.
The lack of a 2021-level pump must come as a slight disappointment to the tea leaf readers who had been pointing to the fabled golden cross on the technical chart.
Theory has it that when the 50-day moving average (MA) moves above the 200-day MA, as it did on the sixth of this month, bitcoin is prepared to skyrocket in value.
Yes, there was some positive price action following the latest golden cross, but certainly nothing of the magnitude seen in 2021 or 2019.
It could still happen, or BTC could continue to consolidate in the range we’re seeing now.
Temper your expectations on a golden cross pump – Source: currency.com
Ethereum (ETH) closed 0.5% lower at US$1,633 yesterday and fell another 0.8% to US$1,616 on the ETH/USDT pair this morning, with bulls and bears seemingly evenly matched.
Ethereum coders successfully simulated the upcoming Shanghai hard fork today, in a positive step to the next major protocol upgrade due in the coming weeks.
Evidently this was a bit of an arcane development and failed to have any effect on the market.
In the altcoin space
One feels like Solana (SOL) dodged a bullet after it suffered yet another blackout on Saturday.
Sure, SOL coin is 14% down week-on-week, but that’s hardly any better or worse than the likes of Polkadot (DOT), Polygon (MATIC) or Avalanche (AVAX).
All major altcoins in the top-20 set are now in the red week-on-week, though Litecoin (LTC) has outperformed with less than 2% cut from its market capitalisation.
Litecoin benefitted from a bit of hype when Ordinals, the controversial bitcoin NFT project, came to its ledger.
Among the top-100 set, major decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols Synthetix (SNX) and dYdX have pulled ahead, both having added around 8% overnight.
On the downside, layer-1 blockchain Conflux (CFX) suffered a 10% hit to its market cap.
Global cryptocurrency market capitalisation dipped 0.5% to US$1.06tn overnight, while total value locked in the DeFi space stayed at a flat US$49.5bn.