The crypto market stays cautious ahead of US inflation data. Bitcoin is steady at $83.4K, BAT leads after its rally, and the altseason index hit a new high for the year.
Market Overview
The crypto market has remained largely unaffected by volatility, trading within a range of just 0.7% over the past day, reaching $2.80T by the start of active trading in Europe, compared with $2.81T the previous day. It appears that cryptocurrency traders are adopting a wait-and-see approach, slow to capitalise on the dollar’s pullback from its highs and the strengthening of bond buying, which is a sign of a recovery in risk appetite. The urge to take profits in big tech stocks at the start of the new earnings season is weighing on cryptocurrencies, as evidenced by the Nasdaq-100’s decline over four of the last five days. Among altcoins, the ratio of rising to falling coins is 1:9. The top gainers were BAT (+4.7%), Bitcoin Cash (+1.2%) and Tron (+0.4%). Polkadot (−5.2%), Near Protocol (−4.5%) and Internet Computer (−4.3%) have fallen the most.
Bitcoin remains stagnant, hovering around $83.4K, and has avoided sharp drops or surges over the past 24 hours. The leading cryptocurrency has managed to stay above its 50-day moving average near $81K without much difficulty, but has so far been unable to break above $84K. For institutional investors, BTC is positioned near the Nasdaq-100 on the risk asset spectrum. The latter’s caution is preventing Bitcoin from spreading its wings. Perhaps everyone is simply waiting for the release of US inflation data.
Fig. 1. Bitcoin has entered a period of consolidation.
Basic Attention Token (BAT) has doubled in price over the past five days, posting the best performance among the most liquid altcoins over the last seven days (+87%) and over 30 days (+150%). Trading near $0.20, this altcoin has almost recovered to its level at the start of the year. A ‘golden cross’ has formed on the daily timeframe – a significant bullish signal that could attract new buyers. The rapid rally has created localised overbought conditions: the RSI on the daily charts has come very close to 90, reaching a level it has recorded only once before, in 2018. At that time, the rally continued for about another week, albeit on a smaller scale, followed by a correction lasting more than a month. The bulls may push the coin up to $0.26–$0.29, where the range of highs from the end of last year lies, and only then will they take a breather to lock in profits.
Fig. 2. BAT is overbought following its rally but has the potential to reach previous highs.
News Background
According to CoinMarketCap, the Altcoin Season Index has hit a new high for the year. Over the past three months, more than 60 leading coins have outperformed Bitcoin in terms of growth. The top three are the PUMP token from the Pump.fun meme coin launchpad, the Quant (QNT) token and the token of the decentralised crypto exchange Raydium (RAY).
Strive has made its largest Bitcoin purchase since January. Last week, the company acquired an additional 3,311 BTC at an average price of approximately $84.5K, bringing its Bitcoin reserves to 32,773 BTC. Strive ranks among the top five public companies by the size of its corporate BTC reserves.
Japan’s Metaplanet has announced the issuance of $329 million in convertible bonds to repay loans and repurchase shares. The company aims to reduce its reliance on loans secured against BTC without selling assets from its Bitcoin reserve, which stands at 44,000 BTC.
The STRK token on the Starknet network has soared by more than 300% in just one month. The developers plan to migrate the project to their own blockchain, which they claim will become the world’s first network fully resistant to quantum attacks by 2027.
The FxPro Analyst Team