Bitcoin and Ethereum: Crypto fails to regain hefty losses
Proactive Investors – (BTC) was unable to recoup significant end-of-week losses in the weekend trade, instead reverting to a range in the mid-US$22,000s.
BTC/USDT actually fell below US$22,000 by the end of the Friday session, though buyers saw a dip opportunity and moved to offer pricing support.
While there appears to be enough support to keep the pair above US$22,000, there is little to suggest an imminent price breakout, especially not like what we saw back in January.
Crypto markets are still coming to grips with the latest crisis, being the potential collapse of high-profile cryptocurrency bank Silvergate. Investors are likely anxious about another bout of market contagion with echoes of FTX still fresh in the air.
READ: As Silvergate tanks even further, Microstrategy, Coinbase (NASDAQ:) and others jump ship
The US dollar, while tapering out in the past week, has still had an unexpectedly strong year and any continued hawkish rhetoric could keep the greenback elevated for a while longer.
For now, BTC/USDT is sticking to US$22,400 with little in the way of intraday volatility.
A new range for BTC? – Source: currency.com
(ETH) similarly traded sideways over the weekend, unable to break above US$1,600 at any point. The ETH/USDT pair is currently changing hands at US$1,560.
ETH volumes are particularly low right now, which doesn’t bode well for any sudden price surge, at least not in the short term.
Altcoins stick to the script
Surprises are few and far between among the top-20 altcoin set. Polygon (MATIC), (DOT), (SHIB) and (AVAX) continue to be the lowest performers, with each coin’s market capitalisations remaining down in the low double digits week on week.
(XRP) and Tron (TRX) have slightly outperformed against the BTC and ETH benchmarks, having kept week-on-week losses in the low single digits.
Decentralised finance (DeFi) tokens had a good showing overnight. Decentralised derivatives exchange Synthetix (SNX) climbed 5%, bringing its market cap to US$795mln, while decentralised stablecoin exchange Curve (CRV) added 4% to US$694mln.
Trust Wallet Token (TWT), (DASH) and SingularityNET (AGIX) were among the poorest overnight performers.
Global cryptocurrency market cap dipped 0.2% to US$1.02tn, while total value locked across all DeFi protocols stayed relatively flat at US$48.2bn.
