Bitcoin Hovers Around $48,000 Ahead of $800M Options Expiry
The crypto market continued its recovery phase early on Thursday, recouping some of its losses from earlier this week. A consolidation by Bitcoin (BTC) above $47,000 alongside a rally by a few altcoins aided in the recovery. The global cryptocurrency market cap stood at $2.18 trillion, up by 2 per cent as of 9 am. However, trade volumes across exchanges declined by 10 per cent in the past 24 hours.
BTC finally broke its range-bound price actions yesterday to reach a local intraday high of $48,500. However, bears exhibited strength by pushing BTC back to sub $48,000 levels early morning today as the majority of the $310 million put (sell) options ending Friday have been placed at $47,000 or lower. BTC is currently trading at $47,400, up by a modest 1 per cent. BTC dominance continues to be over 41 per cent.
Ethereum (ETH) surged by 6 per cent intraday before getting rejected at $3,620. ETH is currently trading at $3,540, up by 4 per cent from the previous day. Its support levels are at $3,520 and $3,480 while the next short-term resistance is forming at $3,620.
Key altcoins registered moderate gains today. Avalanche (AVAX) gained the most by 13 per cent while Uniswap (UNI), Chainlink (LINK), and Litecoin (LTC) grew by 3 per cent. Solana (SOL), down by 3.7 per cent, is expected to recover soon as the validator community has completed a restart of the network post the detection of a bug the day before.
BTC options expiry is expected to intensify the current battle among the bulls and the bears today. Positive price action above $50,000 by this weekend will ensure that BTC breaks its current range and possibly mount a challenge for $55,000 by the end of this month.
Top Gainers today:
- Ren (REN): 31.4%
- Horizen (ZEN): 26.5%
- Avalanche (AVAX): 13.0%
Top Losers today:
- Tezos (XTZ): -7.8%
- Quant (QNT): -6.7%
- Harmony (ONE): -6.1%
The analysis includes the top 100 cryptocurrencies only as of 9 am IST
Source: CoinMarketCap
Crypto News at a Glance:
- India’s premier engineering institute IIT Madras (IITM) has become a member of the Hedera Hashgraph council for decentralised governance. As a member of the Hedera Governing Council, IITM will run initial network nodes for governing the Hedera public ledger.
- The European Union is looking to invest $177 billion in novel technologies that include blockchain as a part of its plan to kickstart its economy.
- Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer Canaan has registered a record quarterly revenue of $167 million this year due to the strong demand for mining equipment from institutional buyers.
- Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum, has been named as one of the most influential people this year by Time magazine.
- Global crypto exchange Coinbase has increased the size of its proposed bond sale to $2 billion from the original $1.5 billion it had planned to offer earlier this week, after receiving an influx of bids from investors.