The crypto market consolidated on Thursday, with some bearishness to its movements as a strengthening US Dollar pulled back gains from Bitcoin (BTC) followed by corrections in some altcoins. The total cryptocurrency market cap dropped to $2.16 trillion, a decline of 0.7 per cent early on Friday. Trade volumes across exchanges rose by 9.4 per cent in the past 24 hours.

BTC struggled to hold above the $48,000 level, eventually breaking and finding support at $47,020. BTC recovered in early hours today to $48,000, up by 1 per cent, though with a bearish bias. BTC dominance is now at 41.6 per cent.

Ethereum (ETH) rose to $3,670 intraday before facing rejection to a daily low of $3,480. ETH closed the day at $3,575, with a 1 per cent gain. Critical resistance level for ETH continues around $3,620, while its newly tested $3,480 support level should protect it from downside

It was a mixed day for key altcoins, with Solana (SOL), Uniswap (UNI), and Chainlink (LINK) declining by more than 3 per cent. Avalanche (AVAX) zoomed 12 per cent today post announcement of its capital raise followed by Polkadot (DOT) with a 4 per cent gain. Meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB) rose over 38 per cent today on the back of its listing on Coinbase Pro.

With BTC options expiring today, analysts expect BTC to trade below $47,000 for a while before making a move towards the $50,000 level. However, it faces strong resistance in the $49,000-49,500 range and continues to face a risk of being rejected to $42,000 in the absence of volume and sentiment.

Top Gainers today:

1. Shiba Inu (SHIB): 38.3%
2. Audius (AUDIO): 23.3%
3. Cosmos (ATOM): 14.0%

Top Losers today:

1. Telcoin (TEL): -11%
2. Horizen (ZEN): -8.2%
3. Curve DAO Token (CRV): -8.1%

The analysis includes the top 100 cryptocurrencies only as of 9 am.

Source: CoinMarketCap

Crypto News at a Glance:

1. Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase is planning to launch crypto futures on its platform by seeking membership from the National Futures Association (NFA), followed by registration with the US regulator, Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
2. The Hedera Governing Council, a group of organizations responsible for running the Hedera network, has announced the approval of a plan to allocate 10.7 billion HBAR tokens towards the development of the Hedera ecosystem.
3. The Avalanche (AVAX) foundation has announced a $230 million capital raise via its token sale with participation from Polychain, Three Arrows Capital, and several others to accelerate the growth of the DeFi ecosystem and applications that utilize the Avalanche blockchain.
4. Global investment firm SkyBridge Capital has filed for a crypto-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF) and raised more than $100 million towards the newly announced Algorand fund. The firm currently holds $700 million worth of crypto assets.
5. AMC Entertainment, which had unveiled plans to accept Bitcoin (BTC) payments for online movie tickets by the end of 2022, has announced it will also accept Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) along with BTC.

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